Reading List

AAPPM Recommended Reading List

May 2011

1.  Keys to Success.  The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill
2.  Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, It’s all Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, PH.D.
3. One Minute for Yourself by Spencer Johnson
4. Marketing Your Clinical Practices: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition by Neil Baum, MD
5. Focus on the Good Stuff.  The Power of Appreciation by Mike Robbins
6. The E-Myth Physician: Why Most Medical Practices Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
7. Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musiq
8. Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John Kotter
9. The Present by Spencer Johnson
10. Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy
11. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
12. How Full Is Your Bucket?: Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton
13. The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
14. The Power of Full Engagement (Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal) by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
15. No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan S. Kennedy
16. The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn and John C. Maxwell
17. 31 ½ Essentials for Running Your Medical Practice by Dr. John Guiliana and Dr. Hal Ornstein with Mark Terry
18.  Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders
19. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

20. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

Recommended on Marketing

1. Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell
2. Built to Serve by Dan J. Sanders
3. Encore Effect by Mark Sanborn
4. The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler
5. The No Complaining Rule by Jon Gordon
6.  The Power of Small by Linda Kaplan Thaler

               

1.  Keys to Success.  The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill summed up his philosophy of success in Think and Grow Rich!, one of the bestselling inspirational business books ever. A recent USA Today survey of business leaders named it one of the five most influential books in its field, more than 40 years after it was first published. Now, in Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success, his broadly outlined principles are expanded in detail for the first time, with concrete advice on their use and implementation. Compiled from Hill’s teaching materials, lectures, and articles, Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success provides mental exercises, self-analysis techniques, powerful encouragement, and straightforward advice to anyone seeking personal and financial improvement. In addition to Hill’s many personal true-life examples of the principles in action, there are also contemporary illustrations featuring dynamos like Bill Gates, Peter Lynch, and Donna Karan. No other Napoleon Hill book has addressed these 17 principles so completely and in such precise detail. For the millions of loyal Napoleon Hill fans and for those who discover him each year, Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success promises to be a valuable and important guide on the road to riches.

 

2.    Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, It’s all Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, PH.D.

Got a stress case in your life? Of course you do: “Without question, many of us have mastered the neurotic art of spending much of our lives worrying about a variety of things all at once.” Carlson’s cheerful book aims to make us stop and smell—if not roses—whatever is sitting in front of our noses. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff... offers 100 meditations designed to make you appreciate being alive, keep your emotions (especially anger and dissatisfaction) in proper perspective, and cherish other people as the unique miracles they are. It’s an owner’s manual of the heart, and if you follow the directions, you will be a happier, more harmonious person. Like Stairmasters, oat bran, and other things that are good for you, the meditations take discipline. Even so, some of the strategies are kind of fun: “Imagine the people in your life as tiny infants and as 100-year-old adults.” The trouble is, once you start, it’s hard to stop.

 

3.    One Minute for Yourself by Spencer Johnson

In this book, through a vivid parable, Dr. Spencer Johnson demonstrates that caring for others begins with caring for ourselves. In just one minute, Dr. Johnson starts readers on the way to a sense of peace and balance, improved business and personal relationships, increased energy and joy, less stress at work and at home, a dramatic improvement in job performance and much more.

Life is lived minute by minute. Those who know this live best. With the deft practical wisdom that characterizes all of the books in the One Minute series, Dr. Johnson shows how sixty seconds spent on yourself can lead to a lifetime of fulfillment and success.

In this book, through a vivid parable, Dr. Spencer Johnson demonstrates that caring for others begins with caring for ourselves. In just one minute, Dr. Johnson starts readers on the way to a sense of peace and balance, improved business and personal relationships, increased energy and joy, less stress at work and at home, a dramatic improvement in job performance and much more.

Life is lived minute by minute. Those who know this live best. With the deft practical wisdom that characterizes all of the books in the One Minute series, Dr. Johnson shows how sixty seconds spent on yourself can lead to a lifetime of fulfillment and success.

 

4.    Marketing Your Clinical Practices: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition by Neil Baum, MD

Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition is an updated and revised edition of this best-selling guide to medical practice marketing including new topics and advanced techniques. This essential resource provides readers with the plans and real examples to market and grow a successful practice. This book is filled with practical marketing tips and strategies based around five components of a successful practice: retaining current patients; attracting new patients; motivating staff; working with managed care and other physicians; and utilizing the Internet and consultants. Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition is the perfect resource for any physician in a single or group practice looking to improve their business and medical students learning how to develop a practice. New topics to the Fourth Edition include: Internet and website strategies; Professional consultants; Marketing to the Generations: Boomers, Seniors, GenXers; Improving EMR efficiency; Adding ancillary services; In-office dispensing, advantages and risks; How to reconfigure your space; Natural Disaster and Technological Disaster planning.

