The Ultralight Startup: Launching a Business Without Clout or Capital


Jason L. Baptiste - 2012
    I hope this book will help and inspire you to pursue your passion while avoiding some of the mistakes I made.”It’s easier than ever before to launch a startup. But in a world where barriers to entry are virtually nonexistent and everyone wants to be the next Facebook, competition is fierce. If you’re just beginning and lack the money and clout to make an automatic splash, how do you differentiate yourself from all the rest?Jason Baptiste knows firsthand what it takes. After launching his first company while still in college, he cofounded his current venture, Onswipe, in his early twenties, turning it into a multimillion-dollar company in less than a year. Now, drawing on his own experience as a bootstrapping but hungry entrepreneur, as well as on examples from today’s most famous companies, he guides would-be tech moguls through every stage of the process—from testing a concept to acquiring customers to determining the best pricing model—in a cheap, practical way. Among his strategies: • Build the product you wish you had: Four­square founder Dennis Crowley created an early version of his product because he wanted to keep in touch with former colleagues. • It doesn’t have to be sexy to make money: Dropbox took the world by storm by offering a great solution to a mundane problem—online storage. • Be bold when promoting yourself: Online payment service WePay capitalized on dissatis­faction with industry leader PayPal by dumping six hundred pounds of ice in front of a developer conference.• Attract fans to attract customers: Budget tracking site Mint.com created its initial user base by offering original and useful content about per­sonal finance.Baptiste shows you don’t need an MBA, a trust fund, or even experience running your own com­pany to become a star in the tech world. The Ultralight Startup is a comprehensive, easy-to-follow guide that will prepare any entrepreneur to take his or her idea to the next level.

May I Have Your Attention, Please? Your Guide to Business Writing That Charms, Captivates and Converts


Mish Slade - 2016
    It's near impossible for customers to cut through the "innovative solutions" and "passion for customer service," and find out who can actually give them what they need.For the business owner who's willing to do something different, though, it represents a major - and inexpensive - competitive advantage.May I Have Your Attention, Please? lays out 12 simple principles that allow business owners - even those with no writing experience - to attract and enchant their dream customers. With clear and concise explanations of what works and why, and examples of the best and worst text out there, you'll have all the tools you need to turn readers into buyers into raving fans. Give your writing skills an instant upgradeIn this short book, you'll learn: Simple techniques to turn your dull-as-dishwater business marketing into "can't resist" copy - even if you don't think of yourself as a "good writer." How to make price irrelevant and be the only choice for your ideal customer - by changing nothing except your copywriting. The business writing "rules" you should revel in breaking. Why copying your competitors is a dangerous waste of time... and what to do instead (without spending hours searching for ideas). The easily avoidable mistakes that are turning your customers off - even if they don't know it. A simple framework to help you blast through writer's block and know exactly what to say in any piece of writing. How to "read your customers' minds," and get them looking for reasons to buy from you. Who is this book for? Business owners looking to breathe more life into their website, content marketing or sales materials. Employees who want to gain a new skill and have more impact in their work. Anyone who has something great to offer - but is struggling to get the message across.

