Print List Price:	CDN$ 36.99
Kindle Price:	CDN$ 16.99 Save CDN$ 20.00 (54%)
	includes free international wireless delivery via *Amazon Whispernet*
Sold by:	Random House Canada, Incorp. This price was set by the publisher.

Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career by [Jason Feifer]

Follow the Author

Jason Feifer

Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career Kindle Edition

by Jason Feifer (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 73 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

$16.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$22.84

$26.66

Kindle Edition
$16.99 Read with Our Free App
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial
Hardcover
$22.84

4 Used from $26.66 14 New from $22.84 1 Collectible from $97.02

“Build for Tomorrow will change the way you think so you can overcome any obstacle and reach your full potential.”—Jim Kwik, New York Times bestselling author of Limitless

The moments of greatest change can also be the moments of greatest opportunity. Adapt more quickly and use the power of change to your advantage with this guide from the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine and host of the Build for Tomorrow podcast.

We experience change in four phases. The first is panic. Then we adapt. Then we find a new normal. And then, finally, we reach the phase we could not have imagined in the beginning, the moment when we realize that we wouldn’t go back.

Build for Tomorrow is designed to accelerate that process—to help you lessen your panic, adapt faster, define the new normal, and thrive going forward. And it arrives as we all, in some way, have felt a shift in our lives. The pandemic forced a moment of collective change, and we are still being forced to make new plans and adjustments to our lives, families, and careers. Many of us will never go back, continuing to work from home, demanding higher wages, or starting new businesses.

To help people along this journey, Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer offers stories, lessons, and concrete exercises from the most potent sources of change in our world. He speaks to the world’s most successful changemakers—from global celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Maria Sharapova to innovative CEOs and Main Street heroes—to learn how they decide what to protect, what to discard, and how to move forward without fear. He also draws lessons from history, looking at how massive changes across time can help us better understand the opportunities of today. For example, he finds guidance for our post-pandemic realities inside the power shifts that occurred after the Bubonic Plague, and he reveals how the history of innovations like the elevator and even the teddy bear can teach anyone to be more forward-thinking.

We cannot anticipate tomorrow’s needs, but it shouldn’t take a crisis to push us forward. This book will show you how to make change on your own terms.

Print length

273 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Harmony
Publication date

Sept. 6 2022
File size

5042 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

From the Publisher

Change is inevitable. Thriving is up to you.

Product description

Review

“In a time of anxiety and uncertainty, Build for Tomorrow gives you the tools and confidence to be more resilient. It will change the way you think so you can overcome any obstacle and reach your full potential.”—Jim Kwik, New York Times bestselling author of Limitless

“Jason has access to the smartest minds in business. In this book he extracts their best wisdom so you can act on it now—whether that’s quitting your job, leaping ahead, or saying ‘screw it’ and starting something yourself.”—Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, New York Times bestselling author of Crushing It

“I wish I’d had this book years ago! Jason’s advice is honest and real and can help you invent your own future with confidence.”—Kandi Burruss, Grammy-winning artist, TV personality, and entrepreneur

“The most important thing we do is build the future, but that can be scary. This book shares how to attack the future, without fear and with optimism and hope.”—Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, a startup advisor, host of the podcasts Build For Tomorrow and Problem Solvers, and has taught his techniques for adapting to change at companies including Pfizer, Microsoft, Chipotle, DraftKings, and Wix. He has worked as an editor at Fast Company, Men's Health, and Boston magazine, and has written about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, Popular Mechanics, and others. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

You Come from the Future

Jesse Kirshbaum’s clients have been in a panic.

This is understandable. They’re musicians, and popular musicians once had relatively straightforward careers: They scored recording contracts, sold their music to fans, maybe also sold it to advertising and television producers, and they toured and hawked swag. As a longtime music agent, Kirshbaum has been in the business of making this business happen. The company he founded, Nue Agency, works with some of the biggest names in entertainment. But the industry’s old tricks are stumbling. Streaming services have decimated CD sales. Record labels aren’t what they once were. As a result, many musicians are furious at the likes of Spotify. And now it’s Kirshbaum’s job to figure out how to fix this mess and make his clients money.

“If you think that change is opportunity,” Kirshbaum said to me, “then what would you say to my clients?”

“Do you know who John Philip Sousa is?” I replied.

Kirshbaum did not. But he should. Sousa was once among the most famous musicians in America, and he, too, felt left behind by a massive shift in the music industry, and he, too, responded with panic. But now that we look back upon his story, we can see just how much energy he wasted.

