Sustainable Business

Every day, a new silver bullet comes out, promising to grow your business, increase your profit margins, and make your life as a business owner easier. Unfortunately, most of them don't work, wasting your time and money. Plus, they take your attention away from other more worthwhile opportunities. The ones that do work for others just never seem to work for you. Blanket prescriptions are like that - never quite hitting the mark for all but the few with the exact symptoms.

It's easy for scale-ups, giddy from early startup success, to get ahead of themselves and stumble. It's even easier to be slowed down by the many forces of resistance working against them: drag, inertia, friction, and waste. Drawing on a mastery of lean-based methods for achieving maximum effect with minimum means, private equity operators Matthew E. May and Pablo Dominguez provide listeners with a powerful framework of universally applicable principles that enable any company to effectively accelerate its ability to scale and grow.

Over the course of seven decades Ralph Nader has been Corporate America's fiercest critic. But now, in a book that will surprise both his fans and critics, Nader profiles a small group of CEOs who he believes performed extraordinarily well as business leaders and civic reformers, some well-known, some not, who should be celebrated as exceptions whose life and career should be a course of emulation and inspiration for students of business, executives, and the wider citizenry.

Today's business environment looks dramatically different than it did even a decade ago, and it continues to evolve at an increasing rate; macroeconomic shifts, consumer trends, technological advances, and changing competitive dynamics are accelerating the pace of change. A handbook for how to succeed in the age of big data, Optimizing Growth provides insightful guidance, real-world success stories, and practical tools to achieve growth in this new era, utilizing big data to achieve a deeper understanding of demand, customers, competitors, and opportunity.

Regardless of the sector your organization operates within or its size, increasing employee performance, building customer loyalty, and growing revenue are likely your top priorities. How can you continually improve your employees' morale and performance in a sustainable way? How can you stay ahead of your customers' ever-changing needs without spending a fortune on technology? In The Unstoppable Organization, Shawn Casemore will show you how to master the trilogy of success for unsurpassed performance as he shares insights, examples, and proven practices.

Not one to shy away from developing countries, Yusuf Amdani has laid a path for other investors to follow. Originally from Pakistan, Amdani moved to Honduras at a time when few international players paid attention to the Central American country. Amdani’s quick eye and keen business savvy paid off. Today his company has grown and expanded into other Central American countries, along with the Caribbean, United States, Pakistan, and beyond. Moreover, Amdani’s initiatives provide an example of how to create opportunities in developing countries.

Evergreen Talent will show you how to attract, find, and keep employees for the long-term. What many organization leaders fail to understand is that you can't simply transplant a competitor's talent strategy and achieve the same results - just as you can't take plants suited to a warm climate and expect them to thrive in chillier locales. The conditions are too different. But a company that takes the time to examine its own environment, select talent accordingly, and nurture its people will stand tall, regardless of economic conditions.

For hardworking and dedicated professional service providers, Make Them Smile offers a way out of the grind of living hour to billable hour, providing a road map for how to build a scalable, standardized brand that provides a consistent, repeatable, and high-quality customer experience.

In Honor Thy Label, Dr. Bronner’s head of Special Operations, Gero Leson, reveals the inside story of how a little-known family-run soap company grew from countercultural roots to create a revolutionary fair trade and organic supply chain from the ground up - and rode the waves of popular demand without losing sight of the process. Through stories of harrowing setbacks and hard-won triumphs in projects that spanned the globe, in Sri Lanka, Ghana, India, and beyond, Leson demystifies the process of building and scaling ethical production.

A lean strategy is about gaining a competitive edge by offering better quality products at competitive prices and making a sustainable profit by eliminating waste through engaging employees in discovering deeper ways to think about their own jobs and smarter ways of working together. In its current form, lean has been radically effective, but its true powers have yet to be harnessed. The Lean Strategy harnesses that power and delivers a new way of creating value from lean.

Written by Shingo Prize winner Jacob Stoller, Productivity Reimagined shows how most companies are constrained by deeply engrained myths that prevent employees from reaching their full productive potential, causing frustration, poor decisions, and disappointing results. Evidence is drawn from Toyota and dozens of other companies that have countered these myths to build strong collaborative cultures and achieve sustainable growth.

Faced with uncontrollable circumstances, from a change in market demand to a global pandemic, being self-employed can sometimes feel less like you're running the show, and more like the show is running you. But it doesn't need to be that way. Small business consultant, entrepreneur coach, and acclaimed portrait photographer Jeffrey Shaw - TEDx speaker and host of the popular The Self-Employed Life podcast - offers the essential manual on everything you need to be successful as a self-employed business owner.

Scaling with Purpose provides an indispensable guide for taking advantage of opportunities in the ever-evolving IT landscape. As businesses become increasingly reliant on technology, managed service providers (MSP) hold the key to unlocking their potential through expert guidance and support. This book offers a comprehensive blueprint for purposeful growth, presenting insights, best practices, and strategies that ensure the long-term success and prosperity of your MSP.

In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Why have some countries prospered, while others have failed? Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in a specific set of policies, but rather in a key "development bargain," whereby a country's elites shift from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future.

We are living in a time when behavioral change is necessary for our health and survival. Yet we find it exceedingly difficult to transform our own habits, let alone those of other people. Enter Naohiro Matsumura, whose powerful new design method is as astonishingly simple in its logic as it is sophisticated in its psychology. It allows any of us to address challenges in our homes, our public spaces, and our social interactions.

In The Adventure of Sustainable Performance, the authors share their many years of experience serving clients and driving performance as the world transitions to a net zero carbon future. A future that uses resources sustainably and that seeks social justice. Perfect for executives, managers, directors, and other business leaders, The Adventure of Sustainable Performance is an actionable guidebook for the implementation of value-add sustainability programs.

Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business coach Jadah Sellner knows what it’s like to be burned out, in debt, and just barely holding on to a new business. In the process of launching and building multiple companies, she realized today’s aggressive 24/7 hustle culture wasn’t working for her—or for her clients. In She Builds, Sellner shares a new entrepreneurial model for women, centered on sustainable leadership—a practical framework they can use to create a business on their own terms, prioritize their well-being, and break free from the toxic culture that leads to burnout.

In their effort to build the world's first and largest commercial green rooftop farm, the founders of Brooklyn Grange learned a lot about building and sustaining a business while never losing sight of their mission: to serve their community by providing delicious organic food and changing the way people think about what they eat. But their story is about more than just farming. It serves as an inspirational and instructional guide for anyone looking to start a business that is successful while making a positive impact.

Profit or Wealth? gives business owners the easiest ways to avoid business failure. By following the 10 rules of profit and 10 rules of wealth explained within Profit or Wealth?, business owners can live the life of their dreams. Many business owners just worry about profits and ignore business wealth-building, but a business needs both. Without building wealth, the business can still go bankrupt.

In Sustainable Leadership: Lessons of Vision, Courage, and Grit from the CEOs Who Dared to Build a Better World, accomplished leadership expert Clarke Murphy shares a can't-miss toolkit for delivering remarkable sustainability results. You'll learn what it takes to become a sustainable leader and how you can turn your sustainability promises into tangible action on the ground.