3 Months to No.1: The "No-Nonsense" SEO Playbook for Getting Your Website Found on Google


Will Coombe - 2017
    The same ones he used to build a Top SEO Agency in London. 7 Years & 500 clients later, he hands you the Playbook."SEO For 2020 Onwards"Is This You?Total SEO Virgin?Entrepreneur?Business or Blog Owner with Big Plans?Or Perhaps THIS is You...Mom & Pop store ownerHard worker in need of technical knowledgeFrustrated Google Ads spenderSEO professional looking for time-saving hacksAffiliate marketerSEO forum & blog reader in need of some structure...If So, This Book Was Written For You"Features FREE Video Series + SEO Blueprint"What Does This Book Deliver?Over 3 hours of invaluable 'walk through' video tutorials to SHOW you what to do, as well provide you with a step-by-step, week-by-week SEO Blueprint and Checklist.If you've got a solid work ethic, you're eager to learn, and your business model is sound, '3 Months to No.1' will give you all the tools and know-how required to get your website to the very top of Google where the profit is. Through a refreshingly no-nonsense plain English approach to SEO, successful London SEO Agency owner Will Coombe unveils how to...Discover SEO's greatest secret - that it isn't rocket science!Save thousands by doing SEO yourself, or with your in-house teamFilter profitable traffic to your siteLearn what on earth to do with your social mediaEffectively direct and monitor people doing SEO for youGain the industry knowledge to call out anyone full of 'BS'Who is Will Coombe?Before co-founding a successful Digital Marketing Agency in London over 7 years ago, Will Coombe flew passengers round the world for a living. Working for a major UK Airline he helped over 250,000 people reach their final destination. In the end though, his was Google. Now a professional speaker on the subject of making businesses profitable through SEO, Will reveals how and why he went from 'airline', to 'online'; and how you too can leverage his years of experience getting clients' websites to the very top of Google.He may have hung up his wings, but Will's years of experience making technical jargon easily accessible to anyone who entered his cockpit is put to good use in '3 Months to No.1'."Learn. Take Action. Get Results."A Carefully Curated SEO Guide for 2020 OnwardsThis book doesn't hold 'secrets' you can't find scattered throughout the Internet. Instead, it cuts through the noise and guides you to the ultimate return on time investment for SEO. It tells you what to focus on and when. '3 Months to No.1' finally gives you a step-by-step Playbook. One with the fresh and down to earth approach of someone who came from no background in SEO or digital marketing at all."How High Will Your Revenue Go in 12 Weeks?"You'll Discover...- Online marketing 101- Personal advice for your business- How to uncover money-making keywords- Configuring WordPress for SEO success- How to nail the technical elements- How to win links- A crash course in content marketing- Social media account use (finally!)- SEO if you're a local business- eCommerce SEO (inc. Shopify, Magento, & WooCommerce)- Google penalty diagnosis & avoidance- Why it's quicker to go 'white hat' and not try to cheat Google- + more..."Grab a Copy Now..."

Scientific Advertising


Claude C. Hopkins - 1923
    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.

Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds


Gaston Legorburu - 2014
    Storyscapes introduces "storyscaping" as a way to create immersive experiences that solve the challenge of connecting brands and consumers. This book describes a powerful new approach to advertising and marketing for the digital age that involves using stories to design emotional and transactional experiences for customers, both online and offline. Each connection inspires engagement with another, so the brand becomes part of the customer's story. Authors Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl explain how marketers can identify and define the core target audience segment, define your brand's purpose, understand the emotional desires of your consumers, and more.•Shows how to map how the consumer engages with the category and product/service•Explains how to develop an organizing idea and creative plan for an immersive storyscape experience•Defines the role of marketing channels around the organizing idea•Establishes how technology can be applied to the experienceLearn how to measure, optimize, and evolve the customer experience through the use of strong narratives that compel consumers to buy into your brand.

Big Things Have Small Beginnings: Learn to Play the Great Game


Wes Berry - 2018
     It’s these small things that have the greatest impact in the long-term.Neglecting small things can be the difference between failure and success.This book is NOT about failing; this book is about preventing, limiting and continually overcoming the small failures and obstacles so that you can achieve great success because when you take care of the small details, the big stuff takes care of itself.Do you find yourself missing the one thing in life that would help you achieve a desired goal, realize a long-held dream, or push you up the ladder to success?Big Things Have Small Beginnings will give you the blueprint you need to achieve those goals and dreams sooner rather than later.Some of what you’ll learn in this book are:•    The common characteristic our great leaders had that you must possess;•    How giving away flowers helped build a $60 million dollar company and go from surviving to thriving;•    The difference between goals and objectives and which one is more important to your overall success;•    How to be intelligently flexible so you can make massive progress;•    Why learning a new language can improve your business aptitude;•    How to grow a business when you don’t have the capital to do so;•    The importance of keeping a high integrity business model;•    And so much more!Wesley Berry started working at his family’s Detroit-based florist shop when he was just a teenager. He quickly demonstrated a strategic style of management that propelled it from a $65K per year business to a $65 million-dollar international business operating in 130 different countries. In 2016, after 40 years in business, he sold it to “retire” and follow other passions.Through the years, he's provided consulting services to over forty businesses and has appeared as a guest on NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The London Times, Entrepreneur and Time magazines, Fox News, Neil Cavuto, Geraldo Rivera, and John Stossel, to name a just few.Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power:  but they who do not the thing have not the power.” If you want the power and the keys to success, click the BUY NOW button and be the one who wins and has the power.

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity


Hugh MacLeod - 2009
    Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog-gapingvoid.com-and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures.MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person?Ignore Everybody expands on MacLeod's sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice. For example:-Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less.-If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.-Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.-The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.After learning MacLeod's forty keys to creativity, you will be ready to unlock your own brilliance and unleash it on the world.

