2022/06/23
About Scott Jeffrey - Scott Jeffrey
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Hi there! My name is Scott Jeffrey. I'm the founder of CEOsage, a transformational leadership agency and resource for self-actualizing individuals read by over 2 million people each year.
On this website, you'll find in-depth, self-development guides where I share many of the insights that have helped my clients make friends with their dragons, develop self-leadership, and unlock their innate genius.
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A Brief Look at Scott Jeffrey
For over two decades, Scott has been helping high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, best-selling authors, and thought leaders access their higher potential and grow their businesses.
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, he integrate principles, insights, and methods from Jungian psychology, Taoist philosophy, humanistic psychology, qigong, alchemy, transpersonal studies, emotional intelligence training, and other modalities to help leaders scale their businesses without burning out.
Scott began publishing self-development guides on this website in 2016. Today, these in-depth guides are read by over two million visitors each year.
For almost a decade, Scott was also a managing partner and marketing consultant at The Cult Branding Company, a consulting firm that offers consumer insights for leading brands like Kohl’s Department Stores, Scheels, LA Lakers, UNICEF, Turner Classic Movies, and The Life is Good Company.
Scott's true passion is writing, connecting ideas, and sharing knowledge. He has authored numerous books including Creativity Revealed: Discovering the Source of Inspiration, published over 75 in-depth guides and over 100 articles on personal, psychological, professional, and organizational development. He lives in the foothills of the Catskills Mountains in upstate New York.
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Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from Our Greatest Minds Paperback – September 14, 2021
by Scott Jeffrey Miller (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 132 ratings
For busy professionals and lifelong learners seeking practical strategies for reaching new heights, Master Mentors distills 30 essential learnings from Seth Godin, Susan Cain, Trent Shelton, General Stanley McChrystal, and other top business minds and thought leaders of our time.
Mining the best and brightest revelations from FranklinCovey’s global podcast, On Leadership with Scott Miller, Scott personally introduces you to 30 Master Mentors, featuring the single most transformative insight from each of them.
Depending on where you are in your journey, Master Mentors will:Challenge your current mindset and beliefs, leading to what could be the most important career and thought- process shifts of your life!
Restore you to the mindset and beliefs you find effective but aren’t currently living in alignment with.
Validate that you are on the right path with your current mindset and beliefs and empower you on your way forward.
Whether you are challenged, affirmed, informed, or inspired—Master Mentors guarantees you will experience a transformative shift in your personal mindset, life skillset, and career toolset.
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256 pages
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MEET THE MENTORS
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About the Author
Capping a twenty-five-year career in which he served as chief marketing officer and executive vice president, Scott Miller is currently FranklinCovey’s senior advisor on thought leadership, leading the strategy, development, and publication of the firm’s bestselling books on thought leadership.
Miller hosts the FranklinCovey-sponsored On Leadership with Scott Miller, the world’s largest and fastest-growing weekly leadership podcast. Miller also authors a leadership column for Inc.com, and hosted the weekly iHeart Radio show Great Life, Great Career.
In addition to supporting FranklinCovey’s global thought leadership efforts, Miller has developed the Ignite Your Genius™ coaching series to help leaders take their careers from accidental to deliberate. He hosts FranklinCovey’s Bookclub.com series with world-renowned authors. Miller and his wife live in Salt Lake City, Utah, with their three sons.
Product details
Publisher : HarperCollins Leadership (September 14, 2021)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
4.5 out of 5 stars 132 ratings
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Scott Jeffrey Miller
Capping a 25-year career where he served as a chief marketing officer and executive vice president of business development, Scott Jeffrey Miller currently serves as FranklinCovey’s senior advisor on thought leadership, leading the strategy and development of the firm’s speaker’s bureau, as well as the publication of podcasts, webcasts, and bestselling books.
Miller hosts the FranklinCovey-sponsored On Leadership with Scott Miller, the world’s largest and fastest-growing leadership podcast, reaching more than six million people weekly. Miller also authors a leadership column for Inc.com and Utah Business and previously hosted the weekly iHeart Radio show Great Life, Great Career.
Miller is the author of the award-winning, multivolume Mess to Success series, including Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow, Marketing Mess to Brand Success: 30 Challenges to Transform Your Organization’s Brand (and Your Own), and the forthcoming Job Mess to Career Success (January 2022). He is the co-author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team, and the author of Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from Our Greatest Minds (September 2021), which features insights from his interviews with the leading thinkers of our time, including Seth Godin, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, General Stanley McChrystal, Liz Wiseman, and many others.
