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Change Anything: What Will Your Change Story Be?

So often we want to make big changes in our lives, but lack the resolve to see them through. It seems we just can’t summon the necessary willpower to take on these huge challenges – challenges like saving money, changing bad work habits, quitting smoking, increasing productivity, or losing weight. But here’s the secret: willpower is not the answer. With a clearer understanding of the real forces that shape our actions, we can make better decisions, change our outlook, and replace bad habits with good.

From the authors of the national bestsellers, CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS and INFLUENCER, comes a new book that gives you the tools to CHANGE ANYTHING.

@changeanything

www.changeanything.com

In Memoriam: Author Gordon Murray

Gordon Murray, 1950-2011

Gordon Murray, co-author of THE INVESTMENT ANSWER and former Wall Street investment banker, died at his home on Saturday, January 15. He had been battling glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, first diagnosed in 2008.

Murray spent more than 25 years working on Wall Street, primarily at Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Credit Suisse First Boston, in a variety of institutional sales and management roles.

After a recurrence of the disease, Murray decided to cease all further treatment. Instead, he decided to write THE INVESTMENT ANSWER, a clear-cut primer on the basics of financial investing.   Even in his final days, Murray was actively involved in the promotion of the book and working with Business Plus, which will be publishing the book in hardcover on January 25, 2011.

Murray co-authored THE INVESTMENT ANSWER with his friend and financial advisor Daniel Goldie, which was originally self-published in August 2010.

Rick Wolff, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Business Plus, said, “We are most saddened by Gordon’s passing, but we take heart in that his inspirational spirit and legacy will live on in his honest and forthright book.”

After his Wall Street career, Murray worked as a consultant with Dimensional Fund Advisors, an investment management firm known for bringing academic research to the practical world of investing. Murray has served as Vice-Chair of the U.C. Berkeley Parents’ Fund and Advisory Board where he received the Trustees Citation Award in 2009 and on the board of the Hillsborough Schools Foundation where he founded the Scholars’ Circle. Murray graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an A.B. in Political Science, and received an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Visit www.theinvestmentanswerbook.com for more information.
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A BUSINESS PLUS EXCLUSIVE: HANK PAULSON

With the tradepaper edition of the major bestseller ON THE BRINK set to come out in a few weeks, we asked Hank Paulson to give us his thoughts on what has happened since the financial crisis of 2008, and what still needs to be done. Here are his thoughts:

I don’t wake up mornings wishing that I were still Treasury secretary. For one thing, I am finally getting a good night’s sleep again. I hope as the economy recovers that that is also true for the millions of people in America—and throughout the world—who have been living through this long nightmare of home foreclosures, job losses, and financial uncertainty. Congress has passed vitally needed regulatory reforms, and the Group of 20 nations established by President Bush has made great progress in managing this global crisis and taking steps to minimize the next one. More than two years after the start of the current crisis it is more apparent than ever that the major actions we took to prevent the collapse of the financial system and the onset of another Great Depression have worked.  Most of the TARP funds have been returned to the taxpayers and all, or almost all of the rest, will be returned.

But there is much left to do. It will take some time yet to work through the economic, psychological, and political consequences of this truly historic credit crisis. Yet, while the United States and the rest of the world wrestle with the aftermath of the calamitous near-collapse, we need to find ways to prevent another financial crisis of the magnitude and severity of the last one.

On the regulatory front, the Dodd-Frank Act must be implemented and turned into workable regulations. Policymakers here and abroad need to focus on the hard work of modernizing and strengthening the financial regulatory infrastructure—particularly that of the over-the-counter derivatives market and the secured lending, or so-called repo market. And, of course, the most difficult structural economic challenges must be addressed globally and in the United States. The Group of 20 nations must develop an effective global process to encourage major economies—including the US economy—to make progress in controlling dangerously large current account deficits, and surpluses. In the United States, our greatest structural challenge is, of course, our fiscal deficit. As a people and a nation we save too little and spend too much. Our increasing debt level threatens our status as a global economic power, and the economic security of our children and grandchildren. The good news is that we are a wealthy nation; dealing with this problem now will involve some sacrifice but will not drastically affect our standard of living. If we wait until more drastic changes are forced upon us by a crisis of confidence in the capital markets, the consequences will be much more severe and painful. Then our children and those who follow will bear the burden of diminished opportunity.

