New Books for Personal Growth in 2025

Now is the time for new year goal-setting and self-improvement. Here are 10 new books on managing time, setting priorities, and leading a more productive and purposeful life personally and professionally.

It’s About Time: Use Time to Create a More Meaningful Life

It’s About Time

by Christopher S. Hillier

Hillier is an entrepreneur, consultant, academic, and board member for private and nonprofit organizations. In his new book, he aims to help people who are “always busy, but not living the life they want” manage their time by focusing on what is meaningful rather than just efficient.

The 20 Hour A Week CEO: Mastering Online Business for a Balanced Life

20 Hour a Week CEO

by Jess Cassity

This just-released book and workbook offer hands-on exercises, personal development techniques, and coaching insights to help entrepreneurs, online business owners, and busy executives achieve business success and a balanced life on their own terms.

Undoing Urgency: Reclaim Your Time for the Things That Matter Most

Undoing Urgency

by Ryan Matt Reynolds

The founder and CEO of Barbell Logic, an online fitness platform, shares the lessons he learned and strategies he used to move from a feeling of “drowning in urgency” despite outward achievements towards a more value-driven life that is still successful.

Winning the Week: How to Plan a Successful Week, Every Week

Winning the Week

by Demir Bentley and Carey Bentley

The “productivity power couple” who developed the anti-burnout Lifehack Method explains their five-step process for achieving results while avoiding fatigue. Reviewers praise its clear explanation of what to do and why it works.

The Five-Minute Reset: Simple Mindfulness Techniques for a Busy Life

5 Minute Reset

by Adam C. Norton

This brief mindfulness guide for busy people focuses on simple techniques and practices anytime and anywhere without extensive study or long-term commitment. Norton presents proven concepts such as gratitude journaling and breathing exercises to de-stress and improve focus on the go.

Goals! Third Edition: How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible

Goals!

by Brian Tracy

Personal development guru Tracy offers an updated edition of this self-help classic with 20% more content and a new chapter. The book has sold nearly 1 million copies since 2003 and promises to teach strategies to help readers reach their goals and instill a long-term growth mindset.

Nothing Is Random: The Old, the New, and the Enduring Ideas in Business

Nothing Is Random

by Matthew Kelly

Asserting that the “ability to connect one idea with every other idea is the essence of genius,” Kelly explores a series of seemingly random topics — “How do you learn?” “Why is strategic planning confusing?” “Are iPhones destroying the world?” — to recognize the patterns of seemingly disparate ideas.

Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More

Toxic Productivity

by Israa Nasir

Is “hustle culture” taking a toll on our mental and physical health? The author, a psychotherapist and founder of the Well Guide online community, seeks to “dismantle the myth that doing more makes you more worthy.” She combines psychological perspectives and human stories to guide readers in separating who they are from what they do, to help reclaim time and energy for a productive and meaningful life.

The Plan: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius

The Plan

by Kendra Adachi

The author of the 2021 bestseller “The Lazy Genius Way” applies her “kind big sister energy” to time management, offering a practical framework for getting things done without feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of productivity.

Leading to Thrive: Mastering Strategies for Sustainable Success in Business and Life

Leading to Thrive

by Klaus Kleinfeld

Kleinfeld’s 40-year, multi-industry career included stints as CEO of Alcoa in the U.S. and Siemens in Germany. In this new book, he asserts that choosing between business success and a happy personal life is unnecessary. He draws on his experience to show readers how they can sustain energy, achieve balance, and find purpose — all while building world-class teams.

11 Books to Help Navigate Risk

Entrepreneurs and executives face risks daily. Competitors, markets, technology, politics, climate, health — all can dramatically impact a business and career. Here’s a rundown of new, forthcoming, and classic books on recognizing and mitigating risks. The authors are notable researchers, leaders, and risk-avoidance practitioners.

The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck

The Art of Uncertainty

by David Spiegelhalter

Coming in March, this book is already hailed as lively, entertaining, insightful, and witty — not terms often applied to numbers! The author, knighted for his work on medical statistics, illuminates life’s uncertainties — balancing risks and benefits of medical treatments, predicting sports wins and losses, facing the unknowable — with real-world examples and more than 60 illustrations.

Risk-Proof Your Business: The Complete Guide to Smart Insurance Choices

Risk-Proof Your Business

by Michael Gay and Patrick Wraight

The right insurance policies are key to reducing risks such as lawsuits, accidents, and other losses. But how can you be sure you have the right kind and amount of coverage for your situation? Gay and Wraight explain all aspects of insurance clearly, providing an understandable guide to navigating and mitigating business risks.

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

On the Edge

By Nate Silver

In his third bestseller, Silver focuses on “professional risk-takers” — poker players, hedge fund managers, crypto mavens, art collectors — and the common traits that have made them wealthy and powerful and how their (sometimes flawed) mindsets are important drivers of technology and the global economy.

Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk

Shocks, Crises, False Alarms

by Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz

A Financial Times Best Book of 2024, Shocks, Crises aims to help business leaders avoid the contradictory traps of being fooled by false alarms or failing to recognize real changes in local and global markets and economies.

Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World

Playing with Reality

by Kelly Clancy

The Economist calls this book “provocative and fascinating” and, along with The Guardian, included it in the Best Books of 2024. Clancy, a neuroscientist and physicist, reviews how games have shaped human culture from the Enlightenment to today, showing that game theory still underlies many assumptions in economics, politics, and technology.

How to Listen When Markets Speak: Risks, Myths, and Investment Opportunities

How to Listen When Markets Speak

by Lawrence G. McDonald and James Patrick Robinson

McDonald is a former Lehman Brothers vice president and author of the bestseller about its collapse, “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense.” In this new book, he challenges old assumptions about economics and offers thought-provoking insights on the factors that will shape the financial future in what he believes is a radically altered world economy.

Management of Political Risks: Fundamentals and Tools for Executives and Entrepreneurs

Management of Political Risks

by Marc-Felix Otto

Geopolitical risks can endanger companies, shake up entire industries, and even threaten national economies. Otto, a strategy and management consultant with international expertise, shares his approach to identifying, avoiding, and managing such risks while finding ways to turn them into competitive advantages.

A Crash Course on Crises: Macroeconomic Concepts for Run-Ups, Collapses, and Recoveries

A Crash Course on Crises

by Markus K. Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis

Writing clearly on the latest cutting-edge research, two top economists explain what we know about financial crises and how they can spread and intensify, drawing lessons from real-life case studies.

Risk: A User’s Guide

Risk: A User’s Guide

by General Stanley McChrystal with Anna Butrico

The author, a retired U.S. four-star general, presents a system for detecting and responding to risk developed from his extensive military and business experience. Using a simple framework that defines 10 key risk dimensions, he provides practical exercises to help readers address each.

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

The Biggest Bluff

by Maria Konnikova

After a run of personal bad luck, psychologist Konnikova became a tournament-winning professional poker player. She shares what she learned about human nature, making good decisions, and luck in this acclaimed New York Times bestseller.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Against the Gods

by Peter L. Bernstein

Though published in 1998, this worldwide bestseller still holds the top spot in risk management titles on Amazon. Bernstein’s lively and engaging history argues that the idea of risk propelled humankind from primitive belief in soothsayers and oracles to the creation of today’s sophisticated risk-management methods and tools.

Books on Business, Money, Success, and Failure

The story of business involves massive successes, epic failures, intrigue, disruption, politics, and more. I’ve handpicked 12 titles below that encompass all of those via academic studies, histories, and biographies.

Money: A Story of Humanity

Money: A Story of Humanity

by David McWilliams

McWilliams, an academic, banker, and journalist, combines in-depth knowledge of history, economics, and psychology to explore how money has shaped human history and modern society. As the founder of Kilkenomics, an economics and comedy festival, the author excels at demystifying our relationship with money. The Financial Times calls this book “ambitious, insightful, and readable.”

Main Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses

Main Street Millionaire

by Codie Sanchez

A leading investor and small business expert explains how to find opportunity and profit in unglamorous but reliable businesses, including how to identify and close business deals even if you’re not wealthy, how to grow and manage multiple small businesses after acquisition, and what kinds of companies aspiring investors should not acquire.

