Your Business is a Leaky Bucket


Book Description

Using the metaphor of a “Leaky Bucket,” Howard Shore addresses the 15 most common issues in the areas of people, strategy, and execution that drain energy, direction, and profitability from every business. Shore provides a practical guide on how to effect change and ignite growth in the leadership team in order to achieve an organization's full potential. The principles outlined in this book lead to clear and purposeful direction, a stronger, invigorated leadership team, and maximum growth and revenue, all while reducing workplace drama.




Watertight Marketing


Book Description

Are you wasting your money on marketing? Most businesses are. They’ve got serious profit leaks. So when they run their marketing Taps, revenue simply pours out of a leaky Bucket. Watertight Marketing is no ordinary marketing book. There’s no jargon. And it’s not about the latest over-hyped tactic. This is a book that tackles business fundamentals. It’s the book on marketing that makes all the others make sense. Following the process laid out in this book puts you in control of your business growth. You’ll be able to step off the roller coaster of yo-yo sales results and get your business on a sustainable upward curve. Bryony Thomas has a refreshing style that means the ideas click and stick. She has distilled her wealth of experience into clear action points that you’ll want to tackle today.




Traction


Book Description

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers (or, for a free service, users). That’s called traction, and it makes everything else easier—fund-raising, hiring, press, partnerships, acquisitions. Talk is cheap, but traction is hard evidence that you’re on the right path. Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and how to pick the right ones for your business. It draws on inter-views with more than forty successful founders, including Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), Paul English (Kayak), and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot). You’ll learn, for example, how to: ·Find and use offline ads and other channels your competitors probably aren’t using ·Get targeted media coverage that will help you reach more customers ·Boost the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by automating staggered sets of prompts and updates ·Improve your search engine rankings and advertising through online tools and research Weinberg and Mares know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; every startup faces unique challenges and will benefit from a blend of these nineteen traction channels. They offer a three-step framework (called Bullseye) to figure out which ones will work best for your business. But no matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.




The Customer Success Economy


Book Description

If leaders aren't integrating their digital offerings into a philosophy of Customer Success, they will be defeated in the next decade, because technical excellence and other traditional competitive advantages are becoming too easy to imitate. The Customer Success Economy offers examples and specifics of how companies can transform. It addresses the pains of transforming organizational charts, leadership roles, responsibilities, and strategies so the whole company works together in total service to the customer. Shows leaders how their digital implementations will make them more Amazon-like Helps you deliver recurring revenue Shows you how to embrace customer retention Demonstrates the importance of "churning" less Get that competitive advantage in the most relevant and important arena today—making and cultivating happy customers.




E.S.P.


Book Description




Small Business Survival: Teach Yourself


Book Description

Small Business Survival will give you all the help you need to not just ""get by"" in the present economic downturn but to help your business emerge stronger, too. The author, Kevin Duncan, is an independent troubleshooter with a vast knowledge of many business types, writer of 5 bestselling business books, and winner of many creativity and effectiveness awards. His no-nonsense approach to the subject guides you through the key issues and questions you will face and gives you clear, practical solutions - to help ensure your business survives and thrives. NOT GOT MUCH TIME? One and five-minute introductions to key principles to get you started. AUTHOR INSIGHTS Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience. TEST YOURSELF Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress. EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE Extra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of how to keep your small business afloat and going strong. FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBER Quick refreshers to help you remember the key facts. TRY THIS Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.




Thinking Bigger


Book Description

"The paucity of women-led start-ups to reach the same stratospheric levels of funding, growth, and annual revenue achieved by many of the new businesses founded by men is staggering. The lack of female representation among the top-earning founders is all the more surprising when compared to the number of women who do start businesses. So many women would love to build something great but don't know the rules of the game. They want real, practical, usable tools to help them make big things happen. This book aims to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice, empowering women to secure funding and thrive in big business and finance. Sarah Dusek delves into the art and science of creating a winning pitch deck, from crafting a compelling story to using data and design to make a lasting impact. She offers real-life examples from other female entrepreneurs and stories from her own journey, both as an entrepreneur and now as an investor in other women's businesses. Thinking Bigger is for women entrepreneurs around the world who want to think bigger and understand what it will take to get funded. Increasing the number of women-led businesses is not only beneficial for individual women entrepreneurs but is also critical for building a more equal, diverse world. The world is in desperate need of women entrepreneurs who will bring their unique perspectives to solving some of the world's biggest and most stubborn problems. This book is a rallying cry to encourage women to think big, to take their seats at the proverbial tables of power, and to build their own tables if necessary"--




Write the Perfect Book Proposal


Book Description

Want to publish your book? Learn how--it's easier than you think! Charismatic authors and literary agents Jeff Herman and Deborah Levine Herman have successfully sold hundreds of titles and learned--through trial and error--how to write a flawless book proposal that publishers can't resist. Now you can benefit from their hard work and publishing savvy. In this new edition, they offer guidance and advice that will inspire, educate, and, most importantly, give you the necessary edge to get your book published. They explain: * How to shape your idea and create a title * Ways to get to know the market and competition * Tips on writing an effective outline, query letter, and sample chapter * The art and science of fiction and nonfiction book proposals * How ten actual proposals (included here) were successfully sold to publishers--and why "A submission from Jeff Herman always gets moved to the top . . . his new book will show you how to move to the top."--Frederic W. Hills Vice President, Simon & Schuster "This book will take writers to the highest level of proposal writing and success."--Roger Cooper Quality Paperback Book Club "If you want your proposal to ignite a busy editor's interest, read this book."--Adrienne Hickey Senior Acquisitions Editor, AMACOM Books




Startups: the art of getting f*cked every day and not giving up


Book Description

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A ROLLER COASTER WITH THORNS IN THE SEAT, WITHOUT ANY KIND OF RESTRAINTS FOR THE RIDERS. SO DON'T EXPECT INSPIRING SUCCESS STORIES OR A STEP-BY-STEP LIST OF HOW TO CREATE A BILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS. INSTEAD, YOU'LL FIND SOMETHING ELSE ON THESE PAGES: WE AIM TO KEEP IT REAL FOR THOSE WHO DREAM OF BUILDING A BUSINESS. Everyone knows that entrepreneurship is not a bed of roses: creating a business requires a lot of effort, sweat, determination, and resilience. The good news is that Israel Salmen, founder and CEO of Méliuz, and Lucas Marques, COO of Méliuz, let go of their egos and decided to reveal all their mistakes, failures, and learnings throughout their journeys as entrepreneurs. In S tartups: The Art of Getting F*cked Every Day and Not Giving Up, you will see entrepreneurship as it is. There are no big stages or audiences but, a battlefield that rewards the effort of those who keep going despite the hardships. The victorious are those who do not give up even after successive falls. In this book, you will find: Stories of conflicts between partners and what we can learn from them. Problems that come up when the team grows, and how to solve them. Challenges that may appear getting investments and how to deal with them. Essential learnings to nurture your company's culture and not let the problems caused by the lack of it take over the business. Thousands of challenges that entrepreneurs will face in their journeys.




Find (and Keep) Top Talent for Your Business (Collection)


Book Description

A brand new collection of state-of-the-art talent management techniques Breakthrough talent management techniques! 5 authoritative books bring together the state-of-the-art in finding, growing, and keeping world-class people! Talent is everything — and finding, growing, and keeping the best talent has never been more difficult. This 5-book collection brings together powerful new insights, techniques, practices, and skills for improving the way you manage talent in any organization, industry, or environment… including the talent that matters most. (Yours!) In 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent, renowned workforce expert David Russo identifies exactly what great organizations do differently when it comes to managing their people. He distills these differences into 17 rules for everything from resourcing and compensation to leadership development, risk-taking to change management. Next, he shows how to apply these rules in your organization, whether you’re large or small, high-tech or low-tech, for-profit or non-profit. Then, in Talent Force, Rusty Rueff and Hank Springer help you systematically get the right talent into the right place at the right time. You’ll learn how to develop and implement a world-class talent plan that aligns with business objectives, and identify metrics for tracking and optimizing progress. Discover how candidates are using technology to evaluate new opportunities, benchmark compensation, and create new back-channels of communication about worklife — and learn how to use these technologies yourself to grow the world’s best Talent Force. In The Truth About Hiring the Best, Cathy Fyock reveals 53 proven hiring principles for identifying, reaching, and recruiting the very best. Fyock helps you find hidden talent sources… make great people want to work with you… choose amongst the great new people you’ve found, while building great relationships with strong candidates you don’t hire. Next, in The Truth About Getting the Best From People, Second Edition, Martha Finney 60+ proven principles for achieving unprecedented levels of employee engagement. This new edition features more than 15 new truths including: managing virtual teams, building persuasive skills, tuning into your own unconscious biases, managing multiple generations, and identifying and cultivating individual high performers. Not feeling empowered enough to do all this? Vince Thompson’s Ignited! reveals gathering forces that are re-empowering you right now. Thompson outlines realistic steps for leveraging networks and resources to transform your own visions into reality, and accomplishing powerful goals only you can achieve. He offers new tools for leading “from the middle”… expanding your influence and overcoming traps… connecting your passions with business goals… mastering all your new roles: linkmaker, process master, pilot, healer, bard, scout, and translator! From world-renowned talent management experts Vince Thompson, David Russo, Rusty Rueff, Hank Stringer, Cathy Fyock, and Martha I. Finney