Lists and Suggestions

"If you prefer to "just put your head down and do the work," or if you feel like bragging is icky, you are sabotaging yourself without knowing it. Doing good work is no guarantee anyone will notice it. You need a strategy for communicating your achievements and skill sets to others. Meredith Fineman has built a thriving career training the Qualified Quiet: competent professionals who struggle to communicate their worth to others. Rather than pretending that you're more qualified or confident than you are, or inserting self-promotion into conversations at inappropriate times, Fineman advocates finding quiet confidence in your opinions, abilities, and background, and then turning up the volume. In this book, Fineman shares the game-changing tools she's developed over the past decade that make bragging feel easy, including: - Eliminate words that undermine your work and find better ones--like your bio saying you're "trying" or "attempting" to do something instead that you ARE doing it. - Get remembered by focusing your personal brand and voice on key adjectives (like "effective, subtle, and edgy") - Practice explaining what you do in simple, sticky terms to earn respect and recognition from the public and people at work. Our culture rewards loud voices over qualified ones. To create a thoughtful, diverse dialogue, we need you to tell the world who you are and what you want--with volume. If you're ready to unlock career opportunities and help others shine, this book is for you"--

"An indispensable guide to building a startup and breaking down the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs from the visionary venture capitalist and pioneering entrepreneur Kathryn Finney. Build the Damn Thing is a hard-won, battle-tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment has left out. Finney, an investor and startup champion, explains how to build a business from the ground up, from developing a business plan to finding investors, growing a team, and refining a product. Finney empowers entrepreneurs to take advantage of their unique networks and resources; arms readers with responses to investors who say, "great pitch but I just don't do Black women"; and inspires them to overcome naysayers while remaining "100% That B*tch." Don't wait for the system to let you in-break down the door and build your damn thing. For all the Builders striving to build their businesses in a world that has overlooked and underestimated them: this is the essential guide to knowing, breaking, remaking and building your own rules of entrepreneurship in a startup and investing world designed for and by the "Entitleds.""-- Provided by publisher.

"Four-time New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk offers new lessons and inspiration drawn from the experiences of dozens of influencers and entrepreneurs who rejected the predictable corporate path in favor of pursuing their dreams by building thriving businesses and extraordinary personal brands. In his 2009 international bestseller Crush It, Gary insisted that a vibrant personal brand was crucial to entrepreneurial success, In Crushing It!, Gary explains why that's even more true today, offering his unique perspective on what has changed and what principles remain timeless. He also shares stories from other entrepreneurs who have grown wealthier--and not just financially--than they ever imagined possible by following Crush It principles. The secret to their success (and Gary's) has everything to do with their understanding of the social media platforms, and their willingness to do whatever it took to make these tools work to their utmost potential. That's what Crushing It! teaches readers to do. In this lively, practical, and inspiring book, Gary dissects every current major social media platform so that anyone, from a plumber to a professional ice skater, will know exactly how to amplify his or her personal brand on each. He offers both theoretical and tactical advice on how to become the biggest thing on old standbys like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat; podcast platforms like Spotify, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, and iTunes; and other emerging platforms such as Musical.ly. For those with more experience, Crushing It! illuminates some little-known nuances and provides innovative tips and clever tweaks proven to enhance more common tried-and-true strategies. Crushing It! is a state-of-the-art guide to building your own path to professional and financial success, but it's not about getting rich. It's a blueprint to living life on your own terms"--

Raz has interviewed highly successful entrepreneurs, and here he shares tips for every entrepreneur's journey. From the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary, this book offers insights and inspiration on how to start, launch, and build a successful venture. The interviews show that great ideas often come from a simple spark that can make dreams into reality. --

"From a black, gay woman who broke into the boys' club of Silicon Valley comes an empowering guide to finding your voice, working your way into any room you want to be in, and achieving your own dreams. In 2015, Arlan Hamilton was on food stamps and sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, with nothing but an old laptop and a dream of breaking into the venture capital business. She couldn't understand why people starting companies all looked the same (white and male), and she wanted the chance to invest in the ideas and people who didn't conform to this image of how a founder is supposed to look. Hamilton had no contacts or network in Silicon Valley, no background in finance-not even a college degree. What she did have was fierce determination and the will to succeed. As much as we wish it weren't so, we still live in a world where being underrepresented often means being underestimated. But as someone who makes her living investing in high-potential founders who also happen to be female, LGBTQ, or people of color, Hamilton understands that being undervalued simply means that a big upside exists. Because even if you have to work twice as hard to get to the starting line, she says, once you are on a level playing field, you will sprint ahead. Despite what society would have you believe, Hamilton argues, a privileged background, an influential network, and a fancy college degree are not prerequisites for success. Here she shares the hard-won wisdom she's picked up on her remarkable journey from food-stamp recipient to venture capitalist, with lessons like "The Best Music Comes from the Worst Breakups," "Let Someone Shorter Stand in Front of You," "The Dangers of Hustle Porn," and "Don't Let Anyone Drink Your Diet Coke." Along the way, she inspires us all to defy other people's expectations and to become the role models we've been looking for"--

"Practical, specific advice and strategies to help women develop an entrepreneurial mindset. "The perfect guidebook to help every aspiring female entrepreneur and business owner develop the entrepreneurial mindset necessary to launch and grow their startup and thrive in business." -Jason Feifer, Editor in Chief, Entrepreneur magazine "When it comes to becoming a successful entrepreneur, so much of it has to do with developing the right attitude. Charlene Walters has put together an amazing book to help women on their journeys to becoming flourishing businesses owners by adopting the entrepreneurial mindset." -Jon Steinberg, Founder of Cheddar News Channel and President of Altice News & Advertising. With tens of millions unemployed and a pandemic wreaking havoc on traditional businesses, everyone's scrambling to find alternative ways to take control of their own livelihoods and earnings. What hasn't changed? Entrepreneurship is still a man's world-despite the facts that more women than men (51% vs. 35%) have "side hustles" and over 13 million businesses in the US are owned by women. In Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship coach and branding mentor Charlene Walters knows exactly what women specifically need to know-from "Dealing with Haters" and "Closing the Confidence Gap" to "Overcoming Impostor Syndrome" and "Tips to Fight Self-Sabotage." Through 10 specific Mindset Shifts and hands-on workbook activities, you'll find the tools you need to embrace an entrepreneurial attitude, as well as actionable, practical advice on everything from crafting a USP to finding a work-life balance"--

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress, to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations, helping a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Daymond John knows what it means to push yourself hard--and he also knows how spectacularly a killer work ethic can pay off. As a young man, he founded a modest line of clothing on a $40 budget by hand-sewing hats between his shifts at Red Lobster. Today, his brand FUBU has over $6 billion in sales. Convenient though it might be to believe that you can shortcut your way to the top, says John, the truth is that if you want to get and stay ahead, you need to put in the work. You need to out-think, out-hustle, and out-perform everyone around you. You've got to rise and grind every day. In the anticipated follow-up to the bestselling The Power of Broke, Daymond takes an up close look at the hard-charging routines and winning secrets of individuals who have risen to the challenges in their lives and grinded their way to the very tops of their fields. Along the way, he also reveals how grit and persistence both helped him overcome the obstacles he has faced in life and ultimately fueled his success.

"Jaime Schmidt: acclaimed entrepreneur, founder of Schmidt's Naturals, and icon of the Maker Movement shares how you too can start or grow your own business with advice on branding, product development, social media marketing, scaling, PR, and customer engagement, all based on her own hard-won mastery"-- Provided by publisher.

"Thiel starts from the bold premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we're too distracted by our new mobile devices to notice. Progress has stalled in every industry except computers, and globalization is hardly the revolution people think it is. It's true that the world can get marginally richer by building new copies of old inventions, making horizontal progress from "1 to n." But true innovators have nothing to copy. The most valuable companies of the future will make vertical progress from "0 to 1," creating entirely new industries and products that have never existed before. Zero to One is about how to build these companies. Tomorrow's champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today's marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. In today's post-internet bubble world, conventional wisdom dictates that all the good ideas are taken, and the economy becomes a tournament in which everyone competes to reach the top. Zero to One shows how to quit the zero-sum tournament by finding an untapped market, creating a new product, and quickly scaling up a monopoly business that captures lasting value. Planning an escape from competition is essential for every business and every individual, not just for technology startups. The greatest secret of the modern era is that there are still unique frontiers to explore and new problems to solve. Zero to One shows how to pursue them using the most important, most difficult, and most underrated skill in every job or industry: thinking for yourself"--