Small Business Success

The first thing Sophia Amoruso sold online wasn’t fashion - it was a stolen book. She spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and dumpster diving. By twenty-two, she had resigned herself to employment, but was still broke, directionless, and working a mediocre day job she’d taken for the health insurance. It was there that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Eight years later, she is the founder, CEO, and creative director of Nasty Gal, a $100 million plus online fashion retailer with more than 350 employees.

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.

Many professionals aspire to work for a start-up. Yes, start-ups look magical, but they can also be chaotic and inaccessible. Many books are written for those who aspire to be founders, but a company only has one or two of those. What's needed are hundreds of employees to do the day-to-day work. This practical, step-by-step guide provides an insider's analysis of various start-up roles and responsibilities, including product development, marketing, growth strategy, and sales, to help you figure out if you want to join a start-up and what to expect if you do.

In this entrepreneurial age, it's very tempting to leave your job to start your own business. Before you do, learn all you can from the best. World renowned best-selling author and business consultant Brian Tracy tells you about one of today's most needed skill sets, entrepreneurship, covering these important topics: myths of entrepreneurship, the best business choice for you, financing the business, shifting from employee mindset to entrepreneurial mindset, creating a realistic business plan, hiring the best and managing for success, and fueling your business growth.

Stop networking. Seriously, stop doing it. Now. It is time to ditch the old networking-for networking's-sake mentality in favor of a more powerful and effective approach to creating and enhancing connections. In Superconnector, Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh reveal a new category of professionals born out of the social media era: highly valuable community-builders who make things happen through their keen understanding and utilization of social capital. Superconnectors understand the power of relationship-building, problem-solve by connecting the dots at high levels.

This is a book about work choices and life choices, and the critical points, or defining moments, at which the two become one. A refreshing antidote to traditional feel-good, inspirational business ethics, it examines the right-versus-right conflicts that every business manager faces and presents an unorthodox yet practical way for you to think about and resolve them.

We live in an era when misinformation and artificially created content are on the rise. This is breeding consumer distrust, causing traditional marketing and sales strategies to plummet in effectiveness. There is one proven way forward to ensure your business survival and create sustainable long-term growth in your profit and impact. You must optimize your books and business platform by becoming authentically self-expressed in sharing your cause. Only then will your ideal buyers be attracted to you and convert more naturally, allowing infinite impact and personal freedom to inevitably follow.

The Third Circle Theory is the theory that the founder of Secret Entourage created to explain how visionaries are made and billion dollar ideas born from nothing more than your observations. The theory which has proven to be the same for all the successful individuals who have not only found their purpose in life but have executed on their beliefs, and as a result established themselves as successful innovators, explorers, educators, and entrepreneurs is now clearly defined and will teach you how to live successfully.

When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem - how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated.

Take your passion for event planning to the next level with in-the-trenches advice and tools you need to start, run, and grow a successful business. From writing a solid contract to finding reliable vendors, our experts help you identify your niche, teach you how to scout potential clients, evaluate the competition, market your business, and more.

Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they will be lauded as experts on the merits of their work. But that's simply not true anymore. To make a name for yourself, you have to capitalize on your unique perspective and knowledge and inspire others to listen and take action. But becoming a "thought leader" is a mysterious and opaque process. Where do the ideas come from, and how do they get noticed?

Think about your five closest friends. Are they happy? Do they live their lives with purpose? Do you? We put on a fake front for what we want people to see and think about us, but the reality is most people aren’t happy. We’re lost. We settle. We aren’t happy with where we are. You can’t be happy if you don’t know your purpose. It’s not possible. You want more but you don’t even know where to start. You know there is more out there. You see others having success and you want it, too; there is nothing wrong with that. You just need help finding your purpose.

The Fieldbook is an intensely pragmatic guide. It shows how to create an organization of learners where memories are brought to life, where collaboration is the lifeblood of every endeavor, and where the tough questions are fearlessly asked. The stories here show that companies, businesses, schools, agencies, and even communities can undo their “learning issues” and achieve superior performance. If ever a work gave meaning to the phrase hands-on, this is it.

Your friend's mother-in-law is visiting from Korea. When greeting her, do you bow, shake hands, or kiss her on both cheeks? The meeting with his international customers is going well for the corporate president - until he gives the thumbs-up sign. Why? Discover the answers in this incisive, award-winning guide to etiquette, now thoroughly revised to reflect today's truly multicultural society.

Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is Harvey Mackay's last word on how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away.

All of us are looking for practical ways to take control of our lives, whether in our personal relationships, our families, our work, our health, or our future plans. Daily challenges have a way of overwhelming us, making life harder than it needs to be. The good news is that the answers are out there. And they are Easier Than You Think.

Negotiations are incredibly stressful and can bring out the worst in people. Wouldn’t it be better if there were a principled way to negotiate? Wouldn’t it be even better if there were a way to treat people fairly and get treated fairly in a negotiation? Split the Pie offers a new approach that does both—a field-tested method that reframes how negotiations play out. Barry Nalebuff, a professor at Yale School of Management, helps identify what’s really at stake in a negotiation: the “pie.” The negotiation pie is the additional value created through an agreement to work together.

Secretly, if not overtly, almost everyone in America desires to become rich: to make it big, to enjoy the fruits of the most successful life imaginable. But unfortunately, most of us don't have a clue as to how to reach these all too elusive goals. Quite simply, there's really no road map for getting there, no proven plan and almost certainly little if any access to those who have become "the richest man in town".

As the creator of DanielleLaPorte.com - deemed "the best place online for kick-ass spirituality," Danielle LaPorte’s straight-talk life-and-livelihood sermons have inspired over one million people. Bold but empathetic, she reframes popular self-help and success concepts.

Kym Gold's mantra - "never settle for a no, always look for a yes" - is what led her to co-create True Religion Brand Jeans, a major retail clothing company that she sold for close to a billion dollars in 2013. In Gold Standard, she finally gives her side of the story of how the once fledgling jeans company that nobody wanted,went on to become a giant, revolutionizing player in the fashion industry.