A summary of things you should know about Strategy Rules according to David Yoffie: Introduction In this episode David Yoffie takes a deep dive into his book, Strategy Rules, whereRead More
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]]>In this episode David Yoffie takes a deep dive into his book, Strategy Rules, where he unveils 5 five timeless lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs.
In their book Yoffie and his co-author, Michael Cusumano, share the successes, failures, commonalities, and differences of world famous leaders like Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. The goal of the book is to teach you 5 new strategic rules for doing business, the best practices that come with high-tech entrepreneurship, and how to take your leadership to the next level.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who own or plan on owning a high-tech company and want to learn strategy techniques from the best leaders in the business.
The thing that makes this book different from others is most people write biographies on these particular individuals or they write histories of the companies. There is no book, that I am aware of, that dives deep into looking at three CEO’s, comparing and contrasting them, and trying to understand what they were able to do in similar ways that produced such extraordinary performance. We think that by looking across companies and across great leaders you get a deeper insight. It’s not about the individual personality traits; it’s about the ways they think and the ways they deliver performance.
Like many books we have an introduction and concluding chapter which gives you the high level overview of everything you might want to know. Then we go into and talk about each of the five rules in great depth. For each rule we have a single chapter so you can jump in where needed if you want.
The idea of what we call Look Forward Reason Back is the critical idea that ultimately determines what makes a great strategist. It’s that ability to look ahead, to have a vision, and then figure out what you need to do today to get to that particular end game. It’s also about anticipating what customers are going to need tomorrow, not what customers are needing today and then figuring out what they capabilities are that you have in your organization today that will deliver those customer needs of tomorrow.
The way we begin the book is by trying to first understand how these individuals were different and how they were similar. At a very basic level they could not be more different as individuals. Bill Gates was the classic nerd but grew up in a wealthy family, Andy Groves was a holocaust survivor and made his way to get a PhD in the United States, and we all know about Steve Jobs. But beyond that these individuals had some incredibly important similarities which we think are important for any entrepreneur who wants to be successful. Number one they were incredibly ambitious not just to make money but to build great companies and to change the world. Number two they worked incredibly hard and they also provoked incredible debates inside the company. Finally, they were all slightly paranoid and never took success for granted even when they were doing extraordinarily well.
All three of these individuals were able to build the most valuable companies in the world and the question is how did they do it and this is where the five rules come in. The five rules are what we call Look Forward, Reason Back, Make Big Bets Without Beating the Company, Build Platforms and Ecosystem not Just Products, Exploit Leverage and Power, and Shape the Organization Around Your Personal Anchor.
The first three deals with strategy and the last two deal with tactics and execution. If you want to be a great strategist you have got to be able to do things at a high-level as well as at a much more micro level and ultimately be able to execute. The idea of Look Forward Reason Back is that you got to be able to think several steps ahead into the future and then think about what you have to do today in order to reach that position.
We then break that down into a number of different activities that a great CEO is going to do if they follow these rules. The first one is that you have to start with some vision of where you want to go. This vision becomes critical in driving the success of all of these organizations which we define in great detail.
The second idea is that you got to be able to think big and make big bold bets that could potentially change the game but you have to do it without beating the company.
The third big idea is that you have to build platforms and ecosystems not just products. This is the notion that ultimately its great platforms that win, not great products that always win. The fourth idea is about the tactics and this is the notion that when you’re an entrepreneur you’ve got to be clever, you’ve got to stay under the radar, and you’ve got to employ tactics.
The last critical idea is the idea of how you execute when you have an organization that’s trying to do all these things. Ultimately this is about the CEO figuring out what they really do that is special, what it is that they have in their own capability set that enables them to do things that give them a comparative advantage to help their organization understand what will be successful. The notion here is that if you are going to be a successful CEO or entrepreneur first you have to know yourself and exactly what you can do well and don’t do well. All of these rules were quite similar across all three CEO’s and helped them start as entrepreneurs and ultimately build three of the most valuable companies in the history of the world.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:27
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” – Andy Grove
“Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to teach you electronics, you’re going to teach me retail. Let’s go walk the mall.” – Ron Johnson
I have been a professor at Harvard for 34 years and my co-author, Michael Cusumano, has been a professor at MIT for about 30 years. I have been involved in trying to understand the world of strategy and specifically the world of strategy and technology since the mid 1980’s. I had the fortunate experience of joining the Intel board of directors in 1989 which gave me an opportunity to meet Andy Grove and then Andy introduced me to Billy Gates and Steve Jobs. Today I continue to work broadly in this field and it has been the core of my research for most of my career.
I wanted to try to understand how an entrepreneur could develop into a leader of a great company and also think about what would lead to great performance. Ultimately when you think about companies that have done extraordinary well, the leaders who have done it better than anybody else have been Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. And all three of them we know their history from beginning to end and know they have done a really great job. This was an opportunity to dive deep into three extraordinary individuals.
Judo Strategy by David Yoffie
Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
Buy Strategy Rules by David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano on Amazon today
Visit HBS.edu to learn more about David, his book, and his profession
Follow David Yoffie on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Winning the Long Game by Steve Krupp
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about System Busters according to Philip Beyer: Introduction In this episode Philip Beyer takes a deep dive into his book, System Busters whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Philip Beyer takes a deep dive into his book, System Busters where he shares a tactical guide for eliminating typical business problems and making a business run better.
In his book Beyer provides a handful of case studies and success stories of business systems that are shared in a common sense fashion so you can implement the same effective strategies. The goal of the book is to teach you how to effectively systematize any business, how to overcome business struggles, and how to improve your strengths as a business owner.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are fairly new to business, but are struggling when it comes to growing the business, meeting deadlines, finding time for personal life, and eliminating interruptions.
There are a lot of consultants and theories on business systems out there but I actually built and applied business systems from the ground up, measuring their results, and sustaining them for over 20 years. This book shares how we did it step by step in simple terms using true stories as examples. After reading our book I believe anyone can systematize and bring order to their business so that they don’t have to constantly be on site in order for their business to grow and prosper.
You can start at the beginning and read all the way through or you can jump in and out as needed.
If you ever want to get away from day to day operations and you want to own the business, not just have a job, you need a written operations manual for the business. Systems, systems, systems!
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are about where to start, making the decision to systematize your business, and the why and beginning to mission. The small business administration says that over 50% of businesses fail in the first year. In 95% of those who make it past the first year fail in the first 5 years and the reason they fail is not for lack of sales, it’s due to burnout and miss management. In the first chapter I share my epiphany on systematizing my business, my decision making process, my commitment to change, and to do whatever it takes to bring my business to order. I go into detail how that journey began and what set me on that path. I talk about the obstacles and the pitfalls to look for and the people to avoid.
Chapters four and five are about writing it down and working on your business, not in your business. Most business owners are afraid to leave their office because they fear things will fall apart. If you want people to do things the way you would do them you need to write it down step by step and you’ll only have to write it down once. In this chapter I tell the story about a system that I implemented and how it freed up six hours a day for me which was when our business really started to grow. It took around 90 days to write and implement that system but it changed my life.
Chapters six and seven we discuss what systems are and the importance of being committed to them. I talk about how systems intersect and integrate, the mindset of the anti-system solution, and what most businesses use in place of this system.
Chapter nine – How to build systems and your operations manual, where do you start? We discuss when to build or not to build your system, we give stories on how building systems transformed our company, and the building block of a system.
Chapter ten through fourteen are about types of systems that empower employees and give people the tools they need to do a job as you would like it done. I show how to build various types of checklist systems, daily routines, quality and service controls. I share sales and marketing systems, how to build them, and true stories about their success. I talk about how to implement automatic marketing using the power of systems from your operations manual.
Chapter fifteen is about our software System 100. I have one page talking about how this journey led me to build software to automate what is normally manual systems in a company. With this software now we can help other companies systematize in a matter of months, not years.
Chapter sixteen through eighteen is about encountering opposition from employees, how to deal with it, and I use real true stories. I talk about how to not delegate your vision to someone else until you’ve completed the mission.
In chapter twenty I get into Total Quality Management and ISO systems and explain what they are and how not to be intimidated by them but to embrace them.
