Being a business owner can be a tough career, especially if your business is small and not quite booming. It can feel impossible to do anything from hire employees to taking a vacation. Can your business even open if you have to call in sick?

If you’re looking for additional books or resources to help you brush up on your business skills this summer, here’s a  list of suggested readings:

Nail It then Scale It by Nathan Furr

Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt by Harvey Mackay

Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks by August Turak

Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty by Harvey Mackay

Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch

Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott

Getting Everything You Can Out of Everything You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Gung Ho! by Ken Blanchard

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

Lazy Person’s Guide to Success by Ernie Zelinski

Leadership is an Art by Max Depree

Life Strategies by Phillip McGraw

Start with Why by Simon Sinek

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

The Dip by Seth Godin

The Essentials of Business Etiquette by Barbara Pachter

The Power of Focus by Canfield/Hansen/Hewitt

The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani

Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield

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“The Innovator’s Method”

by Dr. Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer shows you the methods that the best innovators use to conceive, test, and validate ideas before implementing them. Developed through research on world-class innovators such as Google, Tesla, Amazon, and Regeneron,  this process helps take the risk out of innovation and offers an additional perspective on the role of a leader: high uncertainty problems require different management principles than low uncertainty problems.

Have you ever come up with an idea for a new product or service but didn’t take any action because you thought it would be too risky?

Or at work, have you had what you thought could be a big idea for your company—perhaps changing the way you develop or distribute a product, provide customer service, or hire and train your employees? If you have, but you haven’t known how to take the next step, you need to understand what the authors call the innovator’s method—a set of tools emerging from lean start-up, design thinking, and agile software development that are revolutionizing how new ideas are created, refined, and brought to market.

 

Tools to help Entrepreneurs

To date these tools have helped entrepreneurs, designers, and software developers manage uncertainty—through cheap and rapid experiments that systematically lower failure rates and risk. But many managers and leaders struggle to apply these powerful tools within their organizations, as they often run counter to traditional managerial thinking and practice.

Authors Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer wrote this book to address that very problem.

Following the breakout success of The Innovator’s DNA—which Dyer wrote with Hal Gregersen and bestselling author Clay Christensen to provide a framework for generating ideas—this book shows how to make those ideas actually happen, to commercialize them for success.

Based on research

Based on their research inside corporations and successful start-ups, Furr and Dyer developed the innovator’s method, an end-to-end process for creating, refining, and bringing ideas to market. They show when and how to apply the tools of their method, how to adapt them to your business, and how to answer commonly asked questions about the method itself, including: How do we know if this idea is worth pursuing? Have we found the right solution? What is the best business model for this new offering? This book focuses on the “how”—how to test, how to validate, and how to commercialize ideas with the lean, design, and agile techniques successful start-ups use.

Whether you’re launching a start-up, leading an established one, or simply working to get a new product off the ground in an existing company, this book is for you.

 

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Rescue the Problem Project

I recently read and would like to highly recommend Todd Williams book, “Rescue the Problem Project”

Todd gives great guidance and sound advice in accurately assessing and dealing with troubled projects. He is an experienced practitioner who has been involved with turning around hundreds of failing projects.

Practical Advice

Todd gives practical advice on how to audit projects, analyze data, and applicable approaches and solutions for those finding themselves with a troubled project that may be over budget, running late or out of control.

Anyone who is involved with running projects needs to read his sound advice to prevent your project from getting into trouble.

http://www.amazon.com/Rescue-Problem-Project-Identifying-Preventing/dp/0814416829/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415904665&sr=1-1&keywords=rescue+the+problem+project

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       8 Things Successful People Never

                   Waste Time Doing

This article from Success Magazine discussing 8 things successful people never waste time doing is excellent! Many of the points mentioned are ones that I am continually teaching to my clients. As often as we create a to do list to help us be successful, we also need to create a Stop Doing list, to gain the kind of success that we are striving for. If we want our business to get better, we need to get better. If we want our business to change, we need to change. What are the things you are doing that waste your time? What things are not the highest and best use of your time, energy and money. What are the 20% of your activities that will generate an 80% return of your investment of time, energy and money? Are you doing any of these 8 things? Do you want to gain greater success in your business? What do you need to do to make that happen?

I hope you enjoy the article.

8 Things Successful People Never Waste Time Doing

Give us a call. We can make a dramatic improvement in your business success.

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Strengthen Your Business is the third book in the Small and Medium Enterprises series that has helped small business owners just like you learn how to fortify and grow your business as you come out of COVID. As we exit the events of the past, now is the time to build on your strengths to create an even more successful future. Learn from business experts from three continents and four countries who specialize in small to medium businesses.

In this book you will learn:

• The importance of cash reserves and low debt
• 7-keys to turning your business around
• How to take advantage of a crisis
• Transitioning your business to another generation
• How events can change your business in a blink of an eye
• Five ways to build success with your banker
• Are you using your data visualization tools properly
• How to recover from the stuff that happens in business and life
• Don’t be afraid to take risk
• Four reasons why you need a board of directors

Get the book today and tap into business advice for small and medium enterprises from six global experts who work with small, medium, and large companies to help them grow, increase revenues and profits, and provide more value to their customers.

Purchase at Amazon

See more books on the Business Publishing Success Website:

Business Success Publishing

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The Authors

Gary Furr is an organizational develop consultant with over 40-years of C-level business experience coupled with an MBA in organizational development. Gary lives in Portland, OR and is the author of It’s Not Hard, It’s Business and Make Your Banker Happy
WEBSITE

Art Koch is a results-oriented business consultant with 20-years of business experience throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, and Europe.
WEBSITE

Oriol Lopez is known as The Proactivist and is trusted advisor to business owners to help them grow and thrive in their businesses. Oriol is author of the book Grow and Thrive and resides in Spain.
WEBSITE

Dean Robinson embraces passionately the concept of family business having worked with many of them and contributed to their success. He is author of the book Crisis of Boredom and resides in Australia
WEBSITE

Phil Symchych is the president and founder of SME Business Wealth Builder Corporation based in Canada and for 26-years has advised more than 120 privately held small and medium businesses. He is author of the book, The Business Wealth Builder.
WEBSITE

Dan Weedin is an experienced entrepreneur, leader, speaker, and consultant with the goal to safeguard the valuation and legacy for his clients. Dan is the author of Unleashed Leadership and lives in Seattle, WA
WEBSITE

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