Designing Your Life


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.




How to Write a Great Business Plan


Book Description

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.




Outlining Your Novel


Book Description

This bestselling guide will help you choose the right type of outline to unleash your creativity as a writer, guide you in brainstorming plot ideas, and aid you in discovering your characters.




The Ten Day Outline


Book Description

"If you've ever tried to write a novel before, you know just how tricky that can be. From juggling your plot and subplots, to crafting characters and fleshing out your worldbuilding, you have a lot to think about. What's worse, you need to keep track of all of this while also putting words on the page and staying productive, otherwise, you may never finish your novel at all" --




Take Off Your Pants!


Book Description

When it comes to writing books, are you a “plotter” or a “pantser?” Is one method really better than the other? In this instructional ebook, author Libbie Hawker explains the benefits and technique of planning a story before you begin to write. She’ll show you how to develop a foolproof character arc and plot, how to pace any book for a can’t-put-down reading experience, and how to ensure that your stories are complete and satisfying without wasting time or words. Hawker’s outlining technique works no matter what genre you write, and no matter the age of your audience. If you want to improve your writing speed, increase your backlist, and ensure a quality book before you even write the first word, this is the how-to book for you. Take off your pants! It’s time to start outlining.




Business Plan Template and Example


Book Description

This book is now used by the University of Kentucky entrepreneurship program. This book will give you a fresh and innovative way to write a business plan that will help you: - Complete your business plan faster - Avoid confusion and frustration - Focus on the core of your business and create more effective business strategies To help you learn the business planning process from the ground up, this book gets you started with a very basic business plan and helps you expand it as you make your way through the book. This way, you have less confusion and frustration and are more likely to finish your business plan faster and have it be better. This way you get a business plan template together practical explanations and an example. So whatever your learning style might be, this book has a high chance of being effective for you. If business planning seems to you complex and scary, this book will make it simple for you. It is written in simple and clear language to help you get started and create a great business plan. So what are you waiting for? Get this book now, and start creating a great business plan for your business today. Also recently added in the last update of this book is a business plan sample since many people commented that they wanted a business plan example. Although for my taste as an entrepreneur, I rather give you lots of great business planning strategies and theory that you can use in the real world instead of having a business plan template or workbook to write your business plan from. After all, a business plan is just a document. But to make your business a success, you will have to do it in the real world. So when you try to figure out how to create a business plan, don't just focus on the business plan document. Instead, focus on a plan for the real world with actionable and effective strategies. Get the book now, and start planning your business today.




From Where You Dream


Book Description

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author “shares his insights into—and passion for—the creation and experience of fiction with total openness” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Robert Olen Butler, author of Perfume River, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and A Small Hotel, teaches graduate fiction at Florida State University—his version of literary boot camp. In From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Offering a direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master, From Where You Dream is an invaluable tool for the novice and experienced writer alike. “Incisive and provocative, Butler’s tutorials are a must for anyone even thinking about writing fiction, and readers, too, will benefit from his passionate exhortations.” —Booklist




Living Forward


Book Description

Each of us has but one life to live on this earth. What we do with it is our choice. Are we drifting through it as spectators, reacting to our circumstances when necessary and wondering just how we got to this point anyway? Or are we directing it, maximizing the joy and potential of every day, living with a purpose or mission in mind? Too many of us are doing the former--and our lives are slipping away one day at a time. But what if we treated life like the gift that it is? What if we lived each day as though it were part of a bigger picture, a plan? That's what New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt and executive coach Daniel Harkavy show us how to do: to design a life with the end in mind, determining in advance the outcomes we desire and path to get there. In this step-by-step guide, they share proven principles that help readers create a simple but effective life plan so that they can get from where they are now to where they really want to be--in every area of life.




Burn the Business Plan


Book Description

Business startup advice from the former president of the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation and cofounder of Global Entrepreneurship Week and StartUp America, this “thoughtful study of ‘how businesses really start, grow, and prosper’...dispels quite a few business myths along the way” (Publishers Weekly). Carl Schramm, the man described by The Economist as “The Evangelist of Entrepreneurship,” has written a myth-busting guide packed with tools and techniques to help you get your big idea off the ground. Schramm believes that entrepreneurship has been misrepresented by the media, business books, university programs, and MBA courses. For example, despite the emphasis on the business plan in most business schools, some of the most successful companies in history—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and hundreds of others—achieved success before they ever had a business plan. Burn the Business Plan punctures the myth of the cool, tech-savvy twenty-something entrepreneur with nothing to lose and venture capital to burn. In fact most people who start businesses are juggling careers and mortgages just like you. The average entrepreneur is actually thirty-nine years old, and the success rate of entrepreneurs over forty is five times higher than that of those under age thirty. Entrepreneurs who come out of the corporate world often have discovered a need for a product or service and have valuable contacts to help them get started. Filled with stories of successful entrepreneurs who drew on real-life experience rather than academic coursework, Burn the Business Plan is the guide to starting and running a business that will actually work for the rest of us.




How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method


Book Description

The Snowflake Method-ten battle-tested steps that jump-start your creativity and help you quickly map out your story.