“What is happening to my life?” Have you ever honestly asked yourself that question? As young boys, we dreamed of being pilots, firefighters, doctors, and cowboys. Now we’re older, with a wonderful wife and kids, as well as a mortgage, a minivan, and a fulfilling but not-so-glamorous job. What happened? All the dreams that once inspired us have evaporated into traffic jams, computer screens, bills, and deadlines. Why is life so ordinary? If you think your life is nothing special, take a look at it through God’s eyes. The revealing truth is that God chooses “ordinary,” faithful men to do His most important work—regular guys like Peter the fisherman, David the shepherd, Stephen the waiter, Gideon the farmer, Paul the tentmaker, and even Jesus the carpenter. In this engaging book, Troy Meeder blends stories about biblical characters and contemporary men to show that an “average-Joe” life, an “ordinary” existence, shapes a man’s integrity, moral stability, resolve, and strength. The world desperately needs an army of “average Joes.” Like you. “Troy Meeder’s heart-felt accounts from both his own personal experience and those of friends and family touch a raw nerve in your soul…. Average Joe reminds us that living a life focused on faith, family, and friends is what makes a man exceptional.” —Rick Wiggers, average Joe and account manager Includes a study guide for use by men’s groups.

The book covers numerous tech entrepreneurial founders and software developers, and the exciting brands or products that they created. It goes deep on a handful of them, narrowly divulging exactly how a few software developers and startup founders created breakthrough tech products like Gmail, Dropbox, Ring, Snapchat, Bitcoin, Groupon, and more. It highlights and unpacks the general hero-worship that the media and our own minds practice about tech founders and tech entrepreneurs. This idealization of tech success can create a paradox, preventing average tech professionals from their own successful journeys. This book provides hard evidence that anyone in tech can create, and anyone on the peripheral of tech can break through to the center where innovation, creativity, and opportunity meet. The anecdotes, stories, evidence, facts, arguments, logic, principles, and techniques provided in this book have helped individuals and businesses engage in slow creation cycles, improve the morale of their development teams, and increased their delivery potential of their technology solutions overall. Average Joe covers: Genius - The systematic deconstruction and debunking of the commonly held assumptions in the tech industry around supreme intelligence, and how that intelligence has been worshipped and sought after, despite the facts. Slow Creation - How to force-manufacture creative ideation. How conscious and subconscious cycles of patterns, details, and secrets can lead to breakthrough innovations, and how those P.D.S. cycles, and systematic mental grappling, can be conjured and repeated on a regular basis. Little-C Creativity - The conscious and miniature moments of epiphany that leak into our active P.D.S. cycles of Slow Creation. Flow - Why it's great, but also - why it's completely unreliable and unnecessary. How to perpetually innovate without relying on a flow state. Team Installation - How teams and companies can engage their employees in Slow Creation to unlock dormant ideas, stir up creative endeavors, and jumpstart fragile ideas into working products. User Manipulation - How tech products are super-charged with tricks, secret techniques, and neural transmitters like Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Cortisol; how those products leverage cognitive mechanisms and psychological techniques to force user adoption and user behaviors. Contrarianism - How oppositional and backward-thinking leaders create brand-new categories and the products which dominate those categories. Showmanship - How tech players have presented their ideas to the world, conjured up magic, manufactured mystique, and presented compelling stories that have captured their audiences. Sustainable Mystique Triad – A simple model for capturing audiences consistently without relying on hype and hustle.

Ever wondered what to say to that girl that was standing in line in front of you? Have you ever seen a girl while out at a club and just never knew how to approach her? Tired of wondering what may have been if you did make an attempt? Now is your chance to have an inside view as to how to approach the opposite sex. You have nothing to lose. The only time you need to involve will be spent reading this book!

Part memoir, part wander through a changing political landscape, part rant about Australia, the media, politics, and everything, Joe Hildebrand's new book, like the man himself, defies description. Joe Hildebrand is the man you see on tV, the man you read in the Daily telegraph, the man you might follow on twitter (where he's rated as one of the top ten most influential tweeters in Australia), the man with an opinion on everything and anything, especially the dire straits of the current political landscape. But who is he? Where did he come from?In this, his first book, you can meet the man behind the man; his highly unconventional family and upbringing, his odd relatives, his less than stellar school career and then his arrival at University where he discovered a tribe of similar outcasts and freaks - student politicians. the lesson Joe learned as an aspiring student leader and newspaper editor would bring him girlfriends, win him elections, and prepare him for a life inside the den of evil itself; the Murdoch newspaper empire.Sit back, relax and laugh along with Joe as he reflects on his life and times - and tries to find some semblance of meaning in either.

Will it happen again, Mama? After the Ant Hill School is destroyed, a little boy ant is afraid to go back to school. His mom caringly explains to him that sometimes things happen in life over which we have no control, but we have to find a way to keep living and growing. To do that, "We breathe in and breathe out, and hold onto each other. We shed a lot of tears, and we love one another. We all come together as a strong team of ONE, and then we rebuild, and get things done!" The Ant Hill Disaster thoughtfully addresses fears associated with both natural and man-caused disasters. It models effective parenting and teaching responses. This book can help assure children that through love, empathetic understanding, preparation, and effective communication, they can stand strong, even in the midst of uncontrollable events.

A Far-From-Average Sports Book for the Average Joe Go beyond the 24/7 online highlights and celebrate the hilarious humor and heartwarming heroics of the sports world in this all-star collection of trivia, quotes, and anecdotes. For example... Did You Know? The Chicago Bears were originally known as the Staleys before being moved from Decatur, Illinois. The Decatur Staleys, as the team was known, was the pride of the city that holds the motto, "The Soybean Capital of the World." Houston Astros infielder Julio Gotay played every game with a cheese sandwich in his back pocket. Others had less cheesy items in their back pockets. Pitcher Sean Burnett had a poker chip in his, while pitcher Al Holland opted for a two-dollar bill. While accepting his NBA MVP award in 2014, basketball star Kevin Durant focused his remarks on his mother, Wanda Pratt. "The odds were stacked against us, a single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old," Durant said. "You made us believe, you kept us off the street, put clothes on our backs, food on the table. When you didn't eat, you made sure we ate. You went to sleep hungry; you sacrificed for us. You're the real MVP." Packed with incredible facts, quirky moments, and heart-warming stories, The Average Joe's Super Sports Almanac will delight fans of all ages and makes a great gift for the sports buff in your life - whether superfan or average Joe.