Praise for THIRD SHIFT ENTREPRENEUR "A must read for any aspiring entrepreneur with the itch to start their own business who is wondering 'but what do I do first?'" —Gino Wickman, Author of Traction and Creator of EOS "Our country and our communities are better when people bring their own ideas to life as entrepreneurs — and this book written as an engaging story helps show us how. If you're ready to step into the arena, grab hold of this book and the strategies in it." —Robert A. McDonald, 8th Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs Retired Chairman, President and CEO of The Procter & Gamble Company “Todd Connor has written the secret real testament of how so many entrepreneurs managed to start and survive. He doesn’t just lift the lid on the world of working entrepreneurs, he offers a game plan to follow. This is a book every person who dreams of starting their own business needs to read first.” —Charlynda Scales, Founder, Mutt’s Sauce LLC “I cannot tell you how much I needed this book. I literally could not put it down. It spoke to my soul, brought me to tears several times while re-living my own angst and discontent, and then ultimately left me bursting with hope, energy and clarity for the path forward. This for me was straight up therapy as well as the coaching I needed. If you’re at that place of wanting to step into your ownential, you have to read this.” - Michael H., Aspiring Entrepreur

Praise for THIRD SHIFT ENTREPRENEUR "A must read for any aspiring entrepreneur with the itch to start their own business who is wondering 'but what do I do first?'" —Gino Wickman, Author of Traction and Creator of EOS "Our country and our communities are better when people bring their own ideas to life as entrepreneurs — and this book written as an engaging story helps show us how. If you're ready to step into the arena, grab hold of this book and the strategies in it." —Robert A. McDonald, 8th Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs Retired Chairman, President and CEO of The Procter & Gamble Company “Todd Connor has written the secret real testament of how so many entrepreneurs managed to start and survive. He doesn’t just lift the lid on the world of working entrepreneurs, he offers a game plan to follow. This is a book every person who dreams of starting their own business needs to read first.” —Charlynda Scales, Founder, Mutt’s Sauce LLC “I cannot tell you how much I needed this book. I literally could not put it down. It spoke to my soul, brought me to tears several times while re-living my own angst and discontent, and then ultimately left me bursting with hope, energy and clarity for the path forward. This for me was straight up therapy as well as the coaching I needed. If you’re at that place of wanting to step into your ownential, you have to read this.” - Michael H., Aspiring Entrepreur

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.

This new edition presents an applied, realistic view of entrepreneurial finance for today's entrepreneur. The book provides an integrated set of concepts and applications, drawing from entrepreneurship, finance, and accounting. The book's contents are designed to follow the life cycle of a new business venture. Topics are presented in a logical order, as entrepreneurs will likely face them as they begin the process of business start-up and move into growing the business. A comprehensive financial statements template is included with the book. This tool allows for the application of many of the concepts to actual businesses, and will be a valuable supplement to the process of developing a full business plan. The templates are available for unlimited free downloads at www.drjeffcornwall.com.

FORBES #1 CAREER BOOK TO READ IN 2018 The larger-than-life journey of an 18-year-old college freshman who set out from his dorm room to track down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and dozens more of the world’s most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers. The Third Door takes readers on an unprecedented adventure—from hacking Warren Buffett’s shareholders meeting to chasing Larry King through a grocery store to celebrating in a nightclub with Lady Gaga—as Alex Banayan travels from icon to icon, decoding their success. After remarkable one-on-one interviews with Bill Gates, Maya Angelou, Steve Wozniak, Jane Goodall, Larry King, Jessica Alba, Pitbull, Tim Ferriss, Quincy Jones, and many more, Alex discovered the one key they have in common: they all took the Third Door. Life, business, success… it’s just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in. There’s the First Door: the main entrance, where ninety-nine percent of people wait in line, hoping to get in. The Second Door: the VIP entrance, where the billionaires and celebrities slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always, always… the Third Door. It’s the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, climb over the dumpster, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen—there’s always a way in. Whether it’s how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took the Third Door.

Shift your business model and transform your organization in the face of disruption Business Model Shifts is co-authored by Patrick van Der Pijl, producer of the global bestseller Business Model Generation, and offers a groundbreaking look at the challenging times in which we live, and the real-world solutions needed to conquer the obstacles organizations must now face. Business Model Shifts is a visually stunning guide that examines six fundamental disruptions happening now and spotlights the opportunities that they present: The Services Shift: the move from products to services The Stakeholder Shift: the move from an exclusive shareholder orientation to creating value for all stakeholders, including employees and society The Digital Shift: the move from traditional business operations to 24/7 connection to customers and their needs The Platform Shift: the move from trying to serve everyone, to connecting people who can exchange value on a proprietary platform The Exponential Shift: the move from seeking incremental growth to an exponential mindset that seeks 10x growth The Circular Shift: the move from take-make-dispose towards restorative, regenerative, and circular value creation Filled with case studies, stories, and in-depth analysis based on the work of hundreds of the world’s largest and most intriguing organizations, Business Model Shifts details how these organizations created their own business model shifts in order to create more customer value, and ultimately, a stronger, more competitive business. Whether you’re looking for ways to redesign your business due to the latest needs of the marketplace, launching a new product or service, or simply creating more lasting value for your customers, Business Model Shifts is the essential book that will change the way you think about your business and its future.

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.”

Are you ready to take the next step in your author journey? Art for the sake of art is important. Writing for the love of it, or to create something beautiful on the page, is absolutely worthwhile and critical to expand the sum of human expression. But I’m not here to talk about creativity or the craft of writing in this book. My aim is to take the result of your creativity into the realm of actually paying the bills. To take you from being an author to running a business as an author. I was a business consultant for 13 years before I gave up my job in September 2011 to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. I worked for large corporates and small businesses, implementing financial systems across Europe and Asia Pacific. I’ve also started a number of my own businesses ”" a scuba dive charter boat in New Zealand, a customized travel website, a property investment portfolio in Australia as well as my freelance consultancy. I’ve failed a lot and learned many lessons in my entrepreneurial life and I share them all in this book. In the last six years of being an author, through tempestuous changes in the publishing world, I've learned the business side of being a writer and I now earn a good living as an author-entrepreneur. I’m an author because it's my passion and my joy but also because it's a viable business in this age of global and digital opportunity. In the book, you will learn: Part 1: From Author To Entrepreneur The arc of the author’s journey, definition of an author-entrepreneur, deciding on your definition of success. Plus/ should you start a company? Part 2: Products and Services How you can turn one manuscript into multiple streams of income by exploiting all the different rights, various business models for authors and how to evaluate them, information on contracts, copyright and piracy. Plus/ putting together a production plan. Part 3: Employees, Suppliers and Contractors The team you need to run your business. Your role as author and what you’re committing to, as well as co-writing. Editors, agents and publishers, translators, book designers and formatters, audiobook narrators, book-keeping and accounting, virtual assistants. Plus/ how to manage your team. Part 4: Customers In-depth questions to help you understand who your customers are and what they want, as well as customer service options for authors. Part 5: Sales and Distribution How to sell through distributors and your options, plus all the information you need to sell direct. ISBNs and publishing imprints ”" do you need them? Plus/ your options for pricing. Part 6: Marketing Key overarching marketing concepts. Book-based marketing including cover, back copy and sales pages on the distributors. Author-based marketing around building your platform, and customer-based marketing around your niche audience and targeted media. Part 7: Financials Revenues of the author business and how to increase that revenue. Costs of the author business and funding your startup. Banking, PayPal, accounting, reporting, tax and estate planning. Part 8: Strategy and Planning Developing your strategy and business plan. Managing your time and developing professional habits. The long-term view and the process for becoming a full-time author. Plus/ looking after yourself. Part 9: Next Steps Questions from the book to help you work out everything to do with your business, plus encouragement for your next steps. Appendices, Workbook and Bonus Downloads including a workbook and business plan template. If you want to go from being an author to running a business as an author, download a sample or buy now.

Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before. The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals. We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you. We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens. The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups. We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well. The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve. "This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor." —Amazon Reviewer

From the trailblazing founder and CEO of the Virgin Group, a powerful argument for using business to make a positive impact in the world. Richard Branson, one of the world’s most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it’s time to turn capitalism upside down—to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities and the planet. As he writes, “My message is a simple one: business as usual isn’t working. In fact, it’s ‘business as usual’ that’s wrecking our planet. Resources are being used up; the air, the sea, the land—are all heavily polluted. The poor are getting poorer. Many are dying of starvation or because they can’t afford a dollar a day for life-saving medicine. . . . Prophesying doom and gloom is simply not my style. . . . I think business can help fix things and create a more prosperous world for everyone. I happen to believe in business because I believe that business can be a force for good. By that I mean doing good is good for business.” Screw Business as Usual shows how easy it is for both businesses and individuals to embark on a whole new way of doing things, solving major problems and turning our work into something we both love and are proud of.