Have you ever thought about starting a business but don't know where to begin? Or, do you have a great product or service idea with limited resources to get it off the ground? Maybe you just want to be the boss and that's it? If you're just like how I was many years ago with tons of ambition and no clue where to start, then this is the book for you. I have designed a thorough step by step guide through actual experience which will teach you how to build your own business from the ground up or through buying a franchise.

Josh Kaufman founded PersonalMBA.com as an alternative to the business school boondoggle. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. Now, he shares the essentials of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, operations, productivity, systems design, and much more, in one comprehensive volume. The Personal MBA distills the most valuable business lessons into simple, memorable mental models that can be applied to real-world challenges.

During economic contractions, it becomes much more difficult to sell your products, maintain your customer base, and gain market share. Mistakes become more costly, and failure becomes a real possibility for all those who are not able to make the transition. But imagine being able to sell your products when others cannot, being able to take market share from your competitors, and knowing the precise formulas that would allow you to expand your sales while others make excuses.

Entrepreneurs have a problem: startups. Almost all startups either fail or never truly reach a sustainable size. Despite the popularity of entrepreneurship, we haven't engineered a better way to start...until now. What if you could skip the startup phase and generate profitable revenue on day one? In Buy Then Build, acquisition entrepreneur Walker Deibel shows you how to begin with a sustainable, profitable company and grow from there.

Years ago, after suffering a humiliatingly large dumb tax, it dawned on me that I have a seemingly unlimited ability to hit unforced errors and sabotage my business and financial success. I suspect you do, too. It turns out that the key to getting rich (and staying that way) is to avoid doing stupid things. I don't need to do more smart things. I just need to make fewer dumb mistakes. The vast majority of our dumb tax is a direct result of emotional, overly optimistic, and poorly thought out decisions.

The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.

How do the really exceptional CEOs get more done in less time than everyone else? What is their technique for getting their work done, while still having the time to spend pursuing hobbies and spending quality time with their friends and family? The truth is that great and lazy CEOs know a secret when it comes to time management. Rather than spending a little time on a lot of things, the best CEOs spend most of their time eliminating the single biggest constraint to the growth of their business.

In his comprehensive Starting a Business QuickStart Guide, Ken Colwell concisely presents the core fundamentals that all new entrepreneurs need to know to get started, find success, and live the life of their dreams.

It may not be your desire to be confined to a nine-to-five job. The idea of engaging in a business that will rake in a seven-figure income by the end of the year will help you gain your independence. This is the road map to your financial freedom. It is a perfect guide for helping you explore yourself business-wise and achieve very big goals in a short space of time.

Michael E. Gerber, the world's leading small business guru and best-selling author of the phenomenally successful The E-Myth Revisited, presents the next big step in entrepreneurial management and leadership with E-Myth Mastery. This audiobook presents a practical, real-world program that can be implemented in real-time in your business.

Here, drawing on revealing, honest stories from his five decades in business - the company's many successes as well as its stumbles - Koch walks the listener step by step through the five dimensions of Market-Based Management to show stockholders, entrepreneurs, leaders, students - and innovators, supervisors and employees of all kinds, in any field - how to apply the principles to generate Good Profit in their organizations, companies, and lives.

After founding or co-founding over 15 start-ups and investing in another 50 early stage ventures as an angel investor, author Howard Love came to understand that a start-up unfolds in a predictable pattern. The more aware entrepreneurs are of this pattern, the better able they will be to capitalize on it.

To win in business requires a winning business plan. To write a winning business plan requires listening to Garrett Sutton's dynamic audiobook on the topic. Writing Winning Business Plans provides the insights and the direction on how to do it well and do it right. Crisply told and featuring real life illustrative stories, Writing Winning Business Plans discusses all the key elements for a successful plan. Topics include focusing your business vision, understanding your financials,and more.

Expert franchise consultant Mark Siebert delivers the ultimate how-to guide to employing the greatest growth strategy ever-franchising. Siebert tells you what to expect, how to move forward, and avoid costly mistakes as he imparts decades of experience, insights, and practical advice to help grow your business exponentially through franchising.

A Wall Street Journal best seller! There is a major difference between being a salesperson in business and being in business as a salesperson. Being successful in sales has a lot to do with what's on the inside of a person, and the person's ability to establish and foster loyal relationships.

From the ABC hit show Shark Tank, this book - filled with practical advice and introductions from the Sharks themselves - will be the ultimate resource for anyone thinking about starting a business or growing the one they have. Full of tips for navigating the confusing world of entrepreneurship, the book will intersperse words of wisdom with inspirational stories from the show.

A Wall Street Journal best seller! There is a major difference between being a salesperson in business and being in business as a salesperson. Being successful in sales has a lot to do with what's on the inside of a person, and the person's ability to establish and foster loyal relationships.

Selling is tougher than ever before. Potential customers are under extreme pressure to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources, and they're wary of anyone who tries to get them to buy or change anything. Under such extreme conditions, yesterday's sales strategies no longer work. Sales strategist Jill Konrath tells you how to overcome obstacles, get more appointments, speed up decisions, and win sales with today's short-fused, frazzled customers.

Anthony Iannarino never set out to become a salesman. He fell into his profession by accident, and now has turned his focus to a question that's been debated for at least a century: Why are a small number of salespeople in any field hugely successful, while the rest are stuck with mediocre results at best? Since then, and for over 25 years, he has read hundreds of books, tested countless strategies, and interviewed dozens of the best salespeople to figure out what sets the extraordinary ones apart from the rest.

Business owners want growth but fear it will take over their lives. Surprisingly, the only way to truly grow your company is to reduce its reliance on you - to scale. Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel offer a blueprint to rapidly grow your business while also gaining more freedom. Based on their own experiences starting, scaling, and effectively exiting from multiple successful companies, they provide seven clear principles that will help you determine the best strategy for growth in your company.

Anthony Iannarino has a different approach to closing geared to the new technological and social realities of our time. In The Lost Art of Closing, he proves that the final commitment can actually be one of the easiest parts of the sales process - if you've set it up properly with other commitments that have to happen long before the close. The key is to lead customers through a series of necessary steps designed to prevent a purchase stall.

Big new ideas rarely make great businesses. Laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time. You are going to need dramatically more start-up money than you think you do. Counterintuitive concepts like these have helped the world's best entrepreneurs succeed. Yet most of us only learn them the hard way. Len Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, shares inside secrets and proven tactics for launching a business.

Companies need high potential leaders (Hi-Pos) more than ever before to help them adapt to today's tumultuous, digitally-driven business environment. If you meet the Hi-Po criteria, you're in high demand - and this book explains how to fast-track yourself.

Based on an acclaimed professor's legendary strategy course at Harvard Business School, The Strategist offers a radically new perspective on a leader's most vital role. "Are you a strategist?" That's the first question Cynthia Montgomery asks the business owners and senior executives from all over the world who participate in her highly regarded executive education course. It's not a question they anticipate, but by the time the program ends, they cannot imagine leading their companies to success without being - and living the role of - a strategist.

When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem - how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated.