In this fascinating and instructive book, he reveals his personal story through the fictional character Ignacio Rodriguez. Ignacio is 40-something stressed-out entrepreneur who is utterly overwhelmed--he is at risk for a heart attack, is losing money at his business--where employee morale is at an all-time low, and has no time or energy for his family. At first, he ignores these problems, thinking that if he only works harder, things will all get better. Predictably, his life quickly gets out of control. His doctor recommends that he try meditation to regain balance in his life. Ignacio--who is skeptical--finds a spiritual guide, who helps Ignacio heal by finding his path in the secret of the seven seeds. The seven seeds represent the path to success and balance in life: self-knowledge, meditation, egolessness, service to others, goodness, balance, and freedom.

    Williams and it "ragtag army of part-timers" took on a Goliath-sezed insurance industry.

    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.

    

    Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.

    Some people wind up happy with the process and satisfied with the way it turned out while others look back on it as a nightmare. The question I hope to answer in this book is why. What did the people with ‘good’ exits do differently from those who’d had ‘bad’ exits?”When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem—how to handle the pressure to grow.Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem—how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated. Whatever your preferred outcome, you need to start planning for it while you still have time and options. The beautiful part is that if you start early enough, the process will lead you to build a better, stronger, more resilient company, as well as one with a higher market value. Unfortunately, most owners don’t start early enough—and pay a steep price for their procrastination.Burlingham interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs across a range of industries and identified eight key factors that determine whether owners are happy after leaving their businesses. His book showcases the insights, exit plans, and cautionary tales of entrepreneurs such asRay Pagano: founder of a leading manufacturer of housings for security cameras. He turned down a bid for his company and instead changed his management style, resulting in a subsequent sale for four times the original offer.Bill Niman: founder of the iconic Niman Ranch, which revolutionized the meat industry. He learned about unhappy exits when he was forced to sell to private equity investors, leaving him with nothing to show for his thirty-five years in business.Gary Hirshberg: founder of organic yogurt pioneer Stonyfield Farm. He pulled off the nearly impossible task of finding a large company that would buy out his 275 small investors at a premium price while letting him retain complete control of the business.Through such stories, Burlingham offers an illuminating and inspirational guide to one of the most stressful, and yet potentially rewarding, processes business owners must go through. And he explores the emotional challenges they face at every step of the way.At the end of the day, owning a business is about more than selling goods and services. It’s about making choices that shape your entire life, both professional and personal. Finish Big helps you figure out how to face your future with confidence and be able to someday look back on your journey with pride.

    Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate. Procurement deploys a variety of tactics designed to do one thing: gain unprecedented discounts and concessions out of even the most sophisticated sales professionals. This book is a strategy guide for salespeople to help them level the procurement playing field by showing readers how to assess the game procurement plays, describing proven ways to resist discounting and protect margins, demonstrating ways to keep value at the forefront of negotiations, offering targeted tactics to protect hard-earned profits from mindless discounting, and detailing eight strategies effective in any type of pricing negotiation. This book will be an invaluable resource for B2B sales professionals, customer-facing professionals, and executives responsible for leading successful sales organizations.

    In If You Build It Will They Come, business professor and strategy consultant Rob Adams shows you how to make sure you hit your target market before you spend a lot of money. He shows you the fast, systematic and proven approach of performing Market Validation in advance of making a large product investment.Adams outlines a simple and effective market validation and testing strategy that is proven, giving entrepreneurs and managers the ability to dramatically improve the prospect of product success. He explains how to quickly gather information on competitors, directly interview members of your target market, and figure out what the market really wants to buy, versus what customers say they want.The steps to quickly understanding the viability of your market Where to go to gather the information needed to hit the market requirements How to follow through with the right product launched in the right way Adams cuts through the fancy terms and expensive market research that gives lots of data but no real product oriented information about usage, pricing, features and competitive forces. In the end you'll produce results on your first release of a far more mature product, shipped in a faster timeframe with features customers will actually use. This book is for anyone involved with designing, developing and launching new products. Its examples and advice cover everything from the fledgling start-up that needs their first product to work just to survive to the successful Fortune Class company establishing new worldwide markets. Examples cut across all major industrial sectors including consumer, retail, manufacturing, technology, life sciences and services. This book offers the step-based guidance you need to make sure failure is not an option.

