Small Business Motivation

These days it's increasingly rare to have a stable career in any field. More and more of us are blending big company jobs, startup gigs, freelance work, and volunteer side projects. We take chances to expand our knowledge, capabilities, and experience. But how do we make sense of that kind of career-and explain it? Pamela Slim, the acclaimed author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, gives us the tools to have meaningful careers in this new world of work.

Start with a plan. One of the biggest reasons goals fail is that we often don’t put enough thought into what we really want before diving in. Your Goal Guide by Debra Eckerling starts with that first, crucial step: figuring out your goals and putting a plan in place. As a professional writer, communications specialist, and project catalyst with more than 20 years of experience, Eckerling is prepared to help you achieve success.

You don't have to be a mechanical genius to be an inventor. Anyone can invent - a parent wrestling with a baby sling...a coach frustrated with slick-soled running shoes...an office worker determined to keep the computer cords untangled. Inventing is simply finding clever solutions to everyday challenges. Author and inventor Patricia Nolan-Brown has turned common annoyances into ingenious and money-making products.

Do you want to be rich before the age of 40? This is the ultimate guidebook for financial success and how to live well and get rich by the age of 40. It shows that with perseverance and dedication to your goal and to a number of basic general rules, it is possible to elevate your life to the right path and achieve abundance, even if the starting point was not at all easy…to soar from the depths to the heights. The wildly successful author of this book will show you the way!

"What do I need to do?" It's almost always the wrong question that an entrepreneur asks when creativity seems to have been lost. When you're stuck and the journals and books you've been reading and going to the masterminds and conventions and seminars you've been attending haven't led to any breakthroughs. When your notepads full of "proven best practices" should have brought you to the next level but haven't. In this paradigm-shifting work, serial entrepreneur Patrick Gentempo explains why the primary question you need to ask as a business leader is "Who should we be?"

The iconic Sydney to Hobart Race, a 723-mile deepwater challenge - often called the “Everest” of offshore ocean racing - is considered one of the toughest in the world. Unpredictable weather and seas make each race demanding, but in 1998, an unexpected “weather bomb” hit the fleet, creating 80-foot waves and 100-mile-per-hour winds. Many bigger, better-equipped boats tried to maneuver around the storm, but the crew of the AFR Midnight Rambler chose to head directly into its path.

Jaclyn Johnson - the founder and CEO behind Create & Cultivate, the fastest growing online platform and conference for millennial women in business - offers a rallying cry for a new generation of women who are redefining the meaning of work on their own terms: WorkParty. Women who want it all and more, and guess what? They can have it.

A faculty member at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Budak created and teaches the wildly popular course “Becoming a Changemaker,” which has quickly grown into one of the most highly rated courses anywhere on campus. It’s regularly heralded by students as “transformative” and “life changing” but to date has only been accessible to students attending UC Berkeley. Budak is driven by the belief that anyone—regardless of title, personality, race, gender, age, or class—can be a changemaker.

Sara Bliss (yes, that’s her real name) tracked down more than 65 people who transformed their lives to learn how they did it so you can, too. Take the Leap is packed with inspiring profiles, quotes, and other pieces of creative advice from game changers, rule breakers, and side hustlers, including successful entrepreneurs like Barbara Corcoran, Bobbi Brown, writer turned actress (at 40) Jill Kargman, Black Crowes drummer turned sports radio host Steve Gorman, writer Simon Doonan, and NFL player turned artist/activist Aaron Maybin, and many more.

What does it take to create the career you want? It's no secret that the world of work has changed, and we're shifting toward an ever more entrepreneurial, self-reliant, work-from-wherever-you-are economy. That can be a liberating force. But there's a major obstacle professionals face when they contemplate taking the leap: how to actually make money doing what they love. You may have incredible talent and novel ideas, but figuring out how to get started, building your reputation in a new realm, and bringing in a steady flow of new clients can be a daunting prospect.

Tom Golisano understands the fears, risks, and challenges small-business owners face every day - he’s lived it. He has launched and grown his own highly successful businesses and mentored dozens of entrepreneurs, helping them build their own successful companies.

The key to achieving what you set out for - in business and in life - doesn't lie in perfectly executed strategy. The greatest tool you have is your own mindset - it determines your ability to adapt and persevere. While most aspiring entrepreneurs think the next business strategy will manifest the life they desire, successful entrepreneurs know it's the emotional and mental "shifts" that will bring you closer to your goals. No one is better equipped to explore these shifts than Ajit Nawalkha, cofounder of Mindvalley and one of the world's leading entrepreneurs and business coaches.

Meant for More is the rare personal development book that offers tangible skills for all areas of your life, including work, to increase your success while also doing good - a How to Win Friends and Influence People for the modern age. It shows you how to stand out in an increasingly noisy world by simply offering your unique skills and talents and helping others do the same. It speaks to people looking to leave the 9-to-5 for more freedom and fulfillment; stay-at-home moms going back to work; young Boomers worried they're too senior (and expensive) to find new jobs.

Teamwork, one of the most celebrated concepts in corporate life, is falling short on its promise. Why Teams Don't Work identifies the obstacles (most of them people-made) that prevent teams from achieving their potential, suggests methods to remove those obstacles, and explains how to take care of the team members.

This practical, step-by-step book is designed specifically for selling teams committed to high achievement in the enterprise environment. You'll learn how to master 13 selling tools integral to your SES success - like the KARE Account Planning Tool, Growth Account Booster Tool, LinkedIn Levers Tool, and Client-Centric Satisfaction Tool. You'll discover practical solutions to the vastly complex challenges in enterprise organizations - extended sales cycles, wide buyer networks, or significant investments in pursuits.

Ditch the labels and embrace positive, healthy practices for eating, exercising, and living an authentic life - your way! Deciding to improve your health, your consciousness, and the world can seem so overwhelming that you don’t know where to begin. Author and actor Alicia Witt isn’t here to dole out lists of dos and don’ts, but she is here to show how adopting the “small changes philosophy” allows you to find balance, eat healthier, and feel better physically and emotionally.

Obroni and the Chocolate Factory is Steven's chaotic, fascinating, and bemusing journey to create a successful international business that aspired do a bit of good in the world. This book is at once a penetrating business memoir and a story about imagining globalism done right. Wallace's picaresque journey takes him to Ghana's residence for the head of state, to the Amsterdam offices of a secretive international cocoa conglomerate, and face-to-face with key figures in the sharp-elbowed world of global trade and geopolitics.

A Wall Street tech leader explains how small behavioral changes lead to major self-improvement. Whether trying to lose weight, save money, or get organized, we' re always setting goals and making resolutions but rarely following through on them. Determination and willpower aren't strong enough to defeat our mass of ingrained habits; to succeed we have to learn how to focus our self-control on precise behavioral targets and overwhelm them, according to longtime Wall Street technology strategist Caroline Arnold.

The Risk Takers is about ordinary people, all with good ideas, who faced daunting challenges, but took a leap of faith and started their own business. The book tells the stories of the personal and professional journeys of 16 fascinating men and women who built hugely successful, multimillion dollar companies. They started with very little, opted to strike out on their own, and struggled with disappointment and failure.

How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur is a practical and highly detailed guide to the mindset you need to have and the actual steps you need to take to become successful in business. Whether you are starting out and looking for an idea or you already have a business, you will find a whole array of useful information within this fascinating book.