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Ep 149 Career: You're underpriced because you're under confident. sdgates
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Ep 139 Career: The Hard Truth About Creativity’s Role in Business Today (and Yesterday) sdgates
Essentials
There are so many apps, books, sites, classes, conferences and more out there how do you know which ones are any good? Here are some of the apps, books, websites, people and more I reference in various episodes the show.
Books:
You can get the full and always evolving list of my recommended books on Amazon.com through the The Crazy One book club.
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS
Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
As the founder and CEO of Behance, a company on a mission to empower and organize the creative world, Belsky has studied the habits of especially productive individuals and teams across industries. Now he has compiled the principles and techniques they share, and presents a systematic approach to creative organization and productivity.
By Scott Belsky – Buy it here
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul. Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
By Steven Pressfield – Buy it here
The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice
It isn’t enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today’s marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand. The Accidental Creative teaches effective practices that support your creative process.
By Todd Henry – Buy it here
Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
Die Empty is a tool for people who aren’t willing to put off their most important work for another day. Todd Henry explains the forces that lead to stagnation and introduces practices that will keep you on a true and steady course.
By Todd Henry – Buy it here
FINDING YOUR CREATIVE VOICE
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”
By Ed Catcall – Buy it here
Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice
Louder Than Words offers specific strategies and tactics for uncovering, developing, and bravely using your authentic voice to create a body of work you are proud of, that resonates deeply with others, and that ultimately impacts the world.
By Todd Henry – Buy it here
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems.
By Tom Kelley – Buy it here
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE / READING PEOPLE
I Dare You To Care
No matter how old you are, where you come from or what you do for a living, the desire to have satisfying and meaningful relationships is one we all share. Nothing interferes more with your ability to enjoy rewarding relationships than an inability to understand your own emotions and manage their impact on you and those around you. Emotional intelligence, the currency of the 21st century, is the essential skill set that separates those who fail in their personal and professional relationships from those who succeed.
By Sylvia Baffour – Buy it here
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles―counterintuitive tactics and strategies―you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
By Chris Voss – Buy it here
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds” – the rational and the emotional – and how they together shape our destiny.
By Daniel Goleman – Buy it here
Read ‘Em and Reap: A Career FBI Agent’s Guide to Decoding Poker Tells
Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer specializing in nonverbal communication and behavior analysis—or, to put it simply, a man who can tell when someone’s lying—offers foolproof techniques, illustrated with amazing examples from poker pro Phil Hellmuth, that will help you decode and interpret your opponents’ body language and other silent tip-offs while concealing your own.
By Phil Hellmuth – Buy it here
What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People
Read this book and send your nonverbal intelligence soaring. Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer and a recognized expert on nonverbal behavior, explains how to “speed-read” people: decode sentiments and behaviors, avoid hidden pitfalls, and look for deceptive behaviors. You’ll also learn how your body language can influence what your boss, family, friends, and strangers think of you.
By Joe Navarro – Buy it here
CAREER GROWTH
Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind
The world has changed and the way we work has to change, too. With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you a toolkit for tackling the new challenges of a 24/7, always-on workplace.
By Jocelyn Glei – Buy it here
Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career
With wisdom from 21 leading creative minds, 99U’s Maximize Your Potential will show you how to generate new opportunities, cultivate your creative expertise, build valuable relationships, and take bold, new risks so that you can utilize your talents to the fullest.
By Jocelyn Glei – Buy it here
LEADERSHIP
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
By Simon Sinek – Buy it here
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
As Simon Sinek noticed in his travels around the world, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. Some of these teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other.
By Simon Sinek – Buy it here
This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Thriving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground
Filled with stories of success and failure, This Might Get Me Fired gives you the tools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and recognize when (and why) to prioritize your product over your job. It shows intrapreneurs how to find one another, join together, and succeed in ways that seem unimaginable until they are inevitable.
By Greg Larkin – Buy it here
Good boss, bad boss
As Dr. Sutton digs into the nitty-gritty of what the best (and worst) bosses do, a theme runs throughout Good Boss, Bad Boss – which brings together the diverse lessons and is a hallmark of great bosses: They work doggedly to “stay in tune” with how their followers (and superiors, peers, and customers too) react to what they say and do. The best bosses are acutely aware that their success depends on having the self-awareness to control their moods and moves, to accurately interpret their impact on others, and to make adjustments on the fly that continuously spark effort, dignity, and pride among their people.
