You think you have a foolproof plan for entrepreneurial success, but somewhere in the midst of getting overwhelmed with every detail, obsessed with every opportunity, you're dissatisfied with employee output, directionless toward growth, or just plain stuck. You need to redefine your thought process-keeping it simple, cutting out complexities, and getting back to why you built the business in the first place. Cassidy Phillips founded one of the world's most successful health and fitness brands, TriggerPoint. While revolutionizing an industry and establishing a household name, he learned a lot along the way. In Blissful Ignorance, he draws upon his triumphs and missteps to help entrepreneurs learn how to simplify their approach, ignite their passion, and discover their own purpose-driven path.Filled with Cassidy-isms-no-nonsense best practices for any industry-this is the wake-up call that will empower you to be exactly who you are supposed to be-in business and in life.

The Ignorance of Bliss tells the true story of ten-year-old Sandy, who moves with her American military family to Saigon, Vietnam where her father, the Colonel, serves as a military advisor to the South Vietnamese Army. In 1960s Saigon, Sandy finds a world of crushing poverty and extraordinary beauty; a world of streets, villas, and brothels, where politics and intrigue reside between plot and counterplot. Blissfully living a life of French decadence, Sandy maneuvers between coups, spies, bombings, corruption, and scandal as she and her thirteen-year-old brother, Tom, run an illicit baby powder and Hershey bar business on the black market and live a life of school, scouts, dance parties, and movies at the underground theater. When the Colonel’s counterpart, Colonel Le Van Sam, delivers an expose on the current ruling Diem regime, Sandy finds that her constant spying on her father’s activities has brought her face to face with the reality of Vietnam and the anti-American sentiment that pervades it. This coming-of age story takes place in a turbulent country striving for nationalism, giving the reader a stunning look into the life of military dependents living abroad and the underlying ignorance that surrounded a little understood time in history.

Leverage the framework of visionaries to innovate, disrupt, and ultimately succeed as an entrepreneur The Lean Entrepreneur, Second Edition banishes the "Myth of the Visionary" and shows you how you can implement proven, actionable techniques to create products and disrupt existing markets on your way to entrepreneurial success. The follow-up to the New York Times bestseller, this great guide combines the concepts of customer insight, rapid experimentation, and actionable data from the Lean Startup methodology to allow individuals, teams, or even entire companies to solve problems, create value, and ramp up their vision quickly and efficiently. The belief that innovative outliers like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have some super-human ability to envision the future and build innovative products to meet needs that have yet to arise is a fallacy that too many fall prey to. This 'Myth of the Visionary' does nothing but get in the way of talented managers, investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Taking a proven, measured approach, The Lean Entrepreneur will have you engaging customers, reducing time to market and budgets, and stressing your organization's focus on the power of loyal customers to build powerhouse new products and companies. This guide will show you how to: Apply actionable tips and tricks from successful lean entrepreneurs with proven track records Leverage the Innovation Spectrum to disrupt markets and create altogether new markets Use minimum viable products to drive strategy and conduct efficient market testing Quickly develop cross-functional innovation teams to overcome typical startup roadblocks The Lean Entrepreneur is your complete guide to getting your startup moving in the right direction quickly and hyper-efficiently.

Unorthodox success principles from a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Eli Broad's embrace of "unreasonable thinking" has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world's greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, "reasonable" people come up with all the reasons something new and different can't be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way. This book shares the "unreasonable" principles—from negotiating to risk-taking, from investing to hiring—that have made Eli Broad such a success. Broad helped to create the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Broad, a new museum being built in downtown Los Angeles His investing approach to philanthropy has led to the creation of scientific and medical research centers in the fields of genomic medicine and stem cell research At his alma mater, Michigan State University, he endowed a full-time M.B.A. program, and he and his wife have funded a new contemporary art museum on campus to serve the broader region Eli Broad is the founder of two Fortune 500 companies: KB Home and SunAmerica If you're stuck doing what reasonable people do—and not getting anywhere—let Eli Broad show you how to be unreasonable, and see how far your next endeavor can go.

There's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. The question is, what kind of entrepreneur will you be? If your sole purpose in life is amassing money, you may want to try a different book. If you crave the flexibility to be passionate, original, and unabashedly enthusiastic about what you do, create work that could excite you on a daily basis, and still earn you enough money to not have to worry about money, The Worst Business Model in the World may be calling your name. It's about doing what you're passionate about and good at, and taking the strategic steps to create a business around that passion. It's about leaving a 9-5 job behind not knowing if you'll match your income level but confident that you'll exceed your happiness level. Backed by interviews with more than 100 entrepreneurs in a wide range of industries, The Worst Business Model in the World provides strategic advice for the real problems entrepreneurs face, whether you're a veteran entrepreneur or on your way to becoming one. Author Danny Schuman lays out a roadmap to help you stay stubbornly and blissfully independent, so you can spend more time doing what you love and less time doing what you hate. Featuring 24 insights, each with an actionable tool, this book will help fill your wallet, feed your heart, and lift you up to the place you really want to be, so you can do all the things you're good at with less pain, enough profits, and more joy.

Every business starts with a bright idea, and many a bright idea has been hatched in a pub - scribbled on a nearby discarded beermat. But how do you turn the moment of inspiration into a well oiled plan? who do you need to talk to? How do you find the cash to back the idea? How many people do you need to work with to get the idea off the ground? And how on earth do you find them? This book tells you exactly how to convert your jotted notes into a big and successful business. It takes you step-by-step, with no jargon, no complex theory and no visits to arrogant pinstriped venture capitalists who aren't really interested in just 'an idea'. This revised edition follows the same successful format of the previous editions with new up to the minute advice including: how to work with a bank to your greatest benefit, a new expanded section on growing your business and how to handle the 20-plus employee stage. Using these tried and tested techniques, your beermat inspiration could become reality.