Small Business Success

We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook - or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google or Facebook or Uber. We see software coders becoming millionaires or billionaires before age 30 and feel we are failing if we are not one of them.

Running a small business is both exciting and challenging. While the rewards of entrepreneurship are great, the risks are equally significant. From financial instability and operational missteps to cybersecurity threats and reputational damage, small business owners must navigate a landscape filled with potential pitfalls. Without the right strategies in place, even a promising business can face unexpected setbacks. This book is designed to help you take control of the risks that threaten your business.

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.

Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is Harvey Mackay's last word on how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away.

Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures.

Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success, and concentrating on the happiness of those around you can dramatically increase your own.

Stop networking. Seriously, stop doing it. Now. It is time to ditch the old networking-for networking's-sake mentality in favor of a more powerful and effective approach to creating and enhancing connections. In Superconnector, Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh reveal a new category of professionals born out of the social media era: highly valuable community-builders who make things happen through their keen understanding and utilization of social capital. Superconnectors understand the power of relationship-building, problem-solve by connecting the dots at high levels.

Don’t trade your 40-hour workweek for an 80-hour-a-week side hustle. The promise of entrepreneurship is to create a lifestyle of freedom—but the pursuit often leads to a time-bankrupt life. If you’re an overworked employee who’s done with the 9-to-5, a serial entrepreneur who has yet to realize the American dream, or a burned-out side hustle owner who’s tired of the grind, this book was written for you.

Why are some people more successful in business than others? Why do some businesses flourish where others fail? Renowned business speaker and author Brian Tracy has discovered the answers to these profoundly puzzling questions. In this eye-opening practical audio guide, he presents a set of principles or "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people everywhere.

After a string of dead-end jobs and a death in the family, Ash Ambirge was down to her last $26 and sleeping in a Kmart parking lot when she faced the truth: No one was coming to her rescue. It was up to her to appoint herself. That night led to what eventually became a six-figure freelance career as a sought-after marketing and copywriting consultant, all while sipping coffee from her front porch in Costa Rica.

From Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First, Clockwork, and The Pumpkin Plan, comes the ultimate diagnostic tool for every entrepreneur.... The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent—but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things.

Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses.

How many self-help books are written by authors whose biggest success is selling self-help books? Three Simple Steps is different. Despite stock market crashes, dot-com busts, and the specter of recession, the author started a virtual company from home, using a few thousand dollars of his savings. A few years later, without ever hiring an employee or leaving his home office, he sold it for more than $100 million. As the economy slipped into another free fall, he did this again with a company in a different field. He accomplished this through no particular genius.

You don’t need a massive shop, expensive tools, or a big budget to build a thriving woodworking business. In fact, staying small can be your biggest advantage—with the right strategy. In Garage Shop Income, seasoned woodworking professional Stoane Loudenslager shares the insider strategies he learned from working in multimillion-dollar cabinet and furniture shops and now applies these to his own independent shop, aiming to guide other small, independent woodworking businesses.

Small Business, Big Success offers unconventional but proven strategies to run a better small business. It also provides a roadmap for owners looking to expand their small businesses by doing more business with Big Business. Cynthia's down-in-the-trenches stories, along with those from other small-business CEOs and Big Business experts, show you how to connect with highly sought-after customers and win them over!

For some people, the thought of quitting their day job to pursue the entrepreneurial life is exhilarating. For many others, it's terrifying. After all, a stable job that delivers a regular paycheck is a blessing. And not everyone has the means or the desire to take on the risks and responsibilities of working for themselves. But what if we could quickly and easily create an additional stream of income without giving up the security of a full-time job? Enter the side hustle.

Does the voice in your head fill you with doubt? Are you working harder but accomplishing less? Does the life you’ve always hoped to live still elude you? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it’s time to unleash the beast. In The Business Beast, Brian Dyer leads you down a fulfilling—but sometimes dark and lonely—path. Entering the wild is dangerous, but it offers rewards you can only begin to imagine, and you’ll be in good hands as Brian guides you through the four primal instincts of The Business Beast.

This unique guide features the start-up stories of regular people launching side businesses that almost anyone can do: an urban tour guide, an artist inspired by maps, a travel site founder, an ice pop maker, and many more. In 100 Side Hustles, best-selling author of The $100 Startup Chris Guillebeau presents an "idea book" filled with inspiration for your next big idea. Distilled from Guillebeau's popular Side Hustle School podcast, these case studies feature teachers, artists, coders, and even entire families who've found ways to create new sources of income.

Don’t Keep Your Day Job will get you fired up, ready to rip it open, and use your zone of genius to add a little more sparkle to this world. Cathy Heller, host of the popular podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job, shares wisdom, anecdotes, and practical suggestions from successful creative entrepreneurs and experts, including actress Jenna Fischer on rejection, Gretchen Rubin on the keys to happiness, Jen Sincero on having your best badass life, and so much more.

The Third Circle Theory is the theory that the founder of Secret Entourage created to explain how visionaries are made and billion dollar ideas born from nothing more than your observations. The theory which has proven to be the same for all the successful individuals who have not only found their purpose in life but have executed on their beliefs, and as a result established themselves as successful innovators, explorers, educators, and entrepreneurs is now clearly defined and will teach you how to live successfully.