Small Business Management

Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

The ultimate guide to managing your career - at every level, through every transition - The McKinsey Edge culls the best practices of an exclusive group of executives and consultants from McKinsey & Company, the legendary consulting firm that services eighty percent of the world's largest corporations. Drawing on his time as an engagement manager with McKinsey, Hattori presents rigorously selected, battle-tested tips that will give you the edge you need to up your game, raise your profile, and take your career to the next level-using a proven four-step program:

The essential skill of creating and maintaining new businesses - the art of the entrepreneur - can be summed up in a single word: managing. In High Output Management, Andrew S. Grove, former chairman and CEO (and employee number three) of Intel, shares his perspective on how to build and run a company. Born of Grove’s experiences at one of America’s leading technology companies, this legendary management book is a Silicon Valley staple, equally appropriate for sales managers, accountants, consultants, and teachers, as well as CEOs and start-up founders.

Running a business involves a constant learning curve. And that applies whether you’re a rookie entrepreneur just starting out with a great idea for a new business or a more established small business owner with a quickly growing business that needs to expand. When it comes to running a business, knowing your numbers is one of the most important things you need to know. Without a good grasp of financial terms, you could be operating a glorified hobby and not a real business. Also, financing your business is probably a top concern of yours.

People often spend years on working on startup ideas that fail - and they could have known long before, had they asked the hard questions earlier. Five-time tech founder Dave Parker has been there, and in Trajectory: Startup he offers a path to get you from ideation to launch and revenue in just six months. Parker shares advice on: what makes a good idea that makes money; recruiting and working with cofounders; asking customers what product they want (customer development); how to build a tech product even as a non-tech founder; and more.

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to earn millions while you sit on the beach and enjoy your life? In The Unemployed Millionaire, you'll learn why it's no longer a pipe dream but a real possibility. The lowering of trade barriers and the emergence of the Internet have made it possible for almost anyone to set up a business from anywhere.

> Hire and Keep the Best People details 21 of the most important, proven principles of employee recruitment and retention. It tells you everything you need to know to attract the most capable, committed employees and to make sure they continue to be active contributors to the company for years to come. Action exercises will help you apply the techniques immediately and see the results for yourself.

In April of 2000, Gary Erickson turned down a $120 million offer to buy his thriving company. Today, instead of taking it easy for the rest of his life and enjoying a luxurious retirement, he's working harder than ever. Why would any sane person pass up the financial opportunity of a lifetime?

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.”

Starting with nothing more than a home-brewing kit, Sam Calagione turned his entrepreneurial dream into a foamy reality in the form of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, one of America's best and fastest-growing craft breweries. In this newly updated second edition, Calagione offers a deeper real-world look at entrepreneurship and what it takes to operate and grow a successful business.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.

It's been over a decade since Verne Harnish's best-selling book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits was first released. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't is the first major revision of this business classic. In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business.

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.

While Erik Z. Severinghaus has been to the top of the physical world (literally climbing Everest) and the business world (exiting companies for hundreds of millions of dollars), what has defined his journey is not the successes...but rather, the hard times of loneliness and self-doubt that nearly cost him his accomplishments and his life. This guidebook passes along the lessons needed in those dark times, with the hope that it will help every entrepreneur who is going through this struggle understand their journey and build the mental resiliency to succeed.

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that the Objectives and Key Results system has spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Here is Trump in action—how he runs his organization and how he runs his life—as he meets the people he needs to meet, chats with family and friends, clashes with enemies, and challenges conventional thinking. But even a maverick plays by rules, and Trump has formulated time-tested guidelines for success. He isolates the common elements in his greatest accomplishments; he shatters myths; he names names, spells out the zeros, and fully reveals the deal-maker's art. And throughout, Trump talks—really talks—about how he does it.

Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas realities. This explosive combination is the key to getting everything you want out of your business. It worked for Disney. It worked for McDonald's. It worked for Ford. It can work for you. From the author of the best-selling Traction, Rocket Fuel details the integral roles of the visionary and integrator and explains how an effective relationship between the two can help your business thrive.

Are you among the thousands of retailers frustrated by market challenges and looking for ways to take control of your business? Are you looking for the advice of an expert consultant, but unable to spend the money? Then The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business is for you.

Negotiation has always been at the heart of solving problems at work. Yet today, when people in organizations are asked to do more with less, be responsive 24/7, and manage in rapidly changing environments, negotiation is more essential than ever. What has been missed in much of the literature of the past 30 years is that negotiations in organizations always take place within a context - of organizational culture, of prior negotiations, of power relationships - that dictates which issues are negotiable and by whom.