Monthly Archives: July 2026

Marketing , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Don’t Get Too Personal

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Personalized marketing defines the future of marketing. Personalized marketing has not delivered on its promise. Got it.

Personalized marketing was supposed to revolutionize how you communicate with prospects, build and strengthen relationships with customers and promote your services and products to target market segments. Its purpose is to tailor your marketing messages, customer experiences and other communication with individual customers based on their unique attributes, purchasing history and preferences. Higher customer retention rates, increased sales revenue, increased customer lifetime value and decreased customer churn are among the most valuable benefits associated with personalized marketing.

Marketers were highly enthusiastic. But then came trouble in paradise, as consumers signaled concern about the privacy of their personal information and browsing behavior, which caused some turbulence in the digital sector. A reset occurred, as certain leading internet browsers instituted a ban, or allowed users to restrict, the use of third-party cookies, the mechanism that enables tracking of online behavior. As a result, marketing leaders (and that includes Freelancers and small business owners) have had to rethink their marketing personalization strategies, just when they were wrapping their heads around Customer Relations Management software and how Artificial Intelligence capabilities refined and optimized the effectiveness of personalized marketing strategies. Sigh.

So, it was necessary for brands to go back to square one marketing and shore up collection of first-party data that customers were willing to share. That information is more valuable than ever now—-and isn’t it better that you own and control your customer data, that customers and prospects know what you know about them; and they also know that you won’t sell their personal data? There’s a lot of upside that results from expanding your collection of first-party customer info—the process helps you strengthen relationships, because you’ll have more opportunities to better understand customers and you’ll be better prepared to improve their experiences with your brand.  You can apply personalization on any digital channel if you have access to customer data — often unified through a customer data platform put into place by your CRM service, which will use AI and algorithms to tailor customer experiences based on his/her data and behavior.

Realize that your customers expect and appreciate a personalized experience from the brands they regularly engage or do business with regularly. A McKinsey research study found that 76% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that personalize. Customers want to know that the brand understands who they are and their needs and does not bombard them with unwanted sales offers.

The benefits of successful marketing personalization

  • More consistent and relevant customer experiences. Personalizing customers’ experiences shows that you understand their preferences and interests. This makes them more likely to engage and remain loyal to your brand, since they know you won’t pummel them with unwanted info.
  • Increased sales conversion rates. The more relevant your offers, the more likely that prospects and customers will value and accept the call-to-action you’re prompting them to, whether that’s purchasing a service or product, signing up for a subscription, or scheduling a consultation. Personalization enables you to entice customers with offers based on their past purchases, interests and real-time behaviors, since you’ll know what matters to them.
  • Higher customer loyalty, retention and lifetime value (LTV). Personalization sets you up to deliver relevant marketing messages and content, as well as the context in which to make recommendations for services or products, add-ons or upgrades, that are likely to resonate. When your organization demonstrates to customers that you are paying attention to their priorities, customers are more likely to give you repeat business and extend the customer lifecycle, which is vital for retaining customers in the long term.
  • Maximized marketing efforts and budget. Personalization ensures you’re always targeting customers with highly relevant offers. This means you’re not wasting your (and your customers’) time and resources. Coupled with the increase in conversion rates and revenue, this makes personalization an incredibly powerful tool for maximizing marketing spend and return on investment (ROI). It can even apply to your broader branding efforts, such as choosing the best name for your YouTube channel in order to engage a specific niche audience and earn more returns from your multimedia content.

 Types of personalization

Marketing personalization can be expressed in different ways, depending on what you want to achieve. For example, some personalization is one-to-one, meaning it’s directly related to the customer’s specific information — a technique increasingly powered by AI personalization. Think email marketing, from blogs or newsletter to special offers or events. Other times, personalization is applied using a targeted approach through customer segmentation, where you choose specific characteristics or customer attributes for a customer group based on their buying history or other interaction with your brand puts them into the segment receive a certain personalized experience.

