Small Business Leadership

Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it's difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you're likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don't have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees.

Over more than 20 years in business, Bronwyn Reid has seen time and time again how winning one initial contract with a “big name” can be the spark that lets a small company realize its potential growth. But as Bronwyn knows from firsthand experience, becoming a supplier to a large company isn’t easy - and there’s a lot to know and do. But almost everything that has been written about the small business/big business relationship is from the big company point of view.

The Business of Expertise, David’s previous book, set the stage by suggesting a narrow focus and then capitalizing on the patterns that emerge from repeated application of your expertise. This book builds on that work by suggesting how to craft a consulting practice with those insights.

"Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You've got a shot at making this work." So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock.

Not confident with your negotiating skills? This book will cure you! A must-have for any small business owner, The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Negotiating is full of helpful tips and strategies for getting what you want without alienating your clients and suppliers. You will learn to analyze your wants, needs, advantages, and disadvantages going in, maintain your resolve, and see the negotiation through to a successful end. Topics include position bargaining, contracts, purchases, conflict resolution, and more.

How can you take your skills and expertise and package it to become a successful consultant? There are proven time-tested principles, strategies, tactics, and best practices the most successful consultants use to start, run, and grow their consulting business. Consulting Success teaches you what they are.

The first thing Sophia Amoruso sold online wasn’t fashion - it was a stolen book. She spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and dumpster diving. By twenty-two, she had resigned herself to employment, but was still broke, directionless, and working a mediocre day job she’d taken for the health insurance. It was there that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Eight years later, she is the founder, CEO, and creative director of Nasty Gal, a $100 million plus online fashion retailer with more than 350 employees.

Would you like to be able to draw people towards you like a magnet? This book is NOT just another communication book and is NOT just a book of tips. This is the ultimate communication system for talking to anybody, anywhere, and in any situation. Using the scientific principles of communication and ©POWER2MIND technology, it will have you talking and communicating to anyone with confidence, charm, and conviction, rapidly and naturally.

Blue Ocean Shift is the essential follow-up to Blue Ocean Strategy, the classic 3.6 million copy global best seller by world-renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Drawing on more than a decade of new work, Kim and Mauborgne show you how to move beyond competing, inspire your people's confidence, and seize new growth, guiding you step by step through how to take your organization from a red ocean crowded with competition to a blue ocean of uncontested market space.

The standard text on innovation advises would-be innovators to conduct creative brainstorming sessions and seek input from outsiders - users or communities. This kind of innovating can be effective at improving products but not at capturing bigger opportunities in the marketplace. In this book, Roberto Verganti offers a new approach - one that does not set out to solve existing problems, but to find breakthrough experiences. There is no brainstorming - which produces too many ideas, unfiltered - but a vision, subject to criticism.

Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, co-authors of the New York Times business best seller Raving Fans, are back with Gung Ho! Here is an invaluable management tool that outlines foolproof ways to increase productivity by fostering excellent morale in the workplace. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to stay on top in today's ultra-competitive business world.

Gary Vaynerchuk—the inspiring and unconventional entrepreneur who introduced us to the concept of crush it—knows how to get things done, have fun, and be massively successful. A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.

Samit has been at the helm of businesses in the ecommerce, digital video, social media, mobile communications, and software industries, helping to navigate them through turbulent economic times and guide them through necessary transformation so that they stay ahead of the curve and profitable. In Disrupt You!, he reveals how specific strategies that help companies flourish can be applied at an individual level. By challenging assumptions, pinpointing one's unique value, and identifying weaknesses in the structure of current industries, anyone can achieve success and lasting prosperity.

Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first start-up company from founders who have been there many times before.

These six daily practices will fuel your efforts to create and sustain positive change in your life. Now The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs brings you these principles in a whole new light - alongside the entrepreneurial elevation principles and the entrepreneur's elevation skills. These are essential skills that you need to create a successful business and personal life.

Explore the universe of potential buyers. Learn how to assemble a team of expert advisors to prepare your business for sale. Walk step by step through a typical investment-banker-led midmarket sale process from start to finish. Adam Coffey has spent the last 20 years as CEO of three private-equity-backed national service companies. Through his experience executing a buy-and-build strategy, he has bought and sold more than 100 companies ranging in size from $1 million to $1 billion. Selling your business is an art.

Entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses ranging from established companies to early stage startups to grow revenues, drive innovation, and emerge as truly modern organizations poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st century.

Jerry Colonna helps start-up CEOs make peace with their demons, the psychological habits and behavioral patterns that have helped them to succeed - molding them into highly accomplished individuals - yet have been detrimental to their relationships and ultimate well-being. Now, this venture capitalist turned executive coach shares his unusual yet highly effective blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial straight talk to help leaders overcome their own psychological traumas.

Ken Langone has seen it all on his way to a net worth beyond his wildest dreams. A pillar of corporate America for decades, he's a co-founder of Home Depot, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, and a world-class philanthropist (including $200 million for NYU's Langone Health). In this memoir he finally tells the story of his unlikely rise and controversial career. It's also a passionate defense of the American Dream - of preserving a country in which any hungry kid can reach the maximum potential of his or her talents and work ethic.

With a nod to Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and other ruthless yet highly successful managers, author Dan S. Kennedy delivers the answer. In this new edition, Kennedy expands on his proven (if radical) strategies to get accountability, profitability, and productivity from employees. In his traditional "No B.S." style, Kennedy kicks traditional leadership and management ideas squarely in the teeth with a realistic, straightforward assessment of the real relationship between business owners and their employees.