 

5.    Focus on the Good Stuff.  The Power of Appreciation by Mike Robbins

Motivational speaker and professional coach Robbins sets out for well-worn territory, turning out a useful but unsurprising exploration of the power of positive thinking and the art of appreciation. Like self-help titles such as The Secret, Robbins insists that like attracts like, and to get what we want in life we must focus on what we want (rather than what we don’t). In this never preachy three-part primer, Robbins explains how the simple act of appreciation can change our lives, making up in empathy, anecdote and readability what he lacks in fresh ideas. In part one, Robbins analyzes the effects of living in a culture of negativity and fear, which keeps individuals from connecting with others, and from seeing the good in both people and life. Part two elucidates his Five Principles of Appreciation (“be grateful,” “use positive words,” etc.) and part three is about putting the principles into action (“it’s not what we know, but what we do that matters”); exercises and “positive practices” throughout give readers further steps to put appreciation’s power to work in daily life.

 

6.    The E-Myth Physician: Why Most Medical Practices Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

Gerber has had great success with his previous E-Myth books, and this is the sixth in the series. The E-Myth posits that, because most professional business owners are successful in their field, they assume they are going to be successful entrepreneurs as well, and this assumption often leads to failure. In doctors’ harried world, time is at such a premium that the ability to work on their practice (Systems Thinking) is usually superseded by the need to continue working in their practice (Tactical Thinking). As a result, the practice suffers, with patients frustrated by waiting, a tense and impatient staff, and poor cash flow. The E-Myth teachings show the doctor how to regain control over her practice, not by trying to manage people better (which is impossible) but by creating a repeatable system that anyone can follow to success. By focusing and creating a sound business plan, the physician creates a supportive environment for himself, his staff, and his patients, which allows him to get back to what he does best—healing.

 

7.    Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musiq

In this fun parable written by corporate trainers Loflin and Musig, the hero, Mark, gets more than just an afternoon of family time out of a visit to the circus with his daughter—he gets a new way of organizing his life. Using the extended metaphor of the three-ring circus, this short volume is written as a dialogue between Mark and his ringmaster mentor, who teaches him how to better coordinate the activities happening in each ring. Readers who take themselves too seriously might have trouble getting past the large print, circus illustrations and a dialogue style more commonly found in children’s books. But the book passes along several circus maxims that easily translate to balancing professional and personal relationships as well as one’s personal pursuits, such as the ringmaster cannot be in all three rings at once and the key to the success of the circus is having quality acts in all three rings. While the advice is not new, the presentation helps it stick in your head, increasing the odds of keeping your act together.

 

8.    Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John Kotter

Harvard Business School professor Kotter, author of the bestselling Leading Change (1996), teams up with executive Rathgeber to offer his contribution to the “business fable” genre. Kotter presents his framework for an effective corporate change initiative through the tale of a colony of Antarctic penguins facing danger-inspired, perhaps, by today’s real-life global warming crisis (or, perhaps, by March of the Penguins’ box office). Under the leadership of one particularly astute bird, a small team of penguins with varied personalities and leadership skills implement a thoughtful plan for coaxing the other birds in their colony through a time of necessary but wrenching change. The logic of Kotter’s fictional framework is wobbly at times-his characters live and act very much like real penguins except that one carries a briefcase and another (“the Professor”) cites articles from scholarly journals-and the whimsical tone will not be to everyone’s taste. However, this light, quick read should fulfill its intended purpose: to serve as a springboard for group discussions about corporate culture, group dynamics and the challenges of change.

 

9.    The Present by Spencer Johnson

Johnson’s megaselling Who Moved My Cheese? helped readers cope with changes beyond their control. The author now proffers another easily digestible parable encompassing a related, but broader, topic: how to attain happiness and success in life. In large type that’s easy on eyes both old and young (and that stretches this brief book past 100 pages), Johnson lays out a bare-bones tale of a man who learns a valuable lesson about living in the present from a wise old gent. Stuck in a rut in his job and personal life, the younger man learns about The Present, a three-fold way of living and working. Bit by bit, the old man explains how it works: in order to achieve bliss in life, it’s important to pay equal attention to the past (learn from mistakes), the present (live in the moment) and the future (plan for it as best as possible, but don’t “lose yourself in worry or anxiety”). The common-sense knowledge and concentration on living in the now lend a Zen feel to the story, and while Johnson’s approach may border on the corny (everything runs smoothly for his characters, and they share with each other such tidbits as, “The Present is a gift you give to yourself. Only you have the power to discover what it is”), it’s undeniably sound. Despite some awkward phrasings, Johnson’s latest brims with good ideas for those feeling frustrated, stagnant, depressed or overwhelmed, and is bound to be embraced by the self-help-loving masses.

