Business Money Management

How to Stop Yourself Before You Make Another Costly Decision - No one intentionally makes bad decisions. Yet we make them all the time. In fact, some of the worst disasters in recent history - the collapse of major investment banks, the global financial meltdown - were the result of seemingly reasonable decisions made by a lot of smart people. How does this happen? Michael J. Mauboussin argues that the correct process for deciding well - especially when the stakes are high - conflicts with how our minds naturally work.

Risk is a regular part of business, but knowing which risks to take and when to step back is often unclear. Whether you're assessing a new opportunity for innovation or thinking about your long-term strategy in an unsteady economy, you need to know the best way to proceed while ensuring that your company is financially secure and thriving. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you determine which risks are worth taking and mitigate those your company - and your industry at large - are already facing.

In The Rule, legendary trader and hedge fund pioneer Larry Hite recounts his working-class upbringing in Brooklyn as a dyslexic, partially blind kid who was anything but a model student - and how he went on to found and run Mint Investment Management Company, one of the most profitable and largest quantitative hedge funds in the world.

In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.

Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows.

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.

One of the most important works ever written on investment theory, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits lays out the fundamental principles of intelligent investing.

Jordan Cohen started out selling entry-level houses in Southern California over thirty years ago. Always working alone as an individual agent without a partner or a team, he consistently sets new sales records year after year, including 2021 where he closed over $314 million in residential real estate. In The Agent’s Edge, he teaches agents of all levels how to win listings, take advantage of every opportunity and make your fortune in the fast-paced, exciting world of real estate sales.

The Failure of Risk Management provides effective solutions to significant faults in current risk analysis methods. Conventional approaches to managing risk lack accurate quantitative analysis methods, yielding strategies that can actually make things worse. Many widely used methods have no systems to measure performance, resulting in inaccurate selection and ineffective application of risk management strategies. These fundamental flaws propagate unrealistic perceptions of risk in business, government, and the general public.

Attorney and CPA Mark J. Kohler targets the leading tax and business issues among small business owners, across all stages of business, and delivers a practical guide to the fundamental tax and legal conflicts faced by new and established entrepreneurs. Coached by Kohler, business owners are armed to seek out the right professionals relevant to their concerns, confidently ask the right questions, and ultimately, save time, money, and in many cases, potential heartache.

As an 18-year-old, black, broke, lonely, insecure, university drop-out, from a bankrupt family, I wrote in my diary that I wanted to be a 'Happy Sexy Millionaire' by the age of 25. By 25 I was a multi-millionaire having created a business worth over $300m dollars. Ironically, in achieving everything I set out to, I learnt that I was wrong about almost everything... The world had lied to me. It lied to me about how you attain fulfilment, love and success, why those things matter, and what those words actually mean.

The Automatic Millionaire starts with the powerful story of an average American couple (he's a low-level manager, she's a beautician), whose joint income never exceeds $55,000 a year, who somehow manage to own two homes debt-free, put two kids through college, and retire at 55 with more than $1 million in savings.

A one-stop start-up guide from an accountant-turned-restaurateur. Ninety percent of all restaurants fail, and those that succeed happened upon that mysterious X factor, right? Wrong! A man of many hats - money-guy, restaurant owner, and restaurant consultant - Roger Fields shows how a restaurant can survive its first year and keep diners coming back for years. Featuring real-life start-up stories (including many of the author's own), this comprehensive how-to walks listeners through the logistics of opening a restaurant: concept, location, menu, staff, and, most important, profit.

In this groundbreaking book, a number one best seller in South Korea, a financial guru shares the secret to building your fortune using your emotion and opens the door to a new world full of hope and prosperity.

Do you feel like your pay check just passes through your account each payday, all spent up before you even get a chance to look at your account? Do you always find yourself scraping money together just to pay your bills? Do you often wonder where all your money goes, even if you’re making a decent income? If you do, then let’s face it - you need a budget. No matter how much money you have coming in, without a consistent way to keep track of it, that money is bound to vanish as soon as it goes into your pocket.

"Absolutely amazing! It completely shifts your paradigm for life. One of the most wonderful things about it is that the results are immediate. My whole perception and relationship to money has undergone a major, substantial change." (Chris Attwood, writer and teacher, California)

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help your company persevere through economic challenges and continue to grow even as your competitors stumble. This audiobook will inspire you to get your company ready before a downturn strikes, learn the right lessons from previous recessions, minimize pain while cutting costs and managing risk, foster a healthy organizational culture during anxious times, and seize the opportunity to innovate and reinvent your business.

Private equity firms are on the rise and rapidly changing the game. Today, more than 5,500 PE firms own tens of thousands of companies, so it is essential for CEOs and senior management executives to understand exactly how private equity firms operate. This invaluable resource can help you devise a winning PE game plan for your own company that offers you greater freedom and financial success.

Brand is everything. Whether you’re a real estate broker, a hair stylist, or a freelance contractor, your end goal is the same: get leads and generate new business. You want people to think of you the split second they consider looking for a new apartment, getting highlights, or finally redoing that guest bathroom. And while building a brand from scratch sounds daunting, the authentic you is already a brand—you just might not know it yet. Brand It Like Serhant brings listeners through Ryan’s three-step strategy that transformed SERHANT.

Created for risk professionals and non-risk professionals alike, this easy-to-understand guide helps you meet the increasingly insistent demand to make sophisticated assessments of companies' risk exposure. It provides the latest methods for measuring and transferring credit risk, increasing risk-management transparency, and implementing an organization-wide Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach.