Entrepreneurship Small Business

Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In the Great Recession, access to capital for small businesses froze and in the aftermath, many community banks shuttered their doors and other lenders that had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. For years after the financial crisis, the outlook for many small businesses was bleak. But then a new dawn of financial technology, or 'fintech', emerged.

Whether you're in the trenches struggling to make consistent sales or dreaming of turning your art into a full-time living, this groundbreaking guide provides the inspiration and the practical steps you need to become your own art boss. There's never been a better time to turn your creative ideas into a successful business. The internet is pushing aside art world “gatekeepers” who used to decide what was "worthy”—now anyone with a laptop and a dream can make a thriving living from their creativity.

The new question: Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? In Great by Choice, Collins and his colleague, Morten T. Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. The new study: Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.

Directed at managers on all rungs of the corporate ladder, this thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the best selling Managing Transitions provides practical, step-by-step strategies for reaching goals and minimizing the disruptions caused by workplace change. It is an invaluable managerial tool for navigating an inevitably tumultuous time.

Much of what we hear about who gets to the top, and how, is wrong. Those who become chief executives set their sights on the C-suite at an early age. In fact, over 70 percent of the CEOs didn't have designs on the corner office until later in their careers. You must graduate from an elite college. In fact, only seven percent of CEOs in the dataset are Ivy League graduates - and eight percent didn't graduate from college at all. To become a CEO you need a flawless résumé. The reality: 45 percent of CEO candidates had at least one major career blowup.

Nothing Is Missing is a “sparkling and impassioned story” (Glamour) of what it takes to show up for yourself—and the joy that can come once you do. Raised in a home where food was unstable and anger was the norm, Nicole learned that she needed to take charge of her own safety and security. So she did: She got into an elite private school by talking to a stranger in her dad’s cab, she strategized her way onto Wheel of Fortune to pay for college, she adopted three girls after meeting their mother panhandling, she quit her job to launch her own business, and she struggled.

Built from Scratch is the story of how two incredibly determined and creative people - and their associates - built a business from nothing to 761 stores and $30 billion in sales in a mere 20 years. Built from Scratch tells many colorful stories associated with The Home Depot's founding and meteoric rise; shows that a company can be a tough, growth-oriented competitor, and still maintain a high sense of responsibility to the community; and provides great lessons useful to people in any business, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

Adam Savage is a maker. From Chewbacca’s bandolier to a 1,000-shot Nerf gun, he has built thousands of spectacular projects as a special-effects artist and the cohost of MythBusters. Adam is also an educator, passionate about instilling the principles of making in the next generation of inventors and inspiring them to turn their curiosity into creation. In this practical and passionate guide, Adam weaves together vivid personal stories, original sketches and photographs from some of his most memorable projects, and interviews with many of his iconic and visionary friends.

The EOS Life will help you to discover, clarify, and customize the life you want to live: one where you do what you love every day, with the people you love doing it with — while at the same time making a huge difference and impact, getting compensated very well for doing it, and still having plenty of time to pursue other passions, hobbies, and interests that energize you.

From Blackstone chairman, CEO, and co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman, a long-awaited book that uses impactful episodes from Schwarzman's life to show listeners how to build, transform, and lead thriving organizations. Whether you are a student, entrepreneur, philanthropist, executive, or simply someone looking for ways to maximize your potential, the same lessons apply.

Whether you're imagining your new business to be the next big thing in Silicon Valley, a pivotal B2B provider, or an anchor in your local community, the Harvard Business Review Entrepreneur's Handbook is your essential resource for getting your company off the ground. Starting an independent new business is rife with both opportunity and risk. And as an entrepreneur, you're the one in charge: Your actions can make or break your business. You need to know the tried-and-true fundamentals - from writing a business plan to getting your first loan.

Emily Heyward founded Red Antler, the Brooklyn-based brand and marketing company, to help entrepreneurs embed brand as a driver of business success from the beginning. In Obsessed, Heyward outlines the new principles of what it takes to build and launch a brand that has people queuing up to buy it on opening day.

Unsure how to differentiate yourself in a busy market without slashing profits? Worried weak sales skills will doom your small business efforts? Need to generate higher ticket averages and fewer callbacks? Joe Crisara was once a struggling home service contractor. He’s now a worldwide educator, entrepreneur, and author who is inspiring everyone from startup managers to Fortune 1000 companies with his unique process. And now he’s ready to reveal his trusted playbook to help you double your income while staying confident in your ethics.

Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Start-ups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect”, where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them.

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.

You know your product is awesome, but does anybody else? Forget everything you thought you knew about positioning. Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn’t a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition, or trying to attract the widest customer base. So, what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech executive, will enlighten you.

The recent pandemic has decimated many small retail businesses, especially in the clothing sector. While big box stores pivoted to online sales, local "mom and pop" shops were left without a roadmap, and many closed their doors permanently. One store in Pikesville, Maryland managed to survive and thrive by using an unorthodox approach: the Poshmark reseller app, and a guy who knows nothing about clothes (hint: the author of this book). Outlandish but true.

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire.

In this fascinating exploration of the surprising power of questioning, innovation expert Warren Berger reveals that powerhouse businesses like Google, Nike, and Netflix, as well as hot Silicon Valley startups like Pandora and Airbnb, are fueled by the ability to ask fundamental, game-changing questions. But Berger also shares human stories of people using questioning to solve everyday problems—from “How can I adapt my career in a time of constant change?” to “How can I step back from the daily rush and figure out what really makes me happy?”

ChatGPT Money Machine 2025 is your no-fluff blueprint to building real, repeatable online income using the most powerful AI tool on the planet. Whether you're chasing your first $1,000 or aiming for six figures, this book gives you the exact strategies, prompts, and business models that actually work in today's fast-paced digital economy.