When we feel panic, I suspect it’s in part because we feel alone. We think we’re experiencing something that nobody else has, and we imagine that there is no playbook for what’s next. We feel like guinea pigs—and nobody wants to be the guinea pig! We want to be the Tesla driving through a beautiful, mountainous pass, long after somebody else dynamited their way through the rock and smoothly paved the road.

But here’s the surprising truth that’s hard to recognize at the beginning of change: Even when we feel lost, we are almost driving that smoothed-out mountainous pass. Someone before us already dealt with what we’re dealing with now. There actually is evidence of the path forward. All we need to do is take it seriously.

That’s what really drew me to history. When I started looking backward in time, to moments when other industries were disrupted and other lives were altered, I saw a lot of the same fear and resistance that we see about today’s changes. Today’s fears about privacy and misinformation on the internet? They were expressed in the 1800s about the telegraph. Today’s parental guilt over kids’ addiction to screens? You’ll find 1920s parents bemoaning radio in the same way. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how panic never led us to solutions—but it did inhibit people from maximizing their lives. They were so focused on losing the old opportunities, they failed to see new ones.

This helped me coalesce around a theory about change. I call it: You Come from the Future.

As we begin to untangle the panic around change, I want to prove to you that you come from the future. It is a liberating realization. And it all starts with John Philip Sousa.

The Drumbeat of Panic

You, too, may not know much about Sousa. But you do know his music.

Sousa was born in 1854, in an era where all music was performed live. There was no radio when he was born, nor were record players available. If you wanted to hear music, then musicians would need to pick up their instruments and play for you in a one-time, unrecorded, never-to-be-heard-again performance. This is how it had always been.

Sousa learned the violin at an early age. At age thirteen, he joined the United States Marine Band. He also studied music privately and learned not just to perform but to compose and to conduct large orchestras. He composed what would become some of the most famous marches in American history. His song “The Stars and Stripes Forever” was designated the national march of the United States of America and his “Semper Fidelis” became the official march of the United States Marine Corps. When a fledgling newspaper called The Washington Post hired him to write a march, he wrote “The Washington Post,” which is still performed regularly today.

All of this made Sousa very famous—one of the biggest names in music at the time. He was a household name who’d pack concert halls, where his music gave warmth and soul to a nation still healing from the Civil War, and where it would eventually rouse them to patriotic duty during World War I.

But his era was coming to a close. In the early 1900s, two things changed. The first big change was the phonograph, an early version of the record player. With this device, for the very first time in human history, music could be recorded and replayed. Time could be captured. No concert hall was required to hear a concert.

This worried a lot of people. Today we’re concerned that social media frays our social connections, or that artificial intelligence is a dangerous replacement for human work—and back then, in the early 1900s, those same concerns were applied to the phonograph. “Does not frequent use of the phonograph, especially in continual repetitions of a number, produce inattention in the hearer?” asked The Brooklyn Daily Eagle at the time, echoing many worries of the time. “The music is so easily obtainable by the listener, who sits back and is fed with sweet sounds.”

Next, radio was invented. It broadcast voices and music into people’s homes, which was a completely foreign concept at the time. From the very beginning of civilization, up until the invention of radio, your home was a barrier between you and the world. Nothing from outside was coming in unless you opened your door and welcomed it. Radio changed that.

This terrified Sousa, who made it his mission to destroy these new technologies. He made frequent proclamations about the shortcomings of this technology, encouraged musicians not to participate, and wrote articles about the dangers it posed to humanity. The way he saw it, phonographs were a threat to our minds and our families. My favorite argument of his was published in Appleton’s Magazine in 1906, where he wrote: “When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery? Children are naturally imitative, and if, in their infancy, they hear only phonographs, will they not sing, if they sing at all, in imitation, and finally become simply human phonographs—without soul or expression?”

In other words, he believed that phonographs would replace all forms of performance—which means that mothers would stop singing to their children, the children would instead grow up to imitate a machine, and therefore we’d raise a generation of machine babies.

And the panic didn’t stop there.

You’ve surely heard the phrase live music. It’s common today—on the billboards of concert halls, on flyers at coffee shops, on Ticketmaster’s website. But the phrase was born out of the same resistance that Sousa had led.

As recorded music technology improved, Sousa wasn’t the only musician who felt threatened. Their careers were suddenly subject to change. Radio stations used to only broadcast live performances—the musicians were literally inside the studio, playing live for the listeners at home. Movie theaters likewise used live musicians; they’d perform the score of a movie in person, as people watched the screen. But soon, radio stations were playing records and movie theaters were playing soundtracks. Due to a lack of work in the late 1920s, many musicians fell into poverty.

