Small Business Leadership

Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education.

Stratis Morfogen has been one of the most innovative names in New York City's hospitality scene for decades. From bringing the famed Fulton Fish Market online in 1997 to pioneering the automat movement with Brooklyn Dumpling Shop to opening a 25,000 square foot venue in Times Square during the pandemic, Morfogen continues to disrupt the status quo. In Be a Disruptor, Morfogen provides an unconventional, real-world education for any entrepreneur by sharing how he beat the odds in the cutthroat, mob-influenced New York City restaurant world.

Ten years ago the idea of getting into a stranger's car or walking into a stranger's home would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries.

Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they will be lauded as experts on the merits of their work. But that's simply not true anymore. To make a name for yourself, you have to capitalize on your unique perspective and knowledge and inspire others to listen and take action. But becoming a "thought leader" is a mysterious and opaque process. Where do the ideas come from, and how do they get noticed?

Here are really two books in one: McNeilly's synthesis of Sun Tzu's ideas into six strategic principles for the business executive, plus the entire text of Samuel B. Griffith's popular translation of The Art of War. Within, McNeilly explains how to gain market share without inciting competitive retaliation, how to attack a competitor's weak points, and how to maximize the power of market information for competitive advantage.

What’s missing in most small businesses and why is it that most fail? In Zen and the Art of Small Business, Michael Gerber, not only answers that question, but provides a deep understanding of the process for transforming any small business into a “sacred space.”

Ask better questions, and you will get better results. Top business coach Mark Moses has identified four critical questions every business leader should explore on their journey to business and life success.

In 1965, John Brink left the Netherlands for Canada equipped with only a single suitcase and $25.47 in cash. He had no connections, he didn’t speak the language, and he’d never finished elementary school, yet he was convinced he could make his dream to build his own sawmill come true. With a tenacity bordering on obsession, John achieved his dreams...and then some. In this lively autobiography, John distills a half-century’s hard work to share 10 simple takeaways.

In The 10% Entrepreneur, Patrick McGinnis shows you how, by investing just 10% of your time and resources, you can become an entrepreneur without losing a steady paycheck. McGinnis details a step-by-step plan that takes you from identifying your first entrepreneurial project to figuring out the smartest way to commit resources to it. He shows you how to select and engage in projects that will provide you with upside outside the office while making you better at your day job.

Rob Sperry is one of the top coaches and leaders in the network marketing industry. With decades of experience and success in his network marketing business, Rob is now known for hosting the most prestigious masterminds in all of the network marketing profession. Rob has a passion for processes, making it simple, and finding wins that create momentum for everyone in the network marketing business. Rob's life's work is coaching and showing people the way to create the lifestyle that they have always wanted through network marketing.

In today's complex, highly competitive, global environment, those who will survive and thrive in this new world of work are individuals, teams, and organizations who can maintain high levels of accountability and remain focused on must-achieve desired results. Achieve with Accountability is your personal handbook for awakening your (or your team or organization's) inner confidence, drive, perseverance, determination, resolve, and can-do mindset.

"What do I need to do?" It's almost always the wrong question that an entrepreneur asks when creativity seems to have been lost. When you're stuck and the journals and books you've been reading and going to the masterminds and conventions and seminars you've been attending haven't led to any breakthroughs. When your notepads full of "proven best practices" should have brought you to the next level but haven't. In this paradigm-shifting work, serial entrepreneur Patrick Gentempo explains why the primary question you need to ask as a business leader is "Who should we be?"

Confronting change is incredibly hard, both organizationally and personally. Yet the pace of change in our world will never be slower than it is right now, says Beth Comstock, the former vice chair and head of marketing and innovation at GE. Imagine It Forward is an inspiring, fresh, candid, and deeply personal audiobook about how to grapple with the challenges to change we face every day. It is a different kind of narrative, a big-picture audiobook that combines Comstock’s personal story in leading change with vital lessons on overcoming the inevitable roadblocks.

With the horrific failure rates of restaurants, how can you ensure yours will not only survive but grow and thrive? If your restaurant sucks, it is because you suck at running it; 100 percent. Donald Burns, author of Your Restaurant Sucks has created a methodology and mindset honed from his Special Operations training in the US Air Force. As a Pararescueman, his training developed a keen sense of purposeful and fast decision making. In the military, he learned the phrase, "embrace the suck".

In every sector, there's an outlier. In the pharmaceutical industry, it’s Merck. In discount retail, it's Family Dollar. It used to be Wrigley in candy and Maytag in appliances. Other superstars have been hidden in plain sight, like Heartland Express in trucking or Linear Technology in semiconductors. How do these exceptional companies deliver superior perfor­mance over the long run despite facing the same constraints as competitors? What are they doing differently? What can we learn from them?

With The Strategy Activation Playbook, author Aric Wood, CEO of XPLANE, teaches you how to do what he's helped organizations around the world accomplish: align and activate the people in your organization to execute your strategy and realize your vision.

Behind every entrepreneur's success story, there's a never-ending list of gut-wrenching failures, missed opportunities, and jaw-dropping setbacks. Real estate mogul and serial entrepreneur Manny Khoshbin is one of those entrepreneurs with a story of perseverance that will make you believe in the American Dream all over again. Driven: The Never-Give-Up Roadmap to Massive Success goes beyond Manny's personal ride through the entrepreneurial journey to deliver the habits, mindset, and insights aspiring entrepreneurs need to turn dreams into reality.

In his much-anticipated memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder shares the business and life lessons he learned as well as the adventures he had while helping transform the mom-and-pop business his mother founded in 1946 in the family kitchen into the beloved brand and ultimately into the iconic global prestige beauty company it is today.

In Eat, Sleep, Innovate, innovation expert Scott Anthony and his impressive team of coauthors use groundbreaking research in behavioral science to provide a first-of-its-kind playbook for empowering individuals and teams to be their most curious and creative - every single day.

Forget about building a business - businesses fail and fade into oblivion. Start a revolution instead. James Watt started a rebellion against tasteless mass market beers by founding BrewDog, now one of the world’s best-known and fastest growing craft breweries, famous for beers, bars, and crowdfunding. In this smart, funny book, he shares his story and explains how you too can tear up the rule book and start a company on your own terms. It’s an anarchic, DIY guide to entrepreneurship - and a new manifesto for business.