Business & Economics Audiobooks

Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot

"Play Money explores a remarkable new phenomenon that's just beginning to enter public consciousness: MMPORGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments the size of continents. With city-sized populations of nearly full-time players, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world. The desire for virtual goods - magic swords, enchanted breastplates, and special, hard-to-get elixirs - has spawned a cottage industry of 'virtual loot farmers': people who play the games just to obtain fantasy goods that they can sell in the real world. The best loot farmers can make between six figures a year and six figures a month. Play Money is an extended walk on the weird side: a vivid snapshot of a subculture whose denizens were once the stuff of mere sociological spectacle but now, with computer gaming poised to eclipse all other entertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and work, virtual and real increasingly blurred, look more and more like the future."

Julian Dibbell (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, 5th Edition

"The Leadership Challenge has become one of the best-selling leadership books of all time. Now, with the publication of the fourth edition of their landmark book and for the first time on audio, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner celebrate 25 years of leadership excellence. The Leadership Challenge, the most trusted source on becoming a better leader, has been thoroughly updated and revised for a new generation of leaders living and working in a global environment. Building on the knowledge base of the previous books, this fourth edition is grounded in research and presents extensive interviews with a diverse group of leaders at all levels in a wide variety of organizations from around the world. The authors emphasize that the fundamentals of leadership are not a fad. While the context of leadership has changed dramatically, the content of leadership has endured the test of time. With scores of new case studies and a timeless and inspiring message, The Leadership Challenge is a 'personal coach in a book', guiding listeners through the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. When leaders understand that leadership is a relationship and they begin to engage in the Five Practices (Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart), they are better able to embark on a lifetime of success and significance."

Barry Z. Posner, James M. Kouzes (Author), Barry Z. Posner, James M. Kouzes, Sean Pratt (Narrator)

Audiobook

[German] - Crash-Kommunikation: Warum Piloten versagen und Manager Fehler machen

"Wie kommt es trotz höchster Sicherheitsvorkehrungen immer wieder zu katastrophalen Flugzeugunglücken? Oder: Wie ist es möglich, dass eine Bank 320 Millionen an eine insolvente US-Bank verschenkt? Crash Kommunikation zieht verblüffende Parallelen zwischen Luftfahrt und Unternehmen und zeigt, dass der Faktor 'menschliches Versagen' einer fatalen Logik folgt. Crash Kommunikation bietet einen originellen und hochaktuellen Zugriff auf grundlegende Fragen der Führung und der Kommunikation. Spannende Einsichten, die Managern und Führungskräften zeigen, wann im 'Unternehmenscockpit' das Warnlämpchen angehen sollten. Daraus leitet der Autor einfach umSetzbare Maßnahmen ab, die helfen, die Verständigung zwischen Menschen ernorm zu verbessern: Was im Flugzeug Abstürze verhindert, kann auch in Unternehmen vor Fehlentscheidungen schützen."

Peter Klaus Brandl (Author), Gabi Franke, Gilles Karolyi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier

"World-renowned business strategist and bestselling author (The Experience Economy, 140,00 copies sold), Joe Pine teams up with Kim Korn to take the next step after The Experience Economy. They offer a revolutionary new model to help businesses understand and develop a strategy for harnessing the limitless potential of digital technology to create memorable, enriching customer experiences."

B. Joseph Pine II, Kim C. Korn (Author), Jay Webb (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Thank You Economy

"“Gary Vaynerchuk has seen the future of marketing. The Thank You Economy shows how it's built on both the time-honored techniques of listening to and appreciating customers and newer services like Twitter that allow you to engage directly with customers at unprecedented scale and speed. The book, like Gary, is also a lot of fun and full of passion.” —Dick Costolo, chief executive officer, Twitter Gary Vaynerchuk, the New York Times bestselling author and creator of Wine Library TV, is back with a bold and expansive look at the evolution of today's marketplace, revealing the essential factors defining and driving successful relationships between businesses and consumers. In this groundbreaking follow-up to the bestselling Crush It!, Vaynerchuk—one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “20 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow”—looks beyond a numbers-based analysis to explore the value of social interactions in building our economy."

Gary Vaynerchuk (Author), Gary Vaynerchuk (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sales Success Made Simple

"Brian Tracy is perhaps the top sales trainer in the world today, having worked with more than two million salespeople. In this program, he teaches you the best methods and techniques practiced by the highest paid salespeople in the world today. This program contains approximately 16 hours of powerful, proven ideas to build your self-confidence and increase your sales immediately. 1. The Inner Game of Selling 2. The Development of Personal Power 3. Personal Strategic Planning for the Sales Professional 4. The Heart of the Sale 5. Building Long-Term Relationships 6. Prospecting Power 7. Filling Your Sales Pipeline 8. The Profession of Selling 9. Motivating People to Buy 10. Influencing the Buying Decision 11. Making Persuasive Presentations 12. How to Emphasize the Real Buying Motives 13. Answering Objections Clearly 14. Closing the Sale Plus: PDF Workbook with Notes. Plus this SPECIAL BONUS! More than $100 worth of online resources to build your sales skills faster; a Sales Skills Assessment to discover your strengths and weaknesses, and breakthrough opportunities, plus one month of free access to a personalized online learning program tailored specifically to your professional sales needs."