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

The Hidden Globe

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

The author explores the origins and consequences of free trade zones, tax havens, and other financial loopholes that, she claims, facilitate inequality and injustice by enabling the wealthy and privileged to operate with impunity.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

Be Ready When the Luck Happens

by Ina Garten

In her long-awaited memoir, the award-winning culinary icon, bestselling cookbook author, internet personality, and television host shares how she navigated challenges and career twists to achieve her many remarkable accomplishments and fame.

Revenge of the Tipping Point

Revenge of the Tipping Point

by Malcolm Gladwell

The surprising ideas in Gladwell’s groundbreaking debut were enormously influential twenty-five years ago. Now, he revisits and reframes those lessons to offer a new perspective on the dark side of spreading social phenomena.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Nexus

by Yuval Noah Harari

Renowned historian Harari takes the long — very long — view of how the flow of information has shaped humans and society from the Stone Age to the present. He examines how different cultures and political systems throughout history have used information to achieve their goals.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

Going Infinite

by Michael Lewis

The author of “The Big Short” and “Moneyball” tells the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, who rose rapidly to be the world’s youngest billionaire, only to fall just as rapidly as the epicenter of the 2022 cryptocurrency collapse. Reviewers hailed it as both “wildly entertaining” and tragic.

Fintech Wars: Tech Titans, Complex Crypto, and the Future of Money

Fintech Wars

by James da Costa

The author is a fintech insider and founder of a digital bank. He draws on his connections with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Capital One founder Nigel Morris, and Martha Lane Fox of Lastminute.com to illuminate the strategies and innovations that fuel companies such as PayPal and Nubank.

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

The Fund

by Rob Copeland

Informed by hundreds of interviews with people close to his subject, Copeland details Dalio’s career from founding the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, to stepping down as its leader nearly fifty years later. Critics are calling it a nonfiction thriller that’s both shocking and entertaining.

Money & Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World

Money & Promises

by Paolo Zannoni

Zannoni, an experienced banker and business executive, uses examples from Italy, Spain, England, the United States, and Russia to illustrate the origins of the modern banking industry and examine the complex relationship between public and private debt.

Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber

A definitive biography of Korean-Japanese tech-finance wizard Mayasoshi Son and his firm, Softbank, which financed hundreds of tech startups, funded Alibaba, and made and lost fortunes many times over, yet stays largely out of the spotlight.

Female Founders’ Playbook

Female Founders’ Playbook

by Anne Boden

After a successful career in the banking industry, Boden founded Starling Bank in 2014 and led it from startup to industry leader. Her book gathers the true stories, experiences, and insights of women entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, covering innovative ideas, building a winning team, and finding investors.

9 Books to Strengthen Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity threats are nonstop. This curated selection of recent books offers perspectives from cybersecurity experts, covering everything from the psychology of cyber attackers to practical defense strategies.

Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset

Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset

by Sarah Armstrong-Smith

Armstrong-Smith is Microsoft’s chief security advisor and a sought-after speaker. In this book, she bridges the gap between technology and psychology by focusing on the human aspects of cybersecurity, including the types of attackers and their motivations and methods. The author draws on interviews with ex-criminals, the advice of top experts, and a wide range of case studies to demonstrate why the human element in cybersecurity is more important than ever.

The AI Revolution in Networking, Cybersecurity, and Emerging Technologies

The AI Revolution

by Omar Santos, Samer Salam, and Hazim Dashir

Artificial intelligence is affecting seemingly every aspect of business, and cybersecurity is no exception. The authors, all executives at Cisco, provide an overview of how AI can help identify and resolve network security threats, explaining both its theory and application. They offer a comprehensive guide to guarding against potential security and privacy pitfalls, security monitoring and alerting, and modernizing and fortifying operations.

Hacking and Security

Hacking and Security

by Michael Kofler, Klaus Gebeshuber, Frank Neugeberger, and others

A team of German experts explains essential security techniques for various infrastructures, including Linux, Microsoft, mobile, cloud, and the internet of things. The book covers identifying system vulnerabilities and possible attack vectors and offers step-by-step instructions for withstanding security attacks.

