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 Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions


Gurbaksh Chahal - 2008
    He dropped out of high school to pursue the venture full-time, and two years later sold ClickAgents for $40 million, making him one of the youngest self-made millionaires in history and allowing him and his entire family to realize their dreams. Chahal went on to become the youngest executive of a multi-billion dollar NASDAQ-listed company, and then sold his second company, BlueLithium, to Yahoo! for $300 million, turning many of his employees into multi-millionaires as well.In The Dream, Chahal's refreshing advice for entrepreneurs encourages them to embrace risk and to carve out new niches in the marketplace. He emphasizes the value of good business timing: how to execute an idea and get it to the marketplace, how to create and maintain solid business relationships, how to stay grounded, and -- most importantly -- how to teach yourself that failure is not an option.Chahal's story not only shows how a 16-year-old immigrant overcame discrimination and adversity to fulfill his highest ambitions, but also provides aspiring entrepreneurs with valuable hands-on advice on how to achieve success.

What I Didn't Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World


Jay B. Barney - 2010
    He's a new MBA graduate who's landed a job with a strategy consultancy. His engagement team is on a mission: help HGS Inc., a specialty chemicals firm, define and execute a strategy for exploiting a textile technology the company developed.Justin and his team deploy state-of-the-art strategy tools to analyze the attractiveness of potential markets for the technology. But they soon realize the tools don't help them grapple with the human side of strategy--including political forces swirling within HGS. Everyone involved in the engagement is biased and insecure, brilliant and hardworking, selfish and lazy, loyal and dedicated.Justin and his cohorts aren't "real"--What I Didn't Learn in Business School is a business novel. But they're realistic: they're just like us. Their story reveals the limitations of strategy tools and demonstrates tactics for navigating the messy, human dynamics that can make or break a company's strategy efforts.This engaging book uses the power of story to present potent lessons for anyone seeking to excel at strategy management. It's a compelling read--whether you're an MBA grad struggling to apply what you learned or in the fray and eager to see what MBAs get wrong when they land in the real world.

Email Marketing Demystified: Build a Massive Mailing List, Write Copy that Converts and Generate More Sales


Matthew Paulson - 2015
    In Email Marketing Demystified, digital marketing expert Matthew Paulson reveals the strategies and techniques that top email marketers use to build large mailing lists, to write compelling copy that converts and to generate substantially more sales using nothing but their email list. Inside the book, you'll learn how to: Build a massive mailing list using 15 different proven list building techniques. Write compelling copy that engages your readers and drives them to take action. Optimize every step of your email marketing funnel to skyrocket your sales. Grow a highly-engaged and hungry fan-base that will devour your content. Create six new revenue streams for your business using email marketing. Keep your messages out of the spam folder by following our best practices. Matthew Paulson has organically grown an email list of more than 250,000 investors and generates more than $1 million per year in revenue using the strategies outlined in Email Marketing Demystified. Regardless of what kind of business you are building, email marketing can serve as the rocket fuel that that will skyrocket your business.

Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship


M.J. DeMarco - 2017
    UNLEASH YOUR DREAM.Tired of sleepwalking through a mediocre life bribed by mindless video-gaming, redemptive weekends, and a scant paycheck from a soul-suffocating job? Welcome to the SCRIPTED club-- where membership is neither perceived or consented.The fact is, ever since you've been old enough to sit obediently in a classroom, you have been culturally engineered for servitude, unwittingly enslaved into a Machiavellian system where illusionary rules go unchallenged, sanctified traditions go unquestioned, and lifelong dreams go unfulfilled. As a result, your life is hijacked and marginalised into debt, despair, and dependence. Life's death sentence becomes the daily curse of the trivial and mundane. Fun fades. Dreams die. Don't let life's consolation prize become a car and a weekend.Recapture what is yours and make a revolutionary repossession of life-and-liberty through the pursuit of entrepreneurship. A paradigm shift isn't needed--the damn paradigm needs to be thrown-out altogether.The truth is, if you blindly follow conventional wisdom pushed by conventional people living conventional lives, can you expect to be anything but conventional? Rewrite life's script: ditch the job, give Wall Street the bird, and escape the insanity of trading your life away for a paycheck and an elderly promise called retirement. UNSCRIPT today and start leading life-- instead of life leading you.

