Extraordinary Entrepreneurship

The 21st Century brings all new rules. Entrepreneurs are challenging conventional wisdom and thinking outside the box. One of the first challenges involves challenging the assumption that a business has to be big to be successful. While most of the 20th century heralded big businesses, it is clear that businesses no longer have to be big to do big business. Now it is possible for a handful of people to operate a global business from virtually any place on the planet. Today, the keyboard has overtaken the boardroom. Financial markets, alliances, and joint ventures have eliminated the need for entrepreneurs to put up substantial capital investments. Today's businesses are driven by ideas, innovation, and execution. This book will show entrepreneurs and business leaders will provide CEOs and entrepreneurs with the tools that they will need to become leaders in their market.

Introducing the global mind-set changing the way we do business. In this fascinating book, global entrepreneurship expert Daniel Isenberg presents a completely novel way to approach business building—with the insights and lessons learned from a worldwide cast of entrepreneurial characters. Not bound by a western, Silicon Valley stereotype, this group of courageous and energetic doers has created a global and diverse mix of companies destined to become tomorrow’s leading organizations. Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid is about how enterprising individuals from around the world see hidden value in situations where others do not, use that perception to develop products and services that people initially don’t think they want, and ultimately go on to realize extraordinary value for themselves, their customers, and society as a whole. What these business builders have in common is a contrarian mind-set that allows them to create opportunities and succeed where others see nothing. Amazingly, this process repeats itself in one form or another countless times a day all over the world. From Albuquerque to Islamabad, you will travel with Isenberg to discover unusual yet practical insights that you can use in your own business. Meet the founders of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, PACIV in Puerto Rico, Sea to Table in New York, Actavis in Iceland, Studio Moderna in Slovenia, Hartwell Metals in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Given Imaging in Israel, WildChina in China, and many others. You’ll be moved by the stories of these plucky start-ups—many of them fueled by adversity and, more often than not, by necessity. Great stories, stunning successes, crushing failures—they’re all here. What can we, in the East and West, learn from them? What can you learn—and what will these entrepreneurial stories, so compellingly told, inspire you to do? Let this book open doors for you where you once saw only walls. If you’ve ever felt the urge to turn a glimmer of an idea into something extraordinary, these stories are for you.

"An inspirational and practical guide for anyone who wants to incorporate the dynamic skills of entrepreneurs into their own lives and work. A new generation of "life entrepreneurs" is emerging: people who apply their vision, talents, creativity, and energy not only to their work but to their entire lives, changing the world for themselves and those around them. In this book, successful entrepreneurs Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek draw on numerous interviews with fifty-five leading entrepreneurs worldwide as well as the wisdom of multiple thought leaders to provide vivid examples, moving vignettes, concrete frameworks, and practical strategies for revving up our work and play through entrepreneurial leadership. This book starts by providing strategies for integrating life, work, and purpose and ends by capturing the implications of the current entrepreneurial boom for our workplaces, learning institutions, communities, and families. Christopher Gergen (Washington, D.C.) is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, co-founder and chairman of SMARTHINKING, Adjunct Professor and Director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University, and a life-long entrepreneur, Gregg Vanourek (Thornton, CO) is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, former CEO of Vanourek Consulting Solutions, and former Senior Vice President of School Development for K12 Inc."

In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, Jessica Herrin, serial entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the Stella & Dot Family Brands, shows how the classic traits of successful entrepreneurs are ones each one of us can develop--and use not only to create a company, but also to create an extraordinary life. What if you could, with a little effort, live an extraordinary life? A life in which you felt deep passion for everything you did, and always had time for what matters most? A life in which you had the power, the daring, and the will to make your boldest dreams come true, all while you happily left feelings of inadequacy or guilt behind? It is possible to take your life from ordinary to extraordinary. The secret? Cultivating the entrepreneurial spirit inside you--the spirit that allows you to embrace your individuality, to look not just at what is but at what could be, to believe in yourself beyond reason and to step up to creating your own definition of happiness and success--a version of success in which work and family life happily co-exist--instead of chasing a cookie-cutter version. Whether we work a corporate job, run a family, or run our own business, Herrin offers realistic, attainable steps each one of us can take to achieve extraordinary success on our own terms. Through candid and inspiring lessons from her life as a successful CEO and working mother of two, as well as stories of many amazing individuals she’s met along the way, Herrin inspires and empowers us to dial up the sound of our own voices and make our authentic dreams a reality. This book isn’t about having it all; it’s about having what matters most to you. It is about how to find your extraordinary--your extraordinary career, your extraordinary happiness, your extraordinary life.

SHORTLISTED: Business Book Awards 2022 - Start Up/Scale Up Times have changed: you can launch a successful enterprise with your phone, sell through social media and tap into a whole world of opportunities. Unprepared to Entrepreneur is an honest guide to launching your own business, sharing real stories from real people who have tested, failed and won at business. It profiles the underdogs, those who brainstormed ideas whilst travelling on the bus, started a business from their phone and managed to create three income streams whilst maintaining a full-time job in the city to show you that you can do it too. From a working Google doc as your business plan, to ideation strategies that live and die off Instagram engagement; they won't teach you this at business school. Sonya Barlow takes a look at the resilience needed to make it in business, the incredible tax on mental health and the non-negotiable steps to creating a viable business. This is the ultimate guide to side hustling, freelancing and entrepreneurial freedom of the future.

