First Business

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition. Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.

Construction industry business coach, speaker, and author, Shawn Van Dyke, has taken the core concepts of Mike Michalowicz's Profit First and customized them to address the specific needs of the construction industry. Profit First for Contractors addresses the major struggles contractors face and provides clear and actionable guidance on how to overcome them. Shawn shows contractors how to go from simply getting by to becoming permanently profitable.

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.

If you want to start and grow a landscaping business or if you want to demolish self-limiting beliefs and transform yourself into a warrior of a self-employed lawn and be a landscape contractor, then this audiobook will change your life.

Learn to conquer every challenge like a pro with the clear, candid advice in The First-Time Manager. For nearly four decades, this trusted guide has brought newcomers up to speed on the nitty gritty realities of managing people. The updated seventh edition delivers new information that helps you manage across generations, use online performance appraisal tools, persuade with stories, oversee remote employees, build a team dynamic, match a boss’ style, and more.

How do you run a big meeting? Help your employees meet their goals? Hire someone? Master these skills and more with this indispensable guide to the first 30, 60, and 90 days in your new management role. Jump into the job with confidence as you navigate the dos and don'ts of first-time managers, learn to communicate effectively, delegate responsibilities clearly, and build the 5 qualities all great bosses have.

Your successful career in real estate starts here! The first 365 days of working in real estate can be one of the most tumultuous times in your career - full of hard lessons, heart breaks, and hard work. Just because you have a license, doesn’t mean you have a business. But if you get the important stuff right, a great future is yours for the taking. This honest, eye-opening, and completely practical insider's guide shows you how to get where you want to be - even if you're starting from nothing.

High-performance psychologist Michael Gervais presents a groundbreaking guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor of human potential: our fear of people's opinions (FOPO).

Many owners of lawn care and landscape businesses found their companies on the belief that they would make more money working for themselves than they would as employees. Dedicated to the maintenance and beautification of properties, they believe that their hard work and expertise in softscape, hardscape, irrigation, or snow plowing will guarantee their success. But technical knowledge alone won't generate profit or help a company grow.

People don’t open restaurants just because they want to start a business. People open restaurants because they are building a dream. You can create the restaurant of your dreams. You can also be profitable, pay your vendors, your staff, and yourself, and savor the joys of hospitality without stress and uncertainty.

Ronit Enos has been there and in Profit First for Salons, she walks you through exactly what she did to take control of her business — and her life — in this must-listen book for salon, spa, and barbershop owners. Enos teaches you the proven Profit First formula so you can master it to build profits, destroy debt, eliminate the work-overwork cycle, and become financially sound – no matter where you’re starting from.

Martha Piper and Indira Samarasekera had vastly different career paths on their way to becoming the first (and so far only) female presidents of two of Canada's largest and most respected research universities and directors of some of the nation's largest market cap companies, but what they had in common was their gender, their willingness to take risks when leadership opportunities presented themselves, and a work ethic second to none. It was not always easy, pretty, or fair, but it was always the result of choosing to answer the call to lead.

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.

Communication should be clear and concise, and we should get to the point quickly. The problem is we don’t always know how to do this. What does it mean to be concise? How can a complex topic be summarized in just a few lines? This award-winning book is a step-by-step guide for clear, concise communication in everyday work conversations. Being concise is not about trying to condense all the information into 60 seconds. It is about having clear intent, talking about one topic at a time, and focusing on solutions instead of dwelling on problems.

First Things First is a revolutionary guide to managing your time by learning how to balance your life. Traditional time management suggests that working harder, smarter, and faster will help you gain control over your life, and that increased control will bring peace and fulfillment. But the authors of First Things First apply the insights of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to our daily problems of struggling with the ever-increasing demands of work and home life.

Network marketing is one of the fastest-growing career opportunities in the United States. Millions of people just like you have abandoned dead-end jobs for the chance to achieve the dream of growing their own businesses. What many of them find, however, is that the first year in network marketing is often the most challenging---and, for some, the most discouraging.

As a top-performing sales professional, you know how to own your calendar, focus your energy, create opportunities, navigate the sales process, negotiate, and close deals. Yet, if you are like most new sales managers, there is still so much you don’t know and that can trip you up if you aren’t careful. Luckily, Mike Weinberg knows the pitfalls to avoid and mindset changes needed to successfully make the leap. This powerful new resource contains candid guidance on how to master your expanded responsibilities like a pro.

In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition: how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you'll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. What do you want to learn?

Throughout history, leaders have used solitude as a matter of course. Eisenhower wrote memoranda to himself during World War II as a way to think through complex problems. Martin Luther King found moral courage while sitting alone at his kitchen table one night during the Montgomery bus boycott. Jane Goodall used her intuition in the jungles of Central Africa while learning how to approach chimps. Solitude is a state of mind, a space where you can focus on your own thoughts without distraction....

During economic contractions, it becomes much more difficult to sell your products, maintain your customer base, and gain market share. Mistakes become more costly, and failure becomes a real possibility for all those who are not able to make the transition. But imagine being able to sell your products when others cannot, being able to take market share from your competitors, and knowing the precise formulas that would allow you to expand your sales while others make excuses.