Small Business Management

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.

In 2010, Tommy Mello became the sole owner/operator of a single garage door service business with $50,000 in debt. Today, A1Garage generates over $30 million in annual revenue, with over 250 employees in 12 states. He shows home service business owners how he did it, and they, too, can in Home Service Millionaire. If you’re like most home service business owners, you are probably just scraping by. You can’t grow your business because there aren’t any more hours in a day.

ALL IN is the pinnacle book in Mike Michalowicz's Entrepreneurship Simplified series, setting the standard for building high-performing teams in today’s challenging work environment. Whether dealing with remote work, flex schedules, or generational divides, ALL IN provides a proven framework for recruiting top talent, transforming underperformers into superstars, and cultivating a culture where every employee is as dedicated as an owner.

There can be no doubt about the credentials of Bill George, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, who has been named one of Business Week's "Top 25 Managers". In Authentic Leadership, George lays out his plan for improving corporate America's flaws through responsible leadership.

Our planet is suffering from serious environmental problems: coastal flooding due to severe storms caused in part by atmospheric pollution, diminishing natural resources such as clean water, and so on. But while these problems plague planet Earth, two-thirds of our globe is ocean. The seas can be home to pioneers, seasteaders, who are willing to homestead the Blue Frontier. Oil platforms and cruise ships already inhabit the waters; now it's time to take the next step to full-fledged ocean civilizations.

Like financial classics The Latte Factor and The Richest Man in Babylon, The Money Tree uses a compelling story with captivating characters to share its core insight: You are never at the mercy of fortune as long as you have an appetite for hard work and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone.

In an impatient world of infobesity, people don't want more information - they want to be intrigued and they want to be intrigued fast. After all, goldfish have longer attention spans than humans - nine seconds to our eight. So, right now, people want to know, "How is this relevant and useful to me? Why are you worth my valuable time, mind, and dime?" Bestselling author and ace communication strategist Sam Horn reveals her "secret sauce" for truly connecting with people - whether it's one or one million.

Do you have trouble keeping your team focused, motivated, and committed to the pursuit of their assigned goals? The truth is, the majority of bosses fail to inspire their employees to be engaged and productive at work. And they're often frustrated by their inability to incite their team to action.

Just because you don’t have cash doesn’t mean you don’t want and need things. According to authors and business gurus Karen Hoffman and Shera Dalin, it’s time to get a little creative. Most people have a skill they can use—it’s just a matter of figuring out what that is and how to use it to get something else. From piano lessons in exchange for haircuts to an engine tune-up in exchange for house painting, The Art of Barter offers step-by-step instructions.

Entrepreneur Voices on Growth Hacking shares the inspirational stories of unconventional entrepreneurs who retooled companies and industries and were rewarded handsomely for it while giving you the tools you need to do the same.

If you are the owner of a home-improvement company of any kind and you want to make quantum leaps in the results you get from your life and your business - this book is for you. Inside this book, entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and host of The Wealthy Contractor podcast Brian Kaskavalciyan will share with you the seven “secrets” that drive the results of every wealthy contractor.

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead - and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they're mopping floors and scrubbing toilets.

Hype Yourself is an invaluable toolkit for getting you and your business featured in the media: newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. Crammed full of insider advice, from the building blocks of your PR strategy to the execution of creative campaigns, it includes expert tips from journalists and industry specialists and is supported by a stack of online resources. Lucy Werner has over 15 years of publicity experience, including running her own specialist consultancy focused on startups and entrepreneurs.

You check email the moment you lift your head off the pillow in the morning. You bring work with you on vacation, sneak glances at your smart phone during family dinners, and take business calls and texts at your kid's sports games. It's as if you've been forced to make a choice between your company or your life, sacrificing time for yourself and family for the sake of career success. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach.

"I've set up my corporation. Now what do I do?" All too often business owners and real estate investors are asking this question. They have formed their protective entity - be it a corporation, LLC, or LP - and don't know what to do next. Run Your Own Corporation provides the solution to this very common dilemma. Breaking down the requirements chronologically (i.e. the first day, first quarter, first year), the audiobook sets forth all the tax and corporate and legal matters new business owners must comply with.

Jay Abraham, a trusted advisor to many top corporations, brings together more than two hundred brilliant business-career ideas in this, his first major audiobook. Abraham reveals numerous new profit and personal advancement opportunities “hidden in plain sight” in and around every business organization today. He also demonstrates how all of us can maximize our careers and our incomes by applying fresh ways of looking at our many options in the vast new opportunity society that’s around us.

In this absorbing tale, you watch the timeless principles of servant leadership unfold through the story of John Daily, a businessman whose outwardly successful life is spiraling out of control. He is failing miserably in each of his leadership roles as boss, husband, father, and coach. To get his life back on track, he reluctantly attends a weeklong leadership retreat at a remote Benedictine monastery.

"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.