Small Business Management

This book is a practical guide that explores how startup entrepreneurs and business leaders, who hold no design degrees, can integrate service design into their development cycles to create sustainable, desirable, and profitable new services.

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.

How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm? One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking: rethinking convention and breaking "rules" that aren't rules.

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.

In Scaling Up Excellence, best-selling author Robert Sutton and Stanford colleague Huggy Rao tackle a challenge that determines every organization’s success: scaling up further, faster, and more effectively as a program or an organization creates a larger footprint. Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever-better work practices.

No matter how motivated and energetic you are - even if you're the greatest salesperson on the planet! - as a network marketer with limited time, there's only so much money you can make without great people to help you sell your products. Recruiting is the life force of any network marketing, multilevel marketing, or party plan business; it lifts the ceiling off your income, the key that will allow you to keep checks rolling in above and beyond what you can do yourself.

Drawing on the entrepreneurial life lessons Taulbert learned from his uncle Cleve, Who Owns the Ice House? chronicles Taulbert’s journey from life in the Mississippi Delta at the height of legal segregation to being recognized by Time magazine as "one of our nation’s most outstanding emerging entrepreneurs". Who Owns the Ice House? reaches into the past to remind us of the timeless and universal principles that can empower anyone to succeed.

What's holding you back? Marshall Goldsmith is an expert at helping global leaders overcome their (sometimes unconscious) annoying habits and attaining a higher level of success. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag. But with this audiobook, you'll get Marshall's great advice without the hefty fee!

Good coaching is a skill that requires a depth of understanding and plenty of practice if it is to deliver its astonishing potential. This extensively revised and expanded new audio edition of Coaching for Performance clearly explains the principles of coaching and illustrates them with examples of high performance from business and sport. It continues to follow the GROW sequence (Goals, Reality, Options, Will) and clarifies the process and practice of coaching.

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.

The Art of Opportunity offers a path toward new growth, providing the perspective and methods you need to make innovation happen. Written by a team of experts with both academic and industry experience - and a client roster composed of some of the world's leading companies - this book provides you with the necessary tools to help you capture growth instead of chasing it.

How did Apple rebound from a decade-long slump? By creating a product, the iPod, that transformed not just the company, but the entire music industry. How did Whole Foods turn itself into a supermarket empire? By challenging the sacred cows of the food business. And how did Dove differentiate its line of beauty products? By creating the concept of "real beauty". In Big Think Strategy, Bernd Schmitt shows you how to "think big" by sourcing and implementing bold ideas that change markets.

Every leader is empowered to set their metric beat to make sure the company is doing everything it needs to do to grow their profit. This audiobook draws on the wisdom of some of the best business minds of our time, as well as the author's own experiences as a serial entrepreneur, to create a methodology that shows you a practical step-by-step process; how to rhythmically integrate all the crucial parts of your business.

Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders - as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a successful company or career.

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.

This book teaches you the vital skills you need to confront others, communicate effectively, and live a more conflict-free life. In this updated edition, communications expert Barbara Pachter shares a practical, step-by-step guide to tackling conflicts in any situation, including a new section on navigating sticky situations online.

Every business leader and entrepreneur should strive for success as well as deep fulfillment and happiness. Few, however, if they are being honest, actually achieve their goals. This causes great disappointment and disillusionment. Many decide they must make a choice between these seemingly opposing states. Is it even possible to be spiritual, incredibly happy and fulfilled and wealthy - all at the same time?

Every start-up founder feels overwhelmed and uncertain at various times. From Start-Up to Grown-Up gives you, the founder and CEO of a great start-up, the knowledge and experience that executive coach Alisa Cohn has gained from helping companies such as Etsy, Foursquare, InVision, and The Wirecutter become headline names. The audiobook provides you with effective and practical ways of maximizing your strengths, defusing your triggers, controlling your self-doubt, and building on your motivators.

With over $500 million a year in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. But beginning in the 1980s, the Bassett company suffered from an influx of cheap Chinese furniture as the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately was forced to send its production offshore to Asia. Only one man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who is now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million.