I’m very pleased that the Bowles-Simpson Commission recently presented a bipartisan proposal to deal with our deficit and that this has prompted a lively and wide-ranging debate, with the public now focused on the real options for addressing our long-term structural issues. In the past, attention has been focused on the need to curb the growth in entitlement spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and rightfully so. What has received much less attention is the need to dramatically reform—rather than just tweak—our incredibly complex tax system. And I mean both individual and corporate taxes. I’m very glad that the Bowles-Simpson Commission has proposed doing just that. Taking away a lot of the complexities and inefficiencies in the tax code will allow us to lower the tax rate and broaden the base—a much better foundation to support sustained economic growth. Reforming our corporate tax system, lowering the rate and eliminating some of the biases while moving to an international system used by other nations, would allow US multinationals to become more competitive and create more jobs here at home.

And, of course, we have much work to do to reshape the government policies that helped to stimulate housing excessively, leading to overvalued home prices throughout the United States. A significant part of this effort should be directed to dramatically downsizing and restructuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; we need to fix a flawed structure that was a major contributor to the crisis, while encouraging a healthy private-sector residential-mortgage market in the United States.

If we don’t lose our sense of urgency, and if the needed reforms are put in place domestically and internationally, markets will adapt and continue their positive trend of the past twenty-five years. Let’s not forget that these markets helped tear down the Iron Curtain, lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and brought great prosperity to our nation. Efficient, well-regulated capital markets can continue to provide economic progress around the world. That inevitably leads to more political freedom and greater individual liberty.

Henry M. Paulson, Jr. served under President George W. Bush as the 74th Secretary of the Treasury from June 2006 until January 2009. Before coming to Treasury, Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs since the firm’s initial public offering in 1999. He joined Goldman Sachs Chicago Office in 1974 and rose through the ranks holding several positions including, Managing Partner of the firm’s Chicago office, Co-head of the firm’s investment Banking Division, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Co-Senior partner.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Paulson was a member of the White House Domestic Council, serving as Staff Assistant to the President from 1972 to 1973, and as Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1972.

Paulson graduated from Dartmouth in 1968, where he majored in English, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an All Ivy, All East football player. He received an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1970. His book ON THE BRINK will be available in tradepaper on February 15, 2011.

THE TOP TEN MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTIONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Today’s post comes to us from Harry Beckwith, bestselling author of the upcoming book, UNTHINKING (January 2011):

No one would nominate me among the several thousand people most qualified to assess the 20th century’s ten most influential inventions, but whichever invention wins the title will have to outscore television in the finals.

Television has shaped our attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior. It has glorified notoriety more than talent, and rewards spectacle and other extremes. It rhapsodizes over items that we simply must have. It’s also made us less communal; the days of early-evening chats with neighbors on their porches look almost medieval to us now, but they were part of American life just 60 years ago. Television, along with the air conditioner, sent us inside. We gather far less, and text far more.

But television also informs us about things we truly need, changes we can and should make, and insights that we can use to improve our lives.

At least as important, television makes real to us what otherwise would be abstract–and our brains much prefer the concrete. Imagine the difference between watching the Twin Towers collapse on your television screen versus reading about it the next day in your newspaper.

Consider television’s greater impact on your senses: hearing the screams, the emotion in the newscasters’ voices, the sound of the implosion. Television lets us see and hear what is happening, and seeing changes our feelings. Think how deeply we grieved the deaths of the people aboard the Challenger, and how stunning it was to watch and hear Neil Armstrong step onto the moon.

Is the internet a greater influence? Will it prove to be? Almost certainly, and definitely.

But television has certainly changed the world dramatically, too.

Beyond those two, I’d include:

 the automobile, which made America wider, spreading us into suburbs and exurbs;

 the atomic bomb, for its immediate effect in ending a war and its longer term effect of raising the stakes of international politics from worrisome to terrifying;

 the computer of course–a too obvious choice;

 air conditioning, which has made our entire country’s shift to the South and Southwest possible;

 jet flight, which helped flatten America and changed how wars are fought and won;

 and the contraceptive pill, which belongs near the top. It’s changed the role of women, promoted their liberation, and affected our belief about controlling our own bodies. If pills to prevent conception, why not pills to alter our minds? “You seem so much better!” “I’m taking these pills.”

That’s a phenomenal change.

These inventions seem uniquely influential. To fill out a ten-invention list, you can make strong arguments for chemotherapy, the Salk polio vaccine, the transistor, the silicon chip, the Interstate Highway System, the New Deal, the radio, and others I am overlooking. And I am among millions who, without consciously thinking about it, am very grateful for the invention of the electric guitar.

Harry Beckwith heads Beckwith Partners, a marketing firm that advises twenty-three Fortune 200 clients and dozens of venture-capitalized start-ups on branding and positioning. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, Beckwith is an internationally acclaimed speaker. He is the bestselling author of five books, which, collectively, have been translated into twenty-three languages. His latest book, UNTHINKING: The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy, will be available on January 26, 2011.

3 Business Plus Books Named Inc. Magazine’s Best Books for Business Owners 2010!

Please join us in congratulating our authors: Robert I. Sutton (author of Good Boss, Bad Boss), Tony Hsieh (author of Delivering Happiness), and Jeffrey W. Hayzlett (author of The Mirror Test), on having their books selected as top business books in 2010 by the panel of experts at Inc. Magazine.

We invite you to take a look!

Breaking News: THE INVESTMENT ANSWER – Coming in Jan. 2011

We are announcing that we have acquired world rights to publish THE INVESTMENT ANSWER: Learn to Manage Your Money & Protect Your Financial Future by Gordon Murray and Dan Goldie. Originally self-published by the authors in August 2010, Business Plus is scheduled to publish the book in hardcover on January 25, 2011.

Mr. Murray is a former bond salesman for Goldman Sachs who rose to the managing director level at both Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston. He has glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, first diagnosed in 2008. Five months ago, after a recurrence of the disease, he decided to cease all treatment and started writing THE INVESTMENT ANSWER with his friend and financial advisor Daniel Goldie. The book explains investing in a handful of simple steps.

Rick Wolff, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Business Plus: “This extraordinary book on investing is stunning – candid, direct, and right to the point in empowering investors everywhere by giving them the five basic questions they need to know. Gordon Murray and Daniel Goldie have truly revealed the inner financial secrets that we all want to know.”

Visit www.theinvestmentanswerbook.com for more information.

You can read the full press release here.

Read A Dying Banker’s Last Instructions via The New York Times.

Gordon Murray, left, and his co-author, Dan Goldie, in Burlingame, Calif. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Why You Really Can CHANGE ANYTHING

It is the end of the year and while many of us are looking back on the year behind us, many are looking forward to the new year and new goals. We are also looking ahead and we’d like to offer you a preview of our upcoming book, CHANGE ANYTHING: The New Science of Personal Success By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, to help you achieve those new (or old) goals.

Have you ever wondered why it is that 95% of all diet attempts fail? Or why New Year’s Resolutions last no more than a few days? And how about why people with good intentions cannot seem to make consistent and positive strides in the way they want to improve their careers, financial fitness, physical fitness, and so on?

Based upon the latest research in a number of psychological and medical fields,  the authors of CHANGE ANYTHING show that traditional will-power is NOT necessarily the answer to these strivings — that people ARE affected in their behaviors by far more subtle influences.

CHANGE ANYTHING shows how individuals can come to understand these powerful and influential forces, and how to put these forces to work in a positive manner that brings real and meaningful results.

Take a look at the video from the CHANGE ANYTHING Labs and let us know what you think…

Do you believe YOU really can CHANGE ANYTHING? What would you like to change in 2011?

@change_anything
www.changeanything.com

CHANGE ANYTHING: The New Science of Personal Success  hits stores shelves April 11, 2011. Stay tuned for an inside preview of the book!