What failed startups don't have are enough customers.Founders and employees fail to spend time thinking about (and working on) traction in the same way they work on building a product. This shortsighted approach has startups trying random tactics - some ads, a blog post or two - in an unstructured way that's guaranteed to fail. This book changes that. Traction Book provides startup founders and employees with the framework successful companies have used to get traction. It allows you to think about which marketing channels make sense for you, given your industry and company stage. This framework has been used by founders like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Paul English (Kayak.com), and Alex Pachikov (Evernote) to build some of the biggest companies and organizations in the world. We interviewed each of the above founders - along with 35+ others - and pulled out the repeatable tactics and strategies they used to get traction. We then cover every possible marketing channel you can use to get traction, and show you which channels will be your key to growth. This book shows you how to grow at a time when getting traction is more important than ever. Below are the channels we cover in the book:Viral Marketing Public Relations (PR) Unconventional PR Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Social and Display Ads Offline Ads Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Content Marketing Email Marketing Engineering as Marketing Target Market Blogs Business Development (BD) Sales Affiliate Programs Existing Platforms Trade Shows Offline Events Speaking Engagements Community BuildingThis book draws on interviews with the following individuals: Jimmy Wales, Co-founder of Wikipedia Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of reddit Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup Rand Fishkin, Founder of SEOmoz Noah Kagan, Founder of AppSumo Patrick McKenzie, CEO of Bingo Card Creator Sam Yagan, Co-founder of OkCupid Andrew Chen, Investor at 500 Startups Justin Kan, Founder of Justin.tv Mark Cramer, CEO of SurfCanyon Colin Nederkoorn, CEO of Customer.io Jason Cohen, Founder of WP Engine Chris Fralic, Partner at First Round Paul English, CEO of Kayak.com Rob Walling, Founder of MicroConf Brian Riley, Co-founder of SlidePad Steve Welch, Co-founder of DreamIt Jason Kincaid, Blogger at TechCrunch Nikhil Sethi, Founder of Adaptly Rick Perreault, CEO of Unbounce Alex Pachikov, Co-founder of Evernote David Skok, Partner at Matrix Ashish Kundra, CEO of myZamana David Hauser, Founder of Grasshopper Matt Monahan, CEO of Inflection Jeff Atwood, Co-founder of Discourse Dan Martell, CEO of Clarity.fm Chris McCann, Founder of StartupDigest Ryan Holiday, Exec at American Apparel Todd Vollmer, Enterprise Sales Veteran Sandi MacPherson, Founder of Quibb Andrew Warner, Founder of Mixergy Sean Murphy, Founder of SKMurphy Satish Dharmaraj, Partner at Redpoint Garry Tan, Partner at Y Combinator Steve Barsh, CEO of Packlate Michael Bodekaer, Co-founder of Smart Launch Zack Linford, Founder of Optimozo

     Business stories are told. Wisdom is revealed. A new perspective emerges. Companies like Costco and Kodak, General Motors and Walmart provide color and texture as they appear on the horizon and in the rearview mirror. Real companies. Real decisions. Real outcomes. Jeff Bezos and Amazon give this road trip its rhythm as the four pillars of their success are made plain. It’s a wonderful success, easily repeated, even by a lemonade stand. But only if you understand the importance of the marshmallow. Endorsements: A little book with enormous impact. Be Like Amazon demystifies the principles and practices of the world’s most successful brands. It’s magical! – Jay Baer – President of Convince & Convert & author of Hug Your Hater Putting relationships front and center is what “Be Like Amazon” is all about. The authors observe that continuous improvement is not about cost cutting but about relationships. “Be Like Amazon” provides a roadmap for businesses to build and improve relationships. I highly recommend "Be Like Amazon" to every business person. - Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI and NY Times Bestselling Author "Be Like Amazon" covers one of the most important elements of being a business owner, how to work on your business instead of in your business. I’d highly recommend this book to every entrepreneur who wants to have a roadmap and skip the years of trial and error. - T. Harv Eker, NY Times No. 1 Best-selling Author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind™ "There are many things that differentiate Amazon and it's competitors. Perhaps the most underappreciated one the deeply faith-based initiative that if they align their interests with their customers, they'll win in the long-term. And. They have! You still need a guide to help you figure out how to apply this to your business. Let Bryan, Jeffrey & Roy help you win bigger." - Avinash Kaushik, Google Evangelist You are going to read a lot of positive blurbs about Be Like Amazon. Let me give it to you straight: If the Eisenberg Brothers feel compelled to write a book, I drop everything to read it. They are just that smart. Be Like Amazon is one of their best efforts. I hate to be so non-specific, but everyone in business really should buy and read Be Like Amazon. The fact that legendary marketer Roy H. Williams co-wrote it with them, only adds to the equation. For the sake of your brand, please please please read this book!. – Mitch Joel President, Mirum – Author, Six Pixels of Separation & CTRL ALT Delete “Wow, that is one of the best “business” books I’ve read in years. Incredibly inspiring — both the story itself and the way in which you told it. I’m in awe.” – Scott Brinker, ChiefMartec “Witty anecdotes and crisp, often hilarious dialog combine with an exploration of powerful marketing principles and customer engagement strategies that have driven the growth of many of today’s most successful companies…making Be Like Amazon a must read for everyone from business professionals to people who love an engaging story well told. Jeffrey, Bryan and Roy have crafted a clever and insightful book that not only underscores the importance of branding, but also lifts the spirit and tickles the funny bone.” – Chris McCann, President and CEO, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.

