AMA Talks with Ed Wallace, author of THE RELATIONSHIP ENGINE

Ed Wallace, author of the forthcoming THE RELATIONSHIP ENGINE: Connecting with the People who Power Your Business (AMACOM October 2016), recently visited the American Management Association offices to discuss the importance of business relationships and how to strengthen yours.

Ed Wallace is president and chief relationship officer of The Relational Capital Group, a consultancy that serves many Fortune 500 clients. He is also on the Executive Education faculty at Drexel’s LeBow College of Business and Villanova University’s Human Resources Master’s Program.

Enjoy! For more AMA Talks with AMACOM authors, please click here.

 

THE GIG ECONOMY Now Available on NetGalley

So many things in life are what you make of them–including the gig economy. Plenty of internet clickbait articles warn of the downsides of this new era in work norms, but few offer a game plan to embrace it and create your most rewarding career within it. Now that guide does exist. In THE GIG ECONOMY: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want (AMACOM November 2016), author Diane Mulcahy provides the tools to prepare for, succeed in, and enjoy this career form. Journalists, booksellers, book reviewers, librarians, and media professionals interested in career, labor, and the gig economy are invited to request The Gig Economy for review.

From Uber to the presidential debates, the gig economy has been dominating the headlines…and for good reason. Today, more than a third of Americans are working in the gig economy—mixing together short-term jobs, contract work, and freelance assignments. For those who’ve figured out the formula, life has never been better!

The Gig Economy is your guide to this uncertain but ultimately rewarding world. Succeeding in it starts with shifting gears to recognize that only you control your future. Next is leveraging your skills, knowledge, and network to create your own career trajectory—one immune to the whims of an employer.

Packed with research, exercises, and anecdotes, this eye-opening book supplies strategies—ranging from the professional to the personal—to help you:

Construct a life based on your priorities and vision of success • Cultivate connections without networking • Create your own security • Take more time off • Build flexibility into your financial life • Face your fears by reducing risk • Prepare for the future • And much more

Layoffs… recessions…Corporate jobs are not only unstable— they’re increasingly scarce. It’s time to take charge of your own career and lead the life you actually want.

DIANE MULCAHY is a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and an Adjunct Lecturer at Babson College, where she teaches “Entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy,” a popular MBA course that Forbes.com named one of the top ten most innovative business school classes in the country. Her work in venture capital and entrepreneurship has been featured on NPR and in the Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, Fortune, Forbes, The New Yorker, The Economist, and other national media.

NetGalley is a service for people who read and recommend books, such as book reviewers, journalists, librarians, professors, booksellers, and bloggers.

There are a number of different reading options for this e-galley:

• Download Galley. Read a Protected (DRM) galley on any major reading device, or on your computer. Click here to see the list of supported devices and instructions for each.
• Kindle. Send a NetGalley file to your Kindle device, using your @Kindle.com or @free.Kindle.com email address. Make sure to follow the instructions here.
• Submit Feedback. After reading the e-galley, don’t forget to submit feedback via NetGalley and post your review online.

Find all of AMACOM’s e-galleys on NetGalley.

You can review how to get AMACOM’s digital galley request approval on NetGalley HERE.

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Podcast: William F. Baker on Art as a Business

William F. Baker recently sat down with the AMA Edgewise team to discuss his book, The World’s Your Stage: How Performing Artists Can Make a Living While Still Doing What They Love, and how artists can fuse their true talent with business savvy to achieve success.

“My students at Juilliard are perhaps the best in the world,” Baker explains on the podcast. “They’re coming out of school having practiced, say, an instrument five hours a day since age three, they’ve gone to the hardest school in America to get into, and they come out and there’s an expectation that somebody’s going to be throwing rose petals at you and an agent taps you on the shoulder and says ‘I’ve got a $200,000 job for you at the Berlin Philharmonic.’ Now, that person is certainly qualified to go to the Berlin Philharmonic, but likely there’s no job.” What are the options for these graduates? They probably need this podcast and The World’s Your Stage.

Artists usually chose their profession for the love of the craft but if they don’t have some business skills they’re going to get left behind. William F Baker, co-author of The World’s Your Stage, published by AMACOM, has tips on how to brand yourself, how to assess your competition, and act like an entrepreneur.