Personalization can be as simple as having a person’s name in an email rather than an all-purpose general greeting, or as detailed as including the details of a customer’s recent purchase or web browsing in that email. It could also include showing particular product promotions on a website based on a person’s past purchases, or sending special promotions via SMS or a mobile application. Customers expect personalization on every channel, a continuity across website, mobile, SMS (text) and email communications.

Other examples of personalization include:

  • Product recommendations based on past purchases or online browsing
  • Product promotion info based on the website pages visited
  • Email offers to a segment of customers who own a particular product or receive a certain service
  • Communicating with a customer post-purchase to ensure they are happy and have no difficulty using the product or service and accessing its benefits

Boundaries matter

While there is no doubt that customers and prospects expect and appreciate personalization, they want to ensure their privacy. When, where and how much your brand personalizes the customer experience deserves consideration. It is imperative that you avoid making those who’d like to engage with your brand feel that you’re getting too personal, that they’re being closely watched. The feeling that business owners and marketers want to communicate is “I matter to this brand.” Build your personalization strategies around that thought and avoid activities that may feel like a violation.

When inviting those who engage with your brand to share certain info, you can take an important step in relationship-building by demonstrating that transparency is a policy you live by. Customers worry about brands collecting too much data, using information in unexpected ways, or creating experiences that feel too close for comfort. How data is used, confirming that it will not be shared with third parties and demonstrating that cybersecurity measures have been installed to discourage data security breaches will go a long way toward earning the trust of your customers and prospects. Clearly stated privacy policies, explicit consent mechanisms, giving customers control over their data and only personalizing in ways that genuinely add value to the customer experience you provide are must-dos.

Tools for effective marketing personalization

To effectively personalize your marketing efforts, implementing data analytics tools is necessary. Analytics tools track customer behavior that reveals website interactions and email responses, for example, so you can accurately tailor your strategies in response. Utilizing a marketing Customer Relations Management platform will optimize those capabilities by centralizing customer data to facilitate targeted, personalized communication. N.B.–maintain the quality of your customer data by taking steps to ensure that it is updated and accurate.

CRM analytics serve as the foundation for both customer journey mapping and sales forecasting by providing the behavioral data needed to understand how prospects move through your sales funnel. Every touchpoint, interaction and transaction recorded in your CRM becomes a valuable data point that reveals patterns in customer behavior and purchasing decisions.

Customer journey mapping relies heavily on CRM data to identify which channels, types of content and engagement lead to conversions. This info helps you understand which activities are most likely to indicate a purchase, or make the prospect more likely to make a purchase. You’ll also learn where in the buyer’s journey prospects are prone to abandon—or accelerate— their buying decisions.

Finally, your marketing CRM platform will greatly improve sales forecasting and ensure the data will be accurate when you analyze historical CRM data to predict future performance based on current sales funnel activity and even seasonal trends. CRM reporting tools enable you to track every interaction across the customer lifecycle, providing the comprehensive data needed to create reliable revenue projections and identify which touchpoints contribute most to creating sales.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © The Everett Collection. Jean Porter and Jimmy Lydon in the film Sweet Genevieve (1947)

Sales , , , , , , Leave a comment

Why They Aren’t Your Customers

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A business owner is always on a mission to attract potential new customers, to introduce them to the company’s products and/or services and pique their interest by helping them to envision how using one (or more) of your offerings will make some aspect of their life or work better—-solve a problem, save time or money, achieve a goal, or enhance the company brand, for example.

You are aware that the answer to most sales appeals is “no;” but have you ever unpacked the deal-breakers that cause prospects to turn you down? Respectfully, I suggest that you explore this uncomfortable question. What you learn may surprise you, but I’ll wager that it will not discourage you, even if you discover a lapse that you should have anticipated. Being all things to all potential buyers is not a goal for the vast majority of business entities. If you’ve made a couple of mistakes, you’ll have a chance to fix things. As for non-customers, they can be grouped into four categories that describe their relationship with your brand:

  • Prospects who are unaware of your company, service, or product and may also be unaware of your product or service category.
  • Prospects who are aware of your company and its offerings, but they are uncertain that your service or product is an effective solution for their needs.
  • Prospects who are aware of the category of services or products that you provide, but your company is unknown to them.
  • Prospects who are satisfied with the services or products provided by a competitor company and they are not motivated to change.