This book is a story of a great adventure arising from a business where adventures could be least expected. Although it’s hero, the late Tomas Bata, kept his eyes focused sharply on the ground (in the shoe business-he has to) his mind was soaring high in dreams of a mission to make all mankind well shod. How he did it and what his motives and accomplishments were is presented in this biography of the man and his time with considerable detail and first hand knowledge. We see a man, who having run away from home at the age of fourteen to start his own business, was continuously impatient with both time and environment visualizing the opportunities which, although at hand, were never noticed by his competitors during his life. He was man who could visualize such opportunities even in the most difficult situations as indicated from his attitude toward the Great Depression of 1929: “Half of mankind is barefoot and only a fraction of the world’s population is well shod,” he said at the time of world-wide unemployment. “Look how little we’ve done so far and how much work is waiting for all shoemakers every-where in the world.” And when the difficulties continued, he growled into their faces in 1930: “I would rather work for nothing than do nothing. Only when you work, can you keep hoping to find a way.” Shoemaker, salesman and organizer of many industries, Tomas Bata was a man among men, changing the simple folk in and around his birthplace into modern industrial workers and managers of business and salesmen resembling a now almost extinct type of man who, in their pursuance of their business, have discovered in former centuries new territories and lifted up the standard of life and living everywhere. Necessity made him a politician to obtain the right to rebuild a whole city, a teacher pioneering new methods of education, a builder who combined building of factories and houses with a businessman type of social service. However, he was first and always an entrepreneur extraordinary. As such, he attacked every problem with gusto of a prize fighter, and the zeal of a missionary, transferring an ideal into ideas--and these again into plans and actions. Ideal? What ideal and ideas? Some of them can be discerned from the pages of this book, others in the fierce loyalty and performance o f the men whom he brought up to spread his message of entrepreneurship to the four corners of the world. In some ways, and perhaps indirectly, a reader could take this book as a challenge. If its hero succeeded in turning a simple business into a real adventure of service and a powerful way of life, why not you? Today’s world needs men of Tomas Bata’s caliber as much as his world needed them several decades ago, and perhaps nowadays even more. It is this type of man who provides the answers to the crucial questions of our time, i.e., whether our society, enjoying the good things of life, will survive as a home of free men. This, in the author’s concept, is a final message arising from the biography of this extraordinary man, Tomas Bata: “He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew.”

When you're reasonable, you use the same strategies everyone else uses. You do things like set your goals a bit higher than last year's, say yes to things because everyone else likes them, and pad your deadlines so you can reach them on time. Being reasonable about your business will only bury you deeper in the pack. If you want to get out in front, you have to break away from yesterday's conventional thinking. Paul Lemberg shows you how unreasonable strategies can bring you unprecedented success. Through real-life case studies of successful and unreasonable businesspeople, Lemberg shows you how to BE Uncompromising by sticking to your goals no matter what. BE Demanding by expecting more, not less, from everybody. BE Critical by changing old systems that just don' t work. BE Outrageous by creating your own Business Brain Trust. BE Prepared for real success on your terms. Paul Lemberg, one of the world's leading business growth consultants, teaches top level executives and entrepreneurs how to get more out of themselves, their companies, and their clients by using strategies that sidestep the prevailing business thinking. Being unreasonable is about assessing the situation and leaping into the unknown-not foolishly, but courageously. Only by going against the norm, and perhaps ruffling feathers, can you be competitive, innovative, and successful.

Behind every successful business is a history of mistakes, failures, and embarrassing moments-some big and some small. Regardless of their size, these failures are essential to learning and to growing professionally and personally. Todd Palmer's failure was big-and the best thing that could have happened to him. When his business nearly went bankrupt in 2006, he began learning the critical steps that would not only rescue his company but also guide him toward becoming a powerful coach for entrepreneurs looking to go from ordinary to extraordinary. Palmer wrote From Suck to Success with the goal of making sure every business owner and corporate leader had simple tools to improve their business and their life. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out or have been in business for decades, the strategies he shares in From Suck to Success can work for you. Whether you are a mid-level leader in a large organization or a C-suite executive, the strategies can help you avoid disaster and achieve higher levels of success. They're designed to strengthen the leader from within, empowered by conviction, confidence, and impact in business and in life. Broken into two simple parts, From Suck to Success is the framework for starting up, building up, or pivoting through change in the pursuit of extraordinary entrepreneurship. In the first part, Palmer does the internal work, helping readers identify and improve their mind-set, leadership, and goal setting, or as he teaches it, intention setting. He shares how discovering your "why," or ikigai, is so pivotal to finding success in both business and personal lives. Palmer then walks readers through the Authentic, Transparent, and Vulnerable (ATV) leadership process and introduces the Extraordinary E-4 Process. The unique E-4 Process allows readers to identify and adjust whenever their mind-set, leadership, or intention setting is veering in the wrong direction. In the second part of From Suck to Success, Palmer focuses on sharing how to improve business operations. This includes building a strong culture and empowering oneself through team members so you can delegate with confidence without sacrificing quality. Success is all about investing in employees, fostering healthy organizations, and creating extraordinary workplaces that allow businesses to thrive. As Palmer writes: "When you live an extraordinary life, you define your own success." "When you live an extraordinary life, you have an iterative attitude to cope with failure." "When you live an extraordinary life, you realize extreme self-actualization." "And you are going to gain each of these by allowing me to help you build a self-fulfilling model of what you really want." A 25-year entrepreneur, business coach, keynote speaker, and author, Palmer has made it his "why" to improve lives by teaching, guiding, and empowering entrepreneurs, CEOs, and leaders on how to go from suck to success and become extraordinary.