Throughout, Benaroya emphasizes “intentional” decision making, in life and in business, in both his clear and engaging passages of coaching and in the original anecdotes and examples (many from business leaders he’s dubbed the “Designers”) that regularly illustrate advice like “Grasp the difference between goals and intentions” and “If you don’t neutralize the entropy, the energy drains in your life, and you won’t have the room to welcome new energy for the intentional work ahead.” In inviting prose, he urges readers to identify their principles, find and stay in their “genius zone”s, and to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to take decisive action, right down to accepting fear, embracing patience, and moving with intention despite not knowing exactly how things will turn out.
Benaroya’ supplements his precepts and his many real-life tales with incisive exercises designed to help readers answer those pressing questions—what do they want, why, and how can they achieve it? At times, the advice itself can seem familiar from other leadership guides, such as a section on finding and inhabiting one’s “Genius Zone,” but Benaroya and his Designers always find a new insight, angle, or inspiring approach.
Takeaway: This practical, engaging leadership guide argues that designing your personal life will aid your professional life.
Great for fans of: Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’s Designing Your Life, Jane A.G. Kise’s Intentional Leadership.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
Leadership demands that you look inside yourself first. One Life to Lead will help you smooth out the ups and downs of life and business by laying out a series of steps you can take to stop reacting and start architecting. Read this book first before getting involved in your next leadership role- or just read it now!!!
As an investor in thousands of startups through Techstars, I've seen time and time again the difference that effective leadership can make in the entrepreneurial journey. One Life to Lead perfectly captures the essential but often unspoken ingredients necessary for great leadership in one's own life as a prerequisite to leading others.
The pandemic. It conjures up thoughts and observations; insights and emotions. For me, I am increasingly observing how it has prompted many including myself to stop, take stock and question what’s next? Russell Benaroya has written a timely book that profiles entrepreneurs on their journeys of self-reflection through the lens of his 5 Steps of Life Design. Applicable not only to entrepreneurs, this model can be applied to corporate executives, non-profit volunteers and anyone who has hit the pause button to reflect on “what next”.
Russell Benaroya’s powerful new book, One Life To Lead, is a compassionate and thoughtful guide to leadership success. His 5 Steps gives leaders a practical map for the journey and inspiration along the way.
The introduction of “One Life to Lead” gives us some important clues about what we are about to read. Russell Benaroya’s vulnerability about his own life, both personal and professional, draws the reader to want to learn more about what has worked, (and not) for him in his life. A major take away for me was to not compromise our core principles. They carry us to the success we all look for. His step by step approach on how to live a good life is straight forward and applicable for everyone.
Russell Benaroya has done the impossible here. He lays out a specific plan for how to design the life you want to live, the life you deserve to live, covering work, family, and relationships with a simple-to-understand, comprehensive framework. He doesn’t try to convince you by talking from on high, but rather by exposing his deepest vulnerabilities and sharing how not getting it right led to understanding and insight. Everyone can learn something important from this book, and I am going to start recommending it to people I care about tomorrow.
A successful life and career, I believe, require both an external and inner journey. In this book Russell shares his novel approach to designing both trips. The hard-earned insights captured in his five steps, reflect the humility it took to really get to know himself and the courage required to translate his potential into action.
With the pace of change, societal divisiveness, technological advances and innumerable daily pulls on our time it certainly can seem as if our lives are completely out of our control. In Russell Benaroya’s timely book, One Life To Lead, he reminds us of the untapped and brilliant potential within each of our lives. Russell challenges us to clarify what matters most, embrace what we can influence, let go of all we can’t and be far more intentional in designing a life of true success. Read this book. Thank me later!
Russell Benaroya is approaching superhuman status. There are few individuals in the world who come even close to combining Russell’s unique mix of ultra-endurance athlete, successful entrepreneur and CEO, author, and coach — all of which are integrated with his authentic care and appreciation of others. I try to learn from him as much as I can. In One Life to Lead, Russell distills real-world lessons into a plan that any leader can follow to design your ideal life and career. I especially recommend this book to anyone who is navigating a work-life transition. If this is you, read this book first! It will provide the foundation and insight to make your most important decisions with high confidence and wisdom. When you’re at your best, doing what you are truly called to do, then you and your family benefit, your business benefits, and we all benefit. So invest in yourself by reading One Life to Lead. It is sure to pay priceless dividends for many years to come.