Practical Cybersecurity

Practical Cybersecurity

by Nicholas Marsh

With a focus on practical strategies and real-world examples, Marsh draws on his experience in small, medium, and large enterprises in multiple industries. The book addresses practices, policies, and products that can help increase network security and reduce risks, explaining both the “why” and the “how” of more than 250 cybersecurity best practices.

Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions

Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions

by Eugene Spafford, Leigh Metcalf, and Josiah Dykstra

Three leading cybersecurity experts go beyond common tactics to demystify false ideas and faulty assumptions that can undermine security efforts. The book offers tips for recognizing and avoiding 175 frequent misconceptions shared by users, leaders, and cybersecurity professionals.

Cybersecurity All-in-One For Dummies

Cybersecurity All-in-One For Dummies

by Joseph Steinberg, Kevin Beaver, Ira Winkler, and Ted Coombs

Steinberg, a top global cybersecurity influencer, combines into one volume six “For Dummies” books: “Grasping Cybersecurity Basics,” “Enhancing Personal Cybersecurity,” “Safeguarding a Business,” “Securing the Cloud,” “Testing Your Security,” and “Enhancing Cybersecurity Awareness.” The result is a one-stop reference for smart security decisions.

Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, 5th ed.

Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, 5th ed.

by Carey Parker

Writing with minimal jargon for laypeople, Parker offers simple, effective precautions everyone should take in the virtual world. The book offers straightforward explanations, with a checklist in each chapter of expert tips, step-by-step instructions, and screenshots.

Managing Risks in Digital Transformation

Managing Risks in Digital Transformation

by Ashish Kumar, Shashank Kumar, and Abbas Kudrati

Practical examples, case studies, and eye-opening stats highlight digital threats that could affect a business’s reputation and bottom line. Focusing on new and emerging risks, the book offers tips for navigating the ever-evolving risk and compliance landscape. It provides a roadmap of the risk mitigation process for business owners, technology leaders, and cybersecurity professionals.

Hacked

Hacked

by Jessica Barker

Barker, a top cyber security advisor to the U.K. government, explains the tactics and technologies hackers use and offers common-sense solutions to safeguard yourself and your business in a world where everyone is a potential cyber-attack victim. The book includes commentary from experts and stories of real-world attacks, showing how to safeguard and respond if you’ve been targeted.

Notable Business Books for 2024

End-of-year award nominations and top-10 lists are popping up for all kinds of books. Here’s a sampling of noteworthy new business titles that have earned a place on one or more prominent “best books” lists.

Growth: A History and a Reckoning

Growth: History and Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind

This thought-provoking analysis by a leading economist of what may be the top economic issue today — the pursuit of economic growth, what drives or hinders it, and whether rising gross domestic product is sustainable — earned a spot on the twentieth annual Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year shortlist.

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT

by Parmy Olson

Another entry on FT and Schroders shortlist is the story of the battle for dominance between OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind and the bitter rivalry between CEOs Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. Olson, an experienced tech writer at Bloomberg, warns of the potential spread of biased and imperfect technology into many fields and industries.

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

The War Below

by Ernest Scheyder

Scheyder, who has covered the energy industry for Reuters, the Associated Press, and others, offers a widely acclaimed analysis of the complex trade-offs involved in mining the crucial minerals needed to build “green” energy infrastructure. It’s on the FT and Schroders 2024 shortlist and longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

The Everything War

The Everything War

by Dana Mattioli

Included on our 10 new books for summer list and widely lauded, “The Everything War” was longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2024 but didn’t make the shortlist.

Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict

Possible: Survive (and Thrive)

by William Ury

McKinsey & Company’s annual book recommendations for 2024 include this new work by global mediator William Ury, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and co-author of “Getting to Yes,” the world’s bestselling book on negotiation. Admirers call it “a landmark” and “a master class in what is possible.”

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell

Trillion Dollar Coach

by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle

Another McKinsey recommendation is this bestselling tribute to “Coach Bill,” who mentored some of the brightest lights in tech and beyond, including Larry Page, Steve Jobs, and the authors. They demonstrate his guiding principles through stories of his work with successful entrepreneurs, from venture capitalists to football players.

