Current Favorite Book:

"oh, shiFt!" How to Change Your Life with One Little Letter – by Jennifer Powers

Totally inspiring. This book is all about taking control of your reactions to what life dishes out.

Highly sought after coach, speaker and author Jennifer Powers answers this question and many others in Oh shift! How to change your life with one little letter. Powers, a self-described & self-reflection whore, challenges readers to create a more joyful life by using the shifting process outlined in Oh shift! How to change your life with one little letter. Drawing on her New Jersey upbringing, Powers couples a provocative approach with fearless humor and wit to provide readers with the inspiration to become true shift heads.

Business Books | Creativity and Inspirational Books

Crush It!: Why NOW is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion – by Gary Vaynerchuk

Everything has changed. The social media revolution has irreversibly changed the way we live our lives and conduct our business. There are billions of dollars in advertising moving online, waiting to be claimed by whoever can build the best content and communities. Despite this change, most people keep working at jobs that don’t make them happy and businesses continue to ignore the major marketing and public relations benefits that can be found online...

It Sure Beats Working: 29 Quirky Stories and Practical Business Lessons for The First-Time, Mid-Life, Solo Professional – by Micahel J. Katz

This has been one of my favorte business books this year. I read the whole thing during
two long baths.

This may be the first of it's kind. Katz draws on his personal successful experience as a solo professional while adding the type of humor that makes you laugh but also makes a point. Each "quirky story" educates and motivates in very practical and useful ways. If you aren't one yet, this just may be the book to get you thinking about taking the leap.

Brand: It's Aint the Logo. It's what people think of you – by Ted Matthews

Brands are more important than ever to the survival of North American business. Our manufacturing base continues to disappear. An unprecedented volume of commercial messaging makes it ever more difficult for Brands to reach customers or employees. Yet "Brand" is misunderstood. Egged on by business schools and the ad industry, most senior executives equate their Brand with their logo or advertising...

Great book for getting a clearer understanding of what branding is and what it can do for your bottom line.

The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing – by Eric Groves

If you are considering doing Email Marketing through Constant Contact, this is a great reference guide. It's a bit dry so I suggest using it when you are working with Constant Contact. This is a great company, with really great tech support and online courses. This book fits the company and is helpful when using their service.

The eMyth Revisited: Why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it – by Michael E Gerber

The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. Next, he walks you through the steps in the life of a business -- from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed -- and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether it is a franchise or not. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.

The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
– by Seth Godin

Godin provides tips for finding your Dip, taking advantage of it and becoming one of the few (inevitably valuable) players to emerge on the other side; he also provides guidelines for quitting with confidence. Quick, hilarious and happily irreverent, Godin's truth-that "we fail when we get distracted by tasks we don't have the guts to quit"-makes excellent sense of an often-difficult career move.

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)  

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – by Malcolm Gladwell

"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference  

The Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle
– by Amy Dacyczyn

I love this book because it challenges the notion that we have to live like the Jones. Instead we can live with more fugality giving us more of the life we want and less of the life someone else says we should want.

While putting this up on my list, I found four more volumes. These are somewhat outdated but I like what the author suggests for ones life. She finds a way to stay home with her kids, and save enough money from her husband's paycheck that they can buy a farmhouse. She was quite a hit in the 90s and women were so jealous of her that she actually had death threats for awhile. There are four volumes of these, just buy the complete guide. You'll get the picture.

Creativity Books

Life is a Verb – by Patti Digh

Another great bathtub read!

Life is a Verb may well be the single book that will change the world or maybe only your life ... Artful, funny, heart-breaking, Digh reminds us that today isn't a dress rehearsal and we can start today celebrating the magic of ordinary life. Reading Life is a Verb is like mainlining goodness. Digh shows us what is real and what matters, and she gives us insiders tips on how to make minuscule life corrections that result in quantum shifts in experience. She reminds us that life can easily be fun.

Living Out Loud: Activities to Fuel a Creative Life – by Keri Smith

The perfect prescription for a creative jump start to your life. Included are games, projects, activities, crafts, postcards, and playful ideas that will send you off on an exciting adventure, where you'll discover inspiration around and within you.

I love the activities in this book and the stickers. Totally fun!

Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing what you want and getting it!
– by Hanriette Klause

Klauser instructs her readers to write down their most extravagant wishes and, merely by the act of recording them, make them come true. She claims that the writings themselves are so powerful that they will influence external circumstances. Eventually, however, she reveals that this wish-writing is neither magical nor miraculous. It requires practitioners not only to write their wishes but also to participate actively in achieving them. Her technique is intended to clarify goals, increase self-confidence, and dispel self-doubt, and she describes how it has dramatically improved her life and the lives of her friends and acquaintances.

A helpful book. The author is a bit on the religious side, but I found that it waspossible to shift what she has to say to my own belief system.

Everyday Matters: A Memoir – by Danny Gregory

This is such a wonderful book for anyone who wants to draw or write or tell their story through art. Danny Gregory and his wife, Patti, hadn’t been married long. Their baby, Jack, was ten months old; life was pretty swell. And then Patti fell under a subway train and was paralyzed from the waist down.

In a world where nothing seemed to have much meaning, Danny decided to teach himself to draw, and what he learned stunned him. Suddenly things had color again, and value. The result is Everyday Matters, his journal of discovery, recovery, and daily life in New York City. It is as funny, insightful, and surprising as life itself.

The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artists You Truly Are
– by Danny Gregory

When Danny Gregory's life was turned upside down by tragedy, he learned to cope by teaching himself to draw. The result was a complete transformation of his life, his priorities, his career, and the way he saw the world. In handwritten chapters full of his lush watercolor illustrations, Danny now offers readers a program for reconnecting to their own creative energies, using drawing as an example. He gently instructs us in the art of allowing ourselves to fail, giving up the expectation of perfection and opening our eyes to the beauty around us. The result is the permission to express ourselves fully and take part in the creative process without fear. Artist or not, readers of all stripes will find inspiration in this unique and beautiful book.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity – by Julia Cameron

My favorite part of this book is the Morning Pages activity. This has been a favorite book for years now and I've grown from using the activities.

With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, the author lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.

Hellow Cupcake: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make

This is not your basic art/creativity book. I'm totally taken by this book. It might be one of the most creative books I've looked at lately. It's also because I was a professional baker earlier in my life and wish I would have had this as a reference book. Buy it for someone who loves to bake and give it a good looking over before you wrap it. It's so much fun.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – by Betty Edwards

An old book but the one my art instructors used to teach me to draw. Great drawing exercises. If you follow the exercises, this book will help you learn to see. Totally fun to use.