Even the most creative minds need stimulation. Inspiration can come from examples of exceptional work, exercises designed to motivate, or time to reflect. The more inventive pieces the mind takes in, the more resources it has to draw from. Street Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz contains countless examples designed to jump-start the right side of the brain. Margo Berman's book is packed with memorable uses of new media, exciting on-strategy marketing, creative online work, and insightful quotes by giants in the advertising industry. She offers innovative techniques to generate 'sticky' slogans and headlines, easy-to-apply copywriting tips, and practical revision strategies. Berman has updated the book to reflect how online media has changed its approach from 'pushing' information to the audience to 'pulling' - i.e., engaging the audience in a brand. By using social networking groups like Facebook and Twitter, the author points out, even small companies can have a giant digital footprint by leveraging their online presence, offering relevant insights, and stimulating consumer-created content. In tough economic times, Berman says, savvy advertisers don't need huge budgets to engage the audience and create forums for them to share ideas. The biggest change in marketing is reaching people through new touch points: through audience intersection, viral marketing, and online dialogues. As Street Smart Advertising makes clear, those who become victorious in this new marketing arena will win the battle of the buzz.

Small firms in Chicago employ more than 1.6 million individuals—nearly 50 percent of the private work force, according to a new study released this fall by the Small Business Administration. The survey, which defines small firms as those employing less than 500 people, also shows that these businesses generate 47 percent of the area's total receipts of $278 billion dollars. However, SBA statistics also reveal that, on average, of the small businesses starting today, 53 percent will not be in business four years from now. Of these closings, it's estimated that 15 percent will close due to business failures. Chicago businessman Jay Goltz understands what it takes for a small business to succeed. During the past twenty years he has owned and operated Artists' Frame Service in Chicago. Goltz started the business in 1978, and today it's the largest, custom retail picture framing facility in the world. Now, Goltz shares some his secrets of success.

Offers a practical guide to staying afloat in the digital age, arguing that despite the technology, certain rules--such as the face-to-face meeting--still apply in business.

Street Smart Disciplines by John A. Kuhn and Mark K. MullinsThese are the Disciplines that can change everything!Street Smart Disciplines gives you access to decades of successful real world, street smart business experience and best practices mined from successful people and businesses encapsulated into 7 easy to understand and executable action plans for Breakout Success.The authors identified the 7 essential and vital disciplines that people must incorporate into their playbook to reach the pinnacle of business success. Kuhn and Mullins speak from experience. One of their first businesses was started for less than $1,000; built it into a multimillion-dollar success and sold debt-free to a Fortune 500 company using these very same disciplines. They continue to use these disciplines to achieve ongoing success and personal fulfillment.The eye-opening insights and practical wisdom will inspire and guide go-getters who want to climb the corporate ladder, aspiring entrepreneurs looking to launch new businesses and established business owners who want to take their organizations to the next level. These indispensable disciplines are drawn from real people, real experiences, real successes, real problems, and real solutions. They are tried and true, time tested, and proven on the street by the authors, successful companies, and successful people—from Wall Street to Main Street—and include a compilation of advice, tips, tactics, techniques, and strategies that work.This is the first book that explains the how and why of Disciplines. Street Smart Disciplines captures the essence of good business practices and distills them into simple, straight- talking, and no-nonsense language. Kuhn and Mullins demystify the process of achieving Breakout Success. You can immediately start applying this vast storehouse of knowledge that combines the winning perspectives of successful entrepreneurial, corporate and academic experts.Learn how to: • Develop a Dynamic Plan for Break-Out Success • Maximize Yourself and Your Ideas• Duplicate Winning Strategies of Successful People • Manage Change and Complexity • Master the Mental Game of Doing Business • Establish Bulletproof Financial Systems and Controls • Create Powerful and Compelling Presentations • Seek out Role Models, Mentors and Smart People • Optimize your Resources …and much more. Integrate the disciplines one by one into your life and business and achieve more success and personal fulfillment in your life than you ever thought possible! “Straight talk! The only book that shows what it should really take takes to succeed in business. One of most honest books I've read.” Michael Kenny, Founder, Agoda.com (subsidiary of Priceline.com)

Draws on the author's personal experiences to offer insight into and advice on the financial world, drawing on a belief that Southeast Asia and China are the dominant drivers of the world economy.

Business schools have long enticed students into their MBA programs with the promise that, after a short stint spent studying the ins and outs of the business world, they will be able to step right into the upper echelons of management or launch a business that soon has them flitting about the world in a private jet. "Sounds great," you say. "Sign me up!" Not so fast. Sure, business school might prove a necessary prerequisite for those aiming to gain employment at a large financial institution, land a job with a consultancy, or accelerate their journey to managerial superstardom at a Fortune 500 company. But for aspiring entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, the truth of the matter is this: The ability to get a business off the ground and running successfully is not the byproduct of toiling away in a classroom, learning esoteric subjects like the economics of competition. Rather, all it takes to start and run a truly successful business are a few sensible, time-proven techniques that have been needlessly forgotten in business innovators' haste to reinvent the wheel. That's why, in The Street Smart MBA, Steve Babitsky and James J. Mangraviti, Jr., encourage you to ditch class—or, better yet, ditch b-school altogether—and go back to the business basics with a series of ten simple steps that will do more for your company than the letters M, B, and A ever will. There are no forays into game theory in The Street Smart MBA, no parables, and no intellectualizing. Instead what you will find is a practical, easy-to-understand, step-by-step business strategy guide that encourages you to revive a handful of basic yet essential practices that many business owners have lost sight of, such as: Building a brand that is so synonymous with quality that you'll be able to maximize your company's profits in no time; Turning your company's products and services into profits by finding your company a niche, working with deadlines, and honoring your company's image above all else; Dealing with customer complaints head-on so that you can turn gripes into opportunities; Doing favors, mentoring, and sending gifts, in order to grow your business network; And much more. With its emphasis on ten simple yet time-honored principles that lead to business success, The Street Smart MBA is all the business education that entrepreneurs with great ideas and business owners with the drive to succeed will ever need.