    We believe the concepts are core to engaging in customer conversations that are focused on their outcomes and what they want to achieve."-Karen Quintos, CMO and SVP, Dell Inc."The concepts outlined in this book are critical skills to building a world-class presales organization."-Ken Hamel, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions and Presales, SAP"Our new messaging, using the approaches presented in this book, is great and is being widely used by our sales team. We've never had a year end sales meeting with content that was met with such widespread acceptance and enthusiasm."-Jerry D. Cline, Senior Vice President, Retail Sales and Marketing, AmerisourceBergen Drug Company"The best salespeople sit across the table and make change easy for their customer by creating a succinct story and vision for what to change, how to change it, and how it will impact customer results. An enterprise focus on sales messaging, using the concepts in this book, is the hidden secret to driving incremental sales productivity and overwhelming customer success!"-Ken Powell, Vice President, Worldwide Sales Enablement, ADP"The Power Messaging techniques in this book are the foundation of how our marketing team creates our sales messages, as well as the process our field sales teams use for delivering that message in a unique and compelling way. At Kronos our results are a reflection of the power of the tool."-Aron Ain, CEO, KronosAbout the Book: In today's highly competitive world of complex sales, commoditization of your brand is one of the greatest dangers. You must differentiate yourself from the competition-or you will lose out. And the way to do that is through customer engagement. Rather than sell your own corporate story and brand message, you need to tell customers their story-the one in which they are the heroes and they achieve success.Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer have been developing and honing their Power Messaging sales technique for more than 20 years, and now they reveal all their secrets in Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.Presenting a catalog of facts or playing 20 questions with prospective customers is the surest way to lose the sale. Peterson and Riesterer provide the tools you need to recraft your message into a compelling story that wins more deals.With Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, you'll learn how to:Differentiate yourself from the competition by finding your "Value Wedge" Avoid parity in your value propositions by creating "Power Positions" Create a message that can literally double the number of deals you close Spike customer attention and create "Wow" in your conversations Prove all your claims without resorting to lists of boring facts and statistics Your competitors are out there telling their own corporate story-a story customers don't want to hear. Now is the time to seize the moment. This book is the one and only source you need to reframe your sales story and turn the tables on the competition by fully engaging their would-be customers.Conversations That Win the Complex Sale helps you create and deliver messages that customers care about, giving your brand the clear edge in today's crowded markets.

    Now their latest research reveals something even more surprising: Being a Challenger seller isn’t enough. Your success or failure also depends on who you challenge.Picture your ideal customer: friendly, eager to meet, ready to coach you through the sale and champion your products and services across the organization. It turns out that’s the last person you need. Most marketing and sales teams go after low-hanging fruit: buyers who are eager and have clearly articulated needs. That’s simply human nature; it’s much easier to build a relationship with someone who always makes time for you, engages with your content, and listens attentively. But according to brand-new CEB research—based on data from thousands of B2B marketers, sellers, and buyers around the world—the highest-performing teams focus their time on potential customers who are far more skeptical, far less interested in meeting, and ultimately agnostic as to who wins the deal. How could this be?The authors of The Challenger Customer reveal that high-performing B2B teams grasp something that their average-performing peers don’t: Now that big, complex deals increasingly require consensus among a wide range of players across the organization, the limiting factor is rarely the salesperson’s inability to get an individual stakeholder to agree to a solution. More often it’s that the stakeholders inside the company can’t even agree with one another about what the problem is.It turns out only a very specific type of customer stakeholder has the credibility, persuasive skill, and will to effectively challenge his or her colleagues to pursue anything more ambitious than the status quo. These customers get deals to the finish line far more often than friendlier stakeholders who seem so receptive at first. In other words, Challenger sellers do best when they target Challenger customers. The Challenger Customer unveils research-based tools that will help you distinguish the "Talkers" from the "Mobilizers" in any organization. It also provides a blueprint for finding them, engaging them with disruptive insight, and equipping them to effectively challenge their own organization.

