No, No, No, No, No, Yes. Insights From a Creative Journey: Motivation & Self-Improvement (Creative & Innovation series Book 1)


Gideon Amichay - 2014
     But rather an essential tool for direction, motivation and innovation. No, No, No, No, No, Yes is the perfect inspirational Christmas gift for that someone in your life embarking on a great new challenge. Whether they just graduated from college, are changing careers, have set out to achieve something in the arts or the business realm, or just aspire to do something seemingly impossible, No, No, No, No, No, Yes will help them see that the “no’s” they will confront are simply directions on the map to “yes”. No. It is a word that every CEO, entrepreneur and creative professional has confronted. It is a word that both novices and seasoned professionals dread. It is a word that can easily seem like death to a dream. And yet it is also a word that can point in the right direction. It is a word that motivates us to do something differently, try something else, get better, innovate, keep going. No is a word that looms over every business person's, innovator's, and artist's life. And yet the word is universally met with trepidation and fear because the value of being told No is so little understood. ˃˃˃ No is a facilitator In No, No, No, No, No, Yes. Insights From A Creative Journey, award winning creator of visionary ad campaigns (Cannes Lions, Clios); ad exec (the Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R agency); cartoonist (The New Yorker); speaker (TEDx); and teacher (School of Visual Arts) Gideon Amichay demonstrates that No is not a barrier to success it s a facilitator. No is not the end, but rather an essential tool for direction, motivation and innovation. Based on Amichay s best-selling book in Israel (published by Gordon Books in 2011) and 2013 TEDx talk of the same name, No, No, No, No, No, Yes takes the reader on an illustrated journey of the author's own lifetime confrontation, negotiation and relationship with No . Walking the reader through critical No s in his own 25 year career pitching cartoons to the New Yorker, risky ad campaign concepts as head of one of Israel s biggest ad agencies, impossible outdoor ad installations -- Amichay reveals the wisdom that No rarely ends with an exclamation point. ˃˃˃ No ends with a comma Rather, Amichay demonstrates that No usually ends with a comma: No comma, we don't have the time. No comma, we don't have the budget. No comma, can we see another option? By discovering which No comma he was confronting, Amichay shows how No s in fact led him to eventual Yes s -- including the waiting, the rejections, and the revisions and demonstrates that No, forces us to reexamine, to explore, to rethink, to change directions, to get better. ˃˃˃ No can be the best answer to get In No, No, No, No, No, Yes Amichay shares the essential revelation that sometimes No can be the best answer to get. Through illuminating anecdotes from his own illustrious career running the gamut between business and the arts, Gideon Amichay demonstrates unequivocally that No's, whether from colleagues, from clients, from life, or from within have great power, and are simply directions on the map to Yes. Authoritative, funny, whimsical, wise, and pragmatic, No, No, No, No, No, Yes. Insights From A Creative Journey. is the essential companion for every executive, innovator and artist to navigate the unavoidable odyssey of No in order to find the eventual Yes. Scroll up and grab a copy today.

Matsushita Leadership


John P. Kotter - 1997
    Thrown into poverty at age four, Konosuke Matsushita (Mat-SOSH-ta) struggled with the early deaths of family members, an apprenticeship which demanded sixteen-hour days at age nine, all the problems associated with starting a business with neither money nor connections, the death of his only son, the Great Depression, the horror of World War II in Japan, and more. Yet John P. Kotter shows in this fascinating and instructive book how, instead of being ground down by these hardships, Matsushita grew to be a fabulously successful entrepreneur and business leader, the founder of Japan's General Electric: the $65 billion a year Matsushita Electric Corporation. His accomplishments as a leader, author, educator, philanthropist, and management innovator are astonishing, and outshine even Soichiro Honda, J.C. Penney, Sam Walton, and Henry Ford. In this immensely readable book, Kotter relates how Matsushita created a large business, invented management practices that are increasingly being used today, helped lead his country's economic miracle after World War II wrote dozens of books in his latter years, founded a graduate school of leadership, created Japan's version of a Nobel Prize, and gave away hundreds of millions to good causes. The Matsushita story expands our notion of the possible, even for a sickly youngster who did not have the benefit of a privileged background, education, good looks, or a charismatic presence. It tells us much about leadership, entrepreneurship, a drive for lifelong learning, and their roots. It demonstrates the power of a longterm outlook, idealistic goals, and humility in the face of great success. Matsushita Leadership is both a biography and a set of lessons for careers and corporations in the 21st century. An inspirational story and a business primer, the implications are powerful, for organizations and for living a meaningful life.

