Small Business Development

Are you a self-employed service provider looking to build a bulletproof business? Struggling to develop a strong, consistent client base? Do you want to take your independent career to the next level but don't know how? Writer, coach, and public speaker Laura Briggs has helped thousands of enthusiastic entrepreneurs find the liberating freedom and flexibility of the contractor model. And now she's here to share her battle-tested guide from working with companies like Microsoft and Business Insider to help you scale your enterprise and soar to new financial heights.

It's easy to feel like networking is a waste of time, energy, or money - but that just means you're doing it wrong. In this new edition of Networking Like a Pro, networking experts Dr. Ivan Misner and Brian Hilliard reveal key networking techniques to help you grow your business. In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover strategies that go beyond collecting business cards and turn networking into a profitable resource for your business. Dive into this book and discover how the most successful networkers leverage their brand, expertise, and customers to achieve greatness in life.

Finding the right venture capitalist to back your start-up is a challenge. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work. Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone.

Even if you don't know anything about cooking or running a business, you might still have a great idea for a restaurant - and this handy guide will show you how to make your dream a reality. If you already own a restaurant, but want to see it get more successful, Running a Restaurant for Dummies offers unbeatable tips and advice for bringing in hungry customers. From start to finish, you'll learn everything you need to know to succeed.

In this accessible guide, franchise expert Rick Grossmann and franchise attorney Michael J. Katz impart decades-worth of insight and advice on what it takes to make your franchise operation successful. Grossmann and Katz share expert tutorials, tricks of the trade, and access to sample franchise documents, checklists, and questionnaires designed to get you organized, support you through the process, and get your new franchise off the ground.

In Launching & Building a Brand for Dummies, Amy Will covers everything from crafting a powerful brand identity and planning that all-important launch to being prepared to scale up as you begin to take off.

Crack the Funding Code will show listeners how to find the money, create pitches that attract investors, and then structure fair, ethical deals that will bring them new sources of outside capital and invaluable professional advice. It will give listeners the broader perspective - how funding works, how investors think, and what they need to hear to put their money where your mouth is.

Based on the author’s experience in the world of inventing and promotion, Hardcore Inventing offers the kind of advice you can only learn from experience: how to developing an idea into an invention, how to build a prototype for show, how to safeguard intellectual property, how to market both strategically and in “guerilla" mode, how find investors, and much more. And all of that is based on his IP 3 Tacitical Method which breaks everything down to Invent, Protect, Promote, and Profit.

Learn how today’s artists survive, exhibit, and earn money, without selling out! This book explains how to be a professional artist and new methods to define and realize what success means. Whether you’re a beginner, a student, or a career artist looking to be in the best museum shows, this book provides ways of advancing your plans on any level. Making It in the Art World is an invaluable resource for artists at every stage, offering readers a plethora of strategies and helpful tips to plan and execute a successful artistic career.

Nationally recognized communication expert, keynote speaker and trainer and best-selling author Debra Fine reveals the techniques and strategies anyone can use to make small talk—in any situation. With practical advice and conversation cheat sheets, The Fine Art of Small Talk will help you learn to feel more comfortable in any type of social situation.

Amazon Book Description Are you tired of customers who shop around endlessly, negotiate every price, then hire your cheapest competitor? The problem isn't your skills, your experience, or even your pricing. Most local business owners who struggle to attract quality customers are actually excellent at what they do. They just don't know how to present their services in ways that customers immediately understand and value. Winning Offers for Local Business gives you the complete step-by-step system for packaging your services so customers stop shopping around and start trying to figure out how...

How businesses can harness the power of online consumer reviews. More than seventy percent of consumers now consult online reviews before making purchases, and they take those picks and pans very seriously. A disgruntled but ignorant customer on Yelp might have more clout than any expert guidebook, magazine article, or newspaper critic. No wonder many businesses feel terrified by the review-driven marketplace.

In The Small Big, three heavyweights from the world of persuasion science and practice describe how, in today's information overloaded and stimulation saturated world, increasingly it is the small changes that you make that lead to the biggest differences. In the last few years, more research-from fields such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and behavioral economics-has helped to uncover an even greater understanding of how influence, persuasion, and behavior change happens.

Whether you like it or loathe it, public speaking is something many of us have to do. Be it presentations to colleagues or speeches to a room full of near-strangers, we all want to shine…or at least get through it with our dignity intact. Luckily Philip Collins, former Chief Speech Writer to Tony Blair, knows exactly what’s needed to give a storming speech. The secret, according to Philip, is content. Too many of us focus on how we’re presenting, and don’t spend enough time thinking about what we’re presenting. The secret to memorable, polished speeches is to think more about the material you’re sharing.

Discover the underdog story of the improbable rise of small-batch distilling in America. This bracingly written, fast-paced work traces the relationship of Americans to spirits such as bourbon, scotch, vodka, gin, and rum. And it presents the full story of a plucky band of entrepreneurs who disrupted the nation's conception of how those libations could appear and taste - and how much they could cost.

Drawing on his decades of experience working with small-business owners, Michael Gerber adds to his mega-selling E-Myth series with The E-Myth Attorney, a one-of-a-kind system for transforming an attorney’s practice into a business positioned for long-term growth.

Small business marketing doesn't have to be a mystery. It's just a series of simple decisions (and the action steps to implement those decisions) that will help you regain the clarity, confidence, and control you need to succeed. Do It! Marketing is an encouraging kick in the pants that will reignite your marketing mojo. The underlying premise is that "only action creates results."

From retailers to growers, producers, and suppliers, there's a seemingly never-ending list of startup opportunities in this emerging market. In Start Your Own Cannabis Business, cannabis, biotech, and entrepreneurship reporter Javier Hasse introduces forward-thinking entrepreneurs like you to the industry and shares hard-earned tips and success stories from pioneers and visionaries in the marijuana industry.

The iconic Sydney to Hobart Race, a 723-mile deepwater challenge - often called the “Everest” of offshore ocean racing - is considered one of the toughest in the world. Unpredictable weather and seas make each race demanding, but in 1998, an unexpected “weather bomb” hit the fleet, creating 80-foot waves and 100-mile-per-hour winds. Many bigger, better-equipped boats tried to maneuver around the storm, but the crew of the AFR Midnight Rambler chose to head directly into its path.

The Art of Communication is for anyone who senses that they could be communicating on a deeper level. There's more to conversation than just clear, rational thinking. Left-brain rationality is important, of course, but neuroscience increasingly shows that the right-brain skills of creativity, intuition, and spontaneity are essential in good communication. In this guide, you'll discover ways of tapping into the full conversational potential that lies dormant within you, adding a level of nuance and watching the result as your relationships blossom.