 

10.  Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy

The legendary Eat That Frog! (more than 450,000 copies sold and translated into 23 languages) provides the 21 most effective methods for conquering procrastination and accomplishing more. This new edition is revised and updated throughout, and includes brand new information on how to keep technology from dominating our time.

 

11.  Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

A must for anyone wanting to improve their lives and their positive thinking. There have been more millionaires and indeed, billionaires, who have made their fortunes as a result of reading this success classic than any other book every printed. NAPOLEON HILLS’s “Think and Grow Rich” is the author’s most famous work. This is the COMPLETE Reference Book. A true masterpiece with the fundamentals of the Success philosophy. *** ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Napoleon Hill was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill’s works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” is one of Hill’s hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill’s books.

 

12.  How Full Is Your Bucket?: Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton

In this brief but significant book, the authors, a grandfather-grandson team, explore how using positive psychology in everyday interactions can dramatically change our lives. Clifton (coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths) and Rath suggest that we all have a bucket within us that needs to be filled with positive experiences, such as recognition or praise. When we’re negative toward others, we use a dipper to remove from their buckets and diminish their positive outlook. When we treat others in a positive manner, we fill not only their buckets but ours as well. The authors illustrate how this principle works in the areas of business and management, marriage and other personal relationships and in parenting through studies covering a 40-year span, many in association with the Gallup Poll. While acknowledging that most lives have their share of misfortune, the authors also make clear that how misfortune affects individuals depends largely on their level of positive energy and confidence. The authors also underscore that our human interactions provide most of the joys or disappointments we receive from life. The book comes with a unique access code to www.bucketbook.com, which offers a positive impact assessment and drop-shaped note cards that can be used to give praise and recognition to others.

 

13.  The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Radio talk-show host and bestselling author Ramsey (Financial Peace) is less a financial analyst and more of a preacher, which explains both his popularity and the appeal of this book, which just might gain a wide audience. The bedrock of his system is simple: work hard, pay what you owe and stay out of debt. His main commandment is “Pay cash.” He first exhorts the reader to take “baby steps,” which are designed to build on each other: first, save $1,000 as an emergency fund; then, pay off all debts from smallest to largest; save a larger three-to-six-month emergency fund; finally, start to save for college and pay off your home mortgage. Ramsey understands the difficulty in putting these steps into action, and therefore packs his book with personal testimonials from everyday people who have used his system and have become debt free, with obvious struggles. The key is what Ramsey calls “Gazelle intensity,” which is to live a financial life the way a gazelle saves itself from an attacking cheetah-“outmaneuver the enemy and run for your life.” While Ramsey provides some helpful charts and graphs so readers can keep track of their efforts to follow his steps, the strength of this book is that it is a straightforward motivational tool. He provides the brutally direct truth about the hard work it takes to become free of debt, and his directness is a great part of the book’s charm.

 

14.  The Power of Full Engagement (Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal) by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

The authors, founders of and executives at LGE Performance Systems, an executive training program based on athletic coaching programs, offer a program aimed at stressed individuals who want to find more purpose in their work and ways to better handle their overburdened relationships. Just as athletes train, play and then recover, people need to recognize their own energy levels. “Balancing stress and recovery is critical not just in competitive sports, but also in managing energy in all facets of our lives. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings.” Case studies demonstrate how some modest changes can have an immediate impact. Loehr (Mental Toughness Training for Sports) and Schwartz (Art of the Deal, writing with Donald Trump) also include a chart highlighting Action Steps, Targeted Muscle, Desired Outcome and Performance Barrier and apply these tenets to individual cases. A chart analyzing the benefits and costs to taking certain action shows the impact negative behavior can have on both physical and mental well-being. However, the actual “training program” whereby readers can learn how to institute certain rituals to change their behavior is less well-defined. Managers and other employees who have attended HR seminars may find this plan easy to use, but self-employed people and others less familiar with “training” may be unable to recognize their behavior patterns and change them.

 

15.  No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan S. Kennedy

For more than 30 years, author, consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur Dan Kennedy has dished out no-nonsense advice, bases on his own experience, to achieve business and sales success. He regularly gets “millionaire-maker” results for satisfied clients in hundreds of professions and industries. His bestselling books include How to Make Millions with Your Ideas.

These proven-effective productivity strategies address reality—the information-overload world of cell phones, PDAs, faxes, e-mails, and need-it-yesterday business demands. This hard-hitting guide boils it all down to 10 time management techniques worth using.

 

16.  The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn  and John C. Maxwell

In his powerful new book THE FRED FACTOR, motivational speaker Mark Sanborn recounts the true story of Fred, the mail carrier who passionately loves his job and who genuinely cares about the people he serves. Because of that, he is constantly going the extra mile handling the mail - and sometimes watching over the houses - of the people on his route, treating everyone he meets as a friend. Where others might see delivering mail as monotonous drudgery, Fred sees an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those he serves.

