8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs


Book Description

“As unique as it is valuable, [8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs] achieves where so many business books fail. It provides practical advice for individuals . . . [I]t delivers what few business books ever aspire to achieve—wisdom regarding business and decision making, within a special context: start-up firms.” —From the Foreword by Carl Schramm, president and CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation At age seven, Cameron Johnson sold tomatoes door-to-door from his family’s farm. Pete Amico quit his job on his first day because he didn’t feel like taking orders from his boss.Greg Herro built a successful business selling diamonds made from the carbon extracted from ashes. If any of these people remind you of yourself, you just might have the kind of personality to take the small business world by storm. In 8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs, Brent Bowers reveals the eight patterns that highly successful entrepreneurs share—and what we can learn from them. In covering small business for decades at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Bowers has chronicled the rise and fall of hundreds of start-ups. In this book, he draws on extensive interviews and research, as well as on the experiences and expertise of business consultants, venture capitalists, academia, and the entrepreneurs themselves, to describe the key characteristics shared by dozens of successful small-business owners and their companies. Among them: The ability to spot and seize opportunities An overwhelming urge to be in charge coupled with a gift for leadership The flexibility to come up with creative, out-of-the-box solutions to problems or obstacles Incredible energy and tenacity in the pursuit of their goals Unwavering faith in their business The ability to take smart risks The ability to bounce back from setbacks and see failure as just one step on the path to ultimate success This book offers invaluable lessons and insights for anyone thinking about starting a business or attempting a start-up a second or third time.







The 8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs


Book Description

Examines the strategies and philosophy of entrepreneurs who have overcome failure, risk, and setbacks to create highly successful companies, identifying key traits shared by all such successful entrepreneurs, including a talent for inspiring loyalty, a high tolerance for risk, and a firm belief in his or her company's product. Originally published as If at First You Don't Succeed. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.







The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People


Book Description

A revolutionary guidebook to achieving peace of mind by seeking the roots of human behavior in character and by learning principles rather than just practices. Covey's method is a pathway to wisdom and power.




Build the Damn Thing


Book Description

The Wall Street Journal Bestseller featured in Bloomberg, Fast Company, Masters of Scale, the Motley Fool, Marketplace and more. An indispensable guide to building a startup and breaking down the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs from the visionary venture capitalist and pioneering entrepreneur Kathryn Finney. Build the Damn Thing is a hard-won, battle-tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment has left out. Finney, an investor and startup champion, explains how to build a business from the ground up, from developing a business plan to finding investors, growing a team, and refining a product. Finney empowers entrepreneurs to take advantage of their unique networks and resources; arms readers with responses to investors who say, “great pitch but I just don’t do Black women”; and inspires them to overcome naysayers while remaining “100% That B*tch.” Don’t wait for the system to let you in—break down the door and build your damn thing. For all the Builders striving to build their businesses in a world that has overlooked and underestimated them: this is the essential guide to knowing, breaking, remaking and building your own rules of entrepreneurship in a startup and investing world designed for and by the “Entitleds.”




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.




High Performance Habits


Book Description

THESE HABITS WILL MAKE YOU EXTRAORDINARY. Twenty years ago, author Brendon Burchard became obsessed with answering three questions: 1. Why do some individuals and teams succeed more quickly than others and sustain that success over the long term? 2. Of those who pull it off, why are some miserable and others consistently happy on their journey? 3. What motivates people to reach for higher levels of success in the first place, and what practices help them improve the most After extensive original research and a decade as the world’s leading high performance coach, Burchard found the answers. It turns out that just six deliberate habits give you the edge. Anyone can practice these habits and, when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers. Which habits can help you achieve long-term success and vibrant well-being no matter your age, career, strengths, or personality? To become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage. The art and science of how to do all this is what this book is about. Whether you want to get more done, lead others better, develop skill faster, or dramatically increase your sense of joy and confidence, the habits in this book will help you achieve it faster. Each of the six habits is illustrated by powerful vignettes, cutting-edge science, thought-provoking exercises, and real-world daily practices you can implement right now. If you’ve ever wanted a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life, it’s in your hands. Best of all, you can measure your progress. A link to a free professional assessment is included in the book.




Napoleon Hill's Success Masters


Book Description

Your possibilities for success are endless. Success is a shapeshifter. Its form changes with the wind, and it cannot be caught or tamed. Often, it feels utterly unattainable. But rather than putting "success" in a box, claiming there's only one path to achieve it, Napoleon Hill has proven in his work that the one thing you really need to succeed is simple: You. Napoleon Hill's Success Masters is your blueprint to discover the winner inside you and earn the success you desire—with essays from motivational powerhouses including Napoleon Hill alums like Paul Harvey, W. Clement Stone, Henry van Dyke, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and Earl Nightingale. Dive in and learn how to: Master yourself with a positive mindset and a winner's habits Create a problem-solving model that works for you in any situation Harness the sales pitch that will transform your business Turn your day-to-day obstacles into opportunities for growth Stay strong through every setback by focusing on moving forward Make stronger decisions with curiosity, creativity, and confidence Develop an action plan to improve your productivity Maximize every hour, even while waiting, driving, or sleeping Plus, work between the lines, along the margins, and beyond the pages with personal development checklists, exclusive action items, and more from the experts at Entrepreneur.




Entrepreneurial Strategy


Book Description

This open access book focuses on explaining differences amongst organizations regarding various attributes, forms, and outcomes. By focusing on the “how” of new venture creation and management to produce well-established organizations, the authors aim to increase our understanding of the antecedents of most management research assumptions. New ventures are the source of most newly created jobs generated in an economy, new industries and markets, innovative products and services, and new solutions to economic, social, and environmental problems. However, most management research assumes a well-established organization as the starting point of their theorizing. Building on the notion of guided attention, it details how entrepreneurs can allocate their transient attention to identify potential opportunities from environmental change and how entrepreneurs allocate their sustained attention to form beliefs about radical and incremental opportunities requiring entrepreneurial action. The authors explain how entrepreneurs build such communities and engage community members over time to co-construct potential opportunities for new venture progress. Using the lean startup framework, they connect the dots between the theorizing on identifying and co-constructing potential opportunities and the startup of new ventures. This leads to a new overarching framework based on are (1) co-creating a startup, (2) organizing a startup, and (3) performing a startup to bring together the many disparate threads of research on new ventures. The authors then theorize on the importance of knowledge in organizational scaling. Based on cutting-edge research from the leading entrepreneurship journals, this book expands knowledge on the cognitive aspect of the new venture creation process.