How a nightclub comedian turned a simple joke formula into a million dollar sales hook... and how you can use the same easy 4-sentence formula to stand out from the crowd and connect more deeply with your best customers and prospects.

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World, by out of the box thinker Brendan Kane, breaks down the most effective strategies to generate new opportunities, innovate and scale your business, and create a compelling brand--both online and off--so you can thrive in the new micro-attention world in which we live. A lot of people know who they are, what they do, and a few even know why they do it--but even when brands or individuals have clarity in these areas, they often struggle to grab a potential audience's attention for long enough to get them to learn about their attributes. Others have amazing products or services that fail to achieve great success because they don't know how to talk about what they do effectively. This is because digital and social media have reshaped our world into one of micro-attention. There are over sixty billion messages shared on digital platforms each day, and the average person is exposed to between four thousand to ten thousand ads a day. This bombardment of stimuli has changed the way we communicate and market content both online and off. In fact, research shows that you have less than three seconds to capture a person's attention. With such a short window of time, we need to hook audiences quickly, efficiently, and consistently if we want to successfully fuel brand awareness and growth. Luckily, Brendan Kane, an out of the box thinker and strategist who's built platforms for celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rhianna, and worked with Fortune 500 companies like Paramount, Viacom, and MTV has mastered the art of standing out. In Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World he reveals the power of hook points--a communication tool that helps marketers package their messages in a succinct, attention-grabbing way that leads to better opportunities both online and off. Whether you're promoting a brand, product, or service this book is the essential guide for making it in our three-second world.

Corporations can no longer just worship the bottom line. Consumers and customers want to be associated with brands that align with their values. For business success today, your company needs to tell a compelling story that creates engagement, word-of-mouth, and brand loyalty. The Hook gives you a proven methodology to create a compelling narrative, then shows you how to share your story with the world and get consumers and customers to listen to and remember your message. More specifically, The Hook will teach you how story-selling can be used as an incredibly powerful instrument to: Create an emotional connection between your organization and its target market, or between a product and consumers. Generate interest, enthusiasm, and support for a person, company, or product. Demonstrate the benefits and potential of any product, service, company, or individual. Create a culture of inclusion for any company or product. Enhance staff commitment to mission and objectives. Improve the power, tone, and texture of speeches, proposals, presentations, and printed materials.

We talk. Our prospects have a choice. #1. Continue thinking about their interesting lives, or #2. Stop what they are thinking, and listen to someone they don’t care about. Ouch. We can’t succeed if no one listens to our message. But how do we get prospects to pay attention to us? With hooks—strong openings that capture their curiosity. What kinds of hooks can we learn? • Curiosity hooks. • Magic phrases. • Humor hooks. • Shocking facts. • Quiz openings. • Challenges. • Story hooks and more. We want our prospects to think, “This is interesting. Please continue.” We don’t have to be creative. Let the simple lessons, examples, and templates in this book help us create professional hooks that work. No more presentations to people who fake their attention. No more nerve-racking encounters with uninterested prospects. Let’s feel confident that we can deliver our message to attentive prospects every time.

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.

Become a better salesperson by learning to debunk the sales myths and focus your strategy on a proven approach that will drive the results you want. Can succeeding in sales be as simple as hooking up the latest CRM tool or perfecting your social media profiles and waiting for qualified leads to show up in your inbox? Are you having trouble believing what the new self-proclaimed “experts” post on LinkedIn and beginning to question their proclamation that everything in sales has changed? The one constant in the world of sales is the noise from self-titled experts and thought leaders informing you of the latest tools, tricks, and strategies that you should utilize. However, ironically, the more modern solutions you adopt, the harder it is to get results. Bestselling author and sales expert Mike Weinberg offers a wake-up call to salespeople and sales leaders on how to bypass the noise so you can start winning more, new sales. In Sales Truth, Weinberg shares some of the truths you’ll learn including: Many self-proclaimed sales experts lack clients, credibility, and a track record of helping sellers achieve breakthrough results. The number of “likes” a sales improvement article receives is often inversely proportional to its accuracy or helpfulness to?a seller or sales team. What has worked exceedingly well in sales and sales management for the past couple of decades is still the (not so) secret to sales success today. Look no further than Weinberg’s powerful principles and proven strategies to help you become a professional sales master and create more new sales opportunities.

Revised and Updated, Featuring a New Case Study How do successful companies create products people can’t put down? Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior. Eyal provides readers with: • Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love. • Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.

A deeply emotional standalone romance set in the worlds of professional basketball and high fashion. Divorced. Single dad. Traded to a losing squad. Cheated on, betrayed, exposed. My perfect life blew up in my face and I'm still picking up the pieces. The last thing I need is her. A wildflower. A storm. A woman I can't resist. Lotus DuPree is a kick to my gut and a wrench in my plans from the moment our eyes meet. I promised myself I wouldn't trust a woman again, but I've never wanted anyone the way I want Lo. She's not the plan I made, but she's the risk I have to take. A warrior. A baller. The one they call Gladiator. Kenan Ross charged into my life smelling all good, looking even better and snatching my breath from the moment we met. The last thing I need is him. I'm working on me. Facing my pain and conquering my demons. I've seen what trusting a man gets you. I. Don't. Have. Time. For. This. But he just keeps coming for me. Keeps knocking down my defenses and stealing my excuses one by one. He never gives up, and now...I'm not sure I want him to.

There's only one place in the world where you can find and connect with hundreds of millions of professionals every day, and that's on LinkedIn. Are you taking advantage of it? Or are you who Gary Vaynerchuk is talking about when he says, "So many . . . are missing out on the insane opportunity on LinkedIn right now."Tragically, too many of the almost 800 million people on LinkedIn are missing out because they use it the wrong way, but that spells opportunity for those who use it correctly. The good news is, with this book as your guide, you'll be an expert LinkedIn user in no time.Whether you're an employee who dreams of finding a new job, an executive who needs to hire star talent, or an entrepreneur who wants to grow a business, LinkedIn Mastery is the super-simple, straightforward, practical blueprint that will help you achieve your goals.This step-by-step guide to mastering LinkedIn will teach you how to:Optimize your LinkedIn profile so it's something you're proud to show off, rather than something you want to hideMake high-quality connections on LinkedIn with your ideal audience-the people you can serve and who can serve youCreate compelling content-quickly, easily, and affordably-that will bring your dream opportunities to youThis book contains 60 LinkedIn lessons, each short enough to understand and implement in 15 minutes or less. If you complete one each day, within 60 days you'll fully master LinkedIn. If you're looking to find a new job, your LinkedIn profile will attract the best employers and the best offers. If you're recruiting, you'll find and connect with top talent. And if you're generating leads and growing your business, you'll create content that brings your ideal customer to you.Are you ready for your first lesson?