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4.5 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from the United States
Johnny Utah
5.0 out of 5 stars Simplified and condensedReviewed in the United States on September 18, 2021
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Has a book ever tried to do this before? Taking 30 different books, covering widely differing topics, and distilling them down to the ‘big ideas’?
It seems so obviously brilliant, it’s shocking if it isn’t already a thing. Either way, I’m thankful to have discovered Master Mentors. I’m interested in bettering myself as a person, and that includes as a husband, father, friend, and leader. It’s not always easy for me to pick a book to invest my time on. I see the bestseller lists and that’s usually how I pick them. It’s as if Scott Miller looked at the bestseller lists too and just cherry picked the best ones for this book!
After reading master mentors, I’m actually going further down the rabbit hole on a few of the people featured in the book, especially Seth Godin and Eric Barker.
5 people found this helpful
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Darci V
5.0 out of 5 stars Just hit “buy now” you won’t regret it!Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2021
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WARNING - reading this book will exponentially grow your future reading list with incredible and inspiring thought leaders! You may refer to the author as your BFF when you are telling other people about the book, because that’s what it feels like reading it…. and your mindset will likely be challenged, validated, and restored - you’ve been warned!
Reading this book felt like I was having bite size conversations with a close friend sharing the details of a great book or a podcast that they had just listened to! You know how that goes:
“Oh my gosh have you read this book? It’s amazing! I learned so much…(insert honest, funny, conversational reflections)”
This book felt like it was a choose your own adventure, where you could pick it up anywhere, read for a few minutes, get some amazing insights and thought-provoking questions, and then flip to a chapter 20 pages later and do the same thing. As a busy professional, I absolutely loved it!
And extra bonus! You know when you finish a book and you feel that sense of dread because it’s done and you want more? Each of the chapters references an episode on his podcast where he interviewed the Master Mentor - so you can dig into the content even more!
I truly enjoyed this first book of the series, love tuning into the podcast, and can’t wait for the next one! Thank you Scott Miller!
2 people found this helpful
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Stephen Cochran
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Way to Collect Nuggets of WisdomReviewed in the United States on October 6, 2021
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Scott has written this book to share moments of wisdom from his personal and direct experience with this sampling of "master mentors." This easy to read, easy to pick up and read a chapter book shares insight you may never expect, or even hear in typical interviews; from learning to appreciate your ability to pick up your own fork, to being a high-level executive who is committed to her customer having a great podcast and interview process (what an insight from Stephenie McMahon of WWE fame) anyone and everyone willing to learn will benefit from this book. I am looking forward to future volumes. Thanks for this collection Scott!
One person found this helpful
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Bob Morris
5.0 out of 5 stars Shining Examples of MentoringReviewed in the United States on September 16, 2021
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With so much focus on mentoring today (including in my dissertation) Master Mentors is a great addition to the Covey Leadership library. Stories about recognizable and unknown (to me) master mentors makes this an excellent and inspiring read. Got it the day it came out and reading it certainly benefited me and my own mentoring journey.
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Chris P
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic resourceReviewed in the United States on September 18, 2021
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This book truly compiles insights and lessons from the most influential and innovative minds in business. Put this on your reading list and transform how you lead, mentor, and change lives.
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liz sims
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2021
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Scott Miller did an excellent job outlining thirty leaders and the lessons he learned from them. It's definitely worth a read and would be an excellent gift for a college student, graduate or colleague. I gave my copy to my 21-year-old son. Two thumbs up!
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Claire Chitwood
5.0 out of 5 stars Learn from proven leaders!!Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2021
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What's great about this book is that the author focuses on diverse leaders. Regardless of your industry, this book is for you - you can't help but reflect on what you can do better as a leader. Be prepared for introspection, self-challenges, and most importantly - encouragement to tackle what's standing in your way from being the leader you aspire to be.
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Laura W
5.0 out of 5 stars a delight!Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2021
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Some of my favorite motivators, all in one book from a fabulous host and author? Of course! I had the honor of hearing Scott talk at a conference - his story, experience, and his joy of the world is contagious.
It's a quick read - Packed full of good nuggets - It's a great book to revisit when you need a lift!
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Top reviews from other countries
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2.0 out of 5 stars Not so goodReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2022
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Often the most interesting part are the last 2 sections of the chapter.
Not too bad, but I finished it with the feeling I deserved more and the author could have easily delivered more.
All in all I wouldn’t suggest to buy it.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Listen to the podcast weekly and this book was equally as brilliant.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2021
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Listen to the podcast weekly and this book was equally as brilliant. Looking forward to volume 2 in the near future.
