Small Leadership

Starting a creative company needn't cost you everything. If you agree, then you'll find wit and wisdom in this book for creative entrepreneurs. Author, artist, and graphic designer Patricia Arnold presents her best tips for starting a handmade business with this initial volume in her Creative Entrepreneur series. After starting a decade-old business with a shoestring budget and then founding a second business six years later, Patricia Arnold has a lot to say about building creative businesses from scratch.

While today's technological, social, and economic changes have helped the business world, they have also increased anxiety for employees, business owners, and especially managers. Experts Ken Blanchard and Michael O'Connor offer practical, proven solutions to help managers and their organizations reduce pressure while enhancing productivity.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it was clear that it would impact all of our lives in important ways and we would have to drastically change the way we communicated with one another and did business. Would we fight back against the changes and wait for the “old normal” to return, or adopt new technologies and adapt to the new way of doing things? Though the Zoom video conferencing platform was already being used by individuals and businesses around the world, the pandemic made its use a necessity, and those who embraced it and mastered it thrived.

Imagine if you could start your dream business, work from home, and make a real difference in people's lives. When you become a life coach, all of this is possible. The authors of Make Money as a Life Coach get it. They know what it’s like to navigate the world of online business and coaching. After considerable learning and several wrong turns, they’ve both gone on to create successful coaching businesses.

In today's generation, businesses are increasing in number, and competition is inevitable. There is no doubt that because of the demands of the people in this society, businesses are increasing in importance. Because of that fact, there are a number of aspiring entrepreneurs in the process of considering the idea of starting a business. Their businesses could be of great help not just to them but also to society. Still, it might not be that easy to build a business thanks to the fact that competition is always on the rise.

Did you know that only 20 percent of new businesses survive to see their fifth birthday? This is just not right. If they had focused on the key issues and received the right guidance, many of these failed businesses would still be here today. Better, Stronger, Faster is a benchmark book that acts as a mentor for the business builder addressing all of the hard issues and guiding the listener through the many pitfalls start-ups face.

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.

Target Funding is a strategic guide to funding opportunities aimed at specific types of businesses and business owners. You'll learn about all the options available to you - including conventional, alternative, and diversity funding - and how to access them based on your needs and your demographic, industry, location, and other variables.

A groundbreaking book for any business owner, family business, or budding entrepreneur, The Family Edge provides clear evidence and powerful tools to help you leverage the asset you need but have probably not paid enough attention to: family capital.

We've entered a new era. Call it the age of imagination, ideation, conceptualization, creativity, or innovation - take your pick. Creativity, mental flexibility, and collaboration have displaced one-dimensional intelligence and isolated determination as core ingredients of competitive advantage. But these methods and mindsets needed to drive innovation are only found by tapping into the discretionary levels of passion, creativity and initiative within us. This is where Out Think leadership comes in.

Tom Peters has, for the past 12 years, been telling American business that the rules have changed. Now he goes farther in The Tom Peters Seminar, the first in an exciting new series aimed at helping everyone, Fortune 500 chairmen, middle managers trying to hold onto their place on the ladder (a mistake!), and hotel housekeepers, thrive in the brave new world of business in the 90s.

Running a successful architectural firm is a juggling act. You need expertise in your area of architecture to provide services to clients. You also need the know-how to run a small business. You've probably been well prepared by your education and experience for the technical ins and outs of an architecture firm. Yet what training has prepared you to run a business? The E-Myth Architect fills this knowledge gap, giving you a complete toolkit for either starting a successful firm from scratch or maximizing an existing firm's performance.

Yet what training has prepared you to run a business? E-Myth Real Insurance Store fills this knowledge gap, giving you a complete toolkit for either starting a successful business from scratch or maximizing an existing business’ performance. Loaded with practical, powerful advice you can easily use, this one-stop guide helps you realize all the benefits that come with a thriving insurance business.

As a small to medium business owner, correctly managing your workers' compensation coverage may mean the difference between staying open another year or closing your doors for good. This is the book that you wish you had read before you hired your first team member. In it, Nancy Germond will break down the complexity of workers' compensation, why you need it, why you need to pay attention to it, and how doing it well will make your team better and help your company's bottom line.

In The Scrum Master Files, trusted coach and certified scrum trainer Angela Johnson takes you through her journey from project manager to scrum master. She helps you learn through her own failures what it means to coach developers, product owners, and organizations in changing the way they work with scrum. The case studies in this book put you in the scrum master role and help you see what went wrong and how to make things right using real-world scenarios. The secrets shared in this book are not exclusive to scrum masters!

Robert E. Lee scholar H. W. Crocker III is an esteemed Civil War historian. Skillfully summarizing Lee’s life, Crocker clearly extracts leadership lessons from the storied career of the South’s beloved leader and applies them to today’s business worldUnder General Lee’s management, a rag-tag army of poor farmers—vastly outnumbered, outgunned, under-supplied, and under-fed—consistently routed Union troops. Brilliantly seizing strategic opportunities, Lee stunned his foes and inspired his soldiers. He was decisive, focused, and humble.

In the current digital age, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stay focused. Smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and other devices constantly vie for our attention. In both business and life, we are constantly bombarded with tweets, likes, mentions, and a constant stream of information. The inability to pay attention impacts learning, parenting, prioritizing, and leading. Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus teaches managers and leaders how to help themselves and others sharpen their focusing skills.

There's a revolution going on right now. On the frontiers of medicine, some doctors have developed an approach for treating people that is more effective, more humane, and more affordable. It's an approach to healthcare that has captured the attention of the media and business elite. It's all happening at Cleveland Clinic, one of the most innovative, forward-looking medical institutions in the nation. In this groundbreaking book, Toby Cosgrove, MD, reveals how the Clinic works so well and argues persuasively for why it should be the model for the nation.

In an age of Twitter, smartphones, and self-service kiosks, high-tech but still high-touch customer service is the answer. Today’s customers are a hard bunch to crack. Time-strapped, screen-addicted, value-savvy, and socially engaged, their expectations are tougher than ever for a business to keep up with. They are empowered like never before and expect businesses to respect that sense of empowerment - lashing out at those that don’t. Take heart: Old-fashioned customer service, fully retooled for today’s blistering pace and digitally connected reality, is what you need to build the kind of loyal customer base that allows you to survive - and thrive.

As a teenager, real-estate broker Danny Morel felt he was destined to do great things. Even though he had to contend with a lackluster education system and lived on welfare in a single-parent home, he didn't let any of that hold him back. He had resilience - and now you can, too.