Small Business Management

Author and entrepreneur Mick Spencer offers entrepreneurs an inspiring new road map to success - one that runs against nearly everything you've ever been taught about business. In this book, Spencer presents a solid case that analysis paralysis and endless "preparation" won't get you anywhere - you have to take that leap and do what you really want to do. He challenges you to get outside your comfort zone and, although intimidating, his approach forces you to learn "on the go" and focus on what you can do rather than what you can't.

Business partnerships are wonderfully complex entities. As with all relationships, they are vulnerable and subject to fallibility. If you think the fact that one in every two marriages in the United States ends in divorce (that's one every 36 seconds!) is unbelievable, then consider this: The number is significantly higher for business partnerships; about 70 percent of them fail. As a business partnership relationship coach, my mission is to help flip this fail/succeed ratio.

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 Experience is a unique guide to mastering the art of customer service and service relationships, based on the principles employed at the renowned leader in customer experience - the Walt Disney Company. Co-author Bruce Loeffler spent 10 years at Disney World overseeing service excellence. He has partnered with Brian T. Church to show you how to bring that same level of care and value to your own organization.

> Hire and Keep the Best People details 21 of the most important, proven principles of employee recruitment and retention. It tells you everything you need to know to attract the most capable, committed employees and to make sure they continue to be active contributors to the company for years to come. Action exercises will help you apply the techniques immediately and see the results for yourself.

In this "refreshingly different" high-toned business book, three leading business school professors take to America's back roads in search of offbeat small businesses—enterprises that hold valuable lessons for executives and entrepreneurs everywhere (Bloomberg Businessweek). While playing...

In this accessible guide, franchise expert Rick Grossmann and franchise attorney Michael J. Katz impart decades-worth of insight and advice on what it takes to make your franchise operation successful. Grossmann and Katz share expert tutorials, tricks of the trade, and access to sample franchise documents, checklists, and questionnaires designed to get you organized, support you through the process, and get your new franchise off the ground.

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.

When it comes to how to succeed as an entrepreneur, we are besotted with advice. According to best-selling author Alan Weiss, success is a combination of opportunism, very disciplined work, luck, timing, and ignoring most advice. In other words, it means striking out on your own original path to success. In Million Dollar Maverick, he explains that entrepreneurs don't take advice; they create value and then monetize it. They do what they love and are great at and find a way to sell it to people.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

Being a physician is challenging. So is starting your own business. In Entrepreneur Rx, physician and serial entrepreneur, Dr. John Shufeldt, shares time-tested insights and knowledge for building a thriving startup while maintaining your practice. From identifying winning business ideas to raising necessary capital, Dr. Shufeldt offers a comprehensive insider’s view into strategies that have helped him develop and nurture a number of successful businesses (including two valued at more than $100 million).

Imagine what life would be like if you started every morning with small actions that created a chain reaction of positive benefits throughout your life. You eat a healthy breakfast, have a great conversation with your loved ones, and then begin your workday focusing on the important tasks. Then, throughout the day, you complete other habits that positively impact your top goals. I guarantee you'd feel more fulfilled, get more accomplished, and have a better direction for your career.

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.

A successful optometry practice is a juggling act. You need to know your field of optometry, as well as how to run a small business. Your education has prepared you for the technical ins and outs of optometry practice. But what has prepared you to run a business? The E-Myth Optometrist fills this knowledge gap, giving you a complete toolkit for starting a successful practice from scratch or maximizing an existing practice’s performance.

In Victory, best-selling author Brian Tracy applies to business and personal success the same concepts that have helped great leaders triumph in military campaigns throughout history. Using military examples throughout, he provides ambitious, success-oriented listeners with a practical template for reaching their own potential for greatness. This is an indispensable strategic field guide from America's foremost expert on achievement.

Have you outgrown your current systems—or are you stuck on a growth plateau? Whether you’ve implemented EOS®, experimented with Scaling Up®, or are searching for a complete business operating system, Pinnacle: Five Principles is your guide to building a company that thrives without your day-to-day involvement.

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.

Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders.

The Customer Success Manager has become a critical asset to organizations across the business landscape. As the subscription model has spread from the cloud and SaaS to more sectors of the economy, that pivotal role will only grow in importance. That's because if you want to compete and thrive in this new environment, you need to put the customer at the center of your strategy. You need to recognize you're no longer selling just a product. You're selling an outcome.

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.