Successful Blog

The Book List: 42 Rules to Jumpstart your Professional Success and We First

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The Book List: a weekly series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, aka The Author’s Cheerleader and I work with authors & writers to help them with their online book promotion and marketing. As part of my job I read a lot of books (I love to read anyway!). The books in The Book List series will cover a range of topics such as social media, product development, marketing, blogging, business, organization, career building, finance, networking, writing, self development, and inspiration.

’42 Rules of Professional Success:A Guide to Common Sense Career Development, Entrepreneurial Achievement’ by Bud Bilanich

About the Book:
Written in a straightforward, common sense manner, 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Personal and Professional Success provides the reader with practical, down to earth advice on how to create a successful life and career. In this book you will learn how to:

take responsibility for your life and career
become more self confident
create positive personal impact
become and outstanding performer
become a dynamic communicator
become more interpersonally competent.

’42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success’ is a guide to common sense career development, entrepreneurial achievement and life skills. Author Bud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy, has been helping people succeed for over 30 years. He’s spent the last 10 years studying successful people, cracking the code to success. He shares what he’s learned in 42 rules to Jumpstart Your Personal and Professional Success. Bud shares stories of personal and professional triumphs and failures and what he learned from them. He also tells other people’s stories that he finds inspiring.

About Bud:
Bud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy, is an executive coach, motivational speaker, author and blogger. He is the Official Guide for Executive Coaching at SelfGrowth.com, and the Careers Group Coordinator at FastCompany.com. He is a member of the USA Today Small Business Advisory Panel. He writes the popular blog (www.SuccessCommonSense.com) to which he posts five days a week. Dr. Bilanich is Harvard educated but has a no nonsense approach to personal and professional success as a result of over 35 years of business experience, 10 years of research and study of successful people and the application of common sense. Bud is the author of seven other books, including Straight Talk for Success: Common Sense Ideas That Won’t Let You Down.

His clients include Pfizer, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Abbot Laboratories, PepsiCo, AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup, General Motors, UBS, AXA Advisors, Cabot Corporation, The Aetna, PECO Energy, Olin Corporation, Minerals Technologies, The Boys and Girls Clubs of America and a number of small and family owned businesses. Bud is a cancer survivor and lives in Denver Colorado with his wife Cathy. He is a retired rugby player and an avid cyclist. He likes movies, live theatre and crime fiction.

You can pick up your copy of ’42 Rules to Jumpstart your Professional Success’ at the publisher’s site

Another book that is on my Book List is ‘We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World’

We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World by Simon Mainwaring

“We First lays out a movement to transform corporate America, providing plenty of food for thought for the business leaders of today and tomorrow.”–Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

“Mainwaring is an inspiring leader that truly understands the dynamics in play in the new world of business, online consumer behavior, and how they can collaborate to rethink and rework paths to true global renewal.”–Brian Solis, award-winning author of Engage

“Simon Mainwaring shows how to use social technologies to create and deepen business relationships, which in turn drive profits. Put meaning back into your business by buying this book. Actually, buy two and give one away to someone who is also yearning to take their business to the next level.”–Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership and Founder of Altimeter Group

About the Book

A social media expert with global experience with many of the world’s biggest brands —including Nike, Toyota and Motorola—Simon Mainwaring offers a visionary new practice in which brands leverage social media to earn consumer goodwill, loyalty and profit, while creating a third pillar of sustainable social change through conscious contributions from customer purchases. These innovative private sector partnerships answer perhaps the most pressing issue facing business and thought leaders today: how to practice capitalism in a way that satisfies the need for both profit and a healthy, sustainable planet. Mainwaring provides case studies from companies such as P&G, Walmart, Starbucks, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nike, Whole Foods, Patagonia, and Nestlé as well as a bold plan for how corporations need to rethink their strategies.

About Simon:
Simon Mainwaring is a branding consultant, author, blogger and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he is the founder and CEO of We First, a social branding consultancy that helps brands and creative companies use social media to reinvent their industries and our world.

He is a member of the GMI Digital Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, AdAge’s Power150 and is an Expert Blogger for Fast Company. Most recently he was a guest of the Brookings Institute at the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha as part of their New Media working group and a speaker at the 2010 Cannes International Advertising Festival.