That’s when musicians tried to change the tune. “The whole term live music was actually introduced by the musicians union as a rhetorical attempt to oppose ‘live’ versus ‘dead,’ ” said Mark Katz, a professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They wanted consumers to think of recordings as dead, and them as alive—and who would choose death over life?” In 1928, Joseph W. Weber, the president of the American Federation of Musicians, framed the change as an existential threat to everyone. Musical machines in theaters, Weber wrote, “constitute a serious menace to cultural growth.” In the 1940s, musicians went on strike twice: No union musicians would go into a studio to record anything.

“So here’s why I’m telling you this,” I said to Kirshbaum, the music agent, after walking through this history. “Your musicians today are worried about losing the thing that a previous generation of musicians tried to stop.” --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09KX841M1
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harmony (Sept. 6 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5042 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 273 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #289,351 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #171 in Professional & Technical Organizational Behaviour
- #392 in Organizational Behaviour (Kindle Store)
- #759 in Entrepeneurship

Customer Reviews:
4.6 73 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jason Feifer

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, author of the book Build For Tomorrow, host of the podcasts Build For Tomorrow and Problem Solvers, a keynote speaker, startup advisor, and nonstop optimism machine. His goal is to help you become more resilient and adaptable in a world of constant change — so you can seize new opportunity before anyone else does.

Donald Miller
8,692
Kindle Edition
in Business Writing Guides
1 offer from $10.99
Bessel van der Kolk
64,749
Kindle Edition
in Neuropsychology
1 offer from $16.99
Donald Miller
1,881
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $10.99
Allan Dib
8,486
Kindle Edition
in Global Marketing
1 offer from $2.99
Donald Miller
1,839
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $10.99
Donald Miller
176
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $10.99

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

73 global ratings

5 star		74%
4 star		14%
3 star		11%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top review from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Dubi

A practical guide for facing and embracing change

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

I first encountered Jason Feifer through his podcast, The Pessimist Archives. Each episode discussed a beloved and respectable aspect of our lives, and described how and why people thought it would destroy human society when it was originally introduced - how bicycle were said to give you "Bicycle Face" and endanger your health, how teddy bears were sure to eliminate motherhood, how recorded music would result in children growing up to be mere vacant automatons, and my personal favourite - the danger posed to the very fabric of our society from the awful, widespread addiction of children to READING NOVELS.
The podcast was a beautiful rejection of the "kids these days" narrative, steeped in evidence and humour. But at some point, Feifer, Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, realized the podcast could be more that just an archive of yesteryear's pessimists. Asking himself "what is this for?", he renamed the podcast "Build for Tomorrow", and shifted its mission from merely refuting "kids these days" to using these examples to help people engage with change in a more productive manner.
If you've listened to the podcast, you'll be familiar with many of the examples and themes presented in the book, but this books goes beyond merely rehashing the podcast, and offers a comprehensive framework to think about how we react to change. It identifies the pits we may fall into and the aspects of our natural reaction that we should embrace. It also provides tools for the reader to stop and think about their own life and career, and how they can make the most out of the change that will, inevitably, be part of them.
I like that it's not written as a "how to" - there is no paint-by-numbers guide of how to successfully navigate change. Different tools may be more relevant in different contexts. But at the core, Feifer asks us to be aware of the four stages of reacting to change, which also form the structure of the book: Panic, Adaptation, New Normal, and Wouldn't Go Back.
Feifer doesn't claim all change is inherently good - one example he gives is how the horrors of the bubonic plague resulted in a completely different balance of power between property owners and labourers, which gave the latter a lot more power to improve their lives so that they "wouldn't go back" to life before the plague. But getting there, of course, required the decimation of the population in a manner that left a lot fewer labourers for property owners to fight over. The "panic" stage of this change was certainly very warranted. Yet we could draw parallels to the impact of COVID-19 on office work practices, which are still being negotiated, or to the common (though hardly unprecedented) complaint that "young people don't want to work anymore". The point, however, is that change will happen. It may be good, it may be bad, or it may be neutral in its direct impact on our lives, but it's up to us to make the most of what opportunities it does present, and it does nobody any good to get stuck in panic mode.