Chapter twenty-one is closing the circle and I recap how all these systems come together step by step.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:14
“A great system is a great tool to help people do a great job.” – Philip Beyer
I was born and raised in Louisiana and I moved to Nashville Tennessee in 1981. I’ve been self-employed since the age of 24. I am the owner and president of two Nashville base businesses, a commercial printing company called Beyer Printing, and a software company called System 100. I’m the father of three grown sons who work with me in our companies, the husband of a beautiful wife who is my editor and chief of our blogs, website content and this book.
I started Beyer printing in 1988 and after five years of steady growth I found myself in chaos working long, bogged down in daily operations, and no time for personal life. I found myself making good money but not having the free time with it. A friend gave me a book to read on business and systems. From there I was able to change our systems, free up a lot of my time, and eventually help other business do the same. That journey led me to writing System Busters.
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Buy System Busters by Philip Beyer on Amazon today
Visit System100.com to learn more about Philip and his company content
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
How To Ruin a Business Without Really Trying by MJ Gottlieb
How to Get Unstuck by Barry Moltz
Relevant advice and tips:
4 Common Reasons Why Startup Companies Fail
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Building Your Booming Business according to David Mitchell: Introduction In this episode David Mitchell reveals all his insights on Building Your BoomingRead More
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]]>In this episode David Mitchell reveals all his insights on Building Your Booming Business where he discusses 5 foundations every organization must have to succeed.
In his book Mitchell delivers step-by-step business strategies and advice that will not only take your business to the top, but will help you systemize your business, build an effective team, provide high quality customer experiences, and drive more sales. The goal of the book is alleviate the consequences that come with unmotivated employees, escalating business issues, and an overworked schedule.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who own a business that is experiencing stagnant sales, a lack of employee motivation, and an inability to scale.
In my book I write in a conversational tone so I use a lot of examples both from my own life and from some of my client’s lives. I gather all the information and put it in one place where a business owner can pick it up and have the basic nuts and bolts they need to create a business that’s going to be successful. A lot of the business books that I have found out there are very niche oriented and I wanted a book that ties it all together.
I tried to create a progression that if someone were to sit down and start at page one they could read it all the way through. But I also structured it in a way that you can jump in and out where needed.
In everything that you do in your business you need to be thinking about the next step.
The subtitle of the book is The Five Foundations Every Organization Must Have to Succeed. Everything that I do is built around five foundations which are Marketing, Leadership and Management, Operations, Finance, and Systems and Controls.
I started the book with Marketing and the reason why I started it with this topic is because nothing happens until somebody sells something. We don’t have a business until we put it out on the market and somebody pays us for the value that we provide them. I help the reader walk through everything from defining their product well, understanding who their target market is, pricing it appropriately and also creating marketing strategies that actually encourage action.
When I go into the Leadership and Management section I really dig deep into the leader verses the manager. They are two very different skills, a leader leads people, and a manager is somebody who manages things, processes or systems. But in order to move your organization you have to do both and sometimes you do have to manage people. At the same time you need to help inspire them so I talk about how to do that and how to develop leadership styles that are appropriate for the stage of team development.
Operations are about working with your clients to develop operations and create one that not only delivers a great experience but also is able to deliver consistently.
In the section on Finance I talk about how to get more consistently with your clients and I also discuss cash management.
The Systems and Controls section dives down deep into how to get all of these different sections to talk to each other.
At the end of the book I throw in an extra foundation called Your Personal Foundation. This discusses things like building your integrity and how people don’t judge us on our intentions but rather on what we do. So we discuss how to follow through, time management, and rounding it all out with how to prioritize between work and family.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:48
“As business owners we are plate spinners and as plate spinners we can’t start all 20 of our plates that we are trying to get spinning at the same time.” –Unknown
I am a business coach, consultant, and professional key note speaker. I take an entrepreneurial and business view to business leaders, owners, and entrepreneurs to help them build their business.
As I was working with business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders I found that I was saying the same thing over and over again. So I took the same concepts and principles that I taught to my clients and combined it all in one book.