    The author of Scientific Advertising, Claude C. Hopkins, is well known as the father of modern advertising techniques, and this book has been widely used by students of advertising and marketing. This book covers many important aspects of advertising including how advertising laws are established, mail order advertising, headlines, psychology, strategy, budgeting, and more advanced subjects like negative advertising and how to test an advertising campaign.

    So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion -as quickly as possible.When growing at a breakneck pace, getting to next level requires very different strategies from those that got you to where you are today. In a book inspired by their popular class at Stanford Business School, Hoffman and Yeh reveal how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company's life cycle, such as: how to design business models for igniting and sustaining relentless growth; strategies for hiring and managing; how the role of the founder and company culture must evolve as the business matures, and more.Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the only competitive advantage that matters.

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    Unfortunately, it's not always easy to know what will successfully drive traffic, leads, and sales. If you want to stand out from your competition, your SEO needs a distinctive blend of creativity and logic.Maybe you're a marketing manager or executive who is responsible for SEO growth but do not fully understand how it works. Or maybe you are a seasoned SEO pro looking to optimize further. Either way, this book is your behind-the-scenes guide to online visibility.When it comes to SEO, success often depends not on what you do but on how you do it. That is why Product-Led SEO digs deep into the logic and theory of SEO instead of offering step-by-step guidelines and techniques. You will learn to develop your own best practices and see where most SEO strategies go astray. If your main goal is driving traffic, you are leaving sales on the table.

    Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most – when people’s lives were at stake.Rooted in the real-life experiences of an intelligence professional at the top of his game, Never Split the Difference will give you the competitive edge in any discussion.

    This is not a book just for copywriters and other advertising experts but a book for every business owner, marketing expert or anyone who needs to increase sales.The reason why is because it deals with how to channel the forces in the marketplace which control sales.Put simply, Gene's book addresses the universal problem of all copywriting: How to write a headline — and an ad that follows it — that will open up a whole new market.

    In Russell Brunson's experience, after working with thousands of businesses, he has found that’s rarely the case. Low traffic and weak conversion numbers are just symptoms of a much greater problem, a problem that’s a little harder to see (that’s the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that’s the good news). DotComSecrets will give you the marketing funnels and the sales scripts you need to be able to turn on a flood of new leads into your business.

    Please find the Paperback or Kindle-compatible Ebook at stackingthebricks.com/tinymba/You don't need an MBA or fancy investors to succeed in business. Use the 100 ideas in this tiny book to evaluate your current situation: your advantages, your relationships, your potential choices, and the most likely outcomes.BONUS! If you enjoy The Tiny MBA and want to go deeper on the topics lessons and themes in the book, check out the Tiny MBA Podcast Tour with the author! In each episode, Alex visits with the host of a different podcast or livestream to dig deeper into that hosts favorite pages of the book, and explore specific examples or stories rooted in these lessons.Check it out now at stackingthebricks.com/podcast/ and subscribe to get new episodes every week.

    Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought—leveraging the internet to rent movies—and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning.But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair—with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO—founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts, and determination can change the world—even with an idea that many think will never work.What emerges, though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success?From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.

    This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.

    Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't is the first major revision of this business classic. 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. This book is written so everyone -- from frontline employees to senior executives -- can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. There's no reason to do it alone, yet many top leaders feel like they are the ones dragging the rest of the organization up the S-curve of growth. 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 book includes a series of new one-page tools including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits ChecklistTM, which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully -- many to $1 billion and beyond. Running a business is ultimately about freedom. Scaling Up shows business leaders how to get their organizations moving in sync to create something significant and enjoy the ride.