By Robert Sutton – Buy it here
DESIGN THINKING
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
Design thinking is not just applicable to so−called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It′s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to increase the quality of patient care by re−examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change‚ or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization‚ product‚ or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.
By Tim Brown – Buy it here
WORK ETHIC
Do the fucking work
Do the F*cking Work is a collection of 100 beautifully packaged pieces that showcase their irreverent advice—inspiration that will help unstick even the most dedicated procrastinators. Covering everything from drinking your morning coffee to handling productive criticism, from embracing failure to rejecting the status quo, their insights upend conventional thinking and teach you to embrace and celebrate the journey of creation—the joy of trying, failing, learning, and sometimes failing again.
By Brian Buirge – Buy it here
The Nature and Art of Workmanship
This is one of the classic books on craftsmanship and design. In it, David Pye explores the meaning of skill and its relationship to design and manufacture. Cutting through a century of fuzzy thinking, he proposes a new theory of making based on the concept of good workmanship and shows how it imparts all-important diversity to our visual environment.
By David Pye – Buy it here
BEING CREATIVE IN A CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
Originally self-published and already a business “cult classic”, this personally empowering and entertaining look at the intersection between human creativity and the bottom line is now widely available to bookstores. It will be a must-read for any manager looking for new ways to invigorate employees, and any professional who wants to achieve his or her best, most self-expressive, most creative and fulfilling work.
By Gordon MacKenzie – Buy it here
PRESENTATION SKILLS
Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life
In Steal the Show, New York Times best-selling author, top-rated corporate speaker, and former professional actor Michael Port teaches you how to make the most of your own moments in the spotlight. He makes it easy to give your presentations a clear focus, engage your listeners, manage your nerves, play the right role in every situation to give your message maximum impact, and much more.
By Tom Asacker – Buy it here
Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds
Many people have a fear of public speaking or are insecure about their ability to give a TED-worthy presentation. Carmine Gallo’s top 10 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Talk Like TED will give them the tools to communicate the ideas that matter most to them, the skill to win over hearts and minds, and the confidence to deliver the talk of their lives.
By Carmine Gallo – Buy it here
INNOVATION
The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation.
By Tom Kelley – Buy it here
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.
By Nir Eyal – Buy it here
AGILE METHODOLOGIES
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies. A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.
By Jake Knapp – Buy it here
Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products
Design sprints not only let you test digital product ideas before you pour too many resources into a project, they also help everyone get on board—whether they’re team members, decision makers, or potential users. You’ll know within days whether a particular product idea is worth pursuing.
By Richard Banfield – Buy it here
DIGITAL DESIGN
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.
By Steve Krug – Buy it here
Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
In this how-to companion to Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out a streamlined approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own Web site, application, or other product.
By Steve Krug – Buy it here
Blogs/Sites:
These are the sites I read every day, use for reference and inspiration.
Inside Design
Great selection of articles about all the different facts of design written some of the best in the industry.
Visit the site
A List Apart
Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
Visit the site
99u
Provides actionable insights on productivity, organization, and leadership to help creatives people push ideas forward.
Visit the site
Quartz
A guide to the new global economy for people in business who are excited by change. We cover business, economics, markets, finance, technology and more.
Visit the site
PSFK
The world’s leading business intelligence platform for customer experience innovation via a mix of trend reports, immersive events, insight-rich content and more.
Visit the site
TheMakers.io Tools
Matchmaking for creatives mind & tech people
Visit the site
Fubiz
The latest creative news from Fubiz about art, design and pop-culture.
Visit the site
The Next Web
Original and proudly opinionated perspectives on remarkable stories for Generation T
Visit the site
Smashing Magazine
An online magazine for professional Web designers and developers.
Visit the site
Creative Bloq
Daily inspiration for creative people
Visit the site
Design Genome Project
A detailed look inside the design teams of the some of the world’s best and most innovative companies.
