Small Business Leadership

From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the "nail it then scale it" method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate. These processes and principles have now been distilled into a handbook to guide entrepreneurs and innovative product managers to victory. Stop following conventional wisdom, and join the few entrepreneurs that can consistently take their innovative idea all the way to a successful company launch.

Imagine what Atari might have achieved if Steve Jobs had stayed there to develop the first massmarket personal computer. Or what Steve Case might have done for PepsiCo if he hadn't left for a gaming start-up that eventually became AOL. What if Salomon Brothers had kept Michael Bloomberg, or Bear Stearns had exploited the inventive ideas of Stephen Ross? Scores of top-tier entrepreneurs worked for established corporations before they struck out on their own and became self-made billionaires.

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 compelling book, strategy guru Roger L. Martin and Skoll Foundation President and CEO Sally R. Osberg describe how social entrepreneurs target systems that exist in a stable but unjust equilibrium and transform them into entirely new, superior, and sustainable equilibria. All of these leaders - call them disrupters, visionaries, or changemakers - develop, build, and scale their solutions in ways that bring about the truly revolutionary change that makes the world a fairer and better place.

The Cofounder’s Handbook brings business partnerships into the spotlight where they belong. Most people don’t realize how much their partnership affects the strength of their business. The right cofounder multiplies your success. But the wrong partner divides your attention and effort, hinders your business’s progress, and potentially destroys it from within.

Negotiation has always been at the heart of solving problems at work. Yet today, when people in organizations are asked to do more with less, be responsive 24/7, and manage in rapidly changing environments, negotiation is more essential than ever. What has been missed in much of the literature of the past 30 years is that negotiations in organizations always take place within a context - of organizational culture, of prior negotiations, of power relationships - that dictates which issues are negotiable and by whom.

Trevor Blake built three successful startups and sold them for more than $300 million. Now he's written a complete instruction manual that covers everything the budding entrepreneur or existing business owner needs to know to build the career or business of their dreams. Unlike the many theoretical guides out there, this is a practical handbook based on Blake's wildly successful in-the-trenches experience.

Most small business owners never achieve their goals because they do not know what to do or do not understand why they need to do it and/or cannot figure out how to do it. Running Your Small Business like a Pro is a commonsense guide for learning how to run your business as a professional enterprise. It provides you with a fundamental understanding of the challenges small businesses face with real-world solutions that drive results.

Managing complex projects can stretch you to the limits. But with a book full of experts coaching you each step of the way, you'll never be baffled, blocked, or misdirected again. Packed with essays and insights from the field's top professionals, The AMA Handbook of Project Management is the resource professionals and students rely on for its practical guidance and big picture overview of the entire field. Whether you need advice keeping projects on track or help preparing for certification, this new edition explains every principle, process, and development.

If you want to cook a delicious soup, you start with the best ingredients. The pot you cook the soup in won’t affect the outcome very much. Many coaches hope that things like a Facebook group, YouTube channel, or Funnel are the answer to growing their businesses when, in fact, these are the equivalent of a pot in a kitchen. They are helpful tools, but they don’t work on their own. You must combine them with the best ingredients. Nail Your Niche is about finding your ingredients, so you can use them with your tool of choice to build a successful online coaching business.

Debra Traverso tells you how to prepare for the surprises most likely to throw small businesses off course. She helps you anticipate both predictable hurdles and devastating ordeals, so that no crisis will catch you off guard. No need to waste emotions, time, and money when a crisis hits: you can get a good night's sleep!

If any of the following behaviors sound like you or someone you work with, beware! In Why CEOs Fail, David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo describe the most common characteristics of derailed top executives and how you can avoid them.

Dental practice owners and their teams often dream of growing a successful dental group or DSO. Then complexity sets in. Today, successful practitioners have to survive the world of business: marketing, messaging, HR, finance, compliance. It's a lot for any team to manage. DSO Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dental Empire uncovers those secrets. Whether your goal is to be a top clinician in a single practice or to build your own multi-practice portfolio, this book has the resources you're looking for.

Unstoppable takes the most valuable lessons and top commonalities from how to succeed and lays out the nine principles for unlimited success...in both business and in life. Proven by author Kelly Roach's award-winning career in corporate settings and as an entrepreneur, Unstoppable is set to inspire everyone from the new entrepreneur to the seasoned CEO.

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.

Dominate your market through an inside and out business structure: Martin Pettigrew's proven concept with over $40 million in yearly gross roofing sales. In The Roofing Machine, Martin shares a unique business structure that can enable you to grow your sales revenue to over $40 million per year. It is based on the obsession with customers to provide them with what they deserve...the best.

The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up. Instead of shooting for a $10-billion payday or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus on Big Little Breakthroughs - small creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time. By cultivating daily micro-innovations, individuals and organizations are better equipped to tackle tough challenges and seize transformational opportunities.

What is the difference between a good leader, and a great leader? What results do great leaders consistently achieve, and what activities do they perform in order to accomplish these results? In this audiobook Brad Giles provides a detailed step-by-step process for leaders to identify their key opportunities, evolve beyond their leadership comfort zone and implement tools to achieve enduring greatness as a leader.

Trust is a basic, intuitive human reaction; it holds the fabric of our society together. Unfortunately, trust is at an all-time low in our institutions, governments, health care, and law enforcement. Losing someone’s trust is easy—building it back is much harder. Darryl Stickel, one of the world’s foremost experts on trust, moves away from the traditional approach of influencing people’s willingness to trust—the con artist’s tactic—to employing levers which leaders can “pull” to close the gap between how much they are trusted and how much they should be.

In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn’t rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.