The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out

Journey of Leadership

by Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink, Ramesh Srinivasan

It’s no surprise that this title is on McKinsey’s list, as all four authors are senior executives at the global management consulting firm. It’s also a recent bestseller. The authors share lessons from McKinsey’s signature leadership program, which has helped more than 500 CEOs transform personally and professionally.

In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work

In This Economy?

by Kyla Scanlon with a foreword by Morgan Housel

Scanlon, a popular internet personal finance guru, breaks down the “mad math and terrible terminology” of complex economic concepts in easily understandable terms, dispels outdated myths, and explains how money and markets really work. Published in May, the title made Kiplinger Personal Finance’s list of “12 Books That Taught Us About Finance” alongside several classics.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom: A Monday Morning Radio Anthology of Actionable Advice

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

by Maxwell Rotbart

The author combed through 10 years of interviews from the “Monday Morning Radio” podcast he co-hosts with his father, former Wall Street Journal reporter Dean Rotbart, to compile more than 100 practical tips from 21 business leaders. The book garnered a silver medal from the Nonfiction Authors Association and a coveted star rating from Kirkus Reviews, which describes it as “a business self-help book that’s actually helpful — and a good read, too.”

New Books to Grow (or Sell) a Business, Fall 2024

Fall 2024 offers a bumper crop of new books aimed at helping ecommerce entrepreneurs and execs. Here are 10 books that provide practical advice for multiple aspects of selling online, from getting started to communicating with partners and customers to selling the company. Most are available in print, digital, and audio.

Books for Fall 2024

How to Sell Anything Online: The Ultimate Marketing Playbook to Grow Your Online Business by Anaita Sarkar

How to Sell Anything Online

Serial entrepreneur Sarkar offers tips and insights that cover all aspects of online selling — content and influencer marketing, search and social media advertising, search engine optimization, more — and makes implementing them seem easy instead of overwhelming.

The Consumer Insights Revolution: Transforming Market Research for Competitive Advantage by Steve Phillips, Ryan Barry, Stephan Gans, and Kate Schardt

Consumer Insights Revolution

Case studies from the authors’ extensive experience with global companies such as PepsiCo illustrate how the right people and processes, combined with cutting-edge technology, can take market research to the next level.

Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI by Mark Abraham and David C. Edelman

Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI

Customers expect personalization, but doing it right is often challenging. The authors share stories from their experience advising leading brands, providing practical insights for success in the “new frontier of competition.”

The AI Edge: Sales Strategies for Unleashing the Power of AI to Save Time, Sell More, and Crush the Competition by Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannarino

The AI Edge

Renowned sales gurus Blount and Iannarino team up to demystify artificial intelligence, explaining how to use it to streamline the sales process and enhance — not replace — the all-important human touch.

Make It Punchy: How to Write Simple Tech Messaging That Wins Hearts, Minds & Markets by Emma Stratton

Make It Punchy

Tips for creating clear, convincing, and memorable promotional messaging that avoids jargon to persuade more prospects and elevate your tech-related product or service above the competition.

The Negotiation Playbook: Strategies That Work and Results That Last by Glin Bayley

Negotiation Playbook

This guide to Bayley’s trademarked five-part “Value Method” framework promises to boost readers’ communication skills for better persuasion and collaborative problem-solving in all kinds of business negotiations — bargaining, pitching, presenting, or selling.

Triple Fit Strategy: How to Build Lasting Customer Relationships and Boost Growth by Christoph Senn and Mehak Gandhi

Triple Fit Strategy

The authors advocate a new, collaborative approach to achieving robust business growth. They show how buyers and suppliers can work together on shared goals for greater mutual benefit instead of merely negotiating transactional deals.

Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes by Gary Shapiro

Pivot or Die

The bestselling author, consumer technology entrepreneur, and head of the industry-leading CES trade show offers his insider view of innovative tech and business strategies, focusing on four key turning points: the startup pivot, the forced pivot, the failure pivot, and the success pivot.

Billion Dollar Bullseye: Scale as Big as You Want, as Fast as You Want, and Exit (If You Want) on Your Terms by Jonathan “JCron” Cronstedt

Billion Dollar Bullseye

In this book, released last month and already a USA Today bestseller, Cronstedt shares the seven “billion-dollar bullseye principles” he learned as president of Kajabi, the online learning giant: purpose, profit, product, prestige, promotion, persuasion, and people.