In 2011 Simon’s first book entitled We First will be released that presents a new vision for the practice of capitalism, the role of the private sector, and for how brands and consumers use social media to build communities, profits and positive impact: www.wefirstbook.com

Simon has received over sixty international awards at the Cannes Advertising Festival, the One Show (U.S.) and the British Design & Art Direction Awards, among others. He studied Law and Fine Arts (1st Class Honors) at Sydney University and lives in Los Angeles. His website is www.wefirstbranding.com, he blogs at www.simonmainwaring.com and tweets @simonmainwaring.

You can pick up your copy of ‘We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World’ on Amazon.com.

Simon Mainwaring says We First – Do You?

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We First: An Invitation to Build a Better World
By Simon Mainwaring
Founder, We first

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Let me start out by saying this is a big picture blog. I am seeking your support for a movement to build a better world. That’s a sizeable request, I know, but let me explain because this will be important to you both personally and professionally.Several years ago, I read a speech Bill Gates gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He asked corporate leaders to come up with new models to justify doing business in the poorest regions of the world. He exhorted that corporations have an obligation to raise the standards of living throughout the world, even if they cannot capture their usual profit margins. Gates called it “creative capitalism” and he challenged the business world to get involved.

Does this message resonate with you? Do you think the world could be in better shape were capitalism to function better?

I did. Gates inspired me and I began thinking. Since then, I have devoted myself to formulating ideas that could fundamentally alter how we practice business. I call it We First capitalism in opposition to Me First capitalism. It is based on the premise that we are now living in a complex, interconnected, globalized world of 7 billion people in which our economic decisions and business practices ripple everywhere to impact millions of other people. We can no longer accept that capitalism functions as an engine of selfish short-term wealth creation, winner-take-all, profit-for-profit’s sake system of commerce. Capitalism cannot remain an elite economic activity whose results provide happiness and prosperity for a limited group of stakeholders, leaving billions of others living without opportunity or hope, and our planet in shambles.

My purpose in formulating We First capitalism is to persuade corporations and businesses of all sizes that we all must accept greater social responsibility. Building a better world must become what our businesses do every day as part and parcel of our operations, not something we do after we make our profits. The scale of crises in the world needs more than charitable contributions reluctantly squeezed out of pre-tax net profits. Business itself must become a smarter engine of constructive contribution to solving the world’s problems, not just a mindless motor churning out profits from our consumer culture.

In recent years, we have seen many of the leading companies in the world start to tackle their social responsibility. Brands like Nike, Starbucks, Pepsi, Patagonia, and even the largest brands like P&G and Unilever are responding with programs to implement sustainable manufacturing, develop Fair Trade suppliers who support indigent farmers, and assist NGOs on the ground not just with their money but with their expertise, distribution resources, and leadership. We First is not wishful thinking for two reasons. First, research shows that consumers are increasingly attracted to companies that practice social responsibility. They prefer to do business with socially-oriented companies and they are even willing to switch brands to a product that supports a cause if the price is about equal, especially Moms and Millennials who are the major markets for many consumer products.

Secondly, social media is connecting up consumers and empowering them as never before to have a voice and communication outlets to talk back to irresponsible businesses. Through their fan pages on Facebook and twitterstreams, consumers have new opportunities to protest against the bad actors of the business world, to organize boycotts and buycotts, to reward the good and punish the offenders. New smart phone apps are giving consumers the tools to scan barcodes and get information right in the shopping aisle about a product’s ecological and social footprint so they can make smarter choices about which companies they want to support.

So whether you are a corporate executive, manager, entrepreneur, or small business owner, the movement to temper capitalism and bring social responsibility to the forefront is going to impact you and your business. If you are looking for guidance as to how to respond, I hope you will order We First and join other individuals and companies in building a better world.

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Simon Mainwaring is the founder of We First, a social branding consultancy that helps companies, non-profits and consumer groups build a better world through changes to the practice of capitalism, branding, and consumerism using social technology. You can find more about We First capitalism and its principles in his book, We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World (Palgrave/Macmillan, June 2011) at www.wefirstbook.com

Simon writes at SimonMainwaring.com and you find him on Twitter as @simonmainwaring

Thanks, Simon! It was easy to feature what you’re doing. I know your head is connected to your heart.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!