Sean Pratt has narrated 267 audiobooks on Listento.it by 256 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 3,944 ratings. The most-rated is Essentialism.
Small Giants
Summary
How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill - and focused on greatness instead. It's an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside 14 remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummers. They include Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer; CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars and other nutrition foods; Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco; Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman's Deli of Ann Arbor. Burlingham shows how the leaders of these small giants recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of companies they could create. And he shows how we can all benefit by questioning the usual definitions of business success. In his new afterword, Burlingham reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the audiobook.
©2016 Bo Burlingham (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC
Ready, Fire, Aim
Summary
If you had the opportunity to work where, when, and with whom you wanted - all while getting paid very well - would you take it? Self-made multimillionaire and best-selling author Michael Masterson did, and with Ready, Fire, Aim he'll show you how to do the same. Whether you're thinking about starting a new business or growing an existing one, Ready, Fire, Aim has what you need to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors. In it, Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth. Along the way, you'll learn the skills needed to succeed in this dynamic environment. Discover how to: Start a business from scratch and make it profitable quickly Keep a growing business growing Get other people to do almost all the hard work for you, so you are free to do the fun stuff Position yourself as an indispensable business builder, so you can enjoy a big share of the profits - even if you are only working part time Duplicate your winning strategy in several businesses so you never have to worry about "needing" any one of them. Over the course of his remarkably successful career, Masterson has developed dozens of businesses, including one still growing at $300 million. Now he shows you how to outsell your competitors by implementing innovative operational procedures to reduce costs and using the power of the Internet to reduce customer complaints and increase profits.
©2008 Michael Masterson (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp
The Third Reich in Power
Summary
The definitive account of Germany's malign transformation under Hitler's total rule and the implacable march to war. This magnificent second volume of Richard J. Evans's three-volume history of Nazi Germany was hailed by Benjamin Schwartz of The Atlantic Monthly as "the definitive English-language account... gripping and precise." It chronicles the incredible story of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule. As those who were deemed unworthy to be counted among the German people were dealt with in increasingly brutal terms, Hitler's drive to prepare Germany for the war that he saw as its destiny reached its fateful hour in September 1939. The Third Reich in Power is the fullest and most authoritative account yet written of how, in six years, Germany was brought to the edge of that terrible abyss.
©2006 Richard J. Evans (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp
Public Speaking for Success
Summary
Dale Carnegie, author of the legendary How to Win Friends and Influence People, began his career as the premier "life coach" of the 20th century by teaching the art of public speaking. Public speaking, as Carnegie saw it, is a vital skill that can be attained through basic and repeated steps. His classic volume on the subject appeared in 1926 and was revised twice - in shortened versions - in 1956 and 1962. This 2006 revision - edited by a longtime consultant to Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., and the editor in charge of updating How to Win Friends and Influence People - is the definitive one for our era. While up to date in its language and points of reference, Public Speaking for Success preserves the full range of ideas and methods that appeared in the original, including Carnegie's complete speech and diction exercises, which follow each chapter, as the author originally designated them. This edition restores Carnegie's original appendix of the three complete self-help classics: Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, and A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard. Carnegie included these essays in his original edition because, although they do not directly relate to public speaking, he felt they would be of great value to listeners. Here is the definitive update of the best-loved public-speaking book of all time.
©2005 JMW Group (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC
Ember's End
Summary
The end is here. Heather and Picket face off for the last time with their tyrannical foes in this final installment of the Green Ember Series. The Mended Wood flickers dimly in the vision of the rabbits of Natalia, as they battle bravely for their survival and a hopeful future beyond. "My place beside you, My blood for yours, Till the Green Ember... Ends."
©2020 S.D. Smith (P)2020 S.D. Smith
Finding Flow
Summary
Part psychological study, part self-help book, Finding Flow is a prescriptive guide that helps us reclaim ownership of our lives. Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware of and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: During much of the day, we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, and during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom. The key, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is to challenge ourselves with tasks requiring a high degree of skill and commitment. Instead of watching television, play the piano. Transform a routine task by taking a different approach. In short, learn the joy of complete engagement. Though they appear simple, the lessons in Finding Flow are life altering.
©1997 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC
Survival Guide for the Soul
Summary
What keeps us from flourishing in our spiritual lives is a neglect of the inner life of the soul. And more and more today, this neglect is driven by our ambition to accomplish something big outside ourselves. We live in a society that pressures us to achieve professionally, socially, and through the constant acquisition of material possessions. Drawing on a wide range of sources including scripture, church history, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as a rich variety of stories from his own life, Ken Shigematsu demonstrates how the gospel redeems our desires and reorders our lives. He offers fresh perspective on how certain spiritual practices help orient our lives so that our souls can flourish in the midst of a demanding, competitive society. And he concludes with a liberating and counter-cultural definition of true greatness. This book will appeal to anyone who longs to experience a deeper relationship with Christ in the midst of the daily pressures to succeed, as well as to those on the borderlands of faith seeking to transcend the human tendency to define ourselves by our production and success. Discussion questions available in the audiobook companion PDF download. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Ken Shigematsu (P)2018 Zondervan
The Death of Money
Summary
The international monetary system has collapsed three times in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971. Each collapse was followed by a period of tumult: War, civil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of the global economy. Now James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why another collapse is rapidly approaching - and why this time, nothing less than the institution of money itself is at risk. The American dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of the Second World War. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. No other currency has the deep, liquid pools of assets needed to do the job. Optimists have always said, in essence, that there’s nothing to worry about—that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government. But in the last few years, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked and unable to make progress on our long-term problems, our biggest economic competitors—China, Russia, and the oil producing nations of the Middle East—are doing everything possible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. The potential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation. Market collapse. Chaos. Rickards offers a bracing analysis of these and other threats to the dollar. The fundamental problem is that money and wealth have become more and more detached. Money is transitory and ephemeral, and it may soon be worthless if central bankers and politicians continue on their current path. But true wealth is permanent and tangible, and it has real value worldwide. The author shows how everyday citizens who save and invest have become guinea pigs in the central bankers’ laboratory. The world’s major financial players—national governments, big banks, multilateral institutions—will always muddle through by patching together new rules of the game. The real victims of the next crisis will be small investors who assumed that what worked for decades will keep working. Fortunately, it’s not too late to prepare for the coming death of money. Rickards explains the power of converting unreliable money into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value. As he writes: “The coming collapse of the dollar and the international monetary system is entirely foreseeable… Only nations and individuals who make provision today will survive the maelstrom to come.”
©2014 James Rickards (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC
Humble Inquiry
Summary
The key to effective communication. Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people - especially those who report to us - we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry. Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as "the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person." In this seminal work, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry with other kinds of inquiry, shows the benefits Humble Inquiry provides in many different settings, and offers advice on overcoming the cultural, organizational, and psychological barriers that keep us from practicing it.
©2013 Edgar H Schein (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC
Making Sense of God
Summary
We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it's easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times best-selling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
©2016 Timothy Keller (P)2016 Penguin Audio
The Bed of Procrustes
Summary
By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects - modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.
©2010 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Summary
Pulitzer Prize Winner, General Nonfiction, 1998 In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life.
©1997 Jared Diamond (P)2001 HighBridge Company
Memory Improvement
Summary
Have you ever walked into a room and couldn't remember what you went there for? Have you ever grasped the hand of a potential client and then when the handshake broke, the name seemed to disappear from your memory? Or have you ever left a prospect or an important meeting and as you drove away remembered a key point that you should have shared with them? The problem is NOT with your memory. The problem is with the "Filing System" your brain currently uses to store and retrieve memory items. Change the filing system and you'll double and even triple your memory comprehension. Two-time USA Memory Champion Ron White will teach you the same 2,000-year-old memory method that he has already taught thousands to: Give presentations and speeches without notes... Memorize chapters of books word for word... Retain information from workshops or training classes... Improve your grades and study skills... Remember names and faces, even years later... Routinely memorize 100-digit numbers after hearing them only once... And lots more! Please Note: this audio references accompanying material that is not included with the purchase of the audiobook.