Selling Your Business with Confidence: A Practical Playbook for Mid-Market Owners by David W. McCombie III

Selling Your Business with Confidence

As an entrepreneur and mergers and acquisitions wiz, McCombie understands that selling the business is often an emotional journey as well as a complex financial decision. He offers advice on preparing for the process and optimizing the outcome.

Book Excerpt: ‘Buyer Personas: Insights into Customer Decisions’

“Buyer Personas: Gain Deep Insight into Customers’ Buying Decisions” presents tools, techniques, and real-world case studies to help management win more business. The authors, Jim Kraus and Adele Revella, are experienced marketers and the president and founder, respectively, of the Buyer Persona Institute.

The book is available in digital ($17) or hardcover print ($23.80) at Wiley, the publisher, or Amazon.

What follows is an edited excerpt.

Marketers as Experts

No one questions the assumption that the finance team is best qualified to keep the books or that engineering is most knowledgeable about building useful products. But marketing tends to be everyone’s playground.

Buyer Personas, Revised and Expanded

Once they are perceived as experts, marketers should receive similar authority to affect decisions that impact buyers. From market expansion and product extensions, the buyer’s perspective is paramount to success or failure. There is a vacuum of buying insight inside most corporations. Marketers need to own that competency.

At any meeting where buyers’ opinions are relevant, try to start your sentence with, “We’ve been listening to buyers, and here’s what they think,” or “We have been interviewing buyers, and they said they wanted. . . .”

Statements such as these may raise questions about how recently you have spoken to buyers, so be prepared to back up your comments. We recommend conducting at least one interview a month.

In reality, however, buying insights rarely change, and when they do, you will likely require additional interviews. That’s because the primary triggers for these changes are typically big news — a broad upturn or downturn in economic conditions, the merger or divestiture by a significant competitor, or a new regulation that requires consumers to invest in a solution like your organization’s. Major technological advances or security problems are other factors affecting buying insights. If any of these occur, consider another round of interviews to understand how your buyer’s mindset may have shifted.

Communicating with Teams

As buyers describe your products, you will likely learn about non-marketing-related matters impacting their purchase decisions.

Perhaps your product doesn’t integrate with a particular network or infrastructure. Maybe it doesn’t create the kind of reports that are in demand.

Be cautious with any of these discoveries. Remember that your primary goal is to gain guidance for changes that will improve your marketing activities.

For example, if buyers consistently have the same incorrect perception about the product, your first step is to own the problem and invest in marketing activities to debunk the misperception. If critical, make it a key message on your website or in an ebook. Reinforce the need for sales teams to emphasize that capability.

But once you’ve won internal support for the value of buyer personas, take product-related findings to your development team and sales-related problems to management.

Q&A: Joe Natoli, Author of ‘UX Team of One’

Joe Natoli is the co-author of “The User Experience Team of One, Second Edition,” a seminal book to help smaller ecommerce businesses improve customer experience by “doing more with less.”

I asked Natoli, the founder of Give Good UX and a 30-year user-experience consultant, what’s changed in the decade since the book’s acclaimed first edition.

Joe Natoli: A lot — not just in UX, but in business as a whole. Customer expectations across the web have changed. The way we buy products has changed radically. Part of being in any business is the constant necessity to upgrade to meet customer wants, needs, and expectations — everything to do with user experience. If you’re not getting the desired results, there’s a reason. You need to find it.

Joe Natoli

In this second edition, we addressed key questions: What do people want? Why do they want it? What should happen here? How do we figure out what’s going to move the needle?

Jean Gazis: How do merchants stay current amid nonstop change?

Natoli: It boils down to audience expectations. People want to buy things in certain ways. There’s no controlling that. When your competitors are there already, you have to get there yesterday. The methods in the book help do that much faster than traditional UX processes.

The time you have to work with determines what you do. If you can carve out a day to talk to customers, do it. But you have to build the functionality. You have to design things that are easily rolled back. Roll it out, test it, watch it. The minute it looks like a bad decision, go back to where you were.

Gazis: Another trade-off is researching ahead of time and testing after.

