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THIS WEEK
Top 5 Must Read Business Books of 2011
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
From 1 January 2012 "Words from the Heart" will become a monthly email summarising the best blog posts & links to great articles and resources both from Heart Harmony and around the net.
All of our great tips and articles will be appearing a few times a week on our blog - www.heartharmony.com.au/blog.
I look forward to seeing you there!
Top 5 Must Read Business Books of 2011
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I love books (no surprise there). I read one to two business books a week and this year I have read some very compelling and confronting books – particularly around the emerging area of neuromarketing or marketing to the brain. If you are even vaguely interested in what makes people tick, then you need to get across at least the basics of this emerging field of research.
So out of the pile of books I read throughout the year, here's my pick of the top 5 books I recommend most managers and business owners read.
 
1. Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade & Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing by Roger Dooley
This is a great introduction to Neuromarketing as it summarises a whole pile of recent research in easy to digest snippets. Each chapter is only a few pages long at most, and highlights a unique point or takeaway.
"Any marketing tool can be "evil" if the company behind it misuses it"
 
2. Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom
Another great neuromarketing book that highlights the seedier side of how you are subtly brainwashed into buying particular brands from birth.
"One study ... found that newborn babies will actually show a preference for a TV theme song ... that was heard frequently by their mothers during their pregnancies (Neighbours theme song). ... they became more alert and less agitated, stopped squirming, and had a decreased heart rate"
 
3. The Buying Brain - Secrets to Selling the Unconscious Mind by Dr A K Pradeep
This fascinating book lets you inside the world of one of the leading neuromarketers. In it, he shares some of his experiments and marketing results from using cutting-edge brain scanning technology. You will never look at a puff of steam rising from a bowl of soup in an ad the same way again after reading this book.
"When asked to recount how it reacted to something, in the course of responding the brain actually alters the original data it recorded"
 
4. Do the Work by Stephen Pressfield
This book is the ultimate kick in the pants for creative types, who find every excuse under the sun not to live their greatness.
"Resistance will unfailingly point to true North – meaning that calling or action it most wants us to stop doing. We can use this. We can use this as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel towards pursuing it".
 
5. Public Parts - How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Live and Work by Jeff Jarvis
Confronting discussion about how much should realistically be public and whether there really is such a thing as private in an online world. It also has a fascinating look through history on how technology always threatened our sense of privacy – I loved the sections on the camera and the debates around photos of people in public places.
"Technology also breeds fear. Again and again in history, technology has caused change and that change has sparked fears that privacy is being threatened or that publicness is being thrust upon us. The invention of the printing press did that five centuries ago, as did the invention of the camera a century ago and countless other technologies since".
Happy reading!
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 We all know that having solid HR procedures saves time and money for a business.
And having talked with many hundred businesses who now use our HR manual, they all say the same thing. Writing their HR Manual had been on their "To Do" list for months (years in some cases) - until they found our Instant HR Manual.
They tell me that having detailed templates that just need a few tweaks here and there to customise them to your business takes all the pressure off. A job that seemed too big to tackle, suddenly becomes simple and easy.
At this time of year, when things are winding down, it's a great time to look at those jobs that have been on the "To Do" list during the year.
Many businesses pick up a copy of our HR Manual in December to read through in the quieter days, and then make the edits in the New Year so they can start the year off with a full HR Manual in place.
Here's just a few comments from people who have recently bought the manual.
What I liked best:
- Ease of adapting the policies and procedures to meet my company’s needs. Greg May
- Established for Australian business and easy to apply to our business. Kerry Donkers
- Easy to download; easy to read/interpret and relevant to our needs . Debra Rowley
Get a head-start on 2012 - Download your copy of Instant HR Policies & Procedures today.
If you have a business page on Facebook, then you will want to read this week's blog post where I outline a few tests I recently ran. Looks like many businesses on Facebook could be losing customers and not know why.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended as only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
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