First Business

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....

Between the constant pressures of job performance and demands on your time, it’s easy to lose sight of your values, letting them shift out of alignment. Those simple misalignments are keeping you from feeling joyful and fulfilled.

David Rakoff's best-selling collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of today's funniest and most insightful writers. Now, in Don't Get Too Comfortable, Rakoff moves from the personal to the public, journeying into the land of unchecked plenty that is contemporary America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily skewered.

Here's the hard truth about leadership: It either forces you to get stronger or it slowly destroys your life. There is no in-between. Kevin Lawrence has discovered 17 habits that allow any leader to transcend the perils of success and keep achieving - habits that have already helped hundreds of CEOs and executives become stronger and more resilient.

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.

Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between sealing the deal or losing the account, getting a promotion, or getting a pink slip. It's essential to be pitch perfect - to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language - both verbal and nonverbal.

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.

From the CEO of the Pavilion community, Sam Jacobs, Kind Folks Finish First weaves practical business lessons with fresh perspectives on how you can achieve success. The ideas in this book are backed by the author's personal experience building a nearly $200-million business rooted in kindness, reciprocity, and deeply held values. More than that, they're proven principles that have helped thousands reach their goals in every arena.

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.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

Learn all the essentials for making your first year of teaching a success! In this exciting audiobook, internationally renowned educator Todd Whitaker teams up with his daughters - Madeline, an elementary teacher, and Katherine, a secondary teacher - to share advice and inspiration. They offer step-by-step guidance to thriving in your new role and overcoming the challenges that many new teachers face.

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.

Author Cyndi Thomason has taken the core concepts of the Profit First methodology, created by Mike Michalowicz, and customized them to address the specific needs of the ecommerce business. Profit First for Ecommerce Sellers addresses the four major struggles and provides clear and actionable guidance on how to overcome them, taking the online seller from simply getting by to becoming permanently profitable.

You're smart. You graduated dental school. But running a business isn't something you just automatically know how to do. Things can get out of hand quickly. Drew Hinrichs, CPA, and Barbara Stackhouse, RDH, MEd, have adapted the core principles of Mike Michalowicz's book Profit First and customized them for dental practice businesses. Profit First for Dentists addresses the specific financial challenges dentists face in their businesses. Using true stories of their clients, they pull back the curtain and share the steps to creating a highly profitable practice.

As a manager, you are prepared to face any challenge when it comes to the work at hand, but you may not be ready to overcome a hostile work environment, a catastrophic disruption in workflow, or any other of a multitude to challenges that can arise, seemingly from nowhere.

Do you dream of holding that globally respected PMP certification, having doors of opportunity swing wide open, and commanding respect in the project management world? It's closer than you think. For 30 long years, we've crafted the perfect map, a guiding star, to scale this mountain. we present to you a study guide that's not just informative—it's transformative. Navigating the path to PMP certification can often seem like a Herculean endeavor.

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.

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.

With a more connected society, due to the pandemic, and online shopping taking over so much retail space, shipping is becoming more central to daily life. There is almost no getting around it. How many of you shop Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.? How many of you have your groceries delivered? Probably a lot more of you now than a few years ago. This means that freight brokers, and the freight industry as a whole, are more needed than ever before.

It's time to level the playing field! You are accustomed to being the first - the first to go to college, the first to start a business. You often enter rooms where no one else looks like you. You're a trailblazer on a mission to create a new legacy for your family. And yet, despite your success, you still work too hard for too little cash. In Profit First for Minority Business Enterprises, Susanne Mariga, CPA, shows you how to implement the proven Profit First cash-management system that has lifted thousands of entrepreneurs out of the struggle and into success.