©2013 Ron White (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC
#ThisIsBrokering
Summary
Brokering is as easy as you want it to be. However, our tendency is to overcomplicate. It’s time to regain clarity and focus on your business, and your life, through 17 simple lessons learned through 1,700 “complicated” transactions. Embrace unconventional wisdom, make smart hires, and be an analogue standout in a digital world. Because having the best tech alone won’t get you where you want to be.
©2019 Dustan Woodhouse (P)2019 Dustan Woodhouse
Murder in an Irish Pub
Summary
The small village of Kilbane is hosting a poker tournament at the local pub, and card sharp Eamon Foley, a tinker out of Dublin, is set to win the tournament. But when Foley is found at the end of a rope, it’s time for the garda to take matters into their own hands. Macdara Flannery would lay odds it’s a simple suicide, but Siobhán suspects foul play, as does Foley’s pregnant widow. Perhaps one of Foley’s fellow finalists just raised the stakes to life and death. With conflicting theories on the crime, tensions are running high. Soon it’s up to Siobhán to call a killer’s bluff, but if she doesn’t play her cards right, she may be the next one taken out of the game.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
First
Summary
Reigning CrossFit world champion Rich Froning is "the fittest man on Earth". He's fast, he's strong, and he's incredibly disciplined. But it takes more than physical strength to compete and win at an elite level. It takes incredible mental and spiritual toughness as well. And it is the precise balance of all three that makes Rich Froning a champion. In First, listeners follow Rich as he trains for and competes in back-to-back CrossFit world championships. Along the way Rich shares invaluable training tips, motivational techniques, and spiritual insights that, in keeping with the CrossFit philosophy, will prepare you to respond to any real-life physical, mental, or spiritual challenge.
©2013 Rich Froning (P)2015 Tantor
Doing Good Better
Summary
Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result even our best intentions often lead to ineffective - and sometimes downright harmful - outcomes. How can we do better? While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it's not enough simply to do good; we must do good better. At the core of this philosophy are five key questions that help guide our altruistic decisions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing I can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? By applying these questions to real-life scenarios, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about doing good are misguided. MacAskill urges us to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. When we do this - when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors - we find that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.
©2015 William MacAskill (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC
Start-Up Nation
Summary
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality - all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore, and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.
©2009 Dan Senor and Saul Singer (P)2009 Gildan Media Corp
Crash Proof 2.0
Summary
The economic and monetary disaster, which seasoned Wall Street prognosticator Peter Schiff warned of in the best-selling first edition of Crash Proof, is no longer hypothetical - it is here today. And while most people believe that the economic collapse is over, the reality is that it has only just begun. That's why he's returned with Crash Proof 2.0. For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients restructure their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees today is a nation facing a growing economic storm - brought on by bursting bubbles and growing federal, personal, and corporate debt - that will only continue to intensify as the U.S. government refuses to allow market forces to repair the damage. Crash Proof 2.0 picks up right where the first edition - which clearly foresaw the bursting of the real-estate bubble, credit crunch, and the insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - left off and includes much more up-to-the-minute analysis and advice. This timely guide takes into account the dramatic economic shifts that are reshaping America and provides you with valuable insights that will allow you to protect yourself, as well as prosper, during the difficult times that lie ahead. Throughout, Schiff explains the factors that will affect your future financial stability - from the bubble in bond prices and collapse of the dollar to surging long-term interest rates and run-away inflation - and offers a specific three-step plan to battle today's economic downturn and tomorrow's market mayhem.
©2009 Peter D. Schiff (P)2009 Gildan Media Corp
Preaching
Summary
Pastor, preacher, and New York Times best-selling author Timothy Keller's wisdom on communicating the Christian faith from the pulpit as well as from the coffee shop. Most Christians - including pastors - struggle to talk about their faith in a way that applies the power of the Christian Gospel to change people's lives. Timothy Keller is known for his insightful, down-to-earth sermons and talks that help people understand themselves, encounter Jesus, and apply the Bible to their lives. In this accessible guide for pastors and laypeople alike, Keller helps listeners learn to present the Christian message of grace in a more engaging, passionate, and compassionate way.
©2015 Timothy Keller (P)2015 Penguin Audio