Selling Happiness

From the early twentieth century until the Communist takeover in 1949, Shanghai commercial artists created thousands of colorful posters and black and white advertisements that formed an essential part of modern life in the city. This visually appealing and richly illustrated work describes the origin and evolution of modern commercial art in China, focusing on colorful advertisement calendar posters that featured distinctive feminine images. It makes clear how essential commercial art and its institutional backing were to the development of modern art and even modern society in China over the past century. Selling Happiness discusses not only advertising art but also the production and marketing of the calendar poster. These posters, like other advertisements, were rendered in a Western realistic technique and were wildly and widely popular. Ordinary people throughout China often acquired them to decorate their homes. Laing outlines how the Chinese commercial artist, who rarely attended formal Western art classes, gained skills in Western representational art. In the final chapter of the book, she explains how the styles developed by the commercial poster artists during the 1920s and 1930s became the basis for certain types of propaganda art under the Chinese Communists in the 1950s and 1960s.

Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit Make customer service the responsibility of 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, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own. #1 New York Timesand Wall Street Journal bestseller

"As the first substantial investigation of commercial art in China, Selling Happiness explains how the early twentieth century Chinese public came in accept Western style art as mainstream and the heretofore ignored process by which the Chinese art world became (in some sectors at least) thoroughly cosmopolitan. A monumental study of the most important genre of modern Chinese commercial art, this volume will appeal not only to historians of Chinese art but also to those interested in literary, economic, and social history. It will be an essential resource for comparative studies of visual culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A fun, illustrated guide that takes us around the world, discovering the secrets to happiness. Author Helen Russell (The Year of Living Danishly) uncovers the fascinating ways that different nations search for happiness in their lives, and what they can teach us about our own quest for meaning. This charming and diverse assortment of advice, history, and philosophies includes: Sobremesa from Spain Turangawaewae from New Zealand Azart from Russia Tarab from Syria joie de vivre from Canada and many more.

Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit Make customer service the responsibility of 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, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own. #1 New York Timesand Wall Street Journal bestseller

Provides an overview of the big issues in the business world today, with firsthand accounts from young leaders tasked with tackling these issues head on.

New York Times–Bestselling Author: “The message resonates in today’s workaholic culture that rewards hard work and stress with . . . more hard work and stress.” —Deseret News In this book, the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Teaching Your Children Values and The Entitlement Trap, Richard Eyre, contends that the three things today’s society desires most—control, ownership, and independence—are, paradoxically, what bring the most discouragement and unhappiness in our lives. Providing a mind-changing exploration of the inherent problems with our fixation on material possessions, control over our lives, and independence from others, Eyre responds with a unique and engaging counterpoint on how to switch to the joy-giving alternatives of serendipity, stewardship, and interdependence and thus live a more verdant and abundant life. The first half, The Happiness Paradox, explores today’s challenges to happiness. The second half explores The Happiness Paradigm: How A New View Can Turn Your Life Right-Side Up—and walks us through a mental paradigm shift that can change our lives and our search for lasting joy.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER! IF YOU'RE IN SALES, FEAR HAS COST YOU MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, AND THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. Fear is the reason most salespeople don't like to pick up the phone (salespeople average just four hours per week on the phone, and our job is to talk to humans!). Fear is the reason we don't ask for the business more, even though our customers want to buy from us. Fear is the reason we don't offer our customers additional products and services, even though they would love to buy more from us. This book deals with that fear. You will learn exactly how to overcome this destructive fear in sales, and replace it with confidence, optimism, gratitude, joy, and proactive sales work. These are the powerful principles in the new field of positive psychology which are transforming how we work and succeed. Selling Boldly is the first book that leverages positive psychology to help you sell more. You'll also learn a series of fast, simple sales-growth techniques—like how to add on to existing orders; and how to close 20% more quotes and proposals instantly; and how to properly ask for and receive referrals—that will grow your sales...dramatically and quickly. Alex Goldfayn's clients grow their sales by 10-20% annually, every year, as long as they apply his simple approaches. YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO I am not going to teach you much in this book that you don't already know. You're a professional salesperson. You do this for a living. You know, for example, that testimonials and referrals are among the best ways we have to grow sales, right? But do you ask for them enough? Most people don't. You know that calling a customer on the phone is more effective than emailing her, but you still often revert to email. You know your customers buy other products and services that you can help them with, but you don't ask them about these products. You’d like to help them, and they would like more of your help — that is why they've been with you for five or ten or twenty years — but nevertheless we don't ask them. There is a difference between knowing what to do, and actually doing it. I know you know. With Selling Boldly, we start to do what we already know. We will cover what keeps us from doing these things (fear), how to overcome it (by listening to your happy customers), and how to implement these simple but powerful sales growth techniques (by briefly planning them, also doing them). Because sales growth comes from doing, not knowing. Today, we start doing. And growing. These approaches are laid out in this book, in precise detail, for you to implement in your own work. Alex doesn't hold anything back in this manual for selling more. What's the secret to selling more? There is no secret. There is no magic bullet. There is only the work. There are only the mindsets, and the communications. In Selling Boldly, Alex teaches readers how to attain these mindsets, and how to implement these communications, so that sales have no choice but to grow!