Leadership and Self-Deception by Arbinger Institute
Buy Building Your Booming Business by David Mitchell on Amazon today
Visit BuildingYourBoomingBusiness.com to learn more about the book
Visit BoomMyBusiness.com to learn more about David and het his weekly business tips
Follow David Mitchell on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Winning the Long Game by Steve Krupp
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Lean Enterprise according to Jez Humble: Introduction In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise where he uncovers how high performing organizations are able to innovate at scale.
In his book Humble sifts through case studies, principles, and patterns of very successful well-known companies providing you with an action guide to help you rethink how to run your business. The goal of the book is to teach you what it takes to implement the methodologies he presents, manage large-scale projects, create a non-traditional management style, and accelerate innovation.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run a well-established organization that is having trouble adapting to changing market conditions and need a fast, innovative approach to scaling up.
I don’t think anyone has written a book that talk about how to transform enterprises that need to be able to win creating digital products in this environment where you have short product cycles. There are books about how to change culture, there are books about leadership, but there is no book that really ties all these things together in the context of building digital products for large enterprises.
This book is very dense and the first two chapters need to be read straight through. The rest of the book you can dip in and out where needed.
For me the real epiphany of the book is this idea of taking a scientific method and adopting it for product development and for process improvement.
We start off by talking about the fact that lean enterprise is the result of culture. Even though the book is about how to work in a domain of technology the point of technology is really to enable humans to collaborate more effectively and more rapidly. In an enterprise context it becomes really difficult because you got a large number of people with a wide variety of backgrounds who all have to work together in order to achieve a common purpose. And the question is how do we do that rapidly at scale? The answer to that comes from military doctrine. The book is primarily about how you create alignment at scale, how you enable everyone in the organization to make the best decision from the organizational point of view despite their limited knowledge.
The second chapter dives into the product cycle and the product development cycle and there are a number of well named models for the enterprise portfolio. This is increasingly important in the modern world where product development cycles are so short.
Part two of the book describes how to work in the explore domain where exploring a number of ideas knowing that most of them won’t be successful. This explores how to adopt the lean startup methodology in an enterprise context.
Part three of the book describes how to work in the domain where you have validated products and you need to actually exploit it and develop it at scale. The key part of exploiting is actually around driving down cost, improving quality, and improving value to customers and that demands a completely different approach. For that we need to pursue process improvement which means enabling the people doing the work to actually try out new ideas to experiment new ideas in terms of how to increase quality.
There is a piece on engineering practices because engineering practices are poorly understood. Most people are going into management in large companies not necessarily to really understanding how to work in the digital domain and how to build products where software is a competitive advantage. And so we spend a bunch of time discussing how to do that and how to take an experimental approach through product development.
The last part of the book is about how to create a culture of innovation. As an enterprise you can’t afford to hire the top of market people who have exactly the skills and behaviors that you want. You have to invest in developing your people so there is a whole section on growing a culture of innovation rather than taking shortcuts. We talk about financial management and how you can do budgeting, how to do IT in a way that creates a competitive advantage rather than being a cost center, and how to get started using a case study from the UK government digital service.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:19
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at the given time is a function of power and not truth.” –Unknown
I am a Vice President at Chef, a lecturer at UC Berkeley, and before Lean Enterprise I wrote Continuous Delivery. My background is in software engineering and I’ve worked in multiple industries, in multiple companies, helping organizations get better at delivering high quality valuable software products.
Lean Enterprise is about how you create organizations that are able to work in short development cycles, build products rapidly, and get feedback. And that requires us to change the way we think about portfolio management, financial management, culture, and pretty much everything else. All these things need to be a bit different in order to compete in this world where we have these very short product cycles.
Toyota Kata by Mike Rother
Buy Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble on Amazon today
Visit ContinuousDelivery.com to learn more about Jez and his books
Follow Jez Humble on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Exponential Organization by Salim Ismail
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Fail Fast or Win Big according to Bernhard Schroeder: Introduction In this episode Bernhard Schroeder reveals his insights on his book, FailRead More
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]]>In this episode Bernhard Schroeder reveals his insights on his book, Fail Fast or Win Big, where he reveals how the right kind of risk and embracing fast failure can really pay off.