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10 Best Personal Development Books to Read Right Now | CEOsage
10 Best Personal Development Books for High Achievers Who Want to Realize Meaningful Growth
by Scott JeffreyI hated reading in high school. I did everything I could to avoid it. In truth, the only book I recall reading in its entirety was The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Something about that book captivated me. It didn’t have many pages. That was certainly a major factor in my completion of it.
But something in me shifted during college when I studied abroad in London.
I still remember roaming aimlessly through Charing Cross Road near the Leicester Square metro station. It was 1995, and bookstores, used and new, were still popular.
I can recall where I was when I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I’m certain I can’t fully appreciate how these books shaped my mind, but I do know that upon returning from Europe I was a different person.
Before, I loathed reading. Now, I spent most of my available time in the University of Michigan libraries and local Borders bookstore (their flagship headquarters).
Each book turned new lights on in my now inquisitive mind. Each new section of the bookstore I explored opened up a new dimension to reality for me.
I couldn’t get enough books. Self-help, fiction, Eastern thought, psychology, philosophy, popular science, mysticism … it was all thrilling.
Table of Contents
- Theoretical versus Practical Books
- Self-Help versus Personal Development
- My Top Picks for the Best Personal Development Books
- Not enough time to read?
- The Best Personal Development Books
- Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
- Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) by Chade-Meng Tan
- The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
- Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening by Ken Wilber, et al.
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
- The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills by Daniel Coyle
- How to Be an Adult: A Handbook for Psychological and Spiritual Integration by David Richo
- The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
- Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin Seligman
- The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer
- Why You Should Read the Best Personal Development Books
- Read Next
Theoretical versus Practical Books
Now, over two decades later, and over a thousand books later, I’d like to share a few of my favorite titles in the category of personal development.
In the classic How to Read a Book, Adler and Doren explain that there are two types of books: theoretical and practical.
An example of a theoretical book is Plato’s The Republic. It’s an important book that illuminates many insights into the good life and the pursuit of justice.
But it doesn’t necessarily provide instruction on what we should do in the here and now.
Then some books provide methods. These titles are often called “how-to” or “self-help.”
Self-Help versus Personal Development
But “self-help” has the wrong connotation. It implies that there’s something inherently wrong with us. There isn’t.
Also, many books within the self-help genre focus exclusively on how to achieve more. We might call this “success literature.”
Classic titles in this category include Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
These books are helpful when you’re first starting out in your career, launching your business, and wanting to get an edge.
Personal growth and development, from this perspective, include success but go deeper.
Personal growth implies we’re all on a developmental path.
And with the right practices and methods, we can progress on this road, actualize more of our potential, and fundamentally transform the structure of our consciousness.
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My Top Picks for the Best Personal Development Books
That’s why you’ll find precise methods in the personal development guides I publish.
Although I enjoy reading mind-expanding, theoretical books, I’ve come to appreciate the difference between what I know and what I am.
Knowledge (what we can know) comes relatively easily; beingness (what we can become) takes a bit of practice.
While theoretical books can inspire us, only practical books provide us a means to actualize this inspiration. (Some books are both theoretical and practical.)
So in hand-picking a list of personal development books, I’ve restricted it to practical titles.
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The Best Personal Development Books
Listed in no particular order:
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
by George Leonard
Leonard is one of the pioneers in the field of personal coaching and the “human potential movement” (he coined the term). A third-degree black belt in Aikido, Leonard ran an Aikido school and was the president of the Esalen Institute. Esalen was a hotbed for new ideas in human potential in the 70s and 80s.
Together with Esalen founder, Michael Murphy, he also wrote The Life We Are Given, another excellent book that outlines an integrated program for personal development.
In Mastery, Leonard demonstrates his knowledge and experience as someone walking the path toward self-mastery and self-actualization. I wish I read this book in my 20s. My self-mastery guide was highly influenced by this small, yet powerful book.
Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)
by Chade-Meng Tan
Chade-Meng Tan was one of the first engineers at Google. Years later, he helped launch the Search Inside Yourself Institute, a leadership program within Google. The program is a synthesis of the work of psychologists Jon Kabat-Zinn and Daniel Goleman, neuroscientist Richard Davidson, and others.
At its core, Search Inside Yourself is a mind training program in emotional intelligence, the critical factor in outperforming leadership. Not only is this book an accessible, practical introduction to emotional intelligence with clear practices and methods, it’s also an excellent summary of dozens of other great personal development books rolled into one.
The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
by Kelly McGonigal
McGonigal teaches the most popular course at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program called “The Science of Willpower.” The Willpower Instinct is essentially that course distilled into a single manual. It’s full of compelling research to support its insights. But more importantly, the book provides a litany of exercises and practices to cultivate a stronger will.
While Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit is more popular and perhaps more entertaining, if I had to recommend one book on the topic of habit and self-control, McGonigal’s has the edge because of the structure and practical methods she outlines in this book.
See also my guide on How to Master Impulse Control.
Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening
by Ken Wilber, et al.
Okay, so Ken Wilber didn’t actually write this book. He had a small team of people write it, and he simply reviewed the process. If you’re not familiar with Wilber, he’s considered by many to be America’s foremost philosopher and theorist. Decades of his research and writing led to the development of an Integral Model that encapsulates the critical dimensions of reality into a single framework (called AQAL).
But that’s all theory. Integral Life Practice builds on Wilber’s herculean efforts by creating a blueprint for human development. This integral framework is presented in modules like Body, Mind, Spirit, and Shadow. You can explore whichever module speaks most to you and then experiment with the litany of practices and methods to expand your mind of what’s possible as you grow your various lines of intelligence.
This book is part of what inspired my personal development plan guide.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
by Carol Dweck
Dweck’s now modern classic in the success genre is both sobering and enlightening. Her multi-decade psychological study on mindsets reveals how important it is to understand the true nature of our development and how learning works.
Mindset is sobering because it exposes how parents and teachers have been installing a highly limiting fixed mindset in children for many generations. And the societal effects are showing. If you’re a parent, consider this book mandatory reading.
But really, everyone should read it because we’re all influenced, to varying degrees, by a fixed mindset that hijacks us from realizing greater potential within our intelligence, our behavior, or our personality. The implications of Dweck’s research are far-reaching.
The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills
by Daniel Coyle
Coyle’s first book, The Talent Code, broke down the basic ingredients of creating world-class talent and skill. The Talent Code is an excellent book, but for practical, research-based tips on how anyone can improve their abilities, The Little Book of Talent is the answer. There are so many little gems in this book—awesome hacks you can apply immediately to accelerate your learning and skill development.
How to Be an Adult: A Handbook for Psychological and Spiritual Integration
by David Richo
If you were going to read only one book about psychological development, read this one. It truly is a “handbook.” It’s not beautifully written. But this little book is jam-packed with useful insights and practices for psychological development. There’s no “fluff,” which is why it covers so much ground in only 120 pages.
In How to be an Adult, Richo sets the development of our psychology in the hero’s journey framework, exploring the “challenges” we face in approaching adulthood. These challenges take us into what we tend to resist the most: our grief, fears, anger, and guilt.
Richo’s handbook isn’t something you read once and set aside. You carry it with you, referring back often. Don’t be fooled into believing that adulthood comes naturally with age. If everyone read this book—and lived the practices contained within it—I’m confident we would live in a very different world. But that change starts with us.
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Loehr and Schwartz published one of the most important books on personal performance back in 2003. And I believe it’s still one of the best personal development books. While many of us are obsessed with finding ways of managing our time, these performance experts illuminate that what we’re truly looking for is more energy.
Breaking energy into the four core categories of physical, mental, emotional, and spirit, The Power of Full Engagement walks you through multiple ways of actualizing more of your potential in each area. If you’re an entrepreneur or high-achiever in any area of life, this bestseller will change the way you work and approach everything.
Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment
by Martin Seligman
Seligman is considered the father of the positive psychology movement. What I appreciate most about Authentic Happiness is that Seligman provides practical methods for increasing one’s level of happiness based on decades of research in the field.
Seligman demonstrates that lasting fulfillment is found not in fleeting pleasures but in cultivating our natural strengths. Perhaps you’ve heard about the research on the benefits of maintaining a gratitude journal. This book is one of the first I’m aware of that highlighted this research.
I wrote a guide to happiness, inspired by this best personal development book.
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
by Michael A. Singer
The Untethered Soul is popular for a good reason. Singer’s gentle soul communicates how the voice in our head isn’t us and that our true self is silent, open, and free. To return to ourselves, Singer explains, we must unblock the energy in our heart center. And to accomplish this, we must stop resisting painful emotions we’ve been protecting ourselves from.
Only by letting go can we return to ourselves and reunite with our souls. It’s rare to find a book with beautiful, clear, and simple insights on virtually every page. The Untethered Soul is one of those rare gifts.
Why You Should Read the Best Personal Development Books
The best personal development books listed above won’t just help be interesting to read. If you apply the lessons contained in these books, they can transform who you are in the process of becoming.
All of the best personal development books are courses in themselves. You can come back to them again and again, finding new insights and strategies for wherever you are on your hero’s journey.
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