First Business

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition. Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.

Your successful career in real estate starts here! The first 365 days of working in real estate can be one of the most tumultuous times in your career - full of hard lessons, heart breaks, and hard work. Just because you have a license, doesn’t mean you have a business. But if you get the important stuff right, a great future is yours for the taking. This honest, eye-opening, and completely practical insider's guide shows you how to get where you want to be - even if you're starting from nothing.

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense fan base for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable - and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

Having lived nearly her entire life below the poverty line before going on to attain wealth and success as an entrepreneur and investor, Arlan Hamilton knows that money is power—but not for the reasons most people believe. Money is power, she says, because it provides us with options: to pursue our passions, take risks, and change our situation in life.

Harvard Business Review is the foremost destination for smart management thinking. Now, at its 100th anniversary, this commemorative volume brings together the most influential ideas since its inception. With thought leaders including Michael E. Porter, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Peter Drucker, and Clayton M. Christensen, this book puts HBR's greatest concepts at your fingertips. You'll learn how these groundbreaking ideas continue to be relevant in today's business context—and what to keep in mind as you prepare for the future.

As a top-performing sales professional, you know how to own your calendar, focus your energy, create opportunities, navigate the sales process, negotiate, and close deals. Yet, if you are like most new sales managers, there is still so much you don’t know and that can trip you up if you aren’t careful. Luckily, Mike Weinberg knows the pitfalls to avoid and mindset changes needed to successfully make the leap. This powerful new resource contains candid guidance on how to master your expanded responsibilities like a pro.

Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows.

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire.

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.

Communication should be clear and concise, and we should get to the point quickly. The problem is we don’t always know how to do this. What does it mean to be concise? How can a complex topic be summarized in just a few lines? This award-winning book is a step-by-step guide for clear, concise communication in everyday work conversations. Being concise is not about trying to condense all the information into 60 seconds. It is about having clear intent, talking about one topic at a time, and focusing on solutions instead of dwelling on problems.

If you want to start and grow a landscaping business or if you want to demolish self-limiting beliefs and transform yourself into a warrior of a self-employed lawn and be a landscape contractor, then this audiobook will change your life.

Many owners of lawn care and landscape businesses found their companies on the belief that they would make more money working for themselves than they would as employees. Dedicated to the maintenance and beautification of properties, they believe that their hard work and expertise in softscape, hardscape, irrigation, or snow plowing will guarantee their success. But technical knowledge alone won't generate profit or help a company grow.

How do you run a big meeting? Help your employees meet their goals? Hire someone? Master these skills and more with this indispensable guide to the first 30, 60, and 90 days in your new management role. Jump into the job with confidence as you navigate the dos and don'ts of first-time managers, learn to communicate effectively, delegate responsibilities clearly, and build the 5 qualities all great bosses have.

Network marketing is one of the fastest-growing career opportunities in the United States. Millions of people just like you have abandoned dead-end jobs for the chance to achieve the dream of growing their own businesses. What many of them find, however, is that the first year in network marketing is often the most challenging---and, for some, the most discouraging.

Packed with behind-the-peel stories, hard-earned lessons, and a few other surprises, Fans First teaches you how to stand out in your marketplace, drive explosive growth, and inspire fanatical loyalty.

They actually have vastly different styles and backgrounds. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They don’t hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They don’t believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They don’t try to help people overcome their weaknesses. And, yes, they even play favorites. In this longtime management bestseller, Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its massive in-depth study of great managers.

This updated 2025 2-in-1 audiobook bundle is your shortcut to real results—designed to cut years off your learning curve and help you start earning passive income in weeks, not decades.

You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from your subordinates, from those above you, and from your peers and customers. You're not alone. As Harvard Business School's Linda Hill and manager and executive Kent Lineback reveal in Being the Boss, becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey. It requires trial and error, endless effort, and slowly acquired personal insight. Many managers never complete the journey and instead just learn how to get by. At worst, they become terrible bosses.

Construction industry business coach, speaker, and author, Shawn Van Dyke, has taken the core concepts of Mike Michalowicz's Profit First and customized them to address the specific needs of the construction industry. Profit First for Contractors addresses the major struggles contractors face and provides clear and actionable guidance on how to overcome them. Shawn shows contractors how to go from simply getting by to becoming permanently profitable.

Learn to conquer every challenge like a pro with the clear, candid advice in The First-Time Manager. For nearly four decades, this trusted guide has brought newcomers up to speed on the nitty gritty realities of managing people. The updated seventh edition delivers new information that helps you manage across generations, use online performance appraisal tools, persuade with stories, oversee remote employees, build a team dynamic, match a boss’ style, and more.