Listen to William F. Baker on the AMA Edgewise Podcast.

 

Click through to see William F. Baker’s AMA Talks videos!

WILLIAM F. BAKER is president emeritus of WNET, New York’s PBS station, and a professor at Fordham University. He teaches Understanding the Profession: The Business of the Performing Arts in the 21st Century to students from Juilliard and Fordham, and, in addition to The World’s Your Stage, is the author of Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results (AMACOM August 2008).

Listen to more interviews with AMACOM authors on the AMA Edgewise Podcast.

Kimberly Palmer on Balancing Family and Work

How Smart Moms Balance Family and Work: Strategies for Thriving Off the Traditional, Linear Career Track       

A traditional, steadily uphill career path isn’t for everyone, and many moms reject it. Fortunately, opting out of a full-time professional job for more flexibility and time with your kids doesn’t have to mean sacrificing work satisfaction or financial rewards. Some moms find well-paying part-time work and some carve out a comfortable niche as a freelancer or consultant. Some wind up owning and running a booming new business.

Kimberly Palmer has talked with myriad moms who’ve chosen a more winding career path. In her new book, SMART MOM, RICH MOM: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family (AMACOM; June 9, 2016), she shares these mompreneur-tested tips and strategies for success:

• Stay in the professional game. “Keep working in some capacity,” Palmer urges, “even during the most challenging years when you are sleep deprived, juggling multiple children under age five, and stressed to your limits.” Take on short-term assignments. Blog, coach, and mentor.

• Build your personal brand online. Highlight your skills on LinkedIn and Twitter. Keep up with and connected to your professional contacts and networks.

• Create your own space. If you aim to work from home, then you need a dedicated space for working. “Setting some boundaries about where and when you’re working can make it easier for the other members of your family to help you be productive,” Palmer assures.

• Get ultra-organized with paperwork. Freelancing, consulting, contract work, as well as launching a business, means saying goodbye to a steady paycheck from one employer. You’ll have income coming in from a variety of sources. “Create a tracking system that keeps you from getting overwhelmed,” advises Palmer, “and makes it easy to file taxes, with or without the help of a tax accountant.”

• Keep saving. Take advantage of tax benefits for working parents, such as pretax spending accounts that can help reduce the cost of child care. Even when earning outside of a job with a 401(k), find a way to save for retirement through Roth IRAs or traditional IRAs. Make investing a regular practice.

• Be open to reinventing yourself and your career. “Smart moms know that the workforce, and their families, are constantly changing, which means the amount and type of work they want to do is changing, too,” notes Palmer. Tap into your gifts, passions, and values. Stay open to possibilities. Say yes to the right opportunities. Be willing and always ready to make adjustments.

Adapted from Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family by Kimberly Palmer (AMACOM June 2016).

KIMBERLY PALMER, author of The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life, was the senior money editor at US News & World Report for nine years. She is an adjunct professor at American University, where she teaches a course on mastering social media. She lives with her family, including two children, in the Washington, D.C., area.

AMA Talks with William F. Baker on THE WORLD’S YOUR STAGE

William F. Baker, author most recently of THE WORLD’S YOUR STAGE: How Performing Artists Can Make a Living While Still Doing What They Love (AMACOM January 2016), visited the American Management Association offices to answer questions for those building careers in the performing arts (and anyone seeking great business advice!).

William F. Baker, Ph.D., is President Emeritus of THIRTEEN, New York’s flagship PBS station and the premier source of PBS programs nationwide. Over his twenty years as CEO, he launched Charlie Rose and won seven Emmy Awards. He is a Professor of Education at Fordham University, where he directs the Bernard L. Schwartz Center for Media, Public Policy and Education. Each spring he teaches a course on the business of performing arts to a select group of Fordham and Juilliard students. His previous book, Leading with Kindness (AMACOM August 2008), inspired a PBS documentary. The World’s Your Stage is co-authored by Warren C. Gibson and Evan Leatherwood.

Bonus video: Bill Baker recently appeared on THIRTEEN’s MetroFocus to discuss How to ‘Make It’ in New York!