In his book Schroeder teaches you how to create a quick prototype of your product or service, develop a business model, test it repeatedly with customers, and continue to refine your business model. The goal of the book is to help you determine quickly whether your business idea is worth pursuing, needs new direction, or should be abandoned altogether.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are starting a brand new business and need help figuring out the best way to create a business model, test a product or service, and pinpoint any failure.
I think there are some great books and content out there on entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur who has built a billion dollar company and helped build multiple others and so I have a lot of context and experience. I wanted to give the reader a book that was full of rich content on how you can actually test something quickly and that’s the idea behind Fail Fast or Win Big. I’ve taken some of the best principles that have come out in the last five years and I put them all together in this book.
I designed the book to be read jumping in and jumping out but if you wanted to read the whole thing you could.
The main concept would be that you really weren’t born to do anything and you should do what you want. I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur, I became one.
I am on a college campus and I am teaching college kids in 2008 how to write business plans and at the same time I am looking at what is happening with the recession. I am looking at the idea that it’s not about business plans anymore, it’s about moving faster. It takes too long to write a business plan. I have met people that have spent a year writing a business plan only to see someone else move into the market. So in chapter one I explain why we are at the end of business plans and what you have to do next.
In chapter two I introduce the lean model framework and the four elements. The four elements are customer truth, business model, lean resources, and rapid prototyping.
The title of chapter three says it all, Ideas Are Great but Business Models Rule.
In chapter four I get into another element of the framework which is lean resources and the chapter is titled Lean Resources, Less is More. This chapter explains what the lean resources are that are out there that you can leverage.
Chapter five is about rapid prototyping. I don’t know if there has been a better time in the history of the world for creating a company. In this chapter I explain why rapid prototyping is important and how you can test it with customers so that you can get the right feedback to know whether or not you have a good idea to move forward.
In chapter six I talk about a really critical element of the model which is the customer truth. Since I started my marketing career I believe that if you really want to understand the customer you have to meet them face to face. In this chapter I explain how you can get at customer truth and what are all the ways you can get it very cost effectively.
In chapter seven I talk about why we might not need BC’s in the future. I explain regular crowd funding and I explain the new crowd equity funding that the SCC is now getting ready to release the rules on. This chapter is titled Entrepreneurs have a New Investor, the Crowd and I honestly believe this is an amazing way to fund a small startup or to get a company started without giving up very much at all. I explain exactly how to go about it including how to create a crowd funding or a crowd equity campaign.
In chapter eight I talk about where I see opportunity today. In this chapter I explain what I think the top 10 to 15 opportunities are and how people can go after them.
In chapter nine I provide people with something they don’t have easy access to and that is the first two to three years of the back story of what top entrepreneurs did to make it.
And in chapter ten I sum it up and I talk about the steps people can take if they want to be an entrepreneur.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 4:57
“As an entrepreneur you are not in the business of writing business plans.” – Bernhard Schroeder
I am a director of Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at San Diego State University. I also teach in the entrepreneurship program and I was a career marketing guy who happened to build a billion dollar company with three other people and launch some amazing companies like Amazon and Yahoo.
After I built my marketing career and a billion dollar company I decided that none of that was motivating anymore and I wanted to somehow figure out a way to help other people have an amazing life. I decided to go back to a college campus and teach and as I was teaching I was asked to Speak at a Ted event. The topic at that event was Why Failing Fast is Great. The next day I got an e-mail from a publisher in New York who said he’d heard about the talk from a friend of his who attended and he wanted to see the power point because he thought it was a book. Before you know it he gave me feedback that this is the kind of thing that can help a lot of people and so I wrote the book.
Spin Selling by Neil Rackham
Buy Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder on Amazon today
Visit BernieSchroeder.com to learn more about Bernhard and connect with him
Follow Bernhard Schroeder on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
How To Ruin A Business Without Really Trying by MJ Gottlieb
Selfish Scared and Stupid by Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Important Things That Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Starting a New Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Scaling Up according to Verne Harnish: Introduction In this episode Verne Harnish takes a deep dive into his book, Scaling Up whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Verne Harnish takes a deep dive into his book, Scaling Up where he shares practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business.
In his book, Harnish focuses on 4 major decision areas that every company must get right and provides you with a series of one-page tools such as the One-Page Strategic Plan and Rockefeller Habits Checklist. The goal of the book is to help you create a company where the team is engaged, the customers are doing your marketing, and everyone is making money.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs and other business leaders who are looking for a strategic reference guide to help navigate the difficulties that come with scaling a business.
This book is really practical and we get right to the point.
It’s divided into four different sections so you can jump into whatever section fits you best. In the very beginning we wrote a summary that can be read in 20 minutes so that the reader can get an idea of what section they want to go to first.
No one has ever achieved peak performance without a coach.
We start with a chapter called The Barriers and there are three barriers that we have discovered that are common after working with 40 thousand plus companies over 32 years. Very simply it’s the development of the next levels of leadership, if you don’t get some people helping you than you will be stuck as that home base business. We have a hard enough time as entrepreneurs getting our functions running well but the reality is most of our real work cuts across those functions. There are a handful of processes that drive a company and most entrepreneurs don’t focus on it. They don’t focus on how to scale up their processes and infrastructure to handle more customers, more employees, and more people. The third barrier is of all the functions the one that tends to be the bottleneck is the marketing function and it needs to be separate from sales. A lot of our companies are stuck because they just can’t hire enough of the right people to take care of business.
Given those three barriers we then add these four decisions that you absolutely have to get right. The four decisions are people, strategy, execution, and cash. And we created a set of one page tools to help you with that. We have a 40 question assessment that entrepreneurs can take to figure out where to start. And then we end the whole thing with next steps and the five very concrete things a CEO and their leadership team must do next if they are going to get the organization unstuck.
When you’re faced with any opportunity or challenge “your first question should always be a who question.” – Jim Collins
I founded a group called The Entrepreneurs Organization which is worldwide today, about 11,000 members. I started an executive program that we hosted at MIT and I ran it for 15 years and am still teaching it. From there I launched a company called Gazelles in 97. I am enjoying life with my wife and four children in Barcelona, Spain.
It was after 12 years of having my book, Mastering The Rockefeller Habits, out there. With about 40,000 companies using our one page strategic plan, we learned a few tricks so this was a chance to bring it all together in a book.
Magic Of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
Great by Choice by Jim Collins
How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban
Buy Scaling Up by Verne Harnish on Amazon today
Visit ScalingUp.com to learn more about the book and the free resources that Verne mentioned
Follow Verne Harnish on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail
Aligning Sales and Strategy by Frank Cespedes
How To Ruin A Business Without Really Trying by MJ Gottlieb
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Peter Thiel
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in October 2014 The Entrepreneurs Library presents the latest books for entrepreneurs in October 2014. These books are brand new to the market and the authorsRead More
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]]>Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in October 2014
The Entrepreneurs Library presents the latest books for entrepreneurs in October 2014. These books are brand new to the market and the authors are in line to share their insights with me. Stay tuned this month for the release of the interviews with these great books and the authors.
In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business. These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture.
Scaling Up is the first major revision of this business classic. The goal of this book is to help you turn what feels like an anchor into wind at your back — creating a company where the team is engaged; the customers are doing your marketing; and everyone is making money. To accomplish this, Scaling Up focuses on the four major decision areas every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash.
“The idea of guiding a company from the small tide pools to the big seas of business can be exhilarating, but also daunting without a detailed set of directions. Scaling Up provides those directions, along with a remarkably detailed map for how to get there safe and happy.” – Robert B. Cialdini, best-selling author of Influence
“Fast-growing companies — not small ones or big ones — create almost all the jobs and innovation in our economy, and Verne has been an invaluable guide to leaders of such companies, like me. Scaling Up helps us put in place the disciplines critical to building a significant business.” – Graham Weston, Chairman and CEO, Rackspace
Learn more about Verne Harnish | Buy Scaling Up on Amazon
In this groundbreaking book on high-stakes leadership, Co-founder and CEO of Team Rubicon and former Marine Sniper Jake Wood, shows how to apply hard-learned lessons in leadership and teamwork from the battlefield and disaster zone to your professional life.
