Career Planning

Each year, Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of "sell it—do it, sell it—do it" that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try. Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

Written by two MSP veterans who successfully exited their companies, The Pumpkin Plan for Managed Service Providers reveals a path to freedom for MSP leaders that anyone can follow. You can run your MSP with confidence and positive momentum, achieving the kind of success that empowers you to own your time, enjoy the good life, and be there for those you care about most!

Here's how entrepreneurs find the next big thing-and make it huge. The era of easy money and easy jobs is officially over. Today, we're all entrepreneurs, and the tides of change threaten to capsize anyone who plays it safe. Taking risks is the name of the game - but how can you tell a smart bet from a stupid gamble? Andy Kessler offers 12 surprising and controversial rules for these radical entrepreneurs.

In The Automation Advantage, global enterprise technology and automation veterans Bhaskar Ghosh, Rajendra Prasad, and Gayathri Pallail give business leaders and managers the action plan they need to execute a strategic agenda that enables them to quickly and confidently scale their automation and AI initiatives.

Smart Career Planning for Teens: A Guide to Bold Choices and Brilliant Paths is your go-to resource for turning dreams into reality with clarity, purpose, and action.

From Idea to Profit in 90 Days is your step-by-step guide to launching and scaling a successful business in just three months. Written by seasoned entrepreneurs and packed with real-world strategies, this audiobook eliminates the guesswork from business building.

Writing Winning Business Plans reveals how to write an accessible and recognition-promoting business plan for any organization, discussing how new and established companies can benefit from an effectively executed plan. Writing Winning Business Plans clearly shows you how to prepare and utilize the most important document for any organization: The business plan. Whether one is just starting out or is already in business and needs to refocus efforts, this practical guide will take you through all the various steps for preparing a winning business plan.

Supercharged Supply Chains: Discover Unparalleled Business Planning and Execution Practices provides authoritative guidance on effective Supply Chain Management. Written by the experts at Oliver Wight, a leading global consultancy firm, the book provides listeners with a clear understanding of what is required to operate at a Class A Excellent level. The operating principles are supported by practical examples and cases that demonstrate why typical approaches fail, and why Unparalleled Business Planning and Execution Practices succeed.

As a single mom living on food stamps, Sarah completely changed her life of poverty to enable her to live her dream in just 18 months. Sarah discovered the tools to change her life after her husband abandoned her and their three small children in 2008. Her story has impacted hundreds of thousands worldwide through her simple eight-step plan for achieving success known as the #HBRMethod.

America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, median wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess?

What Retirees Want presents the culmination of 30 years of research by world-famous "Age Wave" expert Ken Dychtwald, PhD, and author and consultant Robert Morison. This entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging book explains how individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments can best prepare for a new era - where the needs and demands of the "Third Age" will set the lifestyle, health, social, marketplace, and political priorities of generations to come.

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

Far from slowing down, change and transformation in business seems to come only at a more and more furious rate. The last ten years alone have seen the introduction of groundbreaking new trends that pose new opportunities and challenges for leaders in all industries.

In 2008, with no event production experience and two college degrees between the four of them, Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz became business partners and set out to build a global events company. With passion and tenacity, they began cold calling as many inspiring company founders as they could and tried to convince them to attend their first event. In the beginning, only nineteen people said yes.

Psychologist and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino has long studied the factors at play when judgment and decision-making collide with the results of our choices in real life. In Sidetracked, she explores inconsistent decisions played out in a wide range of circumstances from our roles as consumers and employees (what we buy, how we manage others) to the broader human choices that we make (who we date, how we cultivate friendships).

The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right. Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success.

This book is written to guide business owners and founders, their supporting legal, tax, and valuation professionals, even bankers who often support the entire process. Succession planning is a powerful tool that will touch the lives of today’s owners and tomorrow’s successors, their families, and all of the clients being served by a Professional Service Provider – even your current clients’ children and grandchildren!

4DX® is not theory. It is a proven set of practices that represents a new way of thinking essential to thriving in today’s competitive climate, making this 2nd edition a book that no business leader can afford to miss. The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is a simple, repeatable, and proven formula for executing your most important strategic priorities in the midst of the whirlwind. By following the 4 Disciplines, leaders can produce breakthrough results, even when executing the strategy requires a significant change in behavior from their teams.

It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work—and the work of your team—aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list.

In a world crying out for change, Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems is your guidebook for action. Adam Kahane, the bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a global authority on solving tough problems, delivers game-changing advice for anyone ready to make a difference. This is a manifesto for world-changers. Drawing on decades of work with leaders from national and organizational presidents to front-line managers and grass-roots activists, Kahane distills seven potent habits that enable ordinary citizens to become extraordinary agents of transformation.