Strategies to Sustain Small Businesses Beyond 5 Years


Book Description

Starting a business might sound easy, but sustaining it to be successful is challenging. People are often afraid to start new businesses because at least everyone has known someone who started a business but failed or someone struggling to sustain a business. Starting your own business and staying successful is the most exciting achievement. This book Strategies to Sustain Small Businesses Beyond 5 Years is used worldwide to help aspiring or struggling business owners succeed. The book is for anyone interested in doing business. aEURC/ You might be a passionate creator, starting your business out of love for what you do and believing that passion is a crucial quality of success; running your business gives you a sense of accomplishment and pride. aEURC/ You might be a freedom seeker, starting your small business; you value the ability to control your work experience and want to be in charge of your own schedules, career path, and work environment. aEURC/ You might be a legacy builder, starting a business to bring something new to the marketplace, practical in your approach to business ownership. aEURC/ You might be a struggling survivor profile representing the cold, hard truth of business ownership. aEURC/ You might be a Jack of all trades in your business, spreading too thin from managing directive, sales administrative duties to customer service. This book is the path to success in your business. Sometimes running a small business is more frightening than rewarding, and the fear is real, deeply rooted in you facing the challenges of ownership every day. The motivation of a small business owner is as diverse as the business itself. ItaEUR(tm)s very important to understand your category to know your strengths and weaknesses to adjust accordingly.




Survive and Thrive: an Exploration of Methods Implemented by Small Businesses in the Construction Industry to Sustain Their Business Beyond 5 Years


Book Description

Small businesses represent an influential portion of the American economy yet retain a high rate of closure especially in their early years, therefore; this study sought to address a lack of available research regarding small businesses in the construction industry, by investigating the methods and strategies existing small business owners use to support business survivability, in the regionally specific area of Southern California. The purpose of this study was to investigate strategies used by existing construction industry small businesses, identify the challenges experienced as a construction industry small business organization in Southern California, and determine how the small business owners define and measure success. The guiding theoretical framework for this study followed the Resource Based View, which perceives the organization as a collection of unique resources and capabilities. This qualitative case study included 8 participants who worked in the Southern California area and took part in a short recorded interview. Qualitative interview data was transcribed, coded and analyzed by the researcher. Three research questions helped guide this study: RQ1: What strategies do small businesses in the construction industry located in Southern California apply to sustain their business beyond 5 years? RQ2: What challenges do small businesses in the construction industry, located in Southern California, face? What strategies and resources are used to assist these small businesses to overcome challenges?; and RQ3: How do small businesses in the construction industry, located in Southern California define, measure, and track their organizational success? Results found for RQ1 indicated participant utilization of specific strategies and resources such as learning orientation, human capital, and market orientation. Results for RQ2 showed participants perceived employee turnover, capital management, and internal fears/doubts as major challenges to sustaining a construction industry small business. Results for RQ3 found participants defined and measured success through achievement, employee retention, and internal feelings. Recommendations for future practice and research include the research addressing knowledge gaps for technology usage, research into women-owned construction industry small business owners, in addition to continued qualitative research performed in this subject area.




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.




Management and Leadership Skills that Affect Small Business Survival


Book Description

Have you ever wondered why many of the over 28 million small businesses in operation in the United States do not survive past the first five years? Is it the economy? The stock market? Or is it something else? Two years of research by Jamey Long on factors affecting small business survival revealed a direct relationship linking management and leadership skills. Management and Leadership Skills That Affect Small Business Survival presents the research leading to this discovery that focuses solely on small businesses in the United States and teaches them how to improve management and leadership skills so that they can survive past the historical five-year failure mark.




Small Business Survivability Beyond Five Years


Book Description

The objective of this case study was to explore strategies successful small business owners use to achieve profitability beyond 5 years. The purposive sample for this study included 4 owners of successful small businesses in Atlanta, Georgia, who have been in business for at least 5 years. Business leaders will benefit from this study's findings by gaining insight into how the leaders of successful organizations implement strategies to stay profitable and competitive. Small business leaders may use the findings to enable economic development in various communities, and create valuable jobs for local residents. Social implications include the improved local and state economy and the standard of living in communities. Small business owners will be able to sustain their businesses and contribute to the prosperity of their employees, their families, health of the community, and the local economy.




The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Risk and Decisions


Book Description

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is impossible without accepting risk - the question is which risk to take and at what time. This guide offers practical, no-nonsense advice for marketing and financing your business, bringing on partners and employees, and launching your business as inexpensively and aggressively as possible.




Strong Towns


Book Description

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.




Principles of Management


Book Description

Black & white print. Principles of Management is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the introductory course on management. This is a traditional approach to management using the leading, planning, organizing, and controlling approach. Management is a broad business discipline, and the Principles of Management course covers many management areas such as human resource management and strategic management, as well as behavioral areas such as motivation. No one individual can be an expert in all areas of management, so an additional benefit of this text is that specialists in a variety of areas have authored individual chapters.




Sustainable Entrepreneurship


Book Description

Sustainable Entrepreneurship stands for a business driven concept of sustainability which focusses on increasing both social as well as business value - so called Shared Value. This book shows why and how this unique concept has the potential to become the most recognised strategic management approach in our times. It aims to point out the opportunities that arise from putting sustainable entrepreneurship into practice. At the same time, this book is a wake-up call for all those companies and decision makers who underestimated Sustainable Entrepreneurship before or who are simply not aware of its greater dimension. Well structured chapters from different academic and business perspectives clearly outline how Sustainable Entrepreneurship contributes to solving the world's most challenging problems, such as Climate Change, Finance Crisis and Political Uncertainty, as well as to ensuring business success. The book provides a framework of orientation where the journey might go: What can a successful concept of SE look like? What are the key drivers for its realisation? What is the role of business in shaping the future of our society? The book also presents best practices and provides unique learnings as well as business insights from the international Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award (www.se-award.org). The Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award (short SEA) is an award for companies today who are thinking about tomorrow by making sustainable business practices an integral part of their corporate culture. Companies that receive the SEA are being recognised for the vision they have shown in combining economic and sustainable responsibility.




Introduction to Business


Book Description

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.