Every now and again, fortune will smile and a non-customer will decide to investigate your online marketing funnel and become an active prospect. This individual could enter into active engagement and request information that leads to a chat with you. As you answer questions and position your solution as a preferable alternative to what s/he uses now, you may spark a level of trust and confidence that convinces the prospect that there is something better—and that better mousetrap could be your product or service. Make the most of what could be a good opportunity and listen for cues that subtly reveal a prospect’s niggling dissatisfaction that, with skillful handling, could blow up to become the motivation to abandon ship and buy from you.

Engagement

The most immediate way to assess a prospect’s feelings is by noting the level of engagement s/he demonstrates. A serious prospect will actively participate in discussions with you, either directly in conversation or by way of interactions with your online sales funnel. S/he will make comments, ask questions and solicit recommendations for how to use the product or service in specific situations. Serious prospects want to understand how your product or service will perform; will the results and outcomes justify the purchase? Will your product or service address specific pain points, solve a formidable challenge, or help to achieve an important goal? These prospects will be engaged with you every step of the way. Their responsiveness is typically swift; they are happy to follow-up on emails or to take meetings.

By contrast, prospects who are merely browsing are not prepared to become a paying customer anytime soon. They may need to obtain the support of higher-ups in their organization; they might be waiting for budget confirmation and timing. Prospects who are just looking around are inclined to be casual about their communication with you or your team. They might be motivated by curiosity to comparison shop; or maybe there’s a missing element in what they’re using now, something that was not a deal-breaker when they bought from your competitor. So, your commitment phobic prospect will occasionally search for a product or service that could become a potential replacement and mentally entertain a comparison. But will the prospect change horses?

For this prospect, there is no rush; s/he might take days or weeks to respond to your follow-up attempt. Casual prospects may postpone meetings without requesting a reschedule date; the feedback they give is likely to be vague and noncommittal. If you’re chasing someone for a response, or repeatedly trying to reestablish contact, it’s almost certainly indication that s/he isn’t fully invested in the conversation—or, worse, they’re simply not that interested. Ask yourself: which prospects make an effort to stay engaged with you and which respond only when you reach out—if that? When it’s the latter, you may find that the prospect is even more unreliable than they let on.

Urgency

Prospects with an immediate need for your product or service are usually far more likely to convert. They’ll have a specific problem that requires timely attention and they’ll make that clear early on in your interactions. Whether they’re on a tight timeline or under pressure to resolve a pressing business issue, serious prospects will express a desire to move quickly. You might get questions such as, “How soon can we start?” or “We’d like to get a solution in place by X date.” These statements indicate that the prospect is motivated and ready to move forward and make a purchase.

By contrast, a prospect who is merely browsing will not exhibit urgency. S/he might express interest, but when it’s time to take the next step, there will be hesitation. Commitment phobic prospects push timelines into the future or claim that they need more time to think things over. The lack of urgency may signal that the prospect isn’t prioritizing the purchase or, worse, that there is no plan to move forward. As a rule, when prospects are serious, their enthusiastic and consistent engagement communicates that they are eager to do the deal. If you detect only lukewarm interest, expect that prospect to disappoint you.

Decision-maker

One of the most frustrating experiences in sales is trying to mid-wife a buyer’s journey with a prospect whom you discover doesn’t have the authority to make purchasing decisions. Serious prospects usually have the power to buy, or they’re closely connected to the one who does. If your prospect must refer decisions to higher-ups, or is unclear about who will make the final call, this could be a red flag.

Early in your conversations, smart Freelancers ask the prospect questions about their decision-making process, such as “Who else will be involved in the decision?” or “What steps do we need to go through for final approval?” It’s critical to know if the person with whom you’re communicating has sole authority to make the buy, or if s/he has one vote on a decision team of five people, for example. Or maybe your prospect is doing the legwork for the sale because the person(s) who can green light the sale don’t like getting directly involved in sales (it happens). Whatever the protocol the prospect’s company follows, if s/he is serious, that person will give you accurate info about the purchase approval process and will fill you in on the internal steps and timelines needed to make a decision.

Uncommitted prospects, on the other hand, tend to be ambiguous, if not evasive, about who holds the decision-making power. If the prospect repeatedly tells you s/he needs to consult someone else about the sale, but never seems to move the process forward, that individual is most likely wasting your time. Without clear authority or a transparent decision-making process, it will be difficult to determine when, or if, the sale will be approved.

Moving forward

A serious prospect will move through your sales funnel with consistency and purpose. S/he will ask questions, including those intended to obtain information on the service or product delivery and implementation timelines and pricing specifics. Even if discussions and negotiations take time, there will be clear forward momentum.

Commitment phobic prospects, as you might guess, tend to stall. It’s possible that what appears to be genuine interest is demonstrated early on as the prospect engages in preliminary discussions. But when it’s time to progress to more concrete steps—such as proposing a delivery and implementation timeline, or reviewing a proposal—you find that communication becomes opaque and slows down, it does not bode well for the possibility of consummating the sale. This stalling tactic is manipulative as it traps you in uncertainty and denies you from good faith business practice. Such prospects may be unable to guarantee an adequate budget, or they may be in serious negotiation with another vendor and merely using you as a bargaining chip or a Plan B option. You are advised to be circumspect.

It’s important to recognize the potential significance of persistent delays and face up to the possibility that the prospect may not be willing and able to make a decision. If the prospect habitually postpones meetings, this could surely indicate that this individual is unreliable, probably because the authority to make the purchase is not in hand. Do yourself a favor and monitor how quickly and smoothly prospects move from one step to the next in your sales funnel; any unusual delays are worth questioning.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © MoustacheGirl for Getty Images

Business Strategy , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Predictions: Which Freelance Skills Will Be Most Valued In 2027?

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As we enter Fiscal Year 2027, demand for the expertise, experience, energy and enthusiasm that Freelance professionals bring to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations around the world continues on an upward trend. Hiring rates of Freelance professionals climbed 44% above the average demand predicted by leading Freelance labor platforms. The market is projected to grow from $8.9 billion in 2026 to $21.97 billion by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.32%.

To state the obvious, the steady growth of Freelance labor has largely been fueled by the digital revolution, that has touched all aspects of how we live and work. Artificial Intelligence is the center of the universe now, generating a big demand for Freelance talent. In fact, there is a shortage of talent that possesses the necessary capability to evaluate AI readiness assessment, has a command of AI development expertise or machine learning engineering, or owns the desired fluency in prompt engineering. Other technology sectors that remain a magnet for Freelance talent are programming, from mobile app to software and web development, plus user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) specialists, cybersecurity and sustainability experts. These lucrative niches are predicted by leading Freelance labor sources to reach a CAGR of 16.32% during 2026 – 2031.

Niche to watch: supply chain and logistics

Another industry that has the potential to provide a strong demand for Freelance talent is the supply chain sector, which is expected to play a prominent role in hiring rates of independent labor in FY 2027. The global supply chain industry is entering a period of growth in FY 2027. After several years of sluggish hiring, companies are again expanding their capabilities across logistics, procurement, planning and manufacturing. Hiring managers are especially interested in Freelance professionals who have strong data analytics proficiency and environmental sustainability skills, along with sustainability and logistics experience that includes cross-functional expertise.45% of supply chain and logistics companies currently work with Freelance talent.

