Irrational Persistence

A modern-day Detroit success story that fuels the entrepreneurial fire Irrational Persistence tells the story of Garden Fresh Gourmet, and how two entrepreneurs turned a million-dollar debt to a 100-million-dollar annual revenue. Woody Allen famously said that 80 percent of success is just showing up; but any entrepreneur can tell you that it's the other 20 percent that's key. The founders of Garden Fresh took that old saying to heart, building so many strategic advantages into their products and business that their 'sales' team didn't have to do any selling—they simply had to show up. In this book, you'll find out what kind of legwork goes into building a mega-success product, and the strategies, methods, and just plain stubbornness that helped two guys from Detroit build a market leader. Garden Fresh Gourmet is now the number-one fresh salsa in the US, shipping over a million units every week to Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, and other national chains—and it all began with two middle-aged guys with negative funds and plenty of ideas. This book shares their journey, insight, and passion to help you build a better business and take it to the top. Learn how two entrepreneurs went from major debt to major revenue Discover the key characteristics of a product that sells itself Consider why selling out might not be the ultimate goal Track a journey of 'irrational persistence' from rags to riches Garden Fresh Gourmet is an inspiration beyond the journey—the way you run things at the top matters, too. Irrational Persistence shows you how to make the tough decisions, live with the sacrifices, and prioritize your values as you build your brand and just keep on going.

A modern-day Detroit success story that fuels the entrepreneurial fire Irrational Persistence tells the story of Garden Fresh Gourmet, and how two entrepreneurs turned a million-dollar debt to a 100-million-dollar annual revenue. Woody Allen famously said that 80 percent of success is just showing up; but any entrepreneur can tell you that it's the other 20 percent that's key. The founders of Garden Fresh took that old saying to heart, building so many strategic advantages into their products and business that their 'sales' team didn't have to do any selling—they simply had to show up. In this book, you'll find out what kind of legwork goes into building a mega-success product, and the strategies, methods, and just plain stubbornness that helped two guys from Detroit build a market leader. Garden Fresh Gourmet is now the number-one fresh salsa in the US, shipping over a million units every week to Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, and other national chains—and it all began with two middle-aged guys with negative funds and plenty of ideas. This book shares their journey, insight, and passion to help you build a better business and take it to the top. Learn how two entrepreneurs went from major debt to major revenue Discover the key characteristics of a product that sells itself Consider why selling out might not be the ultimate goal Track a journey of 'irrational persistence' from rags to riches Garden Fresh Gourmet is an inspiration beyond the journey—the way you run things at the top matters, too. Irrational Persistence shows you how to make the tough decisions, live with the sacrifices, and prioritize your values as you build your brand and just keep on going.

The fifth edition of the classic text Thinking and Deciding updates the broad overview of the field of judgments and decisions offered in previous editions. It covers the normative standards used to evaluate conclusions, such as logic, probability, and various forms of utility theory. It explains descriptive accounts of departures from these standards, largely in terms of principles of cognitive psychology, emphasizing the distinction between search processes and inferences. Chapters cover decisions under risk, decision analysis, moral decisions and social dilemmas, and decisions about the future. Although the book assumes no particular prerequisites beyond introductory high-school algebra, it is most suited to advanced undergraduates, early graduate students, and active researchers in related fields, such as business, politics, law, medicine, economics, and philosophy.

This book examinates what goes wrong in IT projects and what can be done to prevent this in the future.

Atheists, getting bolder, are putting messages on London buses that challenge religion head on. One atheist book in particular suggested that religious instruction should be removed from the school curriculum, and replaced with evolutionary science. In reply, this book looks at atheism, morality, science and Godless societies. It demonstrates that science, at its roots, depends on faith as much as religion. Undeniably there are paranormal events that defy a scientific explanation. Scholars may argue their sophistries but religious experience has a certainty about it that has even martyred some believers. The world that we sense, is not so rigid as we think. The interpretation of our senses is all in the mind, and even the Past, Present and Future are not as we normally perceive them. This book destroys our preconceptions on these subjects and shakes the unwarranted certainty of the atheistic position.

When a venture seems to be faltering, do you persist and hope that things will get better or do you cut your losses? This may be one of the most important decisions business or project owners may ever have to make. Persistence involves the risk of throwing good money (or resources) after bad, but owners may feel they have too much invested to quit now. Escalation in Decision-Making reveals why social scientists believe that owners may not respond rationally to such predicaments. Instead of exiting when the odds are clearly stacked against them, they re-invest and end up compounding their losses – a phenomenon known as escalation of commitment. The authors, Helga Drummond and Julia Hodgson, also introduce the concept of entrapment, a variation whereby decision-makers passively drift towards insolvency as the cost of changing direction becomes too high. So: · what drives escalation? · why do some owners quit whilst others persist until the bailiffs arrive? · what can we learn from owners' mistakes? · what makes newcomers believe they can succeed where others are conspicuously failing? These questions of behavioural economics are answered using a narrative that analyses decisions made by market traders facing economic extinction. Many highly successful entrepreneurs started their careers in markets - it was once an almost guaranteed route to prosperity - now market traders are struggling to survive. Although the market traders featured are small entrepreneurs, the ubiquitous phenomenon of escalation at the heart of these stories is widely relevant to practitioners such as project managers in large organizations and to those responsible for managing risk in many situations. Rich in case studies involving real business decisions and dilemmas, Escalation in Decision-Making provides an accessible introduction to the application of theory against a background of growing interest in behavioural economics, now being researched and taught in universities and increasingly attracting the attention of business practitioners.

`The text is clear and easy to follow with vivid sessional excerpts that illustrate the theoretical dialogue' - International Review of Psychiatry `The publication proves to contain much instructive and practice-oriented material' - Nursing Standard Stress Counselling is a comprehensive study of the theory and practice of the Rational Emotive Behaviour approach applied to stress counselling and psychotherapy. Albert Ellis pioneered Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), which has since been adopted internationally. This approach enables the