Author: Lee LeFever
Publisher: Page Two
ISBN: 1989603181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Lee LeFever and his co-founder and wife, Sachi LeFever, didn't know exactly what type of business they were setting out to build when they started Common Craft in the early 2000s. What they were sure of is that they would design the business in such a way that they prioritized their happiness and time--they wanted the opportunity to go camping on Tuesdays if they felt like it, and make up the time later. While not sacrificing their vision for a business that values time over money, Lee and Sachi built a leading internet-based visual communications firm that includes Google, LEGO, Intel, Microsoft, Ford, and Dropbox as its clients. They paved the way for explainer videos that are now a mainstay of companies' marketing and communications strategy. They learned to pivot to different income streams, and say no to opportunities that would increase unhappiness and decrease autonomy. And they did it all while working from home, not taking on outside employees, and camping on Tuesdays. Like Paul Jarvis in Company of One, Lee shows how they did it, and offers his best tips for how you can build a business and a life you love.
Big Enough
Author: Lee LeFever
Publisher: Page Two
ISBN: 1989603181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Lee LeFever and his co-founder and wife, Sachi LeFever, didn't know exactly what type of business they were setting out to build when they started Common Craft in the early 2000s. What they were sure of is that they would design the business in such a way that they prioritized their happiness and time--they wanted the opportunity to go camping on Tuesdays if they felt like it, and make up the time later. While not sacrificing their vision for a business that values time over money, Lee and Sachi built a leading internet-based visual communications firm that includes Google, LEGO, Intel, Microsoft, Ford, and Dropbox as its clients. They paved the way for explainer videos that are now a mainstay of companies' marketing and communications strategy. They learned to pivot to different income streams, and say no to opportunities that would increase unhappiness and decrease autonomy. And they did it all while working from home, not taking on outside employees, and camping on Tuesdays. Like Paul Jarvis in Company of One, Lee shows how they did it, and offers his best tips for how you can build a business and a life you love.
Publisher: Page Two
ISBN: 1989603181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Lee LeFever and his co-founder and wife, Sachi LeFever, didn't know exactly what type of business they were setting out to build when they started Common Craft in the early 2000s. What they were sure of is that they would design the business in such a way that they prioritized their happiness and time--they wanted the opportunity to go camping on Tuesdays if they felt like it, and make up the time later. While not sacrificing their vision for a business that values time over money, Lee and Sachi built a leading internet-based visual communications firm that includes Google, LEGO, Intel, Microsoft, Ford, and Dropbox as its clients. They paved the way for explainer videos that are now a mainstay of companies' marketing and communications strategy. They learned to pivot to different income streams, and say no to opportunities that would increase unhappiness and decrease autonomy. And they did it all while working from home, not taking on outside employees, and camping on Tuesdays. Like Paul Jarvis in Company of One, Lee shows how they did it, and offers his best tips for how you can build a business and a life you love.
Company of One
Author: Paul Jarvis
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 1328972356
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better--and smarter--solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 1328972356
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better--and smarter--solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.
Big Business
Author: Tyler Cowen
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250110548
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250110548
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
Starting Small and Making It Big
Author: Bill Cummings
Publisher: Bill Cummings
ISBN: 0999895117
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Publisher: Bill Cummings
ISBN: 0999895117
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Why Startups Fail
Author: Tom Eisenmann
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0593137027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0593137027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
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.
Beyond Entrepreneurship
Author: James Charles Collins
Publisher: Business & Professional Division
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
This inspiring and yet eminently practical guide shows entrepreneurs how to steer a company to enduring greatness. Leadership style, vision, corporate strategy, innovation, tactical excellence and other key elements are all explored in depth.
Publisher: Business & Professional Division
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
This inspiring and yet eminently practical guide shows entrepreneurs how to steer a company to enduring greatness. Leadership style, vision, corporate strategy, innovation, tactical excellence and other key elements are all explored in depth.
The Founder's Dilemmas
Author: Noam Wasserman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158304
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158304
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.
Good to Great
Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0066620996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0066620996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Seeing the Big Picture
Author: Kevin Cope
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 9781608322466
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Advocates that employees should focus their attention on what the author defines as the key drivers of cash, profit, assets, growth, and people to evaluate the viability of their organization and their prospects for advancement.
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 9781608322466
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Advocates that employees should focus their attention on what the author defines as the key drivers of cash, profit, assets, growth, and people to evaluate the viability of their organization and their prospects for advancement.
The Big Enough Company
Author: Adelaide Lancaster
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591845602
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
All entrepreneurs start their companies because they think it will give them freedom-freedom to work on their own terms, be their own bosses, and create a company that meets their needs. But so often the opposite happens, and they end up encumbered by businesses that bear little to no resemblance to those they had envisioned. They wind up working for their companies, but their companies don't work for them. Despite the freedom that striking out on your own promises, most of the accepted wisdom on how to build a small business advocates a one- size-fits-all approach. So-called experts-and sometimes just well-meaning friends-urge business owners to grow fast, be more profitable, and imitate other successful start-ups. And while these tips may work for some, they fail to consider the astounding variety of values and motivations that individuals have for starting a business. Too often, owners sacrifice their personal satisfaction in order to conform to unnecessary (and often unworkable) standards. Adelaide Lancaster and Amy Abrams have seen this problem for years when working with women entrepreneurs like themselves. They set out to explore how successful female business owners have grown their enterprises in a way that sustains their own personal goals and needs, not someone else's standards. Drawing on the true stories of nearly 100 entrepreneurs, as well as their own experiences, Abrams and Lancaster guide readers through the best principles that really matter when you work for yourself. For instance: Figure out what's in it for you: Clarify why you started your business and what you want to get out of it over the long haul. Find a role that suits your strengths: Identify where you add the most value and can have the most impact. Embrace experimentation: Trying new things gives you the opportunity to see what works and what doesn't and opens up unseen possibilities. This book empowers entrepreneurs to ignore popular "wisdom" and peer pressure to take charge of their businesses in a way that will help them succeed on their own terms.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591845602
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
All entrepreneurs start their companies because they think it will give them freedom-freedom to work on their own terms, be their own bosses, and create a company that meets their needs. But so often the opposite happens, and they end up encumbered by businesses that bear little to no resemblance to those they had envisioned. They wind up working for their companies, but their companies don't work for them. Despite the freedom that striking out on your own promises, most of the accepted wisdom on how to build a small business advocates a one- size-fits-all approach. So-called experts-and sometimes just well-meaning friends-urge business owners to grow fast, be more profitable, and imitate other successful start-ups. And while these tips may work for some, they fail to consider the astounding variety of values and motivations that individuals have for starting a business. Too often, owners sacrifice their personal satisfaction in order to conform to unnecessary (and often unworkable) standards. Adelaide Lancaster and Amy Abrams have seen this problem for years when working with women entrepreneurs like themselves. They set out to explore how successful female business owners have grown their enterprises in a way that sustains their own personal goals and needs, not someone else's standards. Drawing on the true stories of nearly 100 entrepreneurs, as well as their own experiences, Abrams and Lancaster guide readers through the best principles that really matter when you work for yourself. For instance: Figure out what's in it for you: Clarify why you started your business and what you want to get out of it over the long haul. Find a role that suits your strengths: Identify where you add the most value and can have the most impact. Embrace experimentation: Trying new things gives you the opportunity to see what works and what doesn't and opens up unseen possibilities. This book empowers entrepreneurs to ignore popular "wisdom" and peer pressure to take charge of their businesses in a way that will help them succeed on their own terms.