The quick acceptance and implementation of AI powered digital tools have enabled the use of robotics and workflow streamlining, for example, but there is an AI talent gap in the supply chain work force. These urgencies have compelled industry decision-makers to take advantage of the global, scalable, agile workforce available by way of the Freelance talent pool, which also delivers a cost-savings of 30% – 40% vs. full-time employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 11% growth in supply chain management jobs through 2030 .

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © The New York Times/ Federico Rios Escobar. The container ship ZIM Newark (Germany) sails through the Panama Canal in July 2024

Professional Development , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

10 Titles: Good Business Reads for Summer 2026

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The U. S. Chamber of Commerce highly recommends that owners of businesses of any size, from single owner /employee entities to chief executives of global enterprises that employees thousands, should regularly undertake the professional development activity known as reading. In particular, how-to entrepreneurial business books contain a wealth of knowledge and actionable advice that’s supported by the author’s examples of hands-on business leadership experience, along with encouragement and guidance to inspire you. Reading presents opportunities to learn from others’ successes and disappointments; however, in the age of information overload, it can be difficult to make time for reading while simultaneously juggling the demands of operating a business—sometimes on your own.

To make it easier for Freelancers and other business leaders to find books that grab your interest, I’ve curated a list of business reading possibilities. The books have been well-received in the business sector but they are only suggestions, and intended to encourage you to consider subjects that you’d like to explore. Below are recommendations for curating a reading list that will support your knowledge building objectives:

  • Choose topics that interest you. You may need to address a challenge for which you’d like to obtain some insight. A subject or author may pique your interest. There are many books to choose from within the business category; the prospect of taking a deep dive into a topic that tempts you will supply ample motivation to start reading.
  • Schedule time to read.  Similar to reserving a block of time that will be devoted to an important task, dedicating time for reading reinforces its value. Your reading sessions can be longer or shorter; for instance, you can allot mini-blocks of time to give yourself brief but focused reading sessions at the beginning and end of your day. You can create a reading habit that quickly becomes part of your routine and motivates you to find more books to read.
  • Incorporate audiobooks and podcasts. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks allows you to learn while working out, commuting, doing laundry, or tackling other routine tasks.
  • Abandon books that aren’t resonating. If the author’s message or writing style leave you flat, move on to one that captures your attention as it provides the lessons you’re looking for.
  1. Real Time Leadership (David Noble and Carol Kauffman, February 2023)

The best leaders are able to assess pivotal, potentially game-changing situations when the outcome matters most and respond in the most effective way possible to move forward—or not. Authors David Noble and Carol Kauffman are best-in-class leadership coaches; they advise that the most difficult aspect of leadership occurs when you must control the inevitable high-risk, high stakes challenge. Whether you’re faced with a split-second decision, when your business is reeling, or could be soon, and your mind is racing to determine the best strategy to navigate business-critical long-term circumstances. An effective leader must be able to step up, seize the reins and guide the organization to a successful landing. Noble and Kauffman show you how their innovative leadership development framework trains you to excel at tactics that slow down high-stakes situations before they speed you up and pull you under like a rip tide. Instead, you’ll learn to confront and master the moment, so that you can calmly generate response options and quickly evaluate those options before acting.

2. The Science of Scaling (Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson, July 2025)

Are you generating only modest annual growth in your business, frustrated and wondering why a pathway to scale your entity seems out of reach? Authors Blake Erickson and Dr. Benjamin Hardy deliver the outrageous truth—lackluster growth isn’t just slow, it’s a sign your business is sliding toward stagnation. Research shows that businesses that are unable to scale quickly usually fail. But why? Because most leaders are focused on the wrong priorities, operating from the wrong assumptions and setting the wrong goals.

In The Science of Scaling, organizational psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson, co-founders of Scaling .com, reveal a revolutionary framework that helps companies scale bigger and faster than they ever thought possible. In fact, companies that apply this framework routinely grow 10–100x within just three years.

