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Recommended Books

Here are some recommended books you can read.

HR Ledger® Recommended Readings

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

A hidden set of rules governs who owns what–explaining everything from whether you can recline your airplane seat to why HBO lets you borrow a password illegally–and in this lively and entertaining guide, two acclaimed law professors reveal how things become “mine.” “Mine” is one of the first words babies learn.

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An Adam Grant Spring Book Pick
Finalist for the Next Big Idea Club

“A must-read this spring — a fantastically well-written exploration of our need for ownership and the costs of greed.”
–Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far From the Tree


A hidden set of rules governs who owns what–explaining everything from whether you can recline your airplane seat to why HBO lets you borrow a password illegally–and in this lively and entertaining guide, two acclaimed law professors reveal how things become “mine.”

“Mine” is one of the first words babies learn. By the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether buying a cup of coffee or a house. But who controls the space behind your airplane seat: you reclining or the squished laptop user behind? Why is plagiarism wrong, but it’s okay to knock-off a recipe or a dress design? And after a snowstorm, why does a chair in the street hold your parking space in Chicago, but in New York you lose the space and the chair?

Mine! explains these puzzles and many more. Surprisingly, there are just six simple stories that everyone uses to claim everything. Owners choose the story that steers us to do what they want. But we can always pick a different story. This is true not just for airplane seats, but also for battles over digital privacy, climate change, and wealth inequality. As Michael Heller and James Salzman show–in the spirited style of Freakonomics, Nudge, and Predictably Irrational–ownership is always up for grabs.

With stories that are eye-opening, mind-bending, and sometimes infuriating, Mine! reveals the rules of ownership that secretly control our lives.

HBR‘s 10 Must Reads 2021: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review: HBR’s 10 Must Reads Series

The collection includes articles on leadership, strategy, and innovation, as well as articles that will help you manage yourself and others.

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A year’s worth of management wisdom, all in one place.

We’ve combed through the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past year of Harvard Business Review to help you get up to speed fast on the relevant concepts driving business today. Discover new ideas and sample the latest thinking of our vast array of management experts. Revisit these topics now to make sure your organization is incorporating the best, most up-to-date practices, or keep this book as a reference so you can turn to these memorable pieces when you need them the most.

The collection includes articles on leadership, strategy, and innovation, as well as articles that will help you manage yourself and others.

The Adversaries: A Story of Boston and Bunker Hill

This book brings the background and the action on Breeds Hill to life as if you are there. It brings the reality of the fight for liberty to you up close and personal; especially the effect on folks who were friends, but found themselves on opposite sides of the fight.

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Boston, September 1774. It is the beginning of the confrontation that changes the course of history. . . for England and for America. The tension between the colonies and Britain has reached a breaking point. The British are determined to tighten their grip on the colonies, but have underestimated the resolve of their subjects in Boston who refuse to bend the knee.

From the salons of London, where English elites plot the crushing of the colonies, to the halls of Philadelphia where firebrands challenge the British resolve, to the backstreets of Boston where men who once called each other brothers-in-arms now plot against and fight each other for the Crown or for liberty, this is the compelling story of the nine months that transformed the world.

In The Adversaries the men and women-who packed the powder keg and lit the fuse to the revolution that transformed distant colonies into a beacon of liberty-come to life on the streets of London, Boston, and Charlestown in a compelling and dramatic narrative of tested loyalties and fateful meetings.

But even more, this story is a reminder of what occurs when leaders abandon eternal principles and the rule of law for avarice and power, and how a free people tells its government it will not allow its freedoms to be abused any longer. This is the story of Dr. Joseph Warren and his American comrades who with inspiring courage and heartbreaking sacrifice spark the greatest endeavor in human history: the founding of the free American Republic.

Sales Truth: Debunk the Myths. Apply Powerful Principles. Win More New Sales.

A blunt wake-up call to salespeople and sales leaders that debunks the myths of the latest miracle solutions and refocuses your sales strategy on a proven approach that will drive the results you want.

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Can you handle the truth? Can succeeding in sales be as simple as hooking up the latest CRM tool or perfecting your social media profiles and waiting for qualified leads to automatically show up in your inbox? Are you having trouble believing what the new self-proclaimed “experts” keep posting on LinkedIn and beginning to question their proclamation that everything in sales has changed?

Welcome to the world of sales, where the one constant you can bank on is the noise from so-called experts and thought leaders who want to convince you everything has changed and that you need their latest tools, toys, or tricks to stay even or get ahead of the pack. Yet, ironically, it seems that the more of these new miracle solutions you adopt, the harder it is to get results.

In Sales Truth, Mike Weinberg offers a blunt wake-up call to salespeople and sales leaders on how to get past the noise and nonsense, so you can start winning more New Sales. Here’s the truth:

  • Many of these so-called sales experts lack clients, credibility, and a track record of helping sellers achieve breakthrough results.
  • The number of “likes” a sales improvement article receives is often inversely proportional to its accuracy or helpfulness to the typical seller or sales team.
  • What has worked exceedingly well in sales and sales management for the past couple of decades is still the (not so) secret to sales success today, and you can discover these accessible, simple truths and best practices that will drive the results you want in this bold new book.

Mike Weinberg, bestselling author of New Sales. Simplified. and Sales Management. Simplified., brings sanity back to the sales effectiveness table by sharing proven strategies that he sees working firsthand across sales teams in a myriad of industries around the globe. Stop looking for the shortcut or secret sales sauce and instead apply Weinberg’s proven, powerful principles to help you master the fundamentals of professional selling and create more new sales opportunities than you ever believed possible.

LinkedIn Riches: How To Use LinkedIn For Business, Sales and Marketing!

SPECIAL BONUS: Includes Free Access to 25+ LinkedIn Training Videos!

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Discover How To Use LinkedIn For Sales, Business and Marketing, including how to:
– Find New Sales Leads and Prospective Clients on LinkedIn FAST
– Turn Your Existing LinkedIn Connections into Paying Clients
– Make Your LinkedIn Profile a Magnet for New Business and Inbound Leads
– Small Business Case Study: 6 Figures in Just 90 Days using LinkedIn

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR:
– Small Business Owners
– Entrepreneurs
– Business Coaches
– Consultants
– Trainers
– Sales Executives
– Business Development Executives
– Anyone else looking to generate more sales, clients and revenue using LinkedIn!

WHAT OTHERS SAY:
“When it comes to LinkedIn, there are pretty much three people I listen to, but only one has ever dropped new business right in my lap the way John Nemo did. You know me. I don’t recommend people lightly. John Nemo is worth your time. Jump on this book!” – Chris Brogan, New York Times Bestselling Author & Speaker

“John Nemo took my LinkedIn profile page and ignited it in a way I hadn’t seen done before. After witnessing John’s expertise up close and personal, it’s easy to see why he’s been crushing it on LinkedIn the past few years. Simply put, when it comes to LinkedIn, John Nemo is the real deal. Can’t wait to share more of his LinkedIn knowledge bombs with the rest of Fire Nation soon!” – John Lee Dumas, Host, Award-Winning “Entrepreneur on Fire” Podcast, Bestselling Author

WHAT READERS SAY:
“5 of the 13 sales I’ve made so far this year came from LinkedIn using John’s methods! NO KIDDING, this REALLY works!” – Charles (Chaz) Broersma, Internet & Digital Marketing Executive

“I can attribute just over $20,000 in revenue the last 4-5 months to my LinkedIn activity using John’s insights. I have another $10,000 in outstanding proposals that I feel confident will land in the next few weeks. There is not a week that goes past when I do not have new leads generated from my continuing to follow this program’s advice!” – Paul Copcutt, Personal Branding Consultant & Speaker

“After implementing John’s system, I started receiving leads immediately. Within 90 days my business was at 100 percent capacity. I literally had to turn new prospects away. I feel like I can now easily generate all the leads I’ll ever need!” – Karen Nierlich, Small Business Owner

“In a very short amount of time, I’ve added 90 new connections, landed 3 solid leads had more than 30 phone and in person meetings with prospects. I’ve turned my LinkedIn network into a lead generation machine thanks to you John! Your expertise and insight is second to none. You don’t try to pass off BS to your followers. Your system is so simple even for the average Joe. Thank you!” – John Barton, Director of Sales

“John – I should tell you that I just sold my largest consulting gig ever. It came from LinkedIn, and it came from being proactive on LinkedIn and following your tips!” – Dave DeVelder, FasTrac Revenue

“I have invested over $10,000 in various LinkedIn tools & training and John Nemo’s is the top! His training had strategies and techniques that are NOT COVERED BY ANYONE else. All I can say is … Wow!” – Dr. Murray Beaulieu, JV Broker, Health & Safety Products

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of 7 books, John Nemo is a former Associated Press Reporter, Talk Radio Producer, Award-Winning PR Director and Social Media Consultant based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

John has personally rewritten LinkedIn profiles for A-List Entrepreneurs and Bestselling Authors including Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, John Lee Dumas, Bob Burg, Tom Ziglar, Jairek Robbins, Dan Miller, Ray Edwards and many others.

The Millionaire Mind

The New York Times bestseller that gives “readers with an entrepreneurial turn of mind . . . road maps on how millionaires found their niches” (USA Today).

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The author of the blockbuster bestseller The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy shows how self-made millionaires have surmounted shortcomings such as average intelligence by carefully choosing their careers, taking calculated risks, and living balanced lifestyles while maintaining their integrity. Dr. Thomas J. Stanley also builds on his research from The Millionaire Next Door and takes us further into the psyche of the American millionaire.

Stanley focuses in on the top one percent of households in America and tells us the motor behind the engine; what makes them tick. His findings on how these families reached such financial success are based on in-depth surveys and interviews with more than thirteen hundred millionaires.

“A very good book that deserves to be well read.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Worth every cent . . . It’s an inspiration for anyone who has ever been told that he wasn’t smart enough or good enough.” —Associated Press

“A high IQ isn’t necessarily an indicator of financial success . . . Stanley tells us that the typical millionaire had an average GPA and frugal spending habits—but good interpersonal skills.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Ideas bigger than the next buck.” —Orlando Sentinel

A Mind for Sales: Daily Habits and Practical Strategies for Sales Success

For salespeople tired of feeling stressed out, burned out, and bummed out that their customers don’t want to hear from them, A Mind for Sales is the guide they need to develop a success mindset and the habits required to breakthrough to a whole new level of sales performance.

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Everybody knows the world of sales can be tough, and it’s easy to get discouraged when the rejections start piling up, and your customers stop picking up the phone. The wrong thought patterns can start to set in, and pretty soon you aren’t making your quota and are looking through job listings on your lunch break, waiting for the axe to fall.

Mark Hunter’s own start in sales was inauspicious, to say the least. He was fired from his first two stints before he began to learn the lessons that he covers in A Mind for Sales. He discovered that sales can be incredibly rewarding, such as when your customers call you for advice, thanking you for improving their business, and letting you know they just referred you to colleagues. The difference is simply developing mindset and momentum habits.

The good news is that you can learn how to grow a mind for sales like Hunter’s: “Today, sales is my life. It has gone way past being a job. I do not even see sales as a profession anymore; it is a lifestyle, and one I am proud to be living. I cannot imagine doing anything else.”

Let A Mind for Sales inspire and prepare you to form the new thoughts and habits you need to succeed and to realize the incredible rewards that a successful life in sales makes possible.

  • Feel reenergized by renewed purpose and success in your sales role by following the success cycle approach outlined in the book.
  • Receive practical strategies on how to change your mindset and succeed in sales.
  • Learn the daily habits needed to maximize productivity and make hitting the ground running strategy #1.
  • Gain real-world insights from Hunter’s vast experience as a highly successful sales professional and sales coach.

The Art of Closing the Sale: The Key to Making More Money Faster in the World of Professional Selling

For salespeople tired of feeling stressed out, burned out, and bummed out that their customers don’t want to hear from them, A Mind for Sales is the guide they need to develop a success mindset and the habits required to breakthrough to a whole new level of sales performance.

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Fortunately, your success or failure at closing sales is not based on innate ability. In this straightforward how-to, Tracy reveals how practicing the skills of the highest paid salespeople in every business can earn you more and better sales. The Art of Closing the Sale offers readers a practical, proven, step-by-step process that any salesperson can follow–making sales faster and easier than ever before. You’ll learn how to: build value by focusing on benefits and solutions; lower perceived risk by emphasizing guarantees and assurances; answer any objection; and bring a sales conversation to a natural and easy conclusion using effective questioning. Filled with tangible tips and industry insights, The Art of Closing the Sale will give you the confidence you need to increase your reach and effectiveness in any market.

The Federalist Papers

Hailed by Thomas Jefferson as “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written.”

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The Federalist Papers is a collection of eighty-five essays published by Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay from 1787 to 1788, as a means to persuade the public to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

With nearly two-thirds of the essays written by Hamilton, this enduring classic is perfect for modern audiences passionate about his work or seeking a deeper understanding of one of the most important documents in US history.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from iconic authors. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or revisit an old favorite, these new editions open the door to the stories and ideas that have shaped our world.

Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others, and Running Stuff

Make a lasting impact by launching new initiatives, inspiring others, and championing innovative approaches with this from-the-trenches guide by trusted executive mentor, entrepreneur, and leadership expert Joel Peterson. 

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Many leaders see their roles as presiders/managers, with a primary focus on keeping results consistent with past performance and on budget. These kinds of leaders make important contributions but rarely leave a mark on the businesses they serve. For those wanting to make a lasting impact, new skills are required. They need to learn to launch new initiatives, inspire others, and champion innovative approaches. Joel Peterson calls these higher-level leaders “entrepreneurial leaders,” and they create durable enterprises that deliver on their promise.

After three careers, four decades of marriage and seven kids, and demanding roles as CFO, CEO, chairman, lead director, adjunct professor, founder, author, entrepreneur and investor, Joel Peterson is often sought as a mentor and coach by leaders and aspiring leaders. He has worked with all types of leaders and considers the entrepreneurial leader to be the highest level of influence.

Peterson lays out a path to achieving this summit, with a series of leadership maps organized around the four essential basecamps on the path to Entrepreneurial Leadership:

  1. Establishing Trust
  2. Creating a Sense of Mission
  3. Building a Cohesive Team
  4. Executing and Delivering Results

These core philosophies, while easy to summarize, can be extremely difficult to implement. As Peterson says:

“This book of maps and mindsets is aimed at those who hope to lead others, help them achieve their best, break new barriers, change the status quo, create a legacy, develop a brand, and enjoy a life-altering experience.”

Let Entrepreneurial Leadership guide you on your journey.

Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

As the former chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, author Michael Hyatt gained insight on the importance of combining compelling products with a meaningful platform. 

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Now, with nearly three hundred thousand followers on Twitter, his large and growing platform serves as the foundation for his own successful writing, speaking, and business coaching practice. In this straightforward how-to, he offers down-to-earth guidance on crafting an effective and meaningful online platform to help readers extend their influence, monetize it, and build a sustainable career.Social media technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities for getting noticed and earning money in an increasingly noisy world. Platform goes behind the scenes into the world of social media success. You’ll discover what bestselling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to gain contacts, connections, and followers and win customers in today’s crowded marketplace. With proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips, this book makes it easier, less expensive, and more possible than ever to stand out from the crowd and launch a business.

Social Media Success for Every Brand: The Five StoryBrand Pillars That Turn Posts Into Profits

Most business owners are blindly guessing at their social media strategy, and it’s costing them time and money.

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Based on Donald Miller’s bestselling book Building a StoryBrand, Claire Diaz-Ortiz applies the seven principles of the StoryBrand Framework to help you build an effective, long-lasting social media plan for your brand.

Social Media Success for Every Brand teaches readers how to incorporate the StoryBrand 7-Part Framework into their social media channels to increase engagement and see better results. Readers will understand exactly what they need to do with their social media to drive growth to their organization through the practical guidance of the five-point SHARE model:

  • STORY
  • HOW
  • AUDIENCE
  • REACH
  • EXCELLENCE

Social Media Success for Every Brand does not require the reader to be familiar with Building a StoryBrand but provides enough foundation to prepare the reader for practical success with their social media content. Together with the StoryBrand Framework, Claire’s SHARE model will help boost customer engagement and grow the organization’s brand awareness and revenues.

Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

This guide from New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller, is a must-have for any marketing professional or small business owner who wants grow their business. It will teach you how to create and implement a sales funnel that will increase traffic and drive sales.

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Every day, your company is losing sales simply because you do not have a clear path to attract new customers. You’re not alone.

Based on proven principles from Building a StoryBrand , this 5-part checklist  is the ultimate resource for marketing professionals and business owners as they cultivate a sales funnel that flows across key customer touchpoints to effectively develop, strengthen, and communicate their brand’s story to the marketplace. In this book, you will learn:

  • The three stages of customer relationships.
  • How to create and implement the one marketing plan you will never regret.
  • How to develop a sales funnel that attracts the right customers to your business.
  • The power of email and how to create campaigns that result in customer traffic and a growth in brand awareness.
  • The keys to wireframing a website that commands attention and generates conversions.

The inability to attract and convert new customers is costing business owners valuable opportunities to grow their brand. This prevents companies, both big and small, from making the sales that are crucial to their survival. With Marketing Made Simple, you will learn everything you need to know to take your business to the next level.

Taking People with You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen

“AN IMPORTANT BOOK ABOUT MOTIVATION FROM A PROVEN MOTIVATOR.” —JACK WELCH

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Yum! Brands CEO David Novak learned long ago that you can’t lead a great organization of any size without getting your people aligned, enthusiastic, and focused relentlessly on the mission. But how do you do that? There are countless leadership books, but how many will actually help a Taco Bell shift manager, a Fortune 500 CEO, a new entrepreneur, or anyone in between?

Over his fifteen years at Yum! Brands, Novak has developed a trademarked program—Taking People with You—that he personally teaches to thousands of managers around the world. He shows them how to make big things happen by getting people on their side. No skill in business is more important. And Yum!’s extraordinary success (at least 13 percent growth for each of the last ten years) proves his point.

Novak knows that managers don’t need leadership platitudes or business school theories. So he cuts right to the chase with a step-by-step guide to setting big goals, building strong teams, blowing past your targets, and celebrating after you shock the skeptics. And then doing it again and again until consistent excellence becomes a core element of your culture.

n Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

The inspiring, life-changing bestseller by the author of LEADERS EAT LAST and TOGETHER IS BETTER.

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In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn inspire their colleagues and customers. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY — the third most popular TED video of all time.

Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?

People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.

START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel shares his strategy for success as he takes the reader deep inside the workings of a major company in Only the Paranoid Survive.

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Under Andy Grove’s leadership, Intel became the world’s largest chip maker and one of the most admired companies in the world. In Only the Paranoid Survive, Grove reveals his strategy for measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads–when massive change occurs and a company must, virtually overnight, adapt or fall by the wayside–in a new way.

Grove calls such a moment a Strategic Inflection Point, which can be set off by almost anything: mega-competition, a change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology. When a Strategic Inflection Point hits, the ordinary rules of business go out the window. Yet, managed right, a Strategic Inflection Point can be an opportunity to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever.

Grove underscores his message by examining his own record of success and failure, including how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened Intel’s reputation in 1994, and how he has dealt with the explosions in growth of the Internet. The work of a lifetime, Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic of managerial and leadership skills.

GIRLBOSS

In the New York Times bestseller that the Washington Post called “Lean In for misfits,” Sophia Amoruso shares how she went from dumpster diving to founding one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world.

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Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age twenty-two she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school—a job she’d taken for the health insurance. It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay.

Flash forward to today, and she’s the founder of Nasty Gal and the founder and CEO of Girlboss. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she’s written #GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers.

#GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn’t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It’s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.

“A witty and cleverly told account . . . It’s this kind of honest advice, plus the humorous ups and downs of her rise in online retail, that make the book so appealing.” —Los Angeles Times

“Amoruso teaches the innovative and entrepreneurial among us to play to our strengths, learn from our mistakes, and know when to break a few of the traditional rules.” —Vanity Fair

“#GIRLBOSS is more than a book . . . #GIRLBOSS is a movement.” —Lena Dunham

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business

You’re only a startup CEO once. Do it well with Startup CEO, a “master class in building a business.”
―Dick Costolo, Former CEO, Twitter

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Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it’s difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you’re likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don’t have any control over outcomes.
Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees.
Startup CEO is not a memoir of Return Path’s 20-year journey but a thoughtful CEO-focused book that provides first-time CEOs with advice, tools, and approaches for the situations that startup CEOs will face.
You’ll learn:
• How to tell your story to new hires, investors, and customers for greater alignment
• How to create a values-based culture for speed and engagement
• How to create business and personal operating systems so that you can balance your life and grow your company at the same time
• How to develop, lead, and leverage your board of directors for greater impact
• How to ensure that your company is bought, not sold, when you exit
Startup CEO is the field guide every CEO needs throughout the growth of their company.

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history.

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His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger—think global—and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era.

In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including:

• Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming.
• Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity.
• Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale.
• Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them.

This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.

“The ideas in this book strike me as universal” Iger writes. “Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.”

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

“An outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation.” — Warren Buffett

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#1 on Warren Buffett’s Recommended Reading List, Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Letter, 2012

Named one of “19 Books Billionaire Charlie Munger Thinks You Should Read” in Business Insider.

“A book that details the extraordinary success of CEOs who took a radically different approach to corporate management.” — Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation

“Thorndike explores the importance of thoughtful capital allocation through the stories of eight successful CEOs. A good read for any business leader but especially those willing to chart their own course.” — Michael Dell, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Dell

What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: “a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise.” Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.

In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.

Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these “outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.

Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.

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But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study:
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards:
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons:
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don’t.

The Findings:
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

  • Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
  • The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
  • A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
  • The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, “fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Delivering Happiness

Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit
Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department…

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Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit
Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department
Focus on company culture as the #1 priority
Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business
Help employees grow-both personally and professionally
Seek to change the world
Oh, and make money too . . .

Sound crazy? It’s all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that’s doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work For” list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.

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While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

The E Myth Revisited

Voted #1 business book by Inc. 500 CEOs.

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E-Myth \ ‘e-,’mith\ n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work

The Lean Startup

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. 

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The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades.

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It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents—millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 Habits with modern additions from Sean Covey.

The 7 Habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!

How to Win Friends and Influence People

You can go after the job you want—and get it!

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You can take the job you have—and improve it!

You can take any situation—and make it work for you!

Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time.

The Art of Start

It’s much easier to do things right from the start than to fix them later. 

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At this stage, you are forming the DNA of your startup, and this genetic code is permanent. By paying attention to a few important issues, you can build the right foundation and free yourself to concentrate on the big challenges.

Profit First

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability.

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Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales – Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren’t always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales – Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows.

Rework

Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you’re looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.

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Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don’t need to be a workaholic. You don’t need to staff up. You don’t need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don’t even need an office. Those are all just excuses.