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love


Marty Cagan - 2008
    The goal of the book is to share the techniques of the best companies. This book is aimed primarily at Product Managers working on technology-powered products. That includes the hundreds of "tech companies" like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and the like, as well as the thousands of companies moving to leverage technology (financial companies, media companies, retailers, manufacturers, nearly every industry). Inspired covers companies from early stage start-ups to large, established companies. The products might be consumer products or devices, business services for small businesses to enterprises, internal tools, and developer platforms.Inspired is secondarily aimed at the designers, engineers, user researchers and data scientists that work closely with the product managers on product teams at these same companies.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything


Don Tapscott - 2006
     Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century. Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about: • Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry. • Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production. • Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems. An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

The Noticer


Andy Andrews
    Rare book

The Cold Start Problem


Andrew Chen - 2021
    Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth.Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and  on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest — to provide unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries. The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks successful, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula to Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love, and Live the Life of Your Dreams


Jeff Walker - 2014
    Whether you've already got a business or you're itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction.Think about it: what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all but eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget?Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success.But the success-train was just getting started; once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches.Launch is the treasure map into that world; an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches.Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or you're still in the planning phase, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.Now the question is this : are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire


James Wallace - 1992
    Part entrepreneur, part enfant terrible, Gates has become the most powerful -- and feared -- player in the computer industry, and arguably the richest man in America. In Hard Drive, investigative reporters Wallace and Erickson follow Gates from his days as an unkempt thirteen-year-old computer hacker to his present-day status as a ruthless billionaire CEO. More than simply a "revenge of the nerds" story though, this is a balanced analysis of a business triumph, and a stunningly driven personality. The authors have spoken to everyone who knows anything about Bill Gates and Microsoft -- from childhood friends to employees and business rivals who reveal the heights, and limits, of his wizardry. From Gates's singular accomplishments to his equally extraordinary brattiness, arrogance, and hostility (the atmosphere is so intense at Microsoft that stressed-out programmers have been known to ease the tension of their eighty-hour workweeks by exploding homemade bombs), this is a uniquely revealing glimpse of the person who has emerged as the undisputed king of a notoriously brutal industry.

Family Feeling


Judith Saxton - 1987
    Hywel Fletcher was born the day his father was killed in the pit, and is bitterly resented by his mother. And Huw Pettigrew is the much-loved and hard-working eldest child in a respected working family. Dot and Hywel dream of a contented future caring for their land, while Huw's dreams are more like nightmare . . . Yet when tragedy strikes it is Huw's vision which brings the three together and gives each of them, in the end, their heart's desire.

I can start your business: Everything you need to know to run your limited company or self employment - for locums, contractors, freelancers and small business


Russell Smith - 2015
    Covering such topics as: Whether you should be a limited company or self employed? What part of business finances do you really need to understand and which parts can you ignore. Whether you become VAT registered. When your tax is due and how much it will be. Setting up bank accounts. Getting paid by your customers. Managing your cash flow. Getting your pricing right. Russell Smith has worked with over 400 clients all across the UK and is a national expert on small business tax and accounts. His clients include doctors, dentists, psychologists, web-designers, musicians, marketing agencies, IT contractors, artists, graphic designers and many more. Russell Smith is the only chartered accountant in the world to blog every day - you can find it at www.rsaccountancy.co.uk/daily-blog. Russell also has a YouTube channel where he releases weekly 2 minute finance basics: www.youtube.com/RussellSmithtips. There is also a free tax, accounts and profit review with customised action plan worth £200 for readers of this book.

Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition


Michael A. Stelzner - 2011
    Launch reveals a new way to grow your business that involves focusing on the needs of others, giving gifts, working with outsiders, and restraining your marketing messages. These principles are precisely the opposite of traditional marketing. Yet they work. And they are the future. If you follow the formula outlined in this book, you can attract countless customers and prospects, resulting in amazing business growth.This book will show you how to:Create highly sharable content that meets people's needs Identify and work with outside experts, many of whom will gladly promote your content Attract and retain raving fans that will help your business grow Creatively market and sell to people who will gladly purchase your products and services Launch isn't like other marketing books. Rather than making keen observations about others who've achieved success, the ideas and principles in this book were developed, refined, and practiced by the author to great success. Pick up a copy for yourself and one for a friend.

Do Fly: Find Your Way. Make a Living. Be Your Best Self


Gavin Strange - 2016
    Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the reality can be quite different. Whether you're just starting out or simply ready to head in a new direction, you're going to need some help turning your natural skills into success-seeking missiles of radness.On hand is Gavin Strange, a creative working by night under the name of JamFactory and, by day, at Aardman Animations – the Academy Award-winning studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.With advice, encouragement and a reminder that life's too short to not pursue your passion, whatever your age or position – from school leaver or graduate just starting out to CEO ready to head in a new direction, Do Fly will inspire you to:Change your perspective and revamp your mindsetDevelop creative side projectsStay optimistic and resilientDiscover skills and passions you never knew you had!Do Fly is your all-in-one guide, ticket and passport to a new destination. Are you ready for take off?