Starting up a business is no different—it needs preparation.This preparation is about understanding your “why”; about generating and testing business ideas; about building your founding team; about talking to your family; about taking care of your career and your finances. It is about getting mentally prepared to get started. This book will help you ask the right questions. It will guide you, steer you towards finding your answers.You are ambitious. You are a go-getter. You are destined to win. This book will help get you what you deserve."About the AuthorPankaj Goyal grew up in a typical Indian middle class family in Rajasthan. In a family of government employees, he was taught the standard script to build your career: “Work hard on academics and get the highest scores”. And that’s the path he took. While he got his Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur and an MBA from IIM Bangalore, there was always an itch . . . an itch to start a business. He started his company in 2008 and ran it for three years. His experience was bitter sweet. The business generated good cash, but failed to grow. He then took a break, moved to the USA and joined McKinsey and Company. Ever since, he has worked across the world in the technology industry. His work is now focused on applying Artificial Intelligence for the benefit of companies. He continues to be involved in the world of entrepreneurship as an angel investor and as an advisor to startups in the Silicon Valley and India.

    Drawing from his years of experience as a serial entrepreneur who built and nurtured a number of startups into multi-million-dollar enterprises, bestselling author Om Swami opens up in this book like never before. The Heart of Success is yet another masterpiece from the monk who actually sold his Porsche and picked up a pen for a living. No matter who you are—an entrepreneur or an aspiring one, a management graduate on your first internship or a seasoned manager—by the time you finish reading this book, you will be better equipped to succeed in business and life as well as handle the responsibility that comes with success. With plenty of humor and anecdotes, find out what it takes to be successful, no matter what.OM SWAMI has touched the lives of millions around the world through his bestsellers on spirituality and wellness. An MBA from University of Technology, Sydney, he has built and exited multi-million dollar businesses. An unconventional monk, he’s the brain behind the fastest-growing meditation and kindness movement in the world: Black Lotus. Om Swami writes on his blog, os.me, twice a month, and stays away from all forms of social media.

    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.

    While most B2B startups obsess over scalability and tracking, Drift takes a different approach. In This Won't Scale, you'll find insider lessons and plays from the Drift Marketing team that have helped the business grow at a hypergrowth rate. It contains 41 plays organized into easy-to-read and reference chapters. Keep it on your desk, thumb through it when you're looking for inspiration and come back to it over time. You’ll discover not only Drift's abnormal approach, but also hear never-before-told stories and learn how to implement Drift's marketing plays into your own marketing strategy.

    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.

    No one wants to add to the scrap heap. But if you restrict yourself to only reading articles from people who have actually created a business, hit some revenue target, or broken out of the MVP-in-an-incubator stage, there’s very few books and blogs left. This is why we hope this book is relevant to you.It’s not packed with startup clichés, nor is it steeped in myths about how huge companies got their break. Yes, Airbnb sold cereal before they were a 31 billion dollar company, and Slack was one hell of a pivot, but those wells have been over-drilled for their useful lessons at this point. This book is our honest, opinionated take on what we’ve learned building Intercom over the past 6 years. You won’t like it all, you won’t agree with it all, but you’re not supposed to. Your mileage will vary.

    Most importantly, it's about how to avoid making these same mistakes yourself.In The San Francisco Fallacy, serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jonathan Siegel looks at the 10 biggest fallacies that run through startup culture. Over his many years launching companies, he's fallen victim to what he now recognizes as a series of common errors, misconceptions that bedevil startups to this day. But he also learned how to sidestep and surmount many of these challenges.After multiple eight-figure exits and other startup successes, Jonathan began to see the deeper fallacies in which his failures took root. His biggest career successes, on the other hand, seemed to come when he and his teams went against the tide and did everything "wrong."This book is an examination of the popular belief system about startups. At its heart is a series of challenges to years of accumulated startup orthodoxy. What emerges is not just a critique but an inspiring call--to anyone trying to build a successful business--for a broader kind of critical thinking.