    But despite their education and hard work, too many African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans still find unique obstacles on the path to senior management. And there are too few minority mentors available to help them understand and overcome these challenges. Keith R. Wyche, a division president at a Fortune 500 company, is the perfect mentor for ambitious minority businesspeople at all levels. His book is filled with thought-provoking insights and practical advice based on his own experiences and those of the many people he has counseled. He discusses the importance of:Understanding corporate culture--and the impact it has on your career Being visible--because you can't get ahead if nobody knows who you are Staying current--why minorities must be continuous learners Good Is Not Enough also includes anecdotes from prominent CEOs such as Ken Chenault of American Express, Richard Parsons of Time Warner, and Alwyn Lewis of Kmart.

    When we listen, we can notice that there are seven main lessons he encourages for people to learn. By learning and implementing these lessons and habits into your everyday life, you can increase your likelihood of achieving your goals and manifesting your dreams into reality. These habits work in both your personal life, as well as your career life, and will assist you in making the most of any opportunity. It is important to realize that you must work simultaneously on your personal and business lives to achieve success in either, because as Anthony says: “Success without fulfillment is failure.” You cannot truly succeed in one, if you are unhappy and failing within’ the other.

    In this brand new edition of the popular work, David Coghlan and Teresa Brannick provide an easy-to-follow, hands-on guide to every aspect of conducting an action research project in your own organization.Revised and updated, this Third Edition contains: An expanded discussion on politics and ethics of insider action researchAn expanded chapter on writing an action research dissertation and an action research report More case examples and reflective exercises taken from a wide variety of organizational settings

    Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop.Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them.In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture:· The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources· The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast· The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate· Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respondTimely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.

    Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction.This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.Understand Lean Startup, analytics fundamentals, and the data-driven mindsetLook at six sample business models and how they map to new ventures of all sizesFind the One Metric That Matters to youLearn how to draw a line in the sand, so you’ll know it’s time to move forwardApply Lean Analytics principles to large enterprises and established products

    We are on the leading edge of a Smart Machine Age led by artificial intelligence that will be as transformative for us as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors. Smart machines will take over millions of jobs in manufacturing, office work, the service sector, the professions, you name it. Not only can they know more data and analyze it faster than any mere human, say Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig, but smart machines are free of the emotional, psychological, and cultural baggage that so often mars human thinking. So we can't beat 'em and we can't join 'em. To stay relevant, we have to play a different game. Hess and Ludwig offer us that game plan. We need to excel at critical, creative, and innovative thinking and at genuinely engaging with others--things machines can't do well. The key is to change our definition of what it means to be smart. Hess and Ludwig call it being NewSmart. In this extraordinarily timely book, they offer detailed guidance for developing NewSmart attitudes and four critical behaviors that will help us adapt to the new reality. The crucial mindset underlying NewSmart is humility--not self-effacement but an accurate self-appraisal: acknowledging you can't have all the answers, remaining open to new ideas, and committing yourself to lifelong learning. Drawing on extensive multidisciplinary research, Hess and Ludwig emphasize that the key to success in this new era is not to be more like the machines but to excel at the best of what makes us human.

    This timely book suggests instead a "Fortunate 500" list, based on the quality of service available to customers and the quality of life accessible to employees. Managing by Values shows how all stakeholders in a company can win based on their commitment to a common purpose and a set of shared values emphasizing stability, continuity, and growth, all in an ethical context. More than a "must read," this book is a "must do" that shows organizations, owners, managers, and employees how to create and apply a plan to ensure they survive - and thrive.