Matthew Buckland built a successful digital marketing and media business which he sold for millions to UK group M&C Saatchi. A few years later he started a new venture, and his book, So You Want to Build a Startup is a frank and refreshing account of the difficulties – and fun – involved. The book is filled with practical advice, insights, life lessons, tales of wacky characters, management failures and personal growth. Anyone with entrepreneurial ambitions will find Buckland’s refreshingly honest, sensible and very readable approach an essential guide to starting their own business. Tafelberg, R295.
Starting from the simple idea that intelligence is not what you know, but how you think, Craig Adams has explored the subject in The Six Secrets of Intelligence. Beginning with Aristotle, who discovered ‘the blueprint of the human mind’ (and who taught Alexander the Great), the book goes on to reveal other interesting information – such as that modern education doesn’t teach us to think for ourselves. In essence this book is a guide to the fundamentals of reasoning that transform the way we think. It’s an essential toolkit that works in any debate on virtually any subject. It shows us what we’re missing in our search for a sharper, more open and observant mind. Icon, R343.
Even seasoned public speakers can give a boring talk and it’s never easy to make a presentation for the very first time. Experienced or not, Richard Mulholland’s Boredom Slayer – A Speaker’s Guide to Presenting Like a Pro can teach you how to keep your audience glued to every word you say. This candid, practical guide offers key insights into gaining and keeping an audience’s attention, dispelling myths around public speaking and speaking like a true leader. As the author says: ‘It’s time to fight back. It’s time to save the world … one bored audience at a time’ and he does just that in a witty, memorable way that makes this a must-have handbook for anyone involved in public speaking. TMP, R230.
Disruptive changes are characteristic of the 21st century which makes parenting – never a job for the faint-hearted – even more difficult, When it comes to thinking about the future our children will have to deal with, the scripts for success or failure are constantly being rewritten. Nikki Bush & Graeme Codrington have written a guide to show parents what their children need to be and what they might be able to do in Future Proof Your Child for the 2020s and Beyond. The book provides a framework and practical advice for what parents can do today to build solid foundations for their children to maximise their chances of success in the minefield of ever-changing and disappearing jobs. It will help parents create realistic, relevant parenting goals that will set their children up to thrive, no matter what awaits them in the future. Penguin, R240.
