First Business

Packed with behind-the-peel stories, hard-earned lessons, and a few other surprises, Fans First teaches you how to stand out in your marketplace, drive explosive growth, and inspire fanatical loyalty.

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.

The First-Time Leader provides basic frameworks, processes, and tools to help first-time leaders and their teams deliver better results faster. Leading is about inspiring and enabling others to do their absolute best, together, to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose.

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?

Everything you've ever wanted to know about publishing but were too afraid to ask is right here in this funny, candid guide by acclaimed author Courtney Maum. Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book has over 150 contributors from all walks of the industry, including internationally best-selling authors Anthony Doerr, Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, Lisa Ko, R. O. Kwon, Rebecca Makkai, and Ottessa Moshfegh, alongside cult favorites Sarah Gerard, Melissa Febos, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Mira Jacob.

It's weird and frankly bewildering that the most talented women in the world are often the ones struggling to make fabulous money from their talents. In Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, you'll get the tools and inspiration you need to go to the next level of wealth - whether you're starting from scratch or itching to break through the million-dollar mark.

Author Matt LeMay explains agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice. Examples from a wide variety of organizations, including small nonprofits and global financial enterprises, bring to life the on-the-ground realities of agile across industries and functions.

Having lived nearly her entire life below the poverty line before going on to attain wealth and success as an entrepreneur and investor, Arlan Hamilton knows that money is power—but not for the reasons most people believe. Money is power, she says, because it provides us with options: to pursue our passions, take risks, and change our situation in life.

Stephen R. Covey is an internationally respected leadership authority and founder of Covey Leadership Center. He received his M.B.A. from Harvard and a doctorate from Brigham Young University, where he was a professor of business management and organizational behavior for 20 years. His book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 30 languages.

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.

Recruiters and recruiting firm owners are overwhelmed, frustrated with their clients, candidates, and by completely unpredictable revenue. Most training simply puts recruiters in more overwhelm with marginal results. It’s possible to go from annoying vendor to trusted adviser, from rollercoaster revenue to predictable income, and from total overwhelm to clarity. It’s possible to build a recruiting business that runs without you there!

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.

Too often, team dysfunction leads to abysmal productivity and zero innovation for your organization, as well as misery and wasted time for you. Most team members sit and wait, feeling trapped in a team that just isn't working. You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done presents a radical new idea: You can change your team. Author Liane Davey shows how you, from any seat at the table, even without support from your colleagues or your team leader, can transform even a toxic team.

Business partnerships are wonderfully complex entities. As with all relationships, they are vulnerable and subject to fallibility. If you think the fact that one in every two marriages in the United States ends in divorce (that's one every 36 seconds!) is unbelievable, then consider this: The number is significantly higher for business partnerships; about 70 percent of them fail. As a business partnership relationship coach, my mission is to help flip this fail/succeed ratio.

It’s time to stop feeling guilty and lean into the sacrifice. Your willingness to chase your dreams is what sets you apart, and your personal competitive advantage and the strategies presented in True Founder will help you double down on the sacrifice.

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....

It is estimated that we make approximately 35,000 decisions every day. Right now, there is at least one decision we can make that will have a powerful ripple effect across all aspects of our life. But One Decision isn't about taking one overwhelming big step; it's about starting with a single, important step that we have the choice to make every day: the decision to be authentic. To be you, and to do so without doubt, without second-guessing, without worry or anxiety.

In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily-white business world, he married a White woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally he set his White contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them.

Developed for business professionals, The First Two Hours teaches you how to design your day, rather than be at the mercy of it. Using research on neuroscience, energy flow, and the body's natural rhythms, it divides the workday into manageable blocks and helps you determine when you are most resourceful, and therefore when you should complete your most demanding tasks.

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.