First Business

The familiar adage that “It’s a jungle out there” applies to sellers and sales organizations now more than ever. Competitors are hungry for business; decision makers are wary of change; and the market is crowded with products and services that are barely distinguishable from one another. Meanwhile, the tried-and-true sales methods of the past are simply no longer effective in a world where customers aren’t sure whom to trust.

Here's the hard truth about leadership: It either forces you to get stronger or it slowly destroys your life. There is no in-between. Kevin Lawrence has discovered 17 habits that allow any leader to transcend the perils of success and keep achieving - habits that have already helped hundreds of CEOs and executives become stronger and more resilient.

From a businessman who is extraordinarily humble yet is considered one of the world's most visionary, The First Billion Is the Hardest is both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global energy and natural-resource wars - of vital interest to anyone who has a stake in America's future.

For therapists, profit is too often an afterthought. You focus on caring for clients and paying rent and clinicians, and take home the leftovers—if there are any. In Profit First for Therapists, Julie Herres adapts the popular profit first cash flow system specifically for private practice owners. Through client stories and case studies, powerful frameworks, and simple tips, she lays out a clear path to profitability.

People don’t open restaurants just because they want to start a business. People open restaurants because they are building a dream. You can create the restaurant of your dreams. You can also be profitable, pay your vendors, your staff, and yourself, and savor the joys of hospitality without stress and uncertainty.

Women of color comprise one of the fastest-growing segments in the corporate workforce, yet often we are underrepresented—among the first, few, or only ones in a department or company. For too long, corporate structures, social zeitgeist, and cultural conditioning have left us feeling exhausted and downtrodden, believing that in order to “fit in” and be successful, we must hide or change who we are.

The recent pandemic has decimated many small retail businesses, especially in the clothing sector. While big box stores pivoted to online sales, local "mom and pop" shops were left without a roadmap, and many closed their doors permanently. One store in Pikesville, Maryland managed to survive and thrive by using an unorthodox approach: the Poshmark reseller app, and a guy who knows nothing about clothes (hint: the author of this book). Outlandish but true.

Content Inc. is the go-to guide to building a solid small business by establishing a loyal audience before you sell products or services. In this audiobook, Joe Pulizzi provides a lower-risk, more effective way to create a path to startup success by re-engineering the process that so often leads to failure: You’ll learn how to develop valuable content, build an audience around that content and then create a product for that audience. Content Inc. walks you through the entire process.

As a manager, you are prepared to face any challenge when it comes to the work at hand, but you may not be ready to overcome a hostile work environment, a catastrophic disruption in workflow, or any other of a multitude to challenges that can arise, seemingly from nowhere.

In The Employee Advantage, behavioral economist Stephan Meier explains why organizations must value their employees as much as—if not more than—their customers: those that pivot toward an employee-centric model will be more profitable, innovative, and appealing to top talent.

AI-First companies are the only trillion-dollar companies, and soon they will dominate even more industries, more definitively than ever before. These companies succeed by design--they collect valuable data from day one and use it to train predictive models that automate core functions. As a result, they learn faster and outpace the competition in the process. Thankfully, you don't need a PhD to learn how to win with AI. In The AI-First Company, internationally-renowned startup investor Ash Fontana offers an executable guide for applying AI to business problems.

It's weird and frankly bewildering that the most talented women in the world are often the ones struggling to make fabulous money from their talents. In Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, you'll get the tools and inspiration you need to go to the next level of wealth - whether you're starting from scratch or itching to break through the million-dollar mark.

Building trust is your single greatest opportunity to create competitive advantage. With new data at its core, The Four Factors of Trust gives you practical guidance to measure and build trust in the relationships that matter the most—with your customers, workforce, and partners.

From the CEO of the Pavilion community, Sam Jacobs, Kind Folks Finish First weaves practical business lessons with fresh perspectives on how you can achieve success. The ideas in this book are backed by the author's personal experience building a nearly $200-million business rooted in kindness, reciprocity, and deeply held values. More than that, they're proven principles that have helped thousands reach their goals in every arena.

Your easy-to-understand guide to financial freedom! Have you ever wondered how wealthy people actually made their first million? Here is a book that shows how various people have made their money in their own unique ways, thus allowing you to find a method that works for you so that you, too, can make your first million and gain financial freedom.

The Miracle Morning for Network Marketers uses Hal Elrod's global phenomenon to give you the strategies, mindset, and daily rituals that match the top 1 percent of all network marketers, so you can grow yourself and your business faster than you ever thought possible. Once you've nailed down your miracle morning, Hal Elrod and Pat Petrini's book shows you exactly what you should be doing with "the rest of your day".

In his years as a professional ice-skater, Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton learned to embrace the mind-set of working hard to "beat" the competition. But it seems competition has gotten a bad rap these days. We've bought in to the belief that it is unfair to participants to rank performance. Yet competition is in fact a good thing because it's about working toward excellence. Finish First is a wake-up call for business leaders, entrepreneurs, spouses, parents, and even students to stop settling for mediocre and strive to go for the win.

Author Cyndi Thomason has taken the core concepts of the Profit First methodology, created by Mike Michalowicz, and customized them to address the specific needs of the ecommerce business. Profit First for Ecommerce Sellers addresses the four major struggles and provides clear and actionable guidance on how to overcome them, taking the online seller from simply getting by to becoming permanently profitable.

Real estate investors have systems for almost everything—to make the phone ring, to find deals, and to fix, rent, and sell their properties. What they don't have is a system for their finances that ensures positive cash flow and profitability. This is why many investors end up scrambling to cover payroll, taxes, and even their own bills. In Profit First for Real Estate Investing, real estate finance expert, David Richter, reveals his simple cash flow system that not only makes "pay yourself first" possible; it makes it easy.

You're smart. You graduated dental school. But running a business isn't something you just automatically know how to do. Things can get out of hand quickly. Drew Hinrichs, CPA, and Barbara Stackhouse, RDH, MEd, have adapted the core principles of Mike Michalowicz's book Profit First and customized them for dental practice businesses. Profit First for Dentists addresses the specific financial challenges dentists face in their businesses. Using true stories of their clients, they pull back the curtain and share the steps to creating a highly profitable practice.