Brian Tracy (Author), Brian Tracy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social

"TODAY, business moves at the speed of thought. The web enables a perpetual cycle of interaction and feedback, and every status update or tweet that mentions your company or brand either helps or hurts you reputation in real-time. Customers expect a level of attentiveness and responsiveness that most companies can’t live up to. Can you? In The Now Revolution, renowned marketers and social media experts Jay Baer and Amber Naslund offer an effective seven-part plan to harness the power of the social web and adapt to the new era of instantaneous business. Customers aren’t going to wait for your next polished press release to decide if they like you and your products or services. Instead, they’re choosing between you and your competition every second of every day—and talking about it online. Keeping up with them requires seven shifts that will make your business faster, smarter, and more social: • Strip away silos and overgrown business processes • Hire and empower a new type of employee • Organize internal teams for maximum external impact • Listen at the point of need • Travel the Humanization Highway and respond effectively to customer inquiries • Plan for, find, and manage real-time crises • Redesign success metrics in a business world that’s increasingly instantaneous Real-time communication and social media have changed the way we do business—forever. The Now Revolution shows you how to adapt your organization to meet the expectations of today’s always-on customer and harness the power of now."

Amber Naslund, Jay Baer (Author), Erik Synnestvedt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Money Makes Me Crazy!: A Prescription for Money Sanity

"Apexx Behavioral Solutions CEO Ted McLyman presents a compelling story about how behavior drives money decisions and that the common wisdom about personal finance is wrong. Building on over thirty-five years of experience as a leader, educator, financial advisor and business owner McLyman offers a refreshing new approach to money management. Money Makes Me Crazy: A Prescription for Money Sanity draws on his vast understanding of behavioral finance to explore why we continually make bad money choices. This audio book offers a light and entertaining account of how our human nature conspires against us when we make money choices."

Ted McLyman (Author), Brandon Batchelar (Narrator)

Audiobook

Civilization: The West and the Rest

"The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Niall Ferguson's provocative bestseller, Civilization: The West and the Rest, read brilliantly by the author himself. If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople. By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe - Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland - would have seemed little better. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs and Incas. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened. What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six 'killer applications' that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy. Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history."

Niall Ferguson (Author), Niall Ferguson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage

"To market your business, reach new customers, and create long-lasting loyalty, you need one indispensable element: CONTENT. Whether it’s bite-sized tweets that allow you to forge relationships on Twitter, blog posts that give your readers must-have advice, ebooks or white papers that engage (and don’t bore), videos that share the human side of your company, interactive webinars that deliver a valuable learning experience, or podcasts that can be downloaded and listened to on the fly (and more!) . . . now more than ever, content rules! Today, you have an unprecedented opportunity to create a treasury of free, easy-to-use, almost infinitely customizable content that tells the story of your product and your business, and positions you as an expert people will want to do business with. Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, business writers, speakers, and marketing thought leaders for clients such as The Coca-Cola Company, HBO, and Verizon FiOS, show you how to leverage all of today’s tools to create content that truly speaks to your audience. They’ll show you how to: •Understand why you are generating content—getting to the meat of your message in practical, commonsense language, and defining the goals of your content strategy •Explore ways to integrate searchable words into your content without sounding forced (or sounding like “Frankenspeak”) •Write in a way that powerfully communicates your service, product, or message across various Web mediums •Create a publishing schedule that allows you to create different kinds and types of content at once Offering examples of businesses using content effectively across a wide range of industries and fascinating explanations of how you might approach your own content strategy, Content Rules is the essential field guide to creating your story, finding the right balance of humor and humanity in your content, and building a portfolio of value that will keep delivering for the long haul."

Ann Hadley, CC Chapman (Author), Ann Hadley, CC Chapman (Narrator)

Audiobook

12 Steps to Power Presence: How to Exert Your Authority to Lead

"Are leaders born, or made? And what's the single most important quality a real leader should possess? Philosophers and management theorists have endlessly debated-and just as endlessly written about-these subjects for centuries. Finally, here's a book that cuts to the chase. In 68 of the most succinct, no-punches-pulled pages you'll ever read, acclaimed author-speaker-coach John Baldoni maintains that 'leadership presence' is a form of communication that can be learned, and then provides the hows and the whys of learning it. He starts by defining what genuine leadership presence is, and discusses right and wrong ways to demonstrate leadership taken from real-life examples. Baldoni explains how to communicate your objectives in ways that encourage people to buy into the process-even if it includes tough subjects like layoffs, closures, and terminations. Along the way he adds some provocative comments on the importance of ethical actions in tough times as well as good-including why merely thinking good thoughts and voicing good intentions are never enough."

John Baldoni (Author), Erik Synnestvedt (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned Along the Way

"The Extraordinary Life of an Extraordinary Leader Tracing her development as a leader, Frances Hesselbein reveals her remarkable personal story and the principles that have served and guided her well throughout her extraordinary life. Written in an intimate and compelling voice, this audio book delivers key leadership lessons applicable to leaders in every walk of life. My Life in Leadership offers a look at what shaped Frances Hesselbein as a person and as a leader, from her youth in the mountains of western Pennsylvania to her professional journey with the Girl Scouts of the USA where she went from troop leader to transformational CEO, and to how Peter F. Drucker chose her to found and lead the Drucker Foundation, now the Leader to Leader Institute. With excitement and humility, she relives the key moments that have shaped her life of leadership including the day she received our country’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This remarkable audio book also includes stories about her world travels to deliver her message of leadership and her notable experiences with, as well as what she has learned from, some of the most distinguished leaders of our time including Peter Drucker; John W. Gardner; Max DePree; Presidents Clinton, H.W. Bush, and Reagan; General Eric Shinseki; Jim Collins; Warren Bennis; and Marshall Goldsmith. As inspirational as it is practical, My Life in Leadership is filled with Frances Hesselbein’s universal leadership lessons that will serve any leader, of any age, in any sector. “Through her life story you will touch the marrow of a unique contributor to humanity. This audio book’s appeal will transcend time and captivate the hearts of leaders around the globe.” — MARGARET DANIELS TYLER, senior program officer, U.S. Programs, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation"

Frances Hesselbein (Author), Karen Saltus (Narrator)

Audiobook