    Many believe that it cannot be taught, and those who are successful in starting a business are born with something others do not have. Innovation-based entrepreneurship can be broken down into discreet behaviors and processes that can be taught to the intelligent, hardworking, people using this book.Eric Ries and Steve Blank were wrong; the road to a successful start-up is not just four steps. "Innovation Driven"" Entrepreneurship "breaks it down into 24 steps which include: Market segmentationQuantify the value propositionDefine your coreMap the process to acquire a paying costumerTest key assumptionsDevelop a product plan, and more.

    Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt--until they commit to beating the right Dip.Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun...then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip--a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac--a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart.Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you'll earn profits, glory, and long-term security. Whether you're an intern or a CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you're in a Dip that's worthy of your time, effort, and talents. The old saying is wrong--winners do quit, and quitters do win.

    If you could get 1000 True Fans to support you by buying $100 worth of what you create every year, you would earn an income of $100,000 a year. That sounds a bit like a get-rich-quick scheme. 1000 True Fans is not that. It's a get-a-good-income-slowly income model. It requires hard work, but once you’ve built up 1000 True Fans, you are free forever to live as an independent creator earning good money making what you love. Thousands of people are already using this income model that is recommended by Kevin Kelly, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin and Ramit Sethi. Kevin Kelly invented the term 1000 True Fans in a 2008 blog post. This book shows you how you follow a 1000 True Fans income model. It's ideal for anyone who can create a product or service. If you create music, art, writing, information, knowledge, apps, products you've designed, training courses, or anything else you can think of, you can use this business model to live independently. The books is quick and easy to read, written like a letter from a friend who wants to help you. This book starts you on your journey towards getting 1000 True Fans.

    While delighting us with the magic of Mickey Mouse, he also introduced corporate America to some innovative and brilliant new ways of doing business. And as everyone knows, the Disney companies have grown beyond anything even Walt himself could have imagined.Now this practical, hands-on book takes an in-depth look at Disney's business philosophy and the priciples behind it, demonstrating how today's managers can successfully apply them to their own businesses--no matter what the field.

    He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost.Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different swashbuckling style of leadership. Learn how fun, family, passion, and the dying art of listening are key components to what his extended family of employees around the world have always dubbed (with a wink) the “Virgin Way.”This unique perspective comes from a man who dropped out of school at sixteen, suffers from dyslexia, and has never worked for anyone but himself. He may be famous for thinking outside the box—an expression he despises—but Branson asserts that “you’ll never have to think outside the box if you refuse to let anyone build one around you.”This is a unique book on leadership from someone who readily admits he has never read a book on leadership in his life. So expect the unexpected.

    The surprising truth is that the only way to truly scale your company is to reduce its reliance on you. This means that, done right, you get growth without sacrificing your life. Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel offer a blueprint to rapidly grow your existing business while also gaining more freedom. Their three-level action plan, based on their own experiences starting, scaling, and effectively exiting from multiple successful companies, helps you determine the best strategy for growth in your own company. More important, they provide practical advice on how to execute in the face of conflicting demands and multiple responsibilities. By breaking down the path to scaling into seven principles, any owner can increase profits and their own freedom. Scale is for entrepreneurs who wonder if they really own their business, or if their business owns them.

    Author Howard Love calls this pattern the  start-up J Curve: The toughest part of the endeavor is the time between the actual start of a new business and when the product and model are firmly established. The Start-Up J Curve gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to get through the early challenges so they can reach the primary value creation that lies beyond.Love brings thirty-five years of start-up experience to this comprehensive guide to starting a business. He outlines the six predictable stages of start-up growth and details the activities that should be undertaken at each stage to ensure success and to avoid common pitfalls. Instead of feeling lost and confused after a setback, start-up founders and investors can anticipate the challenges, overcome the obstacles, and ride the curve to the top.

    The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance.Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.