One of the things Feifer says makes us tend to get into panic mode is that we tend to remember the good things about the past, and diminish the bad thing. We tend to be nostalgic. This may explain why I felt like many of the suggestions Feifer gives seemed obvious to me: I have a terrible memory, but when I do remember things, I tend to remember the bad things about them. So I'm perpetually in this state of "this is the best I've ever been!", and change is something I willingly seek out. I don't freak out when things change around me. I tend to just go with them -- I'm no trailblazing entrepreneur, but I am an early adopter and a quick adapter. But I see people struggling with change around me all the time. And one of the things I find most valuable about this book is that it also suggests ways we can help others along the way to change, by building what Feifer calls "bridges of familiarity". As such this book is great not only for those who are facing change, but also those trying to push for change in their organizations, and face the need to engage in "change management".

The one issue I had with the book arose early on. Feifer, like too many journalists writing about entrepreneurs, has a somewhat breathless way of describing all the wonderful things the entrepreneurs they are talking about do. Sure, they face challenges, but these challenges are presented as exogenous, while the entrepreneurs actions are just brilliant. But we can say this format is simply there to serve the narrative - life is messy, but our message needs to be clear. Fine. But Feifer seems to feel the need to also describe the businesses themselves as a boon to the world, no matter what. Nowhere else is this clearer than when he speaks of Taboola - that cesspool of clickbait links that pounce on you at the bottom of articles (or sometimes in the middle, with a "keep reading" button you must hunt for once you realize the story ended abruptly mid-sentence). Taboola is not a "Good Thing". It doesn't actually provide a service to the reader. It's an income stream for the websites, sure, but it does that by making us all a little dumber. And yet, Feifer feels compelled to extol the virtues of these links!

"At the bottom of many news websites, you’ll find links to articles with pointed headlines that you cannot ignore like, “15 Foods You Should Never Eat After Age 30,” which might leave you to wonder, Am I eating those foods?! This is an advertisement that Taboola calls “content discovery.” When you click, you’re taken to another site to read the story."

This description is completely unnecessary. It doesn't serve the narrative, it doesn't serve the message. It is also very demonstrably wrong. All it did was make me very suspicious of every other time Feifer said something positive about anything. Is this really a good thing, or is Feifer just a starry-eyed stan of this entrepreneur, again? I cannot emphasize how much this marred my experience with this book.

But still, I'm giving it five-stars, because I think this flaw doesn't detract for the actual benefits of this book. If there is or soon will be change in your life -- and yes, there definitely is -- this book could hell you get through it and emerge better and stronger on the other side.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Carlo Mahfouz

A trip through history with multiple lenses throughout.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 18, 2022

Verified Purchase

From the bubonic plague to the Johari window, Jason doesn’t spare a lesson or exercise in helping you set a plan to embrace change.

Be prepared for inquisitive questions, history lessons, and detailed research that doesn’t leave a stone unturned. I love the macro lens framing of change happening across time that Jason explores. It is an eye-opener. It masterfully bridges the past with the present to provide a plan for dealing with the future.

Jason meticulously engages you with a dance that digs deep and then as elegantly zooms out and elevates you! Build for tomorrow is a fun and energizing read. Highly recommend!

2 people found this helpful

lilli s.

Excellent read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

This book is a must read for any business professional. The concepts and advice can apply to a small business owner, a large business owner, or someone simply trying to start a business. I have been a fan of Jason Feifer's work, and follow him across all of his social media platforms. So I was excited to read this book as soon as it came out. I loved the book and highly recommend!

2 people found this helpful

Heather

You need this book if you’re in any kind of business

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

Very excited to dive into this book. I’ve listened to some podcasts and read various articles written by him, and I’ve read the preview/excerpt available for this book. I’ve been in the salon industry for 22 years and anything that’s going to help navigate the new changes and challenges I meet daily in my business, I welcome! I feel this can be applied to pretty much any business. So far I’m enjoying this book!

Ashlee Berghoff

A fascinating and practical read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

I've enjoyed Jason Feifer's articles for a while and really enjoyed this book. His writing style is really fresh, easy to read, and interesting...I encountered ideas here that I'd never considered before. He uses really intriguing stories from history to demonstrate his core points and share practical tips for understanding and navigating change. I keep coming back to the ideas in the book which is always a great sign.

Dev Aujla

Simple / Directive / Actionable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

Jason’s voice is clear the stories are engaging and it is exactly what you want. It will get you thinking and questioning some of your long standing beliefs and makes you want to get up and go.

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract and engage customers	Amazon Business Everything for your business	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust	Blink Smart Security for Every Home

Follow the Author

Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career Kindle Edition

From the Publisher

Product description

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

About the author

Jason Feifer

Customers who read this book also read

Customer reviews

Top review from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries