Entrepreneur's Guide – serie

There are few absolutes in business, but here is one: Thriving businesses employ a superior team. No matter how great the idea, how strong the entrepreneur's finances, how excellent the location, or how magnetic the advertising, the success or failure of the business rides on the quality of the workforce. And here's another absolute: Long-term financial success depends on keeping effective employees from jumping ship. In this book, business veteran Ken Tanner guides entrepreneurs through the three critical components of staffing a business—recruiting, teambuilding, and retention. As he shows time and again through advice, anecdote, and example, solving these challenges is like adding rocket fuel to the entrepreneurial business.Yet new business owners tend to take a lax view of personnel issues. They hire the first person who walks through the door or interview using a canned sheet of questions snagged from the Internet. Teambuilding consists of showing the new employee where to sit and who to go to for answers. And retention? What's that? The Entrepreneur's Guide to Hiring and Building the Team begins by helping entrepreneurs understand why staffing is so important. Then it guides them through the entire process of recruiting to attract top-notch talent to the budding organization. But that's only the start, Tanner maintains. It's critical to get these talented people to work together to drive the business, and it's equally critical to keep each employee challenged, motivated, and satisfied—the keys to retention.

It's one thing to come up with a good business idea, and quite another to marshal the people, money, and other resources entrepreneurs need to make the dream a successful reality. That's why most businesses fail within the first two years. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Successful Leadership helps budding moguls make it out of the toddler phase of entrepreneurship and into adolescence and adulthood with confidence. A concise and practical guide to leading smaller enterprises, the book is based on a proven, nine-step model of effective leadership developed by Dan Goldberg—the founder of the For Eyes optical chain—and entrepreneur and educator Don Martin. Step by step, readers learn what real leadership looks like and how to lead and grow the successful enterprise.Creating a vibrant business starts with understanding who you are, say the authors, and then coming up with a vision, mission, and strategy. That's the easy part. The hard part is to execute the strategy in line with your dreams, while using effective, ethical tactics to establish the business and prosper. Seasoned hands, the authors make that job easier, while helping entrepreneurs understand what makes employees tick and helping them become their productive best. The hard work not only gets easier, say the authors—it pays off as entrepreneurs watch their fledgling businesses take graceful flight. This book is a treasure chest that provides key insights and methods in the form of real-life stories, humor, strategies, techniques, exercises, checklists, templates, and other resources. Each illustrates in a unique way how good leaders achieve powerful results. Many books on leadership are gimmicky. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Successful Leadership focuses—in clear, simple, and direct terms—on the essential fundamentals, the blocking and tackling, required for business success.

Ask any established business owner to identify his or her toughest challenge when just starting out, and you'll likely get this answer: raising capital. Most aspiring entrepreneurs know far too little about the sources of money that can help start a business or fuel its growth. Where do you get capital? What are investors looking for? How do you ask for money in a way that gets results? This book answers these and many other critical questions. Even more important, entrepreneur and consultant David Nour shows how to develop long-term relationships with financial partner—the people who can help keep a business humming throughout its life.The Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Capital, designed to help entrepreneurs navigate the money-raising maze, shows how to attract financing to fund the start-up and growth phases any business moves through. It answers the most common—and the most perplexing—questions entrepreneurs have about financing a business: How do I put together a credible request for funds? How do I choose wisely from among the plethora of financial and strategic investors, consultants, investment bankers, and other intermediaries? How do I identify and avoid the risks associated with various sources of capital? How do I plan for the right kind, amount, and source of smart capital as the business evolves? How do I get the highest return on invested capital? How do I avoid the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when raising capital?This book provides real-life, pragmatic advice from entrepreneurs who have raised money from friends, family, angel investors, and banks, as well as institutional investors such as venture capitalists and private equity firms. It details the process from start to finish while spotlighting the danger spots and ways to avoid them. It will be especially useful to those who are uncomfortable making important financial decisions, and to those who are confused by all the conflicting opinions offered by advisors—both well meaning and otherwise. By showing readers the financing ropes, Nour removes a major source of stress for budding entrepreneurs and moves them closer to their dream come true: a successful business.

Planning your new business starts here. This invaluable guide arms entrepreneurs with all they need to know to research and analyze potential markets—key steps in constructing effective marketing plans, establishing sound financial forecasts, and finding backers.The Entrepreneur's Guide to Market Research is a must-have for anyone who wants to start or expand a business. This fact-filled, actionable book offers a step-by-step guide to researching and documenting the market potential of any product or service, something that is an essential—and too-often overlooked—part of constructing a workable business plan.Author Anne M. Wenzel, herself a principal in a market research firm, takes entrepreneurs through the process of assessing such things as market size and growth, market trends and needs, emerging technologies, competition, and distribution patterns. She discusses types of market research and makes it clear what market research can and can't do to improve the chances of success. Finally, the book shows entrepreneurs how to document findings as part of a well-written business plan that will be invaluable for their own decision-making and can also be shared with potential partners, lenders, and investors.

Like a detailed trail map through the jungle of finance, this book guides readers past small-business financial pitfalls, showing readers how to fine-tune operations and enhance profitability.Easy to read and full of engaging stories, this book teaches the basics of true financial management—re-made just for small businesses. It's perfect for entrepreneurs who want to get more from their accounting without getting stuck in the details. The author examines each of the three major financial statements and explains both how and why business owners should utilize these powerful tools to create a more stable, more profitable business. Whether one's business has one employee or 100, the small business owner will gain a deeper understanding of why finance is so critical to survival and growth. Written by an experienced CFO and entrepreneur, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Financial Statements uses illustrations, real-life stories, and crystal-clear writing to show business owners the importance of "the numbers" and the critical nature of finance to the survival, profitability, and growth of their small businesses.