Visit the site
UI Garage
Specific design patterns for Web, iOS, Android and Mac.
Visit the site
Pttrns
The finest collection of design patterns, resources and inspiration.
Visit the site
Online communities:
These are the online communities I get the most out of and think are worth engaging with.
Design Leadership Forum
Their mission is to advance the practice of design leadership by fostering a community where the world’s best can learn from one another. They strive to make the Forum inclusive and relevant to those confronting the challenges of leading design teams.
Visit the site
Designer Hangout
Dedicated, invite-only network of UX designers and researchers who discuss trends, give advice, share stories, uncover insights, surface opportunities, and connect in-person.
Visit the site
Conferences:
I have attended A LOT of conferences but these are the ones I return to every year.
Fifteen Second Festival (Europe and U.S.)
What started 2014 as a contemporary marketing conference has since then grown into an interdisciplinary business festival gathering thinkers, makers, and leaders from all around the world. In 2017, more than 4100 curious minds decided to join Fifteen Seconds and come to Graz. What they all have in common? The will to shape the future.
Find out more here
Design Thinkers (Toronto and Vancouver)
DesignThinkers, Canada’s only annual conference for visual communicators, is a must-attend for informed, forward-thinking creative communications and design professionals. At this inspiring two-day event that takes place in Toronto and Vancouver, we offer in-depth analyses of trends and best practices in branding, design thinking, design management, communications technologies and user experience with a range of opportunities to exchange ideas with colleagues, new and old.
Find out more here
Classes:
The online classes I have found to be worth the time and money.
IDEO U
There’s no shortage of challenges to tackle in the world. IDEO believes the world needs more creative leaders to solve these challenges. IDEO U is an online school where anyone can unlock their creative potential through design thinking and collaboration. As a part of IDEO, an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations innovate and grow. IDEO U takes a similar approach to online learning.
I recommend these classes:
• Hello Design Thinking
• Insights For Innovation
• Storytelling For Influence
• Leading For Creativity
•Learn More About IDEO U
MASTERCLASS
MasterClass offers online classes created for students of all skill levels but your instructors are the best in the world. My favorite topics include performing from Usher, writing from Aaron Sorkin, branding from Diana Von Furstenberg, design from Frank Gehry and many more. I think their year long all access pass which will let you take all their available classes is the best value but you can also buy just an individual class for $90.
I recommend these classes:
• Diane Von Furstenverb Teaches Building A Fashion Brand
• Usher Teaches The Art Of Performance
• Frank Gehry Teach Design And Architecture
• Steve Martin Teaches Comedy
•Annie Lebovitz Teaches Photography
• Learn More About Masterclass
Podcasts:
The smartest and most inspiring podcasts I listen to every week.
TED Radio Hour
A journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing invention and new ways to think and create. Based on riveting TED Talks from the world’s most remarkable minds.
Listen now
The Accidental Creative
Shares how to build practical, everday practices that help you stay prolific, brilliant and healthy in life and work.
Listen now
Start With Why
This podcast exists to deepen our understanding of The Golden Circle so we can better harness the power of Why.
Listen now
Adventures in Design
America’s only daily morning talk show for creatives exploring the reality of trying to live your creative dreams.
Listen now
High Resolution
High Resolution is a limited video series on product design and design thinking. Each week they sit down with a new guest for about an hour and we’ll discuss how the best companies approach, communicate and deploy design.
Listen now
Watch Online:
Some of the best talks that I think are essential for every creative to watch.
Start With Why
Simon Sinek | TEDxPugetSound
Watch the video
Making Ideas Happen
Scott Belsky
Watch the video
Why Leaders Eat Last
Simon Sinek | 99u
Watch the video
How to Overcome the 3 Fears Every Creative Faces
Christoph Niemann | 99u
Watch the video
Quieting the Lizard Brain
Seth Godin | 99u
Watch the video
The Art of Book Design
Chip Kidd | TED
Watch the video
Your Work is a Gift
James Victore | 99u
Watch the video
If You Don’t Understand People, You Don’t Understand Business
Simon Sinek | 99u
Watch the video
How to Get People to Follow You
Simon Sinek | Inside Quest
Watch the video