If you’re satisfied with small wins and incremental gains, this book isn’t for you. But if you’re ready to stop optimizing what shouldn’t exist―and finally build a business that scales―this is your playbook. When you read this book, you’ll experience a paradigm shift that will cause you to change your perspective on how to operate a business entity. You’ll realize that you’ve been playing small and trapped by fear. Now, you’ll finally understand how to scale the right way: with bold, ambitious goals, extreme honesty and the true “focus”― defined as filtering for only the people and paths that align directly with your highest vision.

3. The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers (Rob Fitzpatrick, September 2013)

When you decide to learn something about your customers—what you’re on a mission to figure out what they like and would like to see more of, or get the details of what isn’t working for them and why—the standard advice given to every marketing or sales leader, Freelancer or business owner, is to ask them. Talking to those who buy your services or products is considered a foundational skill of sales and marketing. We all know we’re supposed to do it, but no one wants to admit that it’s not so easy to do it right and make your customer feel comfortable enough to give you the info you need, but it can be all too easy to screw up and say the wrong thing—-or say the right thing in the wrong way.

The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers by Rob Fitzpatrick is a practical guide that helps entrepreneurs navigate the crucial task of talking to customers in order to confirm a business idea, or ask questions about an existing service or product. Fitzpatrick illustrates how sensitive conversations can go wrong and shows you how to keep them on track, so that you’ll get the info that you need to move forward. Now you can reduce the risk of building products nobody wants and make informed decisions based on real customer behavior rather than on polite feedback.

The author is an entrepreneur who co-founded the education agency Founder Centric, taught at top universities including Harvard, MIT and University College of London (UK), co-wrote the book Workshop Survival Guide, which describes how to design and run effective and engaging workshops. He also managed to learn enterprise sales, skill that fuels his current vocation of gathering unbiased customer learning and taking an idea from nothing through to its first dozen or so paying customers.

4. Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean (Karen Berman and Joe Knight, February 2013)

This is an excellent book for anyone who doesn’t have a traditional business administration background. Financial Intelligence is a comprehensive guide that’s meant to help managers at all levels understand the often intimidating world of finance and shows you how to make sense of financial data and use that knowledge to make better decisions and develop more confidence.

One of the best things about the book is how clearly authors Karen Berman and Joe Knight simplify and present complicated financial ideas into terms that are easy to understand and to the point. Even those who have never studied business before can understand the core ideas and use them in real life. Berman and Knight stress how important financial knowledge is for all managers, no matter what area they work in. The fact that financial information can be used in any situation is very interesting. It changes the way we think about financial knowledge so that it is no longer a special skill but a core skill that is essential to good management.  The book isn’t just about figuring out what the numbers mean; it’s also about how to use that knowledge to make good business choices. It is a must-read for any boss who wants to make their company successful financially.

5. Inside the Box (David Epstein, April 2026)

We live in a world that gives us seemingly infinite choices and values freedom above all else. We have an unprecedented number of options regarding what to do, who to be, and how to spend our time. All that choice is wonderful; it is also overwhelming. The irony is that total freedom can be paralyzing, and unlimited resources don’t necessarily lead to the biggest breakthroughs. In fact, overvaluing complete freedom can be disastrous for everything from starting a company to harnessing creativity to finding personal satisfaction.

Author David Epstein argues that all of us—individuals, businesses, institutions, even societies—can benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we’re working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation.

6. Build Your Dream Network (J. Kelly Hoey, January 2018)

Acclaimed business columnist and networking expert J. Kelly Hoey offers a fresh new approach to mastering this timeworn skill in a world where everyone is posting, liking and friending fast and furiously, but are mostly failing to leverage their connections successfully—because they’re not really connections. Hoey’s book presents innovative strategies for developing strong and healthy relationships–the genuine, mutually beneficial, long-lasting kind–by using all of the social tools at your disposal. She also reveals creative and surprisingly simple ways to harness the power of your network to accomplish any ambition, from landing your dream job, to signing a coveted account or client, to successfully crowdfunding a new business venture.

