Decisions, Courage, and Action

FREE on Kindle until October 5th.

Decisions, Courage, and Action:
Real Stories of Choosing What Matters, Moving
Through Fear and Turning Intention into Results!

What have you been putting off until you feel ready?

You may have a project you keep revisiting, a conversation you’re avoiding, or a trip you’ve promised yourself for years. Waiting has a cost, even when it feels like the sensible choice.

Decisions, Courage, and Action brings together ten authors with real stories and practical approaches to decision-making, leadership, personal growth, and following through. Compiled by Robert Plank, this collection explores how to choose what matters when fear, exhaustion, competing demands, and rapid change make the next step difficult.

Rita Ainsworth describes the moment she could see the numbers on her advertising dashboard but could no longer understand them. Mitch Slater recalls accepting a million-dollar check as a young financial advisor and learning what another person’s trust required of him. WL Gertz returns to poetry after almost fifty years, with a reminder to pursue the experiences you’ve been postponing.

Alongside these stories, you’ll discover how to:

• Make better decisions with AI. Speed up research and execution while keeping responsibility for the result.
• Recognize the cost of overworking. Explore stress management, boundaries, and a more sustainable relationship with ambition.
• Lead people through change. Ask better questions, communicate expectations, and understand what’s behind resistance.
• Build relationships that last. Listen closely, educate before you sell, and earn trust through follow-through.
• Finish what matters. Use Donna Blevins’s three small daily wins and Robert Plank’s Five Boxes approach to break difficult projects into manageable steps.
• Make room for life beyond work. Revisit creative ambitions and build physical strength through small, repeatable habits.

You’ll also explore Dr. Carlos Davidovich’s Five Brain Leadership approach to recognizing your own reactions, reducing micromanagement, and helping your team make decisions without bringing every problem back to you.

Featuring Jason M. Riggs, Rita Ainsworth, Sally Foley-Lewis, Dr. Carlos Davidovich, M.D., Dr. Julie Donley, Mitch Slater, WL Gertz, Phil Ross, M.S., Donna Blevins, and Robert Plank.

For entrepreneurs, managers, and anyone working through self-doubt or a change in direction, this book offers concrete ways to act before every doubt is settled. Start reading and put one useful idea to work today.

About the Authors

Robert Plank

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Sally Foley-Lewis

Sally Foley-Lewis works with middle managers to be confident, capable and courageous. She gets results. With a leadership development career spanning more than 20 years, she has seen the middle from every angle: reported to, been a middle manager, and a CEO so she’s seen middle management from every angle! She walks the talk!

She is a global award-winning motivational speaker, Hall of Fame educator, and 6 x Author.

The drive to support and skill managers comes from her own senior leadership experiences. Sally delivers keynote presentations and deep programs to skill managers, boost productivity and amplify results.

• 2025 Global Recognition Awards: Leadership Excellence and International Influence

• 2024 Educator Award for Excellence – VSAI

• 2024 Bronze: ROAR Awards – Leadership Award

• 2024 Professional Speakers Australia: National President’s Award for Outstanding Contribution

• 2023 Gold: ROAR Awards – Service Business of the Year

• 2023 Silver: ROAR Awards – Best B2B Business

• 2023 Bronze: International Business Award – Thought Leader of the Year: Business Services

• 2023 Gold: Beam Australia Awards – Emerging Leadership

• 2023 Silver: Asia Pacific Stevie Awards – Thought Leader of the Year

• 2023 Woman to Watch in Management – Women in Biz Global

• 2021 USQ Outstanding Alumnus of the Year – Business and Enterprise

• 2021 Silver ROAR Success Awards – Leadership Award

Consistently named in the Top25 Management Thought Leaders with Thinkers360. Also, named a LinkedIn Top Voice, and Female Entrepreneur of the Year,

Sally has worked with over twenty thousand managers and leaders from medium sized to global organisations in Germany, Middle East, Asia, North America and across Australia. Name an industry and she’s helped mid-levels leaders shine in that industry. Her extensive qualifications; wicked sense of humour, and ability to engage and inspire while making people feel at ease makes her your first choice for your management conference.

If she’s not developing mid-level leaders through her burger framework, she’s walking her rescue dogs and planning her next Camino!

She has authored multiple books:

– The Best Is In The Middle: The 5 key ingredients for high performing middle managers (2024)

– The Middle Matters: Ten Strategies Successful CEOs Use To Lead High-Performing Middle Matters (2023)

– SPARK: 9 Simple Strategies to Ignite Exceptional Self-Leadership (2021)

– DELEGATE: Double the Results! Halve the Effort! (2019)

– Successful Feedback: How Leaders Can Increase Performance, Motivate and Engage Their Team

(2018)

– The Productive Leader: How To Achieve More, Reduce Stress and Gain 2 Hours Per Day (2017)

The Productive Leader received an endorsement from the renowned global personal development guru Brian Tracy.