Small Business Leadership

Mark Siebert, franchise expert and author of Franchise Your Business, flips his script from franchising your existing business to offer entrepreneurs a comprehensive guide to succeeding as franchisees. The Franchisee Handbook tells listeners how to take a systematic approach to assess and invest in franchise opportunities, so they end up with the right fit for their entrepreneurial style. Sharing tales from the trenches and real-world anecdotes from successful franchises, Siebert lays out everything you need to know before signing with well-known franchises.

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.

You can build a home service business that is profitable EVERY month of the year. Offseasons will keep you poor. I hate offseasons. I used to waste $100,000 every winter. I didn't know how to generate leads during the slow months. My revenue dropped. My profits went negative. I had to lay off all my employees! This book fixes that problem. This book contains the playbooks that took me from sleeping in my office closet to owning a business that generates $50,000,000+ per year. When I started my lawn care business, I had no systems. This almost cost me my life in a workplace accident.

Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that “tolerance for ambiguity” has become a clichéd job requirement. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Unsliced is the resource for elevating your pizzeria - from managing staff to mindset, marketing, and everything in between. Industry leader Mike Bausch explains how to make your restaurant unique and in demand based on his 20 years of experience. You’ll learn how to build systems that will help you boost your sales and keep your sanity. And you’ll discover time-tested protocols that will protect you and your restaurant. It’s hard not to get discouraged in this business. But with the right perspective, smart systems, and hard work, your restaurant can thrive.

Salespeople, consultants, managers, executives, entrepreneurs... Influence is a crucial tool for absolutely anyone seeking success and prosperity. But how can everyday people actually become more influential? Maximum Influence unlocks the secrets of the master influencers. Now in an all-new edition, the audiobook combines scientific research with real-world studies, presenting the most authoritative and effective arsenal of persuasion techniques ever.

Problem: Most Americans don't realize the potential gold mine in blue-collar business. By blue-collar business I mean a business providing a specialized service requiring a trained employee and manual labor. In my case it is chimney sweeping, but it can range from construction to gardening to plumbing and junk removal. There are literally thousands and thousands of opportunities, but many people don't consider blue-collar work as an option and are missing out as a result.

Do you want to make a difference? There are many ways someone in a leadership role can have a positive impact on the lives of their employees. Perhaps there is no leadership responsibility more profound than creating a sustainable, injury-free workplace. This audiobook is a collection of leadership concepts, thoughts, words, and actions that (when strategically implemented) can move your organization toward a better safety future.

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

The bar business continues to grow; however, securing running capital and having knowledge about the business are cited as the two biggest reasons new bars fail. Running a Bar for Dummies, 2nd Edition shines a light on these issues to help bar owners prepare properly. The book helps you find your way through the maze of licensing and permits, developing a business plan, and preparing for your grand opening, plus offers clear, no-nonsense guidance on dealing with tough customers. Every step of the way, Running a Bar for Dummies, 2nd Edition is a reference you can count on.

Born on the small Greek island of Nisyros, John Catsimatidis immigrated to the States with his family and quickly became a true New Yorker, raised in Harlem. He went to school by day and worked in a small grocery store by night to help his parents pay the bills until, just eight credits short of graduating from New York University, he opted to work in the grocery business full-time. Today, that grocery business has become the Red Apple Group, a conglomerate with interests in energy, real estate, aviation, baseball, entertainment, and media.

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.

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.

Starting with nothing more than a home-brewing kit, Sam Calagione turned his entrepreneurial dream into a foamy reality in the form of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, one of America's best and fastest-growing craft breweries. In this newly updated second edition, Calagione offers a deeper real-world look at entrepreneurship and what it takes to operate and grow a successful business.

Koch shows how to maximize success in your career and life by using the proven principle that 80 percent of changes in the world result from the most powerful 20 percent of actions and ideas. He'll show how to use your own powerful "20 percent spike" - your most creative ideas and unique skills - to measure the amount of value you bring to your employer, clients, or customers. For most people, there is a huge disparity between their intrinsic value and the compensation they receive for their efforts.

Did you know that women only currently make up around 25 percent of the C-Suite? And they lead less than 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies? Hard to believe right? But things are slowly starting to change, and people are starting to realize that women can bring qualities to the table that men simply can’t.

Hype Yourself is an invaluable toolkit for getting you and your business featured in the media: newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. Crammed full of insider advice, from the building blocks of your PR strategy to the execution of creative campaigns, it includes expert tips from journalists and industry specialists and is supported by a stack of online resources. Lucy Werner has over 15 years of publicity experience, including running her own specialist consultancy focused on startups and entrepreneurs.

Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it's difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you're likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don't have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees.

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.

Robert Kiyosaki's new audiobook 8 Lessons in Military Leadership for Entrepreneurs draws from his years at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point and his service in the United Sates Marine Corps. With compelling stories and examples and an engaging way of comparing and contrasting two very different cultures and value systems, Robert shares the challenges he faced in transitioning to civilian life.