First Business

Your First Leadership Job is divided into two sections. Part One introduces the concept of catalyst leader - one who sparks energy, passion, and commitment in others. Your transition to catalyst leader is a major step in your leadership journey. This book provides essential tips to put you on the catalyst path. Part Two devotes 13 chapters to critical core leadership competencies, including coaching for success, hiring the best employees, and turning dreaded appraisals into discussions that propel performance. It also includes a chapter for first-time female leaders.

In your career, there is one transition that stands out as the most crucial - going from individual contributor to competent manager. New managers have to learn how to lead others rather than do the work themselves, to win trust and respect, to motivate, and to strike the right balance between delegation and control. Many fail to make the transition successfully. In this timeless, indispensable book, Harvard Business School professor and leadership guru Linda Hill traces the experiences of 19 new managers over the course of their first year in the role.

The audio is focused on the most important knowledge and skills you must know to handle many life-threatening situations in everyday life. The material is accurate, up-to-date, and broken down into bite-sized chapters.

Give your hard work a voice and amplify your impact by communicating in a way that makes people want to listen and respond—storytelling with you will help you do it.

Most people typically listen with the intent to reply. Habit 5 explores the essential communication skill of listening to truly understand, which helps us to avoid reading our own autobiographies into other people's lives. It opens us up to one another's perspectives, ideas, and emotions. Then real communication can happen, new and better ideas can be conceived, and everyone involved can learn from one another.

From a businessman who is extraordinarily humble yet is considered one of the world's most visionary, The First Billion Is the Hardest is both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global energy and natural-resource wars - of vital interest to anyone who has a stake in America's future.

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

The world of work continues to grow more complex with hybrid work, a shortage of talent, and a mandate for more inclusive environments with a true DEI perspective. These changes have created many exciting opportunities but also carry big risks for HR managers on the front lines in organizations in transition.

Harvard Business Review is the foremost destination for smart management thinking. Now, at its 100th anniversary, this commemorative volume brings together the most influential ideas since its inception. With thought leaders including Michael E. Porter, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Peter Drucker, and Clayton M. Christensen, this book puts HBR's greatest concepts at your fingertips. You'll learn how these groundbreaking ideas continue to be relevant in today's business context—and what to keep in mind as you prepare for the future.

You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from your subordinates, from those above you, and from your peers and customers. You're not alone. As Harvard Business School's Linda Hill and manager and executive Kent Lineback reveal in Being the Boss, becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey. It requires trial and error, endless effort, and slowly acquired personal insight. Many managers never complete the journey and instead just learn how to get by. At worst, they become terrible bosses.

In The Employee Advantage, behavioral economist Stephan Meier explains why organizations must value their employees as much as—if not more than—their customers: those that pivot toward an employee-centric model will be more profitable, innovative, and appealing to top talent.

Real estate investors have systems for almost everything—to make the phone ring, to find deals, and to fix, rent, and sell their properties. What they don't have is a system for their finances that ensures positive cash flow and profitability. This is why many investors end up scrambling to cover payroll, taxes, and even their own bills. In Profit First for Real Estate Investing, real estate finance expert, David Richter, reveals his simple cash flow system that not only makes "pay yourself first" possible; it makes it easy.

Fitness Professionals live paycheck to paycheck despite working a heroic amount of hours. This audiobook teaches a system that increases their cash flow so they can be home at dinner time and their gym can thrive. The system is simple to learn and implement.

Filled with sharply drawn, emotionally powerful senses, Walk Through Fire traces the hardships Sheila faced in her marriage and her professional life. Despite her skills as a violinist and music teacher, as well as her obvious entrepreneurial talent, she had to fight to overcome self-doubt and fears of failure. Sheila vividly details her struggles, including battling institutional racism, losing a child, suffering emotional abuse in her thirty-three-year marriage, and plunging into a deep depression with her divorce. And yet, out of that pain came renewed purpose and meaning.

As a 24-year-old line cook, Ellen Marie Bennett couldn't stand the kitchen staff’s poorly designed, cheaply made aprons. So when her head chef announced he was ordering a new batch, she blurted out, “Chef, I have an apron company” - even though she had no company, no business plan - just a glimmer of a design idea and a business license. Through hustle and a willingness to leap into the unknown, time and time again, she built that first order into a multi-million-dollar company called Hedley & Bennett.

One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school and a best seller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and issues that are the stuff of legal education; it also brings alive the anxiety and competitiveness, with others and, even more, with oneself, that set the tone in this crucible of character building.

Product management has become a critical function for modern organizations, from small startups to corporate enterprises. And yet, the day-to-day work of product management remains largely misunderstood. In theory, product managers are high-flying visionaries who build products that people love. In practice, they're hard-working facilitators who bring clarity and focus to their teams. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition, Matt LeMay provides real-world guidance for current and aspiring product managers.

Popular personal finance educator Steve Adcock delivers a fun, insightful, and hands-on discussion of how to build financial security, retire early, and give back to the community. You’ll learn to focus on yourself and your family first, creating personal wealth for the purpose of giving back to others. In the book, the author explains that “saving money” isn’t a goal in and of itself, but rather the end product of the personal wealth equation: Wealth = Income + Investments – Lifestyle.

How can women become effective leaders in large organizations without sacrificing who they are, as women and as mothers? This audiobook answers the question: They should live out the 10 characteristics of today's winning leaders. These characteristics - compassion, honesty, and authenticity, for example - were once seen as feminine weaknesses in the command-and-control corporate world. But today, in an inclusive and connected world, they define the leader who strengthens organizations rather than undermines them.

Competing in the global economy isn't unlike guerrilla warfare. Your competitors come at you from unexpected places with surprising force, and the marketplace is constantly shifting. As a leader, what do you do to empower your business and your people not only to survive but to thrive - and win? First, Fast, Fearless is a practical guide for the business leader who wants to learn from the best of the best how to build and lead effective teams in conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and constant change.