Whether it was a Ginsu knife, George Foreman Grill, Tony Robbins' motivational book, kitchen device by Ron Popeil, or any of the countless other famous products that have been marketed on infomercials over the years, admit it: you or someone you know has bought one and you're not alone. Last year, one out of every three Americans picked up the phone and ordered a product from a television infomercial or home shopping network, and in But Wait . . . There's More! journalist (and infomercial addict) Remy Stern offers a lively, behind-the-scenes exploration of this enormous business one that markets the world's most outrageous products using the most outrageous tactics. Don't let the kitschy exterior fool you: behind the laughable demonstrations, goofy grins, and cheesy dialogue lies an industry larger than the film and music industries combined. The first book of its kind, But Wait . . . There's More! exposes the never-before-told story of the infomercial and home shopping phenomenon in all its excessive glory and its meteoric rise to become one of the most profitable businesses in America. Along the way, Stern details the history behind the classic products and introduces readers to some of the most famous (and infamous) pitchmen and personalities in the business, including Tony Robbins, Billy Mays, Ron Popeil, Tony Little, Suzanne Somers, Kevin Trudeau, and Joe Francis. He also presents an in-depth look at the business behind the camera the canny sales strategies, clever psychological tools, and occasionally questionable tactics marketers have used to get us to open up our wallets and spend, spend, spend.Stern's eye-opening account also offers a penetrating look at how late-night television conquered the American consumer and provides insight into modern American culture: our rampant consumerism, our desire for instant riches, and our collective dream of perfect abs, unblemished skin, and gleaming white teeth. Both a compelling business story and a thoroughly entertaining piece of investigative journalism (with a touch of muckraking and social satire), But Wait . . . There's More! will ensure that you never look at those too-good-to-be-true deals the same way again.

In 2004, Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, the world's leading foundation for entrepreneurship, published a groundbreaking essay with a radical premise: that Americans literally have no conception of the secret that truly underlies our economic success, and that for the United States to survive and continue to lead the world's economy, it is imperative we learn to understand and employ that secret.The secret that has led the American economy to become the world's strongestOur unparalleled skill as entrepreneurs. As Schramm compellingly shows in this sweeping manifesto, entrepreneurship alone not anything else can give America the necessary leverage to remain an economic superpower. Not technology, since everyone now has the same technology, or access to it. Not education we are years behind other nations in this area. Not basic manufacturing, long since moved overseas from the United States. And not capital markets, now truly global entities.Drawing on detailed research conducted by the Kauffman Foundation and on his decades of experience as an entrepreneur himself and as a leader and mentor to other entrepreneurs, Schramm persuasively demonstrates in detail what this entrepreneurial imperative means for the way we run universities and foundations, lead companies, make personal job decisions, and even conduct our foreign affairs. The Entrepreneurial Imperative will change not only the way our government, corporations, and nonprofits operate, but also our day-to-day lives as working Americans.

Middle-class couples are working harder than ever. So why are they finding it more difficult to finance their homes, send their kids to college, and save toward retirement?Couples who are strapped for time and weighed down by costly fixed expenses need more than a personal finance pep talk: They need a plan. In The Big Payoff, CNBC correspondent Sharon Epperson lays out a nuts-and-bolts program that couples of all ages can use to realize their financial dreams. From stretching your budget and investing wisely in your home to protecting your family's money and building wealth over the years, The Big Payoff offers a concise bounty of precious information and practical steps toward financial wellness.Epperson begins by showing couples how to communicate better about money. She helps them realize that the same qualities needed to create a lasting relationship understanding, compromise, and patience are vital when it comes to building a secure financial future. Every important decision couples make, whether it's buying a home, having kids, changing jobs, or preparing for retirement, will inevitably involve a discussion about money, and Epperson teaches them how to handle finances with a cool hand while keeping the marriage vibrant and healthy. In addition, she empowers couples to take money matters into their own hands and shows them that by taking control of their finances, they can stop fretting about cash and start focusing on the important things in life.Each of the following chapters is designed to get partners talking and thinking about their financial life together. In eight easy-to-understand steps, Epperson unpacks the various options for saving money; creating emergency, retirement, and college savings plans; investing in a home; choosing the right life and health insurance; and drafting an estate plan. A wife and mother of two herself, Epperson knows a thing or two about the pitfalls of financial planning and doses her advice with plenty of humorous anecdotes, hard-earned experience, and down-to-earth language. Additionally, through helpful worksheets and exercises, The Big Payoff helps readers customize a plan that will work best for them and reap the most payback.It's never too late or too early to start, and now is the best time to start planning. Whether you are newlyweds or fast-approaching retirement, just starting a family or soon to be empty-nesters, this book is for you. After working hard to provide for your family, the reward of discovering your financial strength will be the peace of mind to enjoy your marriage, your family, and the rest of your lives together.

The commercial and cultural explosion of the digital age may have been born in California's Silicon Valley, but it reached its high point of riotous, chaotic exuberance in New York City from 1995 to 2000 in the golden age of Silicon Alley. In that short stretch of time a generation of talented, untested twentysomethings deluged the city, launching thousands of new Internet ventures and attracting billions of dollars in investment capital. Many of these young entrepreneurs were entranced by the infinite promise of the new media; others seemed more captivated by the promise of infinite profits. The innovations they launched from online advertising to 24-hour Webcasting propelled both the Internet and the tech-stock boom of the late '90s. And in doing so they sent the city around them into a maelstrom of brainstorming, code-writing, fundraising, drugs, sex, and frenzied hype . . .until April 2000, when the NASDAQ zeppelin finally burst and fell at their feet. In the pages of Digital Hustlers, Alley insiders Casey Kait and Stephen Weiss have captured the excitement and excesses of this remarkable moment in time. Weaving together the voices of more than fifty of the industry's leading characters, this extraordinary oral history offers a ground-zero look at the birth of a new medium. Here are entrepreneurs like Kevin O'Connor of DoubleClick, Fernando Espuelas of StarMedia, and Craig Kanarick of Razorfish; commentators like Omar Wasow of MSNBC and Jason McCabe Calacanis of the Silicon Alley Reporter; and inimitable Alley characters like party diva Courtney Pulitzer and Josh Harris, the clown prince of Pseudo.com. Together they describe a world of sweatshop programmers and paper millionaires, of cocktail-napkin business plans and billion-dollar IPOs, of spectacular successes and flame-outs alike. Candid and open-eyed, bristling with energy and argument, Digital Hustlers is an unforgettable group portrait of a wildly creative culture caught in the headlights of achievement.

There is no doubt that we are in the middle of a transition to a knowledge-based economy. Breakthrough technologies in microelectronics, biotechnology, new materials, telecommunications, robotics, and computers are fundamentally changing the game of creating wealth. While these new industries are growing explosively, existing industries such as banking and retail are being transformed beyond recognition. As a result, a new global economy is emerging to replace existing national economies.What will it take for individuals, companies, and entire countries to succeed in the new economics of the twenty-first centuryRather than focusing on spending, Lester C. Thurow argues that we must emphasize investment in basic knowledge, education, and infrastructure. Only by committing ourselves to building communal wealth can we maximize opportunities for building personal wealth as well. Building Wealth is an indispensable guide to surviving -- and thriving -- in the economies of the twenty-first century.

When industry giants such as GE, Toyota, and Sharp and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multibillion-dollar investments in clean technology, the message is clear. Developing clean technologies is no longer a social issue championed by environmentalists; it's a moneymaking enterprise moving solidly into the business mainstream. In fact, as the economy faces unprecedented challenges from high energy prices, resource shortages, and global environmental and security threats, clean tech technologies designed to provide superior performance at a lower cost while creating significantly less waste than conventional offerings promises to be the next engine of economic growth.In The Clean Tech Revolution, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street trading floors, and in government offices around the globe. By highlighting eight major clean-tech sectors solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration they uncover how investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals can profit from this next wave of technological innovation. Pernick and Wilder shine the spotlight on the winners among technologies, companies, and regions that are likely to reap the greatest benefits from clean tech and they show you why the time to act is now.Groundbreaking and authoritative, The Clean Tech Revolution is the must-read book to understand and profit from the clean technologies that are reshaping our fast-changing world.

More than ten years after his first bestselling book The EMyth changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of small business owners Michael Gerber trepreneur author and speaker extraordinaire res the next salvo in his highly successful EMyth Revolution. Drawing on lessons learned from working with more than 15000 small medium sized and very large organisations Gerber has discovered the truth behind why management doesn't work and what to do about it. Unearthing the arbitrary origins of commonly held doctrines such as the omniscience of leader (Emperor) and the most widely embraced myth of all EMyth Manager offers a fresh provocative alternative to management as we know it. It explores why every manager must take charge of his own life reconcile his own personal vision with that of the organisation and develop an entrepreneurial mind set to achieve true success.

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.The efficient market hypothesis long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers. The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock's value. That myth is crumbling.Celebrated journalist and columnist Fox introduces a new wave of economists and scholars who no longer teach that investors are rational or that the markets are always right. Many of them now agree with Yale professor Robert Shiller that the efficient markets theory represents one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought. Today the theory has given way to counterintuitive hypotheses about human behavior, psychological models of decision making, and the irrationality of the markets. Investors overreact, underreact, and make irrational decisions based on imperfect data. In his landmark treatment of the history of the world's markets, Fox uncovers the new ideas that may come to drive the market in the century ahead.

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet Is it possible to put a price on the human soul Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a RolexIn Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life.

As the host of Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto and Cavuto on Business, Neil Cavuto reports on today's most influential business leaders and newsmakers. His great talent is to get beneath the issues, connecting people to the events that define them and changing the way that Americans think about their money. Ending each show with a provocative, insightful commentary, Cavuto stirs people to see the world in a new light, calling on them to think beyond the stories at hand and challenging people to reevaluate the world that they live in.In Your Money or Your Life, Cavuto compiles the best of these commentaries in one volume, creating a collection that is at once witty, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Covering a variety of topics from remembering life before 9/11, to providing tips for empty nesters Cavuto presents a wry yet evocative look at our world, one that speaks to the heart of the American condition. Spanning one of the most tumultuous decades in memory from the wild and chaotic Clinton years through the sobering challenges of the War on Terror Cavuto's words offer a window into our America at its best and its worst.

What is Your Collaborative Intention?James W. Tamm and Ronald J. Luyet provide tools that will increase your ability to collaborate. You will learn to be more aware of others and how to problem-solve and negotiate. Collaborative skills have never been more important, and these skills are absolutely necessary for today's workplace.Radical Collaboration is a how-to-manual for anyone who wants to create trusting, collaborative environments, and transform groups into motivated and empowered teams.It is an eye-opener for leaders, managers, HR professionals, agents, trainers, and consultants who are seeking constructive ways of getting the results they want.

Douglas Rushkoff was one of the first social commentators to identify the new culture around the internet. He has spent nearly a decade advising companies on the ways they can re-orient their businesses to the transformations the internet has caused. Through his speaking and consulting, Rushkoff has discovered an important and unrecognized shift in American business. Too many companies are panicked and operating in survival mode when the worst of the crisis has already passed. Likening the internet transformation to the intellectual and technological ferment of the Enlightment, Rushkoff suggests we have a remarkable opportunity to re-integrate our new perspective with the work we actually do. Instead of running around trying to "think out of the box," Rushkoff demonstrates, now is the time to "get back in the box" and improve the way we do our jobs, run our operations and drive innovation from the ground up. Combining stories gleaned from his consulting with a thrilling tour of history's dramatic moments and clever readings of cultural shift we've just experienced, Rushkoff offers a compelling vision of the simple and effective ways businesses can re-invigorate themselves.

Do you feel that if you could get rid of some of the chaos in your work life, you could take your performance to a greater levelDo you stay late at the office many nights, trying to empty an inbox that never seems to diminishDo you have difficulty dealing with cantankerous bosses or passive-aggressive coworkersDo you find yourself checking your BlackBerry almost against your will during dates, family dinners, or your children's soccer gamesIf you've answered yes to any of the above, chances are you feel fragmented, pulled in too many directions at once, frustrated. Your work life has taken over your personal life.In The One-Life Solution, Dr. Henry Cloud, consultant, bestselling author of the Boundaries series and Integrity, and clinical psychologist, examines the workplace. He demonstrates how our failure to maintain a unified life with good boundaries at the office not only blurs the line between the professional and the personal, but leaves us less equipped to deal with the problems of today's workplace: stress, heavy workload, and a blistering pace. As a result, we are overworked, overstressed, and unhappier than ever. Through real-world examples from years of working with leaders at companies large and small, Dr. Cloud shows us how to construct and enforce better boundaries against the technological devices, bullying bosses, and distracting coworkers who invade our time and space.From conducting an audit of your time, to developing a policy of who you are and what you stand for, to learning how to overcome a paralyzing inability to say no, Dr. Cloud provides invaluable strategies and *s for moving toward a more unified, coherent sense of self and a life that fully encompasses work, family, and spirituality. In a clear, conversational voice, he will help you develop the ability to: contain self-destructive behavior and keep it from spreading. define yourself and know who you are. set limits when needed. communicate effectively. learn how to improve your performance at the office and outside it. By starting to do what's best for you, you'll find the key to living the one happy, fulfilling life that only you can live.

How to generate the positive energy found in successful organizations What is organizational energyAccording to internationally recognized leadership coach David Cottrell, it is not short-term enthusiasm for the latest corporate program-of-the-week. Instead, it is grounded in something much deeper a solid commitment to an organization, its mission, and its values. When used positively, organizational energy strengthens and solidifies personal motivation, producing an unshakable desire to achieve bigger and better results. It is a precious resource your organization cannot afford to be without.In Monday Morning Motivation, Cottrell takes inspiration from Einstein's famous equation E=mc 2 to provide a step-by-step strategy you can use to access your organization's energy reservoir (E) and accelerate your people (m) to the next level of performance. Specifically, he reveals the vital conductors of energy (c) that you need to motivate your team and customers synchronization, speed, communication, customer passion, and integrity and expertly demonstrates the effect that your leadership style ( 2 ) has on the effectiveness of these conductors. Fortunately you don't need to be Einstein to learn and apply these principles to your organization. You just need one hour each week for ten weeks to consider Cottrell's helpful discussion questions and determine what you can do right now to become a better leader and motivator. If you do, you will launch your organization to greater results and a whole new stratosphere of job satisfaction.

The Personal Finance Classic . . . that's fun to read!You Need the Truth About MoneyCompletely revised and expanded, The Truth About Money shows you everything you need to know about personal finance and explains it all in plain English. Investments, insurance, taxes, mortgages, leasing cars, getting out of debt, wealth planning for multimillion-dollar estates it's all here for you.Whether you're saving for college or retirement, buying a home or selling one, concerned about long-term care for yourself or your parents, worried about an impending job loss, or facing any financial decision, knowing what's in The Truth About Money will help you make great financial decisions.New to This EditionPlanning Your Retirement LifestyleLearn how to retire in comfort and financial security (and what to do when you get there) (pg. 485).The Best Investment ChoiceLearn how ETFs can help you create wealth while saving you big money (pg. 176).Target-Date FundsIt's what you don't know that can hurt you (pg. 269).Behavioral Finance and NeuroeconomicsLearn why you make bad financial decisions and how to break the cycle (pg. 224).Picking the Best FundsFind out the truth about Morningstar ratings (pg. 250).Are Your Parents Aging?See how best to provide help without harming yourself financially (pg. 374).The Most Important Financial Decision You'll MakeFind out how to make this decision successfully (pg. 631).Plus more than 100 Pages of New Content!

Learn to make the right decisions to achieve greater success Each of us has a different idea of success. Whether you strive for money, power, happiness, or love, your personal choices, the actions you take, and the relationships you choose to invest time and energy in, will determine whether you reach your goals. Internationally recognized leadership coach David Cottrell will show you how to make the right choices, even when they're hard.There are character choices that define the person you will be on the road to success. Cottrell shows you how to make The No-Victim Choice to overcome roadblocks, and The Integrity Choice, to listen to your gut and do the right thing, even when it's not the easiest thing to do. There are action choices you make to continue on your path to success. The Persistence Choice encourages you to bounce back from failure and learn lessons that will lead to your future success. The Do-Something Choice lets you to stop dreaming and start doing the things that will make you happy and successful. Finally, you make investment choices about the people you spend time with and develop relationships with. The Relationship Choice teaches you to invest your time in other successful people in order to contribute to your own future success.Learn to make all these choices and many more in Monday Morning Choices, and find yourself on the fast track to success!

Integrity more than simple honesty, it's the key to success. A person with integrity has the ability to pull everything together, to make it all happen no matter how challenging the circumstances. Drawing on experiences from his work, Dr. Henry Cloud, a clinical psychologist, leadership coach, corporate consultant and nationally syndicated radio host, shows how our character can keep us from achieving all we want to (or could) be. In Integrity, Dr. Cloud explores the six qualities of character that define integrity, and how people with integrity: Are able to connect with others and build trust Are oriented toward reality Finish well Embrace the negative Are oriented toward increase Have an understanding of the transcendent Integrity is not something that you either have or don't, but instead is an exciting growth path that all of us can engage in and enjoy.

At a time when it's harder than ever to get and keep people's attention, we could all use some help. Enter Sonya Hamlin, author of the now classic How to Talk So People Listen (1988), and one of the country's leading communication experts. In this revised and updated edition, Sonya Hamlin, arguably America's leading communication expert, shows us how to successfully capture people's attention so that they listen, understand, and are persuaded by your message especially in the plugged in, fast paced, visually driven atmosphere that is today's workplace. Whether making a presentation to a large audience or dealing one on one with a client or colleague, or communicating by Email, Hamlin teaches us that one of the keys to making people listen is to think about and respond to what motivates them namely, self interest. She then provides tools to assess others' self interest and use it to get them to listen to your message. Hamlin also explains how to capitalize on the latest visual aids we have at our disposal today. We learn to determine what information needs or lends itself to visual presentation, and how to make visuals active, so that they serve as an extension of the speaker. In How To Talk So People Listen, you'll also find practical information on how to understand your audience, how to encourage your listeners to trust you, and how to be yourself when you're on the podium.

Being an NFL coach is the ultimate high-pressure job. Every Sunday a coach makes split-second decisions that will not only decide the fate of a game, but also his team's season and, ultimately, his own job.Meet Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden, John Fox, Andy Reid, and Mike Sherman -- top NFL head coaches whose careers rest on their ability to lead other men to win in the fiercely competitive world of professional football.In this extraordinary collaboration with their agent Bob LaMonte, each of these five coaches shares his leadership principles. LaMonte takes you behind the scenes, where you'll be a fly on the wall as these men reveal how to win beyond the X's and O's. You will see how these successful leaders communicate with different personalities, develop vision, build trust in their people, and win loyalty, as well as overcome adversity and adapt to change.Through their colorful and motivational anecdotes, you'll gain unprecedented insights into the minds of some of the best coaches today and valuable lessons on what it means to be a leader and a champion.

In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City's most revered restaurants Union Square Cafe. Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world's most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game. How has he done itHow has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he's learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls "enlightened hospitality." This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors. This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved. Some of Danny's other insights: Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts for and to express it all. Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location. Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business. Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more. Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit. Full of behind-the-scenes history on the creation of Danny's most famous restaurants and the anecdotes, advice, and lessons he has accumulated on his long and ecstatic journey to the top of the American restaurant scene, Setting the Table is a treasure trove of innovative insights that are applicable to any business or organization.

Change or Die. What if you were given that choiceIf you didn't, your time would end soon a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change matters mostThis is the question Alan Deutschman poses in Change or Die, which began as a sensational cover story by the same title for Fast Company. Deutschman concludes that although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely ever do. From patients suffering from heart disease to repeat offenders in the criminal justice system to companies trapped in the mold of unsuccessful business practices, many of us could prevent ominous outcomes by simply changing our mindset.A powerful book with universal appeal, Change or Die deconstructs and debunks age-old myths about change and empowers us with three critical keys relate, repeat, and reframe to help us make important positive changes in our lives. Explaining breakthrough research and progressive ideas from a wide selection of leaders in medicine, science, and business (including Dr. Dean Ornish, Mimi Silbert of the Delancey Street Foundation, Bill Gates, Daniel Boulud, and many others), Deutschman demonstrates how anyone can achieve lasting, revolutionary changes that are positive, attainable, and absolutely vital.