J. Kelly Hoey cuts through the noise of traditional networking and provides strategies for creating authentic, mutually satisfying relationships. She emphasizes that real networking is not about attending dull cocktail parties or gaining a large number of connections online. The book is packed with innovative strategies to help you make the most of both in-person and digital networking opportunities. One of the standout aspects of Build Your Dream Network is its focus on turning “closed-door” conversations into solid business opportunities and personal relationships. Hoey provides advice on how to approach and follow up with contacts in an authentic and strategic way.

 7. Atomic Habits (James Clear, October 2018)

 Are you struggling to build some useful new habits that you will actually incorporate into your life? Atomic Habits by James Clear breaks down the process of developing a useful new habit and serves it up in four simple steps: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying. If you truly want to live a “successful” life (placed in quotation marks here as success is subjective and its definition is up to you), then you need to put in the time and effort daily to build healthy habits that support your goals and productivity. James Clear shows us that habit-building can be easy and fun. It’s not as boring or arduous as you might think.

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. 

The book will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits–whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

8. Rework (Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, March 2010)

Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, ad nauseum.
But for many aspiring entrepreneurs, you’ll be better off if you stop talking and start working; authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson show you how its done. You’ll learn why a multi-page business plan will not necessarily help your mission, why you probably don’t need outside investors and why you could do better by ignoring the competition.

The truth is, to build a successful business entity, less than can be more. You don’t need to be a workaholic. You don’t always need to hire staff (especially not with artificial intelligence powered tools). You definitely don’t need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don’t even need an office. Those are all just excuses that block you from seizing the moment.

You’ll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank and the value of more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire you. It’s Keep It Simple Strategies make Rework the perfect guide for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of downsizing—Freelancers!—will all find valuable guidance and inspiration in these pages.

9. Future Fit: How to Stay Relevant and Competitive in the Future of Work (Andrea Clarke, March 2019)

The future of work is about talent, not technology, says Andrea Clarke, author of ‘Future Fit: How to Stay Relevant and Competitive in the Future of Work. Clarke points out that if we want to outrun the algorithm to stay secure in the future of work, we need to upgrade our own capability in ways we may not have considered. As artificial intelligence is adopted into the workplace and traditional employee arrangements transform, we’re heading into a far less structured era of work.

For organizations, it means re-imagining talent models, re-skilling the workforce and re-defining business practices for a digital age. For individuals, it means the responsibility for finding, securing and delivering work lies with us more than ever before with the individual. That sounds like the Freelance sector to me! The book will equip you with eight critical human skills we’ll need to invest in for a new working environment. From Reputation Capital, Communication, Adaptability and Creativity to Networking, Leadership, Problem-Solving and Continuous Learning.

10. Start With Yourself (Emma Grede, April 2026)

Start with Yourself is a game-changing, no-nonsense guide for seeking meaningful success on your own terms. It’s an essential framework that will give you the tools and mindset to unlock your full potential in life and business—straight from a woman who defied all the odds to become a serial entrepreneur, most famously as a founding partner of SKIMS with Kim Kardashian and co-founder of Good American, a maker of denim clothing for women, with Khloe Kardashian. Ultimately, this is a book for everyone tired of feeling like a bystander or passenger in your own life. Author Emma Grede offers tangible and applicable-right-now solutions to create a mindset, an overall system of thought to manage emotions, clarify ideas and illuminate the right next step—while always staying positive.

Above all, Grede offers a new vision for work and life that encourages readers everywhere to take responsibility for their own thinking in order to achieve personal and professional success at the highest levels. It’s about gathering yourself after failure. It’s about being accountable but also forgiving yourself. It’s about not expecting shortcuts while never being bashful about grabbing them when they appear. It’s about pushing hard for wins and never apologizing for your dreams.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Walther Firle (Germany, 1859-1929) Three Girls Reading, circa 1900