We’ve all encountered people like Fred in our lives. In THE FRED FACTOR, Mark Sanborn illuminates the simple steps each of us can take to transform our own lives from the ordinary - into the extraordinary. Sanborn, through stories about Fred and others like him, reveals the four basic principles that will help us bring fresh energy and creativity to our life and work: how to make a real difference every day, how to become more successful by building strong relationships, how to create real value for others without spending a penny, and how to constantly reinvent yourself.

By following these principles, and by learning from and teaching other “Freds,” you, too, can excel in your career and make your life extraordinary. As Mark Sanborn makes clear, each of us has the potential be a Fred.THE FRED FACTOR shows you how.

 

17.  31 ½ Essentials for Running Your Medical Practice by Dr. John Guiliana and Dr. Hal Ornstein with Mark Terry

Is there formula for running a practice that focuses on healing while still letting you enjoy robust profitability and a personal life, too? Yes! In fact, there are 31 “essentials” - concrete solutions that have been tested, refined and proven to make a difference by highly successful practices. Now, with 31 ½ Essentials for Running Your Medical Practice You can start using these same ideas to streamline your own practice, contain costs, defuse conflicts, boost reimbursement and increase physician, staff and patient satisfaction.

While many books address medical practice management, this new book goes beyond textbook theory. Drawing on nearly 50 years of combined experience consulting with and running highly successful private practices, the authors map out practical, turnkey solutions to the harsh realities facing medical, dental, and all healthcare practices, including: tough competition, patient expectations, shrinking reimbursement, litigation, malpractice insurance costs, complex regulations, high rents, soaring utilities, and other challenges.

NOTEWORTHY FEATURES

• A “fast start” users-guide style: Spend less time reading! Each chapter zeroes in on one success essential, concisely explaining how to identify problems, clear obstacles, make improvements and measure success.
• Covers every aspect of your practice: No more guesswork! You can get right to work with today’s best strategies for everything from choosing an office location and the right staff, to controlling overhead and getting patients to comply with treatment plans.
• Real-world examples: From mission statements to budgets, you can build your own improvements on the best work already done by other successful practices.
• Ready-to-use tools: The book includes financial benchmarks, numbers and equations that make it even easier to put the 31 success strategies into action in your practice.

 

18.  Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders

Is love really all you need? Tim Sanders, director of Yahoo’s in-house think tank, believes love is the crucial element in the search for personal and professional success. In Love Is the Killer App he explains why. Sander’s advice is to be a “lovecat,” which despite the cutesy moniker is his sincere and surprisingly practical prescription for advancement both inside and outside the office. It starts with amassing as much usable knowledge as possible, which he explains can be done by religiously carving out time to read and then poring through as many cutting-edge books in your field as possible. It follows with an emphasis on networking to the extreme. Sanders offers concrete suggestions, from compiling a super list of contacts to ensuring all are regularly stored in an always-accessible format. And he concludes by advocating a true mindset of compassion, which he says involves sharing this knowledge with those contacts and ultimately helping anyone who in one way or another may ultimately help you. Through identifiable anecdotes and specific recommendations, the book promotes an undeniably feasible yet decidedly offbeat program that has worked for the author and could prove equally favorable for others who apply it.

 

19. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

The youngest partner in Deloitte Consulting's history and founder of the consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight, the author quickly aims in this useful volume to distinguish his networking techniques from generic handshakes and business cards tossed like confetti. At conferences, Ferrazzi practices what he calls the "deep bump" - a "fast and meaningful" slice of intimacy that reveals his uniqueness to interlocutors and quickly forges the kind of emotional connection through which trust, and lots of business, can soon follow. That bump distinguishes this book from so many others that stress networking; writing with Fortune Small Business editor Raz, Ferrazzi creates a real relationship with readers. Ferrazzi may overstate his case somewhat when he says, "People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses," but his clear and well-articulated steps for getting access, getting close and staying close make for a substantial leg up. Each of 31 short chapters highlights a specific technique or concept, from "Warming the Cold Call" and "Managing the Gatekeeper" to following up, making small talk, "pinging" (or sending "quick, casual" greetings) and defining oneself to the point where one's missives become "the e-mail you always read because of who it's from." In addition to variations on the theme of hard work, Ferrazzi offers counterintuitive perspectives that ring true: "vulnerability... is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today"; "too many people confuse secrecy with importance." No one will confuse this book with its competitors.

 

20.  Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success. Pay new employees $2000 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too. Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year. In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine's top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life. (edited by author)

 

Additional Books Recommended on Marketing

 

1.  Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell

If you work at a Fortune 500 company and live in southern Connecticut or New York’s Westchester County (two of Manhattan’s most affluent suburbs), chances are you buy your suits at Mitchells (in Westport, Con