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It’s finally summer! Last Friday marked the official first day of summer. I spent this past weekend getting a jump start on my summer reading list. Do you have your summer reading list yet?
Reading is fundamental in growing your passions and improving your career. Without it you may never discover your true passions. There may be a passion in your future you’ve never heard of and never will until you read about it. Reading also helps you grow your career by keeping you abreast of the ever-changing world of work.
Therefore, I’ve listed below a recommended summer reading list. It includes my own books I’ve had published over the years and most recently. It also includes summer reading recommendations of some awesome books by other authors.
This selection is designed to help you pursue work you love and grow in a career that satisfies your passions. Enjoy and happy summer reading!
Lori’s Books
Get Your Resume Read! (*NEW*)
This small book is a collection of my blog posts I’ve written over the past three years specifically on the topic of resumes. It serves as both a stand-alone resource and a supplement to my on-demand program “Resumes That Get You the Interview: Surprising Secrets To Getting Your Resume Noticed”.
Though the book is small, it’s packed full of resume tips and advice to help you know how to make your resume marketable and competitive in today’s job market. Implementing these tips will dramatically increase the number of people opening your resume and reading it. This book also includes links to a variety of additional resources designed to help you create the best resume possible.
2 Ways to Get It (click on your preferred option):
- Complimentary PDF download with purchase of on-demand video course or on-demand course bundle.
- Kindle from Amazon (retail $4.99, no charge with Kindle Unlimited)
Personal Branding: Why You Need to Know What Makes You YOUnique and AWEthentic
Do you know what makes you unique? Everyone has to be able to answer this question, whether in an interview (“Why should we hire you?”) or in a pitch meeting (“Why should we sign you?” or “Why should we fund your idea?”).
No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, you have to be able to explain why you should be the one to accomplish it. This is why personal branding is so important. Are you comfortable talking about yourself in this way?
In this book you’ll learn:
- The importance and purpose of personal branding.
- How to develop your authentic brand.
- Self-reflection exercises designed to help you see how your passions and abilities fit into your personal philosophy and career.
- How others perceive you (I promise this isn’t as scary as it sounds!).
- How valuable your unique skillset is and where it fits into the world around you.
- Who can benefit from your skills and interests.
- How to effectively and clearly communicate your value (to family, friends, and potential employers or clients).
- A method for making the best decisions for your life and career.
As a result you’ll get:
- Your very own personal mission and vision statements.
- The ability to know which big decisions are the right decisions for you.
- A better understanding of how you add value to the world.
- Better knowledge of who your audience is and how you can best impact them.
- The ability to think “big picture.”
- Confidence in being yourself.
- Feeling comfortable in your own skin and your own abilities.
4 Ways to Get It (click on your preferred option):
- Paperback from Amazon (retail $12.99)
- Kindle from Amazon (retail $9.99; no charge with Kindle Unlimited)
- PDF download ($9.99)
- Complimentary PDF download with purchase of on-demand video course or on-demand course bundle.
Additional Books by Lori
You can also purchase my other two books on Amazon:
- Advance Your Image (Amazon #1 bestseller; published by Hilliard Press 2011; available in paperback and Kindle)
- SUP: Spiritual Understanding & Prayer on a Stand Up Paddleboard (published by Hilliard Press 2017; available in paperback and Kindle)
Additional Recommended Summer Reading
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans provides step-by-step instructions allowing you to experiment with different possible careers and roles for your life. These experiments lead to ways to design and build your life the way you want it to look at various life and career stages.
I’ve personally gone through the book myself, reading it twice and doing each exercise at least once. I choose which exercises I think would best suit my clients at their particular stage of career exploration and help guide them through those exercises. I’m also a member of the authors’ Facebook group for coaches and mentors. So, I use this book quite a bit when coaching my clients and therefore highly recommend it!
Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together
Body of Work by Pamela Slim shows you how to make sense of all your diverse work experiences and the skills gained from them, and how to tie them all together to create a career portfolio and professional brand. This includes not just your “official” full-time job, but also your side jobs, passion projects, volunteer work, artistic creations, etc. All of those experiences can add up to future opportunities you may have never previously considered.
Do Over: Make Today the First Day of Your New Career
This book by Jon Acuff was actually recommended to me by one of my first clients to recommend to my other clients. It’s perfect for someone who is facing a major transition in their career, whether it be an unexpected lay-off, hitting a career ceiling, a change in role or job function, or an unexpected offer in another industry.
Do Over teaches you how to develop the four necessary elements of a successful career: relationships, skills, character, and hustle.
Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time or Money
I have several clients considering starting their own business. This is a great book for them or anyone else thinking of starting their own business or side hustle. It guides readers through several litmus tests to help determine if their business idea is viable, prior to diving in with a huge time or money investment.
The author Pat Flynn (who’s known for teaching people how to create passive income streams) spends a big chunk of the book discussing the importance of having a personal mission statement and personal brand (see 2nd book listed above) prior to starting any kind of business idea. It truly is the first step to starting anything new in your life or career.
Will It Fly? helps you determine both the right reasons and the wrong reasons for starting your own business. Because it is so important to know these reasons, I did an entire group coaching call on this very topic with this book as the basis for the discussion.
Rise of the Youpreneur: The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proof Business
I read The Rise of the Youpreneur on the heels of Will It Fly? It’s a good follow-up after you’ve done all the exercises from Will It Fly? and determined which of your business ideas are most viable and best support your personal mission.
Like Flynn’s book, The Rise of the Youpreneur is chock-full of exercises and online resources to help you get your business off the ground.
While I’d already been doing a lot of what the author Chris Ducker recommends to become a successful brand in my own coaching business, I hadn’t been doing all of it because it just seemed so overwhelming. Ducker’s book helped me to organize and prioritize all those things into manageable phases and steps.
Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly About Finances, and Live a Richer Life
I got a copy of Breaking Money Silence from the author Kathleen Burns Kingsbury herself when I heard her speak here in Nashville. It is BY FAR the best book on finances I’ve ever read.
Kingsbury delves into the emotional side of money. She talks about the various mindsets people have about money, explaining why money often creates unnecessary conflict between people. It dispels myths both men and women have about money. And it reveals the hidden costs of staying quiet about an often uncomfortable topic.
What I love most about this book is it provides tangible ways to have uncomfortable but necessary conversations about money between couples, children and aging parents, siblings, and more. It also helps readers see their worth and the importance of negotiating a fair salary with their employer, something I often teach my clients how to do.
Not only is this a great book for anyone who feels insecure about their knowledge of finances (or thinks they already know everything about finances), it’s also recommended for financial advisers so they can learn how to address the emotional side of money when working with their clients. There are exercises at the end of each chapter for both the interested reader and their financial advisers.
Of all the books on this list, this is the one I’d buy a copy for everyone if I could. I plan to keep my copy because I know I’ll refer back to it every time I need to.
Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life
Barbara Stanny’s book includes strategies to not just help women earn more money, but to also help them overcome their fears, limiting beliefs and self-imposed boundaries in their finances and other areas of their lives.
Biggest take away: Success isn’t if you go on to achieve your dream. It’s having the chance to find out if you can achieve your dream or not, so you won’t wonder all your life.
What career books do you recommend for some great summer reading?