Strengths Based Selling


Tony Rutigliano - 2011
    Includes access to Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment.The key to success, salespeople are constantly told, is to follow specific steps and techniques. Just heed the advice of this guru or that speaker, and you’ll be the best! Well, that approach just doesn’t work for most salespeople. And it probably doesn’t work for you either. The most successful reps, Gallup has determined from decades of research, understand their innate talents and strengths and use them to sell more effectively. The truth is, no two great sales reps are alike: You might thrive on fierce competition, while a colleague wins by being a super-analytical problem solver. Or maybe you have a tremendous talent for building relationships, while your fellow top performer is a brilliant strategist. What’s most important is that you win business your way. Strengths Based Selling explains sales talent and how to identify and maximize it. You’ll receive a code to take the world-renowned CliftonStrengths assessment, which reveals your unique talents and strengths. Armed with this information, you’ll follow this book through the entire selling process — from assessing opportunity and cold calling to retaining and growing accounts — learning how to apply your talents at each step. The book also features action items that will help you make the most of your strengths in sales. There’s no one right way to sell. Salespeople get the best results by building on who they already are. This lively and liberating book will teach you to do just that.

Fundamentals of Financial Management


Prasanna Chandra - 2012
    The book begins with an Overview section. This provides an introduction to Financial Management and to the Financial Environment. The next part covers Financial Planning and Analysis. This section explains concepts like taxes, cash flow, financial statements, and analysis of funds flow and statements. It also discusses financial planning and forecasting.The third part covers the Fundamental Valuation Concepts. This section looks at risk and return, and Securities valuation. The next two parts focus on capital structure, budgeting and dividends. These sections discuss cost of capital, capital structure, planning the capital structure, share valuation and dividend policy. The chapter on Capital budgeting also includes techniques of capital budgeting and analyzing risks in capital budgeting. Part seven goes into Long Term Financing. It covers securities market and sources of long term finance.The next part discusses Working Capital Management. It covers topics like working capital policy and financing, inventory management, and cash and credit management. The last part looks at some special topics like acquisitions, restructuring and mergers. It also discusses international finance management, and project finance, leasing and hire purchase.Fundamentals Of Financial Management provides a good coverage of the basic concepts relating to the financial environment. The topics explained include tax systems, financial institutions, banking arrangements and the regulatory framework. All the concepts are explained using numerous examples and illustrations. Besides the illustrations given within the chapter, additional concepts, tools and techniques with illustrations are provided at the end of chapter sections. The book takes an analytical approach, and explains the various analytical methods in context.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers


Ben Horowitz - 2014
    His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, includingdemoting (or firing) a loyal friend;whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them;if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company;how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you;what to do when smart people are bad employees;why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one;whether you should sell your company, and how to do it.Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds


Charles Mackay - 1841
    This Harriman House edition includes Charles Mackay's account of the three infamous financial manias - John Law's Mississipi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and Tulipomania.Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it.In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written.For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness


Eric Jorgenson - 2020
    These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn.So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence


Stephen A. Schwarzman - 2019
    Schwarzman, a long-awaited book that uses impactful episodes from Schwarzman's life to show readers how to build, transform, and lead thriving organizations. Whether you are a student, entrepreneur, philanthropist, executive, or simply someone looking for ways to maximize your potential, the same lessons apply.People know who Stephen Schwarzman is—at least they think they do. He’s the man who took $400,000 and co-founded Blackstone, the investment firm that manages over $500 billion (as of January 2019). He’s the CEO whose views are sought by heads of state. He’s the billionaire philanthropist who founded Schwarzman Scholars, this century’s version of the Rhodes Scholarship, in China. But behind these achievements is a man who has spent his life learning and reflecting on what it takes to achieve excellence, make an impact, and live a life of consequence. Folding handkerchiefs in his father’s linen shop, Schwarzman dreamed of a larger life, filled with purpose and adventure. His grades and athleticism got him into Yale. After starting his career in finance with a short stint at a financial firm called DLJ, Schwarzman began working at Lehman Brothers where he ascended to run the mergers and acquisitions practice. He eventually partnered with his mentor and friend Pete Peterson to found Blackstone, vowing to create a new and different kind of financial institution. Building Blackstone into the leading global financial institution it is today didn’t come easy. Schwarzman focused intensely on culture, hiring great talent, and establishing processes that allow the firm to systematically analyze and evaluate risk. Schwarzman’s simple mantra “don’t lose money” has helped Blackstone become a leading private equity and real estate investor, and manager of alternative assets for institutional investors globally. Both he and the firm are known for the rigor of their investment process, their innovative approach to deal making, the diversification of their business lines, and a conviction to be the best at everything they do. Schwarzman is also an active philanthropist, having given away more than a billion dollars. In philanthropy, as in business, he is drawn to situations where his capital and energy can be applied to drive transformative solutions and change paradigms, notably in education. He uses the skills learned over a lifetime in finance to design, establish, and support impactful and innovative organizations and initiatives. His gifts have ranged from creating a new College of Computing at MIT for the study of artificial intelligence, to establishing a first-of-its-kind student and performing arts center at Yale, to enabling the renovation of the iconic New York Public Library, to founding the Schwarzman Scholars fellowship program at Tsinghua University in Beijing—the single largest philanthropic effort in China’s history from international donors. Schwarzman’s story is an empowering, entertaining, and informative guide for anyone striving for greater personal impact. From deal making to investing, leadership to entrepreneurship, philanthropy to diplomacy, Schwarzman has lessons for how to think about ambition and scale, risk and opportunities, and how to achieve success through the relentless pursuit of excellence. Schwarzman not only offers readers a thoughtful reflection on all his own experiences, but in doing so provides a practical blueprint for success.

The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage


Daniel Burrus - 2017
    Accelerate innovation and actively shape the future—before someone else does it for you! Digital transformation has divided us all into two camps: the disruptor and the disrupted. The Anticipatory Organization gives you the tools you need to see disruption before it happens, allowing you to turn change into advantage. In The Anticipatory Organization, Burrus shows us that the future is far more certain than we realize, and finding certainty in an uncertain world provides a big advantage for those who know how and where to look for it. Inspired by the dramatic results that organizations are experiencing from his award-winning learning system, The Anticipatory Organization offers a comprehensive way to identify game-changing opportunities. Using the principles of this proven model, you will learn how to elevate planning, accelerate innovation, and transform results by pinpointing and acting upon enormous opportunities waiting to be discovered. Readers will learn how to: • Separate the Hard Trends that will happen from the Soft Trends that might happen • Anticipate disruptions, problems, and game-changing opportunities • Identify and pre-solve predictable problems  • Accelerate innovation (both everyday innovation and exponential innovation)  • Pinpoint and act upon enormous untapped opportunities  ​• Skip problems and barriers to succeed faster

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing


[ MEI ] YUE HAN BO GE - 2013
    

Sam Walton: Made In America


Sam Walton - 1992
    And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns." It's the story of how Walton parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, he never lost the common touch. Here Walton tells his extraordinary story in his own inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure of his ambitions and achievements, Walton shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style."Here is an extraordinary success story about a man whose empire was built not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease."

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future


Peter Thiel - 2014
    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

Networking Is a Contact Sport: How Staying Connected and Serving Others Will Help You Grow Your Business, Expand Your Influence -- or Even Land Your Next Job


Joe Sweeney - 2010
    Networking.In this New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA TODAY bestseller, master networker Joe Sweeney shares his networking secrets from a long and successful career as a business owner, sports agent and executive and investment banking consultant. His first secret: master networkers are focused on giving, not getting.With today’s difficult economy and uncertain workplace, networking has never been more important. Sweeney’s simple but effective 5/10/15 networking plan will give you a leg up in the current job market, help you stay employed, or, if you’ve been laid off, find your next job. The cliché that who you know is more important than what you know has never been truer. Sweeney illustrates his insights with dozens of helpful examples from his own life (along with a few fascinating insider sports stories).With special sections on networking for women and minorities, insights into the usefulness (and handicaps) of social networking sites, how to get (and why you need) a wingman and profiles of other master networkers, Networking Is a Contact Sport is a practical and essential guide for anyone who wants to get ahead in today’s economy.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers


Geoffrey A. Moore - 2006
    Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.

The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building


Matt Mochary - 2019
    With The Great CEO Within, he shares his highly effective leadership and business-operating tools with any CEO or manager in the world. Learn how to efficiently scale your business from startup to corporation by implementing a system of accountability, effective problem-solving, and transparent feedback.Becoming a great CEO requires training. For a founding CEO, there is precious little time to complete that training, especially at the helm of a rapidly growing company. Now you have the guidance you need in one book.