Small Business Leadership

The best entrepreneurs balance brilliant business ideas with a rigorous commitment to serving their customers' needs. If you read (or listen) to nothing else on entrepreneurship and start-ups, listen to these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your company for enduring success.

A successful optometry practice is a juggling act. You need to know your field of optometry, as well as how to run a small business. Your education has prepared you for the technical ins and outs of optometry practice. But what has prepared you to run a business? The E-Myth Optometrist fills this knowledge gap, giving you a complete toolkit for starting a successful practice from scratch or maximizing an existing practice’s performance.

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.

La verdad es que...la mayoría de los nuevos jefes luchan por mantener a su equipo receptivo y motivado. A menudo, los nuevos gerentes pueden tener problemas para adoptar su rol de liderazgo. Tal vez has trabajado para un acosador alguna vez, y no quieres ser el "chico malo". Te gustaría que tus empleados te miraran con admiración y no con "fastidio".

From the world’s leading high-tech strategist comes the definitive road map to help established companies create next-generation growth.

Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses - or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions - the ones all companies must ask to survive.

Wir leben in einer technologischen Sackgasse. Zwar suggeriert die Globalisierung technischen Fortschritt, doch das vermeintlich Neue, sind vor allem Kopien des Bestehenden. Thiel, Peter, Silicon-Valley-Insider und in der Wirtschaftscommunity bestens bekannter Innovationstreiber ist überzeugt: Globalisierung ist kein Fortschritt, Konkurrenz ist schädlich und nur Monopole sind nachhaltig erfolgreich. Er zeigt: Wahre Innovation entsteht nicht horizontal, sondern sprunghaft - from Zero to One.

You have the ability, right now, to accomplish more than you ever have before. In this powerful, practical program, Brian Tracy shows you how to plot your course to greater success and achievement. Life, Tracy says, is a journey. And as with any other journey, you have to do more than just think happy thoughts about where you want to go. You need clear goals, plans, and schedules to get from wherever you are today to wherever you want to be in the future.

Essentially, this book is for entrepreneurs, business owners, and those who seek a better position for themselves and their talents, but who procrastinate, delay, and hang back. It’s about isolating and overcoming the internal fears that we generate every day like a geyser, triggered by time, events, or shifts in the environment. We are our own worst enemies and we ignore the practical remedies to escape fear because we use our energies instead on blaming everyone else.

What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.

For the past 10 years, Rohit Bhargava’s signature annual Non-Obvious Trend Report has helped over a million readers discover more than 100 trends changing our culture. Now for the first time, Rohit and his team of Non-Obvious trend curators reveal 10 revolutionary new megatrends that are transforming how we work, play, and live.

Author and entrepreneur Mick Spencer offers entrepreneurs an inspiring new road map to success - one that runs against nearly everything you've ever been taught about business. In this book, Spencer presents a solid case that analysis paralysis and endless "preparation" won't get you anywhere - you have to take that leap and do what you really want to do. He challenges you to get outside your comfort zone and, although intimidating, his approach forces you to learn "on the go" and focus on what you can do rather than what you can't.

The LLC Bible provides a clear and concise playbook which explains the positives and negatives of LLCs. You will receive expert advice on choosing members, creating your legal name, filing your Articles of Organization, as well as managing daily operations.

Chris Guillebeau, the best-selling author of The $100 Start Up, has created a practical, actionable guide that can help you turn your passion into paychecks - whether within a traditional company or business, or by striking out on your own.

An ordinary leader is someone who leads a small organization or team that is doing great things. They manage the majority of the world's workforce, but they don't lead large corporations or big government agencies. Ordinary leaders are rarely written about in books or quoted in magazines. They are, however, important. Maybe not globally, but in their own realm of influence, their leadership makes a difference.

The Risk-Driven Business Model will help you manage risk better by showing how the key choices you make in designing your business models either increase or reduce two characteristic types of risk - information risk, when you make decisions without enough information, and incentive-alignment risk, when decision makers' incentives are at odds with the broader goals of the company. Leaders who understand how the structure of their business model affects risk have the power to create wealth, revolutionize industries, and shape a better world.

Para os professores W. Chan Kim e Renée Mauborgne, o resultado de uma concorrência acirrada nada mais é que um oceano vermelho sangrento, repleto de rivais que lutam entre si por uma parcela de lucros cada vez menor. Com base em um estudo de 150 movimentos estratégicos (que abrangem mais de 100 anos e 30 setores), os autores afirmam que o êxito duradouro não decorre da disputa feroz entre concorrentes, mas da criação de “oceanos azuis” – novos e intocados espaços de mercado prontos para o crescimento.

In Victory, best-selling author Brian Tracy applies to business and personal success the same concepts that have helped great leaders triumph in military campaigns throughout history. Using military examples throughout, he provides ambitious, success-oriented listeners with a practical template for reaching their own potential for greatness. This is an indispensable strategic field guide from America's foremost expert on achievement.

The step-by-step guide to building your gym. Tactical, actionable advice from the founder of the world's largest gym mentorship practice. Your business has two parts: your operations and your audience. Each of those two parts can be built according to a recipe. And this is your recipe audiobook.

Whether you're a novice entrepreneur or a seasoned pro, The Small Business Bible is a comprehensive A-to-Z library of everything you might need to know. Not only does it teach new entrepreneurs what works and what doesn't, with scores of tips, hints, insider information, and secrets of success, but it's also a reliable, valuable, and insightful resource for established business owners who want to help their businesses to grow and succeed.