Start Small, Stay Small


Book Description

Start Small, Stay Small is a step-by-step guide to launching a self-funded startup. If you're a desktop, mobile or web developer, this book is your blueprint to getting your startup off the ground with no outside investment.This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.This book assumes: You don't have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account You're not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world You're not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock options There's nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.Start Small, Stay Small also focuses on the single most important element of a startup that most developers avoid: marketing. There are many great resources for learning how to write code, organize source control, or connect to a database. This book does not cover the technical aspects developers already know or can learn elsewhere. It focuses on finding your idea, testing it before you build, and getting it into the hands of your customers.




Start Small FINISH BIG


Book Description

At age seventeen Fred Deluca borrowed $1,000 from a a friend-and srarted SUBWAY(R). Today, with more than 38,000 stores in one hundred countries and annual sales exceeding $16.6 billion, Fred DeLuca's SUBWAY is a success story with a message... START SMALL FINISH BIG Publishers Weekly Review: DeLuca was only 17 when he started what is now the Subway restaurant chain in 1965; he needed money to attend college and a friend offered to back him with $1,000 to start a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Conn. That beginning led DeLuca to an enormously successful career: in addition to being president of the chain, he runs MILE, a nonprofit organization that offers loans to entrepreneurs. According to DeLuca, there are 15 essential principles for anyone starting a small business, some of which, DeLuca confesses, he learned the hard way (he had never made a submarine sandwich before opening day of his first shop). Among these pillars: Believe in Your People; Never Run Out of Money; Keep the Faith; and Profit or Perish. DeLuca uses his own business experience as well as that of other successful entrepreneursAe.g., the founders of Kinko's and Little Caesar'sAin addition to those of less well-known business people. Written in a conversational style, the advice isn't especially original or creative. However, would-be millionaires who are sitting at their kitchen table wondering if they should take that big step and start a business will find the book both instructive and inspirational. Agent, Bob Diforio. Library Journal DeLuca, co-founder in 1965 of SUBWAY Restaurants and founder in 1996 of the Micro Investment Lending Enterprise (MILE), a nonprofit organization making microloans to entrepreneurs/microentrepreneurs, has written this humorous, down-to-earth guide to success as a small business owner. Coauthor Hayes is a writer (Computer Architecture and Organization, 1998), public speaker, and business trainer. Each chapter describes one of DeLuca's 15 key lessons and is illustrated with a real-life case study. None of the people in these cases is a household name, but businesses such as Kinkos, Little Caesars, and SUBWAY are. DeLuca doesn't claim that his guides form a master plan for success, but he optimistically believes that anyone can become Bill Gates, Lillian Vernon, or Henry Lay and that his lessons will increase the chances. His book also promotes and supports MILE, and the last chapter and appendix are devoted to information about it and its programs. Recommended for most small business collections. Susan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Albuquerque




Think Big, Start Small


Book Description

You no longer have to be a neuroscientist to understand how your students absorb knowledge. This easy-to-comprehend guide pares down the vast field of neuroscience and covers the brain basics that affect your classroom the most—attention, memory, emotions, and stress. With a variety of simple brain-compatible strategies, you’ll see a measurable difference in your differentiated classrooms.




Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast: A Blueprint for Transformation from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation


Book Description

The Only Innovation Guide You Will Ever Need--from the Award-Winning Minds at Mayo Clinic A lot of businesspeople talk about innovation, but few companies have achieved the level of truly transformative innovation as brilliantly--or as famously--as the legendary Mayo Clinic. Introducing Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast, the first innovation guide based on the proven, decade-long program that’s made Mayo Clinic one of the most respected and successful organizations in the world. This essential must-have guide shows you how to: Inspire and ignite trailblazing innovation in your workplace Design a new business model that’s creative, collaborative, and sustainable Apply the traditional scientific method to the latest innovations in "design thinking" Build a customized toolkit of the best practices, project portfolios, and strategies Increase your innovation capacity--and watch how quickly you succeed These field-tested techniques grew out of the health care industry but are designed to work with any complex organization. Written by three Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation insiders--Dr. Nicholas LaRusso, Barbara Spurrier, and Dr. Gianrico Farrugia--the book offers a wealth of transformative ideas and strategies. The concise, easy-to-implement methods can help jump-start your employees' creative potential, involve them in the collaborative process, and pave the way to the future of sustainable innovation. You get step-by-step advice on building leadership teams, accelerator platforms for speeding up results, and fascinating case studies of innovation in action from the files of the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation. In today's fast-moving world, it's innovation that drives success. This book gives you the keys. ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THINK BIG, START SMALL, MOVE FAST: "Truly great organizations do not just achieve great results; they are also relentless in the pursuit of continual improvement. This book offers both methods and motivation to leaders in any industry who understand that the pursuit of excellence is never-ending." -- Donald Berwick, M.D., MPP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement "Do you want your organization to deliver a shockingly better customer experience? Here is Mayo's method that transformed the patient experience by making innovation systemic, the human side of innovation." -- Scott Cook, Cofounder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit "A powerful set of actionable, yet importantly nonprescriptive, principles for transformative change that will inspire and challenge all of us to reenvision a system that delivers health, not just care, for all our patients." -- Rebecca Onie, Cofounder and CEO, Health Leads "This book should serve both as a how-to guide for medical professionals and an inspiration for other innovators all over the country." -- T. R. Reid, reporter and author of The Healing of America "Powerful insight on how to deliver meaningful innovations time and again." -- Frans van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips "Leaders who seek to accelerate new innovation competencies can benefit from this hands-on guide." -- Sarah Miller Caldicott, great grandniece of Thomas Edison, and CEO, Power Patterns of Innovation "Read this book. . . . Copy its practices. It will save you years of misery and missteps as you build your own innovation revolution." -- Larry Keeley, Cofounder, Doblin Inc., and Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP




Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast


Book Description

Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast is based on the key business transformation guidance that futurist Jim Carroll has been providing to his global client base for over 25 years. He has shared his insight with over 2 million people in more than 1,500 keynote presentations worldwide. The book provides a glimpse into the uniqueness of the work that Jim has done in preparing for these events, and is based on insight from a long career as an advisor to countless global organizations. Jim came to realize this unique experience -- a life on the stage -- provided him with some very unique observations into how people try to deal with a world of massive change and challenge. Over time, he began to capture these observations, usually inspirational, sometimes controversial. Notes Jim: "In late July 2016, through a variety of colliding circumstances, the opportunity to focus my thinking into a message of hope and inspiration took on a life of its own. Since that moment in time, I have started each workday, without fail, very early in the morning, with my coffee, my laptop, and a moment of quiet reflection. They are a critical part of a very important journey, that of painting a picture of hope and optimism for what the day might bring. I have not missed one day, since starting this in early August 2016. I mark my personal progress and success one day at a time by my ability to inspire myself and others each and every day through this small personal thought." The book is a story of inspiration and transformation. It provides motivational guidance to those who seek how to navigate our increasingly complex and ever faster world. It provides insight into what people and organizations must do to deal with a world of massive disruption and transformation in everything they know: disruptive business models; competitive markets, product and service lines; changing consumer behaviour; the impact of accelerating technology, and more.




Why Startups Fail


Book Description

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way 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. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.




Start And Run A Gift Shop


Book Description

Setting up a shop, retail unit or market stall is one of the most accessible small business start-up options - it needs no specific training, no compulsory qualifications and no large capital outlay. Give your business a head start by following the advice in this book to make sure your business is built on solid foundations. It will tell you: how to research your business idea to ensure it will be a success; what you need to do to turn your idea into reality; and, how to manage yourself, your stock and your money to power ahead through good times and bad. No other book divulges this sort of insider knowledge of the retail trade. Author Val Clarke has over ten years' experience of starting up shops, running and selling them as well as importing and wholesaling. She has traded in a wide variety of goods, from clothing to furniture. Her latest venture, a mainstream gift and jewellery shop, opened in September 2007. This business is thriving, proving that her methods are successful and that times of economic downturn are also times of opportunity for the shrewd shopkeeper. 'When I opened my first shop I wished there was a book to help me. I learnt by trial and error, from my own mistakes and those of others. With this book you'll speed up the learning process and start to make a profit from day one'!




Start Small, Profit Big in Real Estate: Fixer Jay's 2-Year Plan for Building Wealth - Starting from Scratch


Book Description

From the BusinessWeek bestselling author of Investing in Fixer-Uppers--a plan for building a real estate empire with little or no money down " Fixer Jay" DeCima, the acknowledged king of fixer-uppers, delivers a much-anticipated guide to realizing financial independence through real estate investing. Written in DeCima's trademark folksy style, Start Small, Profit Big in Real Estate provides a complete two-year plan for making it big in real estate starting with little or no money of your own. You'll learn how to: Scout out properties with the highest return Calculate the payoff versus the effort involved in any real estate investment Find motivated sellers who will finance your properties Use leveraging and compounding to utmost advantage Negotiate with sellers and win every time Make big bucks with rental properties




Tiny Habits


Book Description

The world's leading expert on habit formation shows how you can have a happier, healthier life: by starting small. Myth: Change is hard. Reality: Change can be easy if you know the simple steps of Behavior Design. Myth: It's all about willpower. Reality: Willpower is fickle and finite, and exactly the wrong way to create habits. Myth: You have to make a plan and stick to it. Reality: You transform your life by starting small and being flexible. BJ FOGG is here to change your life--and revolutionize how we think about human behavior. Based on twenty years of research and Fogg's experience coaching more than 40,000 people, Tiny Habits cracks the code of habit formation. With breakthrough discoveries in every chapter, you'll learn the simplest proven ways to transform your life. Fogg shows you how to feel good about your successes instead of bad about your failures. Whether you want to lose weight, de-stress, sleep better, or be more productive each day, Tiny Habits makes it easy to achieve. Already the habit guru to companies around the world, Fogg brings his proven method to a global audience for the first time. Whether you want to lose weight, de-stress, sleep better, or exercise more, Tiny Habits makes it easy to achieve.




The Great Mental Models, Volume 1


Book Description

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.