Entrepreneurship Small Business

Built from Scratch is the story of how two incredibly determined and creative people - and their associates - built a business from nothing to 761 stores and $30 billion in sales in a mere 20 years. Built from Scratch tells many colorful stories associated with The Home Depot's founding and meteoric rise; shows that a company can be a tough, growth-oriented competitor, and still maintain a high sense of responsibility to the community; and provides great lessons useful to people in any business, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

With Peter Drucker's five essential questions and the help of five of today's thought leaders, this little book will challenge readers to take a close look at the very heart of their organizations and what drives them. A tool for self-assessment and transformation, answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning....

Each year, Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of "sell it—do it, sell it—do it" that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try. Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.

Once a barista in a small cafe making $6.50 an hour, Andrew Wilkinson built a business valued at over a billion dollars by the time he was 36—and yet, his path to success was anything but a straight line. In Never Enough, Wilkinson pulls back the curtain on the lives of the ultra-rich, sharing insights into building a successful business that has been called a “Berkshire Hathaway, but for internet companies,” and a surprising first-person account of what it's actually like to become a billionaire.

The founder and CEO of AppSumo.com, Noah Kagan, knows how to launch a seven-figure business in a single weekend—and he’s done it seven times. Million Dollar Weekend will show you how. By Monday, you’ll have a market-tested, scalable business idea and you’ll be a entrepreneur on the path to seven figures. Million Dollar Weekend is the path to creating your dream life and attaining financial freedom.

Still in his early 30s, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations - and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck. Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back. In The $100 Startup, he tells you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose - and earn a good living.

This audiobook is expressively for entrepreneurs and business owners who wear many hats - those who can't resist piling more responsibility onto his own shoulders, who has more great ideas than time and resources to take advantage of them, who runs (not walks) through each day. Serial entrepreneur Dan S. Kennedy delivers a fresh take on the mantra "time is money" as he shows you how to drastically re-engineer your entire relationship with time and, if applied faithfully, achieve peak personal productivity and make lots and lots of money.

Whether you're launching your business for the first time or looking to transform your existing business, Stu McLaren, founder of Searchie and the Marketing Your Business podcast is here to help you launch a membership site. What's magical about a membership site is it not only creates predictable recurring revenue every month, but the more you put into it, the bigger potential it has to grow each month. With memberships, you never start from zero. You start every month with the momentum that you gained the previous months.

Trevor Blake built three successful startups and sold them for more than $300 million. Now he's written a complete instruction manual that covers everything the budding entrepreneur or existing business owner needs to know to build the career or business of their dreams. Unlike the many theoretical guides out there, this is a practical handbook based on Blake's wildly successful in-the-trenches experience.

Master the science of funnel building to grow your company online with sales funnels in this updated edition from the $100 million entrepreneur and cofounder of the software company ClickFunnels.

If you had the opportunity to work where, when, and with whom you wanted - all while getting paid very well - would you take it? Self-made multimillionaire and best-selling author Michael Masterson did, and with Ready, Fire, Aim he'll show you how to do the same.

How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale - and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization. Through case studies, you'll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance.

Close That Sale! The 24 Best Sales Closing Techniques Ever Discovered is perhaps the most valuable small book in the world of selling and business today. In 25 fast-moving chapters, based on thousands of sales conversations, and the experience of more than 1,000,000 salespeople worldwide, you learn how to make more sales, faster than you ever thought possible.

Finally, a book that speaks to the heart of small business struggles! Small Business, Big Opportunity is a beacon of hope for entrepreneurs drowning in overwhelm. Beverlee’s expertise shines through as she provides actionable strategies to streamline operations, empower your team, and finally make sense of your numbers.

Did you know the typical small business owner works three to four months just to earn enough profit to pay taxes? Whether you've been in business for several decades or are breaking ground as a new entrepreneur, taxes are a significant expenditure. They must be accounted for and incorporated into your business plan from the very beginning. Failing to account for taxes when planning, budgeting, and assessing revenue goals for a business is like failing to account for the expense of your rent or mortgage.

Not confident with your negotiating skills? This book will cure you! A must-have for any small business owner, The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Negotiating is full of helpful tips and strategies for getting what you want without alienating your clients and suppliers. You will learn to analyze your wants, needs, advantages, and disadvantages going in, maintain your resolve, and see the negotiation through to a successful end. Topics include position bargaining, contracts, purchases, conflict resolution, and more.

Why do so many business owners dread looking at the numbers? Financial statements, ledgers, profit and loss reports--many avoid these and treat them like junk mail and phone solicitors. Nevertheless, it’s true--you’re not a numbers person. How can you learn to make sense out of all this Greek? This easy-to-follow guide demystifies your company's financial dashboard: the Net Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet.