Is This a Lousy Job or Is It Me?: A Real-Life Guide for Achieving Success at Work

Terri Jacke is an accomplished coach, speaker, and trainer, and the founder of Inspired Training Institute, Inc. She offers a unique blend of business savvy, perceptiveness, and momentum to the development of executives, business leaders and leadership teams. She works with clients across numerous industries and for companies ranging from small privately-held firms to large Fortune 500 companies to inspire organizations through character, leadership and culture development.

Her first book, Is This a Lousy Job or Is It Me?, grew out of her work to better understand how to help people who struggle with difficult coworkers, meaningless work, and lousy work situations. It was 14 years in the making as she analyzed what allowed some people to move gracefully through all of those obstacles to find fulfillment and success while others rebelled, shrank, or got stuck.

Teri’s book and her coaching rely on her BY FABLE model to empower readers to make sense of their workplace experiences and effectively move themselves through the seven stages. Is This a Lousy Job or Is It Me? empowers readers to employ the natural sequence of those stages to achieve more fulfillment from their work and greater success at work. Interactive tie-in workshops are available for workplaces to help strengthen their organizational cultures and/or develop stronger teams.

To learn more about Terri, her coaching, and her book, visit https://inspiredtraining.net/.

Live in a Home that Pays You Back: A Complete Guide to Net Zero and Energy-Efficient Homes

Award-winning author and respected housing expert Anna DiSimone wants to take you on a virtual tour of the home of the future. It’s healthier, more comfortable, saves money, and reduces your carbon footprint. Live in a Home that Pays You Back is a reference guide that can be used for years to come. It uncovers every part of the sustainable home, with clear explanations, helpful infographics, and hundreds of follow-up resources.

The book offers a wide range of information for homeowners looking to build or retrofit, including mortgage financing and how to roll retrofit costs into the mortgage. It explains about the health benefits of energy-efficient homes and how this can improve a home’s true cost of ownership. Anna explains many different renewable energy options, using a “whole-house efficiency blueprint” chapter to point out the many places homeowners should consider. Or, if you’re looking to construct your own home, consider the popular “zero energy ready” program and the home building opportunities chapter with instructions for modular, manufactured, log and timber, and prefab home kits.

The book even includes a comprehensive directory of rebates and incentives for all U.S. states and Canada provinces. Find out about cash rebates and financial incentives from utility companies and local municipalities, along with key local government policies such as solar and wind access rights, and net metering laws.

For more information about Ann and Live in a Home that Pays You Back, or to read sample chapters and view the full table of contents, visit https://annadesimone.net/books/live-in-a-home-that-pays-you-back/.

The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You

Think back over your life. Did anyone ever teach you networking, negotiating, communicating, leading, or career planning? No? Mark Herschberg would like to remedy that.

The Career Toolkit is packed with dozens of actionable principles, exercises, and practices that will accelerate your success and yield outsized returns for your career and your income. The book guides you through designing and executing your personal plan to achieve the career you deserve. It’s written for office professions, leaders, HR, and students – no matter where you are in your career, Mark has some suggestions to help you keep on the path that’s right for you.

The book is divided into three sections: Career, Leadership & Management, and Interpersonal Dynamics. If you’re currently facing a particular challenge, you can jump right ahead to that chapter. At the end of the book, you’ll have developed a wide-ranging set of skills for your career. You’ll also create a plan for where you want to go and use your newly honed skills to strategically and tactically accelerate your career.

Mark has spent his own career launching and developing new ventures at startups, in Fortune 500 companies, and in academia. He’s been dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator” and he teaches a course there annually. Now he’s taken so much of what he’s learned and turned it into a book to deliver directly into your hands.

Find out more about The Career Toolkit – including a free download of the first chapter – and Mark’s other resources here: https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/.

Build Your Future: The Complete Guide to a Skilled Trades Career

There has never been a better time to consider a career in the skilled trades. More than 2.5 million job openings in 2021 were in the skilled trades, and that number isn’t expected to drop in the coming years. Skilled trades rely more on trade schools, apprenticeships, and on-the-job trainings than a four-year college degree, and they take people above and beyond the entry-level positions that often get called “unskilled labor.”

Skilled trades cover a wide variety of positions in areas like construction, manufacturing and industrial, transportation, energy, and agriculture. They reference specific skills or knowledge essential for current industry. Skilled trade professionals have opportunities for growth and advancement, and many of them become entrepreneurs who can set their own schedules, work for themselves, and enjoy high levels of independence.

Build Your Future breaks down the top ten myths about skilled trades and tackles the question of whether college is really the best option for everyone. It addresses average salaries, future prospects, learning pathways, opportunities for entrepreneurship, and questions of overall job satisfaction to provide students with the information they need to decide their paths for the future.

Perfect for high schoolers and their parents, Build Your Future reminds readers that there are options for success and employment happiness beyond four-year college degrees. To learn more about the book or place an order, contact awp@jenkinsgroupinc.com.

Abuse Exposed: Identifying Family Secrets That Breed Dysfunction

Christine Hammond is a leading mental health influencer, author, and guest speaker who specializes in treating families of abuse and trauma. Her work is based on her own personal experience. Abuse Exposed explores not just obvious abuse, but less obvious tactics like family secrets, intimidation, and the “Silent Treatment.”

Christine knows that victims often ask “Why did this happen to me?” She also knows that victims can rewrite their stories, improve their relationships, and break the cycle for future generations. While her book focuses on the family, it has information useful for all kinds of relationships, including work and professional relationships.

Abuse Exposed teaches readers about the wide range of abuse, both covert and overt; the generational links to abuse; what to do before, during, and after abuse; how to confront your abuser; finding forgiveness despite the pain; how to re-write your story to avoid future problems; and so much more. It has been praised by neurologists, psychotherapists, wellness specialists, and trauma survivor counselors alike. 

Christine specializes in personality disorders (Narcissism and Borderline), mental health disorders, addictions, ADD, OCD, co-dependency, anxiety, anger, depression, parenting, and marriage. She is also the host of the podcast “Understanding Today’s Narcissist.”

For more information about Christine or her book, visit https://abuseexposed.com/.

Intrinsic Inclusion: Rebooting Your Biased Brain

Dr. Janet B. Reid is an innovative thought leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Vincent Brown is an expert in diversity and inclusion, organizational and team development, and executive coaching. Together they have written an award-winning book, Intrinsic Inclusion: Rebooting Your Biased Brain, to share the secrets of the naturally inclusive and to disrupt unconscious biases, leading to better teamwork, collaboration, and productivity. 

Intrinsic Inclusion is about re-training your brain to make yourself more naturally inclusive. It works at the intersection of diversity, neuroscience, biases, and biology to disrupt implicit unconscious biases and change “default” mindsets. The book asks timely and provocative questions to prompt important discussions for readers to consider in their business and personal lives. Reid and Brown encourage dialogue and discovery, empowered by intrinsic motivation to be more naturally inclusive.

Intrinsic Inclusion has been embraced by experts in diversity and inclusion, civic engagement, global diversity, HR, and more. Through the book and the offered Facilitated Learning Experiences, individuals and groups can engage in respectful empathy, connected understanding, shared trust, and reaction to significant emotional events or relationships. Intrinsic Inclusion can help teams of any size create an inclusive environment for all.

To learn more about intrinsic inclusion, visit https://intrinsicinclusion.com/.

CONNECT: The Ultimate Human Superpower

Sam Beard wants you to connect – to yourself, to others, and to the universe. Connection is behind every good and noble deed, and is the core to creativity and resourcefulness. Connecting is a prerequisite for love and a gateway to spirituality, enlightenment, and higher purpose. It is also one of the key initiatives of Gift Global.

In his book CONNECT: The Ultimate Human Superpower, Beard shares 38 remarkable journeys into the inner realm of mind power. These 38 storytellers work to ignite in us the spark to gaining richer, more fulfilling, and purposeful lives. Each of them has unlocked a way for us all to connect to a greater power within ourselves so we can realize our enlightened human potential.

The stories within the book are told by a range of people from an Aboriginal healer, to a scientist probing the frontiers of higher consciousness, to leaders on the world stage, to people who appear ordinary and everyday but are far from it. CONNECT is part of a global collaborative campaign to engage and invite new people to discover and activate their inbuilt capacities and reach greater happiness

For more information about Gift Global and CONNECT: The Ultimate Human Superpower, see https://giftglobal.org/connect-the-ultimate-human-superpower/.

Building the Skilled Trades Pipeline

 In the 1990s, Connie Valliere created Billy the Builder Bear to teach kids about the knowledge and labor required to build a house. Now, Skilled to Build Michigan Foundation has the chance to introduce 20,000 children to Billy the Builder Bear and interest them in pursuing the skilled trades. This project involves Michigan legislators and adults who work in industry going into classrooms, when possible, to read the book, hand out copies, and answer children’s questions.

Skilled to Build Michigan Foundation works to build awareness of the many career opportunities in the residential construction industry. They are working on a daily basis to fill the labor shortage being felt in the residential construction industry. By sharing Billy the Builder Bear with young elementary students, they want kids to learn about the skilled trades and to see them as an opportunity from an early age. 

For more information about Billy the Builder Bear and Skilled to Build Michigan Foundation, visit https://skilledtobuildmichigan.com/#/billy-the-builder-bear

The Elixir of Life Cookbook – Finding Love and Joy in the Passionate Pursuit of Food

From olives to oils and wine, the art of cooking features a variety of elixirs.

Widely celebrated chef, Lisa Dahl, has published an inspiring cookbook, The Elixir of Life Cookbook – Finding Love and Joy in the Passionate Pursuit of Food, which won an Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Gold Medal.

Dahl's cookbook brings Italian rustic cuisine to life. The recipes are illuminated and inspired by Dahl's travels to Tuscany, as well the four restaurants in Arizona at which she is executive chef.

The Elixer of Life Cookbook serves as an excellent marketing tool, giving readers a personal stake in Dahl's signature cuisine. Dahl enables readers to turn her recipes into their own source of inspiration as they take her recipes home. Dahl's extraordinary, award-winning cookbook enhances her brand as well as her culinary legacy.