The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

Today, the career escalator is jammed at every level.  Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Wages are virtually stagnant. Global competition for jobs is fierce.  The employer-employee pact is over; job security doesn’t exist.

Here, LinkedIn co-founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and author  Ben Casnocha  reveal a revolutionary new blueprint for how to survive and thrive in this new career landscape.  How? By learning to thinking and act like an entrepreneur. In other words, the secret to moving up that jammed escalator, they say, is to run your career like it’s a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you.

Why? Start-ups and entrepreneurs are nimble. They are innovative. They invest in themselves. They are self-reliant, yet build strong networks to amplify their strengths. They assess the needs of their target customers. They leverage their competitive advantages in the marketplace.

These are the very same skills needed to get ahead in today’s fractured world of work. 

You will learn the best practices of some of the most successful start-ups on the planet, and how these entrepreneurial strategies can be applied to your career. Because whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a mid-size company in a rural city, or a two-person operation run out of a garage, you need to know how to:

-Launch career plans in conditions of tremendous uncertainty – and be nimble enough to iterate on these plans quickly if current ones aren’t working

-Invest in your assets and establish a competitive advantage 

-Capitalize on breakout opportunities – and effectively manage the risk inherent in those opportunities

-Develop genuine relationships and map these relationships into an effective  professional network.

-Tap your network for the information and intelligence that will lead to you smarter career decisions

-And much more

A groundbreaking guide to  flourishing in the world we live in today, the Start-Up of You empowers each one of us to be the founder of and CEO our own career, and take control of our professional future.

From the Hardcover edition.

The career escalator is jammed at every level. Unemployment rates are sky-high. Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Global competition for jobs is fierce. The employer-employee pact is over and traditional job security is a thing of the past.  

Here, LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and author Ben Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world. The key is to manage your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you.

Why? Start-ups - and the entrepreneurs who run them - are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.

These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.

This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or launching your own venture, you need to know how to:

* Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change.

* Develop a competitive advantage to win the best jobs and opportunities.

* Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships. * Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth.

* Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis.

* Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions.

A revolutionary new guide to thriving in today's fractured world of work, the strategies in this book will help you survive and thrive and achieve your boldest professional ambitions. The Start-Up of You empowers you to become the CEO of your career and take control of your future.

BEN CASNOCHA is an award-winning entrepreneur and author. He has written for Newsweek and appeared on CNN, the CBS Early Show, and Fox News. BusinessWeek named him one of "America's best young entrepreneurs.” He has spoken to more than ten thousand students and businesspeople in countries around the world.