Includes real-life examples and practical exercises, this guide to starting a small business looks at all aspects of the process, including planning the right marketing strategies and managing an effective team.

How do I know if my idea will work? How do I decide on the business model? How do I find my audience? Your digital business start-up journey begins here. From the bestselling author of The Small Business Start-up Workbook, Cheryl Rickman brings you a thoroughly practical guide to starting up a digital business, covering the full journey from idea to exit, with easy-to-implement strategies to make your online venture an ongoing success. With a combination of tips, exercises, checklists, anecdotes, case studies and lessons learned by business leaders, this workbook will guide you through each step of digital business. Learn how to: • Assess whether your business idea will work online/digitally • Choose the right business model for your proposition and avoid wasting time • Assess demand, viability and uncover untapped needs and gaps in the market • Build a usable, engaging website and mobile app • Create a buzz using social networking • Drive high quality traffic to your site and convert visitors into paying customers • Use search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) tools effectively • Raise finance and protect your business • Build and maintain a strong brand • Recruit and retain a strong team • Sell the business or find a suitable successor. Reviews for the book: “If you want advice on starting your own internet business, don’t ask me, read this book instead. It is more up-to-date and costs far less than a good lunch.” Nick Jenkins, Founder of Moonpig.com “This book excels in providing practical guidance on how to create a successful digital business which exceeds customer expectations and keeps customers happy each step of the way.” Scott Weavers-Wright, CEO of Kiddicare.com, and MD of Morrison.com (non-food) “If you read just one book on digital business, make it this one... It is inspirational, informative and interactive in equal measure. Highly recommended!” Rowan Gormley, Founder and CEO of NakedWines.com “Interspersed with inspiring and useful stories from successful entrepreneurs, this book can help aspiring business owners through a step-by-step process of refining their start-up ideas and building a solid business.” Elizabeth Varley, Founder and CEO of TechHub

In this practical and comprehensive workbook, Cheryl Rickman, offers a modern approach to self-employment and business start-up. Packed with real-life case studies and practical exercises, checklists and worksheets, it provides a step-by-step guide to researching and formulating your business ideas, planning the right marketing strategies, and managing a team that will drive your vision forward with you. You'll discover what, with hindsight, well-known entrepreneurs would have done differently, what their biggest mistakes have been and what they've learnt: Dame Anita Roddick, Julie Meyer, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Simon Woodroffe and others reveal their best and worst decisions and contribute their wisdom and tips for succeeding in business. You'll learn how to: develop, research and plan "the idea"; design and create the right products and services; define and understand your customers and target audience; secure finance and manage cash flow and accounts; create a winning brand and marketing message; gain and retain customers; achieve competitive advantage; plan, create, launch and promote your website; and manage your business and time. This fresh approach to small business start-up also includes information and recommendations on making your business ethical and socially responsible, along with exercises to help build self-confidence and visualize success.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. 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 Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Everything that is needed to set up a small business sole proprietorship is contained in this valuable reference. State-by-State rules for sole proprietorship are included in the appendix.

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.

Want to start your own business, but not sure where to begin? Mind Your Business is the ONLY book that teaches you everything you need to know about how to build a successful business from scratch. From developing your brand to designing products to identifying your legal and tax needs, this comprehensive guide will take you through every step of the process and help you create a unique and customized roadmap for your business. Mind Your Business is for aspiring entrepreneurs who are driven, ambitious, creative, and determined to build a business and life they love. Author Ilana Griffo shares the formula that turned her creative hobby into a six-figure design studio. From initial planning to long-term business strategy, Mind Your Business includes: • Insider tips from successful entrepreneurs • Advice to identify your ideal market and customer • Legal guidelines to protect your ass(ets) • Budget and forecast tools • How to avoid the pitfalls that doom most startups • Guidance on how to scale and grow • Suggestions on how to dominate online platforms • Tips to beat your competitors with SEO and social media Mind Your Business puts you in the driver’s seat. It will help you navigate the journey of starting your first business and take your ambitions and ideas from wishful thinking to successful reality.

There is a movement of women stepping into their God-given gifts to make money doing what they love. If you're ready to join them, this is your handbook that will take the ideas in your head and the dream in your heart and turn them into action. *Help you create a step-by-step, customized plan to start and grow your business. *Show you how to manage your time so you can have a business- and life- that you love. *Explain overwhelming business stuff like pricing, taxes, and budgeting in simple terms. *Teach you how to use marketing to reach the right people in the right way.

More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why? The Startup Owner's Manual guides you, step-by-step, as you put the Customer Development process to work. This method was created by renowned Silicon Valley startup expert Steve Blank, co-creator with Eric Ries of the "Lean Startup" movement and tested and refined by him for more than a decade. This 608-page how-to guide includes over 100 charts, graphs, and diagrams, plus 77 valuable checklists that guide you as you drive your company toward profitability. It will help you: Avoid the 9 deadly sins that destroy startups' chances for success Use the Customer Development method to bring your business idea to life Incorporate the Business Model Canvas as the organizing principle for startup hypotheses Identify your customers and determine how to "get, keep and grow" customers profitably Compute how you'll drive your startup to repeatable, scalable profits. The Startup Owners Manual was originally published by K&S Ranch Publishing Inc. and is now available from Wiley. The cover, design, and content are the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product.