Small Business Success

Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a bad neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing.

This is not a story about failure, but it might as well be. When we don't define success in our own terms, finding our purpose, and carving our own path becomes impossible. How do you break the cycle so that you can be better at work and life? In this audiobook, Laura Gassner Otting teaches you how to ignore the rules that created your limits, align your energies and your actions, and do work that really matters so that you can live your best life.

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.

Are you waiting for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change your life, change your business or change the world? How will you know when it comes? How will you be sure you're ready? This book is not about waiting for an opportunity that might never come. It's a book for right now containing ideas and strategies that can be employed right away, and will ensure that you attract opportunities, whether big or small, all the 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.

The youngest of her parents’ combined 21 children, Sarah Frey grew up on a struggling farm in southern Illinois, often having to grow, catch, or hunt her own dinner alongside her brothers. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to the big city - or really anywhere with central heating. At 15, she moved out of her family home and started her own fresh produce delivery business with nothing more than an old pickup truck. Two years later, when the family farm faced inevitable foreclosure, Frey gave up on her dreams of escape and took over the farm.

Building a business can be confusing. Entrepreneurs aren't sure whether to keep control or delegate and automate, say yes or say no, work all hours or prioritize work-life balance. They take advice from all directions and wind up feeling overwhelmed and overworked without a finish line in sight. Ten Year Career turns that premise upside down and argues that it doesn't have to be that way.

Professional athletes, surgeons, first responders - all perform remarkable feats in the face of intense stress. Why do they thrive under pressure while others succumb? What separates the two is attitude. Resilient people meet adversity head on and bounce back from setbacks. They seem to naturally exude an inner strength - but studies show that resilience is something that anyone can build.

In the new edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in the New York Times, best-selling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and surprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations - truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today.

In this innovative book, Jürgen Salenbacher shares his unique personal coaching method designed to develop creative thinking and innovation. The method, which originated as a career management tool, can be used by anyone who wishes to explore what they have to offer the world. In five succinct chapters, Salenbacher reveals how to use brand positioning methodology to discover where to go next.

This no-nonsense playbook is for the entrepreneurial dark horse, a memoir and business narrative that presents seven key principles to rise above racism, poverty, imposter syndrome, and every imaginable and unimaginable startup obstacle.

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.

Learn the top 10 tactics all new freelancers and consultants must do so that you can survive, thrive, and make bank...even if you've never done it before. I've created these tactics so you can easily follow them to attain the lifestyle you've been dreaming of which means you'll no dread Monday mornings because you'll have your autonomy. You'll learn how to follow the simple steps in this guide so you can experience great success in freelancing (and consulting) even if you've never done it before.

Adam Braun began working summers at hedge funds when he was just 16 years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. But while traveling as a college student, he met a young boy begging on the streets of India. When Braun asked the boy what he wanted most in the world, he simply answered, "A pencil." This small request became the inspiration for Pencils of Promise, the organization Braun would leave a prestigious job at Bain & Company to start with just $25 at the age of 24.

Kathleen Shannon and Emily Thompson are self-proclaimed "business besties" and hosts of the top-ranked podcast Being Boss, where they talk shop and share their combined expertise with other creative entrepreneurs. Now they take the best of their from-the-trenches advice, giving you targeted guidance on: The Boss Mindset: how to weed out distractions, cultivate confidence, and tackle "fraudy feelings"; Boss Habits: including a tested method for visually mapping out goals with magical results; and Boss Money: how to stop freaking out about finances and sell yourself (without shame).

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:

Will to Wild is an instruction manual to adventure. Your guide: enthusiastic outdoorswoman Shelby Stanger. Shelby has been teaching folks how to leap into the unknown since she taught her first surf class over twenty years ago. Over the years, she watched many of her students quit their jobs, end dysfunctional relationships, and move across the country for a healthier work-life balance—all after spending a bit of time in nature. Shelby marveled at the phenomenon. Being outside was changing the lives of her students, her peers, and herself.

Written by James Ruell, who has served as director and vice-treasurer of an award-winning charity, Nonprofit Board Success gives practical advice and proven techniques for building a top-notch board of directors—one that will make you the envy of CEOs everywhere.

Find out how to get organized, navigate technologies like portable communication devices and e-mail, run a no-nonsense meeting, juggle all the players in the new global business environment, and carve out more time to do what you really want to do. We all struggle to balance work life and personal life; this audiobook will help you work more quickly and efficiently, freeing time for you to fulfill your other duties as a parent, a spouse, or a friend.

Richard Branson, one of the world's most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it's time to turn capitalism upside down - to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities, and the planet as he writes: "People often associate me with challenges, with trying to break records while sailing the Atlantic or flying in a jet stream in a balloon or going into space with Virgin Galactic. But this audiobook isn't just about fun and adventure and exceeding one's wildest dreams."