Adobe InDesign CS6 Classroom in a Book


Adobe Creative Team - 2012
    The 16 project-based lessons show readers step-by-step the key techniques for working with InDesign CS6. Readers learn what they need to know to create engaging page layouts using InDesign CS6. This completely revised CS6 edition covers the new tools for adding PDF form fields, linking content, and creating alternative layouts for digital publishing. The companion CD includes all the lesson files that readers need to work along with the book. This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe InDesign CS6 is ideal for beginning users who want to master the key features of this program. Readers who already have some experience with InDesign can improve their skills and learn InDesign's newest features. "The Classroom in a Book series is by far the best training material on the market. Everything you need to master the software is included: clear explanations of each lesson, step-by-step instructions, and the project files for the students." -Barbara Binder, Adobe Certified Instructor, Rocky Mountain Training Classroom in a Book(R), the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does-an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts. All of Peachpit's eBooks contain the same content as the print edition. You will find a link in the last few pages of your eBook that directs you to the media files.Helpful tips:If you are able to search the book, search for "Where are the lesson files?"Go to the very last page of the book and scroll backwards.You will need a web-enabled device or computer in order to access the media files that accompany this ebook. Entering the URL supplied into a computer with web access will allow you to get to the files.Depending on your device, it is possible that your display settings will cut off part of the URL. To make sure this is not the case, try reducing your font size and turning your device to a landscape view. This should cause the full URL to appear.

The Opportunity Analysis Canvas


James V. Green - 2013
    The emergence of business “model” (not plan) courses, tools, and competitions are a step in the right direction. The focus of these new activities is engaging aspiring entrepreneurs in customer discovery and developing and testing a business model canvas.While this is a viable approach and valuable lesson in entrepreneurship education, business models only begin to take shape when a new venture idea is formulated. Customer discovery requires having a product or service concept in the mind of the entrepreneur. Without the idea for the product or service itself, no business model nor customer discovery can begin.It is this first step, the idea generation step, that the Opportunity Analysis Canvas fulfills. The Opportunity Analysis Canvas is an innovative tool for identifying and analyzing entrepreneurial ideas.

The Art of Creating Story


William H Coles - 2020
    Major topics include: characterization, narration, character-based plotting, dialogue, drama, point of view, significance, and revision.

Advanced Rhinocerology: "to help you through the jungle" (The Rhino Books)


Scott Alexander - 1981
    Thank you, Scott, for a wonderful book that has changed my life!" --Scott Alexander"Compelling...startling...I recommend it for everyone!" --Scott Alexander

Free Tools for Writers, Bloggers and Solopreneurs


Karen Banes - 2014
     By the time you finish this book you'll be able to do everything from checking your grammar, to creating an infographic, to driving free traffic to your blog or website, all using free tools, sites and downloads. The book contains links to all resources mentioned. A handy little reference guide you'll keep on your Kindle or other device to refer back to again and again.

The Strait Path to Real Estate Wealth


Kris Krohn - 2010
    Meanwhile, Kris Krohn and investors in his Real Estate Investment Companies are basking in record profits. Their secret? Strait Path real estate, which Kris created after analyzing and experiencing virtually every form of real estate investing. The proprietary system incorporates the strengths and eliminates the flaws of all other strategies. It takes the least time, effort, and risk, creates the most value for society, and generates the greatest profits. Best of all, the system is proven to work in every market, especially down markets. In The Strait Path to Real Estate Wealth, Kris explains the system in depth. He demonstrates why other strategies and systems fail and reveals how to escape their pitfalls. He also exposes the flaws of Americas traditional retirement advice and products and offers a refreshing, practical, and safe alternative. His advice will empower you to move beyond simple education to actual implementation. Read this book to learn why the next ten years could be the most profitable years of your life, regardless of economic conditions. Testimonial: My previous experiences in real estate have involved a lot of time and disorganization, and the results have been very poor, losing my money and my familys money. Strait Path real estate looks at the big picture and has minimized my time, effort, and risk while providing superior returns, independent of market conditions.--Dennis N.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration


Ed Catmull - 2009
    Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.” For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.   As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:   • Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. • Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.

Advanced Accounting Part 2


Gloria J. Tolentino-Baysa - 2008
    Topics include discussions about Business Combination, Consolidated Financial Statements - On the date of acquisition, Subsequent to date of acquisition, Financially Distressed Corporations, Accounting for Foreign Exchange.