Small Business Management

Lifelong learning has become a multibillion-dollar business, with more than 60 million adults currently engaged in webinars, webcasts, in-house training, continuing education classes, and more. But it is also an industry in flux, as newcomers topple old-guard organizations that can’t keep pace with the need for instant access to materials and flexible delivery methods, as well as demands for community and connection.

In this offbeat approach to leadership, college president Steven B. Sample - the man who turned the University of Southern California into one of the most respected and highly rated universities in the country - challenges many conventional teachings on the subject. Here, Sample outlines an iconoclastic style of leadership that flies in the face of current leadership thought, but a style that unquestionably works, nevertheless.

As an ambitious person, I inevitably have a lot on my plate. In just two years, I went through pretty much every life change you can imagine. I planned our wedding, got married, moved jobs, moved countries, wrote and published a book, completed an MBA, became a father to my baby son, and then coped with his sudden serious illness, all whilst working full time. I had to be the lion. I created new habits and thought patterns, and reconnected with my purpose to get sh*t done. I became stronger, a master of time management, productivity, and motivation. As a result my goals got closer.

The Making of a Well-Designed Business is the insiders' guide to helping others overcome the challenges of owning a business. The strategies it provides to ensure success include: The importance of establishing your company mission and core values, how to assemble a team of experts and mentors, where and how to find (and attract) the ideal client, the significance of making customer service your top priority, and why owning your worth is the key to profitable selling.

Whether you own a garage gym, a CrossFit box, or a martial-arts studio, Two-Brain Business can help you get running, get organized, get members, keep people happier, and make more time for yourself. Chris Cooper of TwoBrainBusiness.com shows you how!

Featuring a foreword by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, this fascinating handbook inspires potential founders and provides essential guidance and advice for people who want to create their own start-up and build a successful company. This audiobook answers the question “how do I get started?” It takes the listener from making the decision to plunge into entrepreneurship, through the process of choosing and developing an idea and team, all the way to raising capital and working with VCs and angel investors.

In this practical guide, Cloé Caron, PCC shares her unique O2coaching 5C Leadership and Team Efficiency Model and her Unique Strategic Contribution (USC) concept with you. As an experienced coach and leadership consultant, founder and president of o2Coaching, a public speaker and author, Cloé has helped hundreds of leaders and their teams improve their strategic posture and team efficiency. With 20 years of experience, her book is sure to make you reflect on the required behaviors needed to achieve concrete and sustainable results.

After several highly successful businesses and a couple of epic failures, Jake Hanes, CPA and highly successful entrepreneur, shares not only his step-by-step strategies on turning a business into a cash cow, but also the secrets of the most successful entrepreneurs. No matter your age, the industry you’re in, or your current level of success (or failure) in business to date, this book will provide the resources, insights, best practices, and ultimately, the step-by-step road map to become the number one most successful business owner in your industry.

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.

Traditional workplace conversations - which are based on a parent-child model - stymie growth and erode commitment. The Showkeirs advocate instead authentic conversations that are based on an adult-adult model. These conversations tell the truth, let go of the illusion of control, and view people as in charge of their own motivation. The result is a conversation revolution that creates greater commitment, real accountability for results, and improved organizational performance.

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.

UTV founder and pioneer of the media industry Ronnie Screwvala is one of India’s most successful first-generation entrepreneurs. An avid philanthropist, he has penned Dream with Your Eyes Open: An Entrepreneurial Journey as one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial self-help books.

Demographics not only define who we are, where we live, and how our numbers change. For those who can read beyond the raw figures, they open up hidden business opportunities that lie ahead. What will happen when retiring Boomers free up jobs? How will Generation Y alter supermarkets? Which states will have the most dynamic workforces? Will American manufacturing rebound as Asia's population declines? Upside puts this powerful yet little-understood science to work finding answers.

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.

What if you learned that to lead well, you’d need to live like a drug addict? During treatment for drug addiction, Michael Brody-Waite learned three principles that became the difference between life and death: Practice rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome, and do uncomfortable work. Leaving rehab, Michael entered the workplace where he was shocked to see most business leaders doing what he had been taught would kill him. He began to see striking similarities between drug addiction and what he calls “mask addiction”.

7 Secrets of Persuasion is the first book to take the latest scientific insights about the mind and apply them to the art of persuasion. It directly translates the revolution in neuroscience that has occurred over the last 40 years into practical new techniques for effective persuasion.

Rethink how your organization creates, delivers, and captures value - or risk becoming irrelevant. If you listen to nothing else on business model innovation, listen to these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you reach new customers and stay ahead of your competitors by reinventing your business model.

Forget everything you've learned about creating new businesses. Forget market research. Forget customer interviews. Forget everything business schools teach. Forget about "finding pains in the market", or gaining user empathy, or validating hypotheses.

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.

Is it possible to be a mom and be a successful business owner? You have big dreams, big ideas, and big goals. You know that you can contribute amazing things to the world, and you are made for more...but you also have little people clinging to your ankles, begging for more snacks, trashing your kitchen, and interrupting your sleep. Mom-life-business demands are a treacherous path to navigate - the struggle is real! That’s where Dream Big, Step Small can help you achieve life changing goals. With one small step at a time.