Why stumble alone on a risky venture on your way to failure when you can tap into the best ideas and minds for increasing your chances for success? Most entrepreneurs have had to learn things the hard way--concepts such as: big ideas rarely make great businesses; laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time; and you will need dramatically more start-up money than you originally thought you did. Lenoard Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, has encapsulated together all the inside secrets, proven strategies, and mistakes experienced so that you can learn it all beforehand, rather than when all your capital is on the line. Based on his popular Ultimate Entrepreneurship course, The Entrepreneur’s Playbook explains how to: Locate sure-bet opportunities for improving products Find funding Take calculated risks and minimize failure Get serious about positioning, distributing, and licensing Stripping away the complexity favored by business schools and the hype of the technology sector, the book reveals eighteen down-to-earth principles and dozens of tactics for every kind of business. Plus, the invaluable instruction available for you is now interactive. Dozens of exercises are given throughout the book that can be submitted online for feedback.

Wharton professor Ian C. MacMillan and Dr. James Thompson, director of the Wharton Social Entrepreneurship Program, provide a tough-love approach that significantly increases the likelihood of a successful social enterprise launch in the face of the high-uncertainty conditions typically encountered by social entrepreneurs.

" ... [The author] shares the inspiring experiences, lessons, and words to the wise from more than forty founders, along with his own playbook for startup success"--Page 4 of cover.

Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before. The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals. We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you. We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens. The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups. We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well. The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve. "This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor." —Amazon Reviewer

Why does an entrepreneur struggling through 80 hours a week only make half as much as another working no more than 40? What actions determine whether you end up with a small business pulling in five figures a year or a billion-dollar behemoth blazing a path to market dominance? As an entrepreneur, you're told the secret to success is working hard and fighting your way to the top. But what if this advice came from all the wrong people and places? What if there was more to the success stories you read in magazines, watch on TV or hear on the radio? Uncovering the true secret to success is marketing expert Charles E. Gaudet II's obsession. Gaudet discovered nearly every great organization - whether Apple, Nordstrom, Zappos, FedEx or Disney - follows a stunningly similar formula. And surprisingly, this approach defies the principles followed by most entrepreneurs running businesses today. Gaudet finally reveals why some businesses find growth opportunities in any economic situation and others balance on the edge of failure. His research shows many small business owners seek out success strategies from other small business owners and, for this reason, most remain small. Fortunately, today's advances in technology and media level the playing field, allowing small businesses to compete using a "big-business playbook," even when they don't have a big-business marketing budget. Inside The Predictable Profits Playbook, you'll learn time-tested lessons from leading small business owners and discover how to: Succeed in a down economy Become the preferred provider sought by only the best customers Swipe market share from your competitors Increase margins while growing demand Multiply your prospect-to-sales ratio Boost customer loyalty and build a raving fan base Create predictable and rising profits from one month to the next Become known as a business of excellence The Predictable Profits methodology avoids gimmicks, schemes or stunts - and you won't need to outspend your competitors. Instead, you'll focus on optimizing your existing marketing dollars and delivering the greatest advantages to your customers. Some entrepreneurs want to experience growth and others just wish for it. This book is for the motivated entrepreneur committed to making growth happen."

"The EXITpreneur's Playbook is the ultimate guide to selling an online business. We all need to transition our businesses someday, and those that learn from this book will have a smoother experience, an improved deal structure, and a stronger bank account." -Walker Deibel, bestselling author of Buy Then Build Most people start an online business for the freedom, autonomy, and money that come with entrepreneurship-but what they often find instead is the feeling that they're running on a hamster wheel and can't jump off. If you were looking to exit your business, would you know how? Do you know what your business is truly worth? This book will shift your mindset from entrepreneur to EXITpreneur. After all, the majority of all the money you'll ever make from your business comes on the day you sell-so it's important to get the exit right. In The EXITpreneur's Playbook, Joe Valley shares his experience in all facets of exiting an online business through direct experiences and real-life examples, with clear math and logic. You'll learn to: ● Assess the value of your business and reverse engineer a path to an incredible exit ● Avoid the "ignorance discount" when selling a business on your own ● Negotiate favorable deal terms and conditions ● Calculate the all-important seller's discretionary earnings ● Create rock-solid pillars every buyer wants The EXITpreneur's Playbook is the definitive guide to achieving your own incredible exit, at the right time and value, and with the best deal structure that allows you to move on to your next adventure-with not just money in the bank, but satisfaction and peace of mind.

Entrepreneur, CEO, or business leader: no matter your title, the success of your company is a responsibility-and weight-that lies squarely on your shoulders. In the beginning, increased control was an asset that bought you peace of mind. But now, without the structure your business needs to thrive, you're overworked, overwhelmed, and unsure of the path ahead. Fortunately, everything that makes your company work can be captured and put to work for you. In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn't rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.