While most of our jobs don’t involve leading a tour of Marines through an ambush, or rushing into a relief zone just decimated by a hurricane, in today’s fast-paced, hyper-competitive business environment, we are ALL on the front lines.
And in an entrepreneurially-minded world where technology is constantly reinventing how we work, global competition is fierce, and industries are being disrupted overnight, success requires a new kind of leadership. This book is about how to become the kind of leader who gets results when the stakes are at their highest—how to take command.
“There are leaders everywhere. Parents. Entrepreneurs. Warriors. Executives. And people with big ideas. Wood relates to all of them with a humility and confidence that its uniquely American. If there is one book on leadership to read, it is this one. From his hometown to the battlefield of Iraq to Haiti and untold other natural disasters, to the boardroom and the factory floor, Wood gets it: the kind of leader you are shapes your outcome.” – Christine Romans, CNN chief business correspondent
“A must read for every aspiring leader. Filled with powerful stories and simple, straightforward guidelines, this is the new roadmap for leadership from the front lines.” – Dave Kerpen, NY Times Bestselling Author, Likeable Social Media, Likeable Business & The Art of People
Learn more about Jake Wood | Buy Take Command on Amazon
From Idea To Exit is an excellent summation of Jeff Weber’s entrepreneurial journey that should be a reference guide book on the bookshelf of all entrepreneurs. It is filled with insights that help organize familiar concepts in a logical way, and can be used again and again through all stages of building a startup. Jeff distills his learnings and catalogs them with the precision of a surgeon in the OR.
While most small business books cover niche components of the start-up model, From Idea to Exit takes a more comprehensive approach, tackling the entire entrepreneurial journey from the initial seed idea through a well-planned exit strategy. Through a persuasive narrative, the author draws from his own success a practical call to action for those who dream of taking that first big step.
By following the entertaining and informative true story of Jeffrey Weber, you’ll learn his proven methodologies for entrepreneurial success.
Learn more about Jeffrey Weber | Buy From Idea To Exit on Amazon | Listen to my interview with Jeff here
Crazy Is A Compliment by Linda Rottenberg
Rottenberg draws on her unrivaled experience to show you the proven techniques to achieve your dreams: from overcoming fear to facing down critics, from stalking supporters to exploiting chaos. Crazy Is A Compliment combines inspiring stories, original research, and practical advice to create a road map for getting started and going bigger.
She brings to life iconic entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Estée Lauder and reveals how companies like MTV, GE, and Burberry found their best successes by breaking the corporate mold and embracing the entrepreneur mind-set. She also introduces us to some of the one thousand entrepreneurs she’s advised, like Leila Velez, who started a hair-care company in her kitchen sink in Rio that now earns $80 million a year. As Linda writes:
“Every day I meet people with a dream. Maybe you’re serving coffee and fantasizing about launching a microbrewery; maybe you’ve skipped college and yearn to start your own design firm; maybe you’re sitting in your cubicle and brainstorming a new idea that can improve your company.”
“Call me crazy, but I think Linda is onto something big here. She delivers powerful insights with her legendary wit and candor to show how everyone can think and act like an entrepreneur.”— Michael Dell, founder and CEO, Dell Inc.
“Crazy is what they call people who don’t fit in. And we need a lot more crazy like Linda is crazy. She is generous, curious, connected and driven to make a difference in the world. And this book captures all of that and more. Buy it, read it, live it.” — Seth Godin, author of Linchpin
Learn more about Linda Rottenberg | Buy Crazy Is A Compliment on Amazon
This is the story of a man who, despite a difficult family life and professional setbacks, developed the determination, drive and skills to create a successful business and happy life. Geoff’s skills and self-motivation gave him the drive, determination and tenacity to continue a journey through hardship to reach self-fulfillment and, ultimately, success.
Freedom After The Sharks shows how, even in a declining economy, a business can survive and even succeed. It covers some real-life experiences and offers some suggestions for dealing with problems and issues. It provides a guide to finding your way in the business world.
The book is suitable for entrepreneurs who might not be sure of the path to take or who want to benefit from other people’s mistakes and failures.
Learn more about Geoff Hudson-Searle | Buy Freedom After The Sharks on Amazon
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