Natoli: It’s a question of the situation. There are instances where research is unnecessary — for example, a low-risk change that’s quick and does not risk alienating customers. Just put it out there and watch what happens.

If it’s a major change, such as another step to the checkout flow, where shoppers have to validate their information or log in before they can buy, that’s a different story. Research that upfront because it’s high-risk and could halt your sales. But the research doesn’t have to be lengthy.

I tell teams to take what they can get. If you’ve got a day, it’s a day. Something is always better than nothing. Some of the methods in the book are for internal use. If a merchant doesn’t have time for research, that’s fine. Just put yourself in the customer’s place and run through the process.

Gazis: How do you measure the value of UX for ecommerce?

Natoli: There is no excuse for not having basic analytics in place. It’s dead simple — from one line of code on every page. Merchants must understand what they’re measuring and a tool to do it.

It’s easy to assume that everybody knows what they should be asking. I don’t think that’s the case. In the book we try to walk through the process: “What questions do I ask? Where do I start? How do I find these things out?” It’s about thinking before deciding. Figure out what is worth doing and what to avoid. I’ve seen countless ecommerce sites ruin their checkout, believe it or not.

Gazis: What are the critical UX aspects for ecommerce?

The User Experience Team of One, Second Edition

Natoli: Merchants have to remove every element of friction. You have impatient shoppers looking to buy a product. Their wallets are out, and they’re thinking, “The minute I find this, I’m going to buy it.” Your content should reflect “here’s what’s in it for you.”

You can’t just make claims. You need to show people what they’re getting. So the UX of an ecommerce site has to prove why a product is worthwhile right now. Answer in a prominent manner, “Why this is worth my money? Why it’s worth my time? How is it useful and valuable to me?”

That’s what I mean by friction. A checkout process has friction if it runs counter to conventional expectations of what happens first, what happens next, how much information you’re asking for, and when you’re asking. Any time the checkout contains something unexpected, that’s friction. Shoppers’ brains are used to a pattern. It’s habit and reflex. The minute something breaks that pattern, it’s a moment of doubt.

Ease of use separates one ecommerce site from another. How easy can people do business? Not investing time and money in the user experience is the most short-sighted thing I can think of.

11 Books on Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon

Summer 2024 marks 30 years since Jeff Bezos started Amazon from his garage. Anyone looking to learn more about Bezos, compete with Amazon, or both can find food for thought in these 11 books — some admiring, some critical — that explain the principles and tactics behind the company’s success.

Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post by Martin Baron

Collision of Power

Though not about ecommerce, Baron’s book offers insight into Jeff Bezos’s leadership style. The author began his eight-year stint as the Post’s executive editor just before Bezos purchased it in 2013. He provides an insider’s view of how reporting decisions were made through tumultuous news cycles.

Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets by Jason Del Ray

Winner Sells All

Evolving from a bookseller to a general retailer put Amazon on a collision course with Walmart. Del Rey chronicles the ongoing battle that has placed billions of dollars and millions of jobs on the line with outsized impacts on consumers, retailers, and the future of shopping.

The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman by Carmine Gallo

The Bezos Blueprint

There’s no disputing Amazon’s influence. This book aims to distill the methods its leaders use to write, collaborate, innovate, and pitch — and present them as tools that others can apply in their own organizations.

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

Amazon Unbound

Stone, a Bloomberg journalist, revisits the subject of his 2013 bestseller, “The Everything Store,” which chronicled Amazon’s rise from startup to billion-dollar company. This time he explores how the company and its founder transformed from an upstart to a global power.

Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr

Working Backwards

Both authors joined Amazon early on and spent more than a decade as senior executives working closely with Jeff Bezos. They share their experiences to create an exciting story and a practical business guide.

Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos intro by Walter Isaacson

Invent & Wander

The book compiles speeches, interviews, and annual shareholder letters for insight into Bezos’s evolution, along with plenty of case studies.

All In: How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary by Robert Bruce Shaw

All In

Drawing on extensive research, Shaw compares business titans Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Travis Kalanick “warts and all” to tech trailblazer Steve Jobs, illustrating their impressive achievements and the downsides of the “all in” leadership style.

Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World’s Best Companies Are Learning from It by Brian Dumaine

Bezonomics

Dumaine combines a lively history of Amazon’s rise with speculation about where it will go next — advertising, health care, banking? He also delves into how other companies worldwide borrow from Amazon’s model and offers tips for “Amazon-proofing” your business.

199 Best Quotes from the Great Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos by Olivia Longray

199 Best Quotes

This is a compilation of Jeff Bezos’s thoughts on family support, Amazon, Blue Origin, space colonization, leadership, motivation, failure, and success — organized in four thematic sections, with links to sources.

The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon by Steve Anderson with Karen Anderson

The Bezos Letters

Business analyst Steve Anderson calls Bezos’s annual letters to shareholders a “hidden roadmap” business leaders can follow to make their companies more efficient, powerful, and successful, distilling them into key growth principles such as “Obsess over Customers” and “Promote Ownership.”

The Everything War by Dana Mattioli

The Everything War

A scathing critique of the practices that led to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filing its antitrust suit against Amazon last year, this book asks whether Amazon’s ecommerce and cloud computing businesses have grown too big to regulate. I included the book in my “10 New Business Books for Summer” roundup. The book is longlisted for the “Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2024” award.

‘AI Snake Oil’ Sorts Promise from Hype

The hype surrounding artificial intelligence is everywhere, from get-rich-quick schemes to fears of sentient robots replacing humans. A quick Amazon search retrieves more than a thousand “books on ChatGPT.” At least three on the first results page include the word “millionaire” in the title. Others are entirely AI-written with bogus claims of legitimate authorship.

Yet AI offers much promise to merchants — content tools, productivity, search engine optimization, you name it.

AI Snake Oil

A new book, “AI Snake Oil: What AI Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference,” coming September 24 from Princeton University Press, aims to help non-experts separate reality from hype. The authors are two of “Time” magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in AI.” Arvind Narayanan is a professor of computer science and director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Sayash Kapoor formerly engineered content-moderation software at Facebook and is now a PhD candidate in computer science at Princeton.

They explain what artificial intelligence is, how it works, what it can and can’t do presently, and its likely direction.

AI “snake oil,” per Narayanan and Kapoor, is “AI that does not and cannot work as advertised.”

The book focuses on three AI technologies — predictive, generative, and content moderation — and outlines the capabilities and shortcomings of each, with plenty of real-world examples.

Predictive AI, already popular in business, education, and criminal justice, deserves the “snake oil” label. The book discusses the unverifiable claims made by companies selling these products, problems with their use (such as implicit bias and users who game the system), and the inherent difficulty of forecasting.

They see more potential for generative AI, suggesting when it’s useful and discussing controversies such as academic cheating, copyright infringement, and its likely impact on work.

The authors also detail why AI can’t completely replace human judgment in moderating content, giving examples of shocking failures and concluding that “whether or not a piece of content is objectionable often depends on the context. The inability to discern that context remains a major limitation of AI.” The book’s analysis of social media moderation is enlightening, especially for those of us who have had seemingly innocuous posts banned for no apparent reason.

A chapter titled “Is Advanced AI an Existential Threat?” evaluates “the dire view that AI threatens the future of humanity.” They concede that artificial general intelligence — AI that matches human capabilities — may someday be possible. But they contend “society already has the tools to address its risks calmly,” pointing out that “unlike chatbots, advanced AI can’t be trained on text from the internet and then let loose. That would be like expecting to read a book about biking and then get on a bike and ride.”

The final two chapters, “Why Do Myths about AI Persist?” and “Where Do We Go from Here?” explore the aspects of AI that make it susceptible to hype, suggesting regulations, practices for mitigating negative effects, and best- and worst-case scenarios.

“AI Snake Oil” covers the technology’s key facets in just 285 pages. The explanations are easily understood without being oversimplified.

The authors admirably differentiate fact from opinion, draw from personal experience, give sensible reasons for their views (including copious references), and don’t hesitate to call for action. They also publish a newsletter to monitor developments.

If you’re curious about AI or deciding how to implement it, “AI Snake Oil” offers clear writing and level-headed thinking. The book’s straightforward analysis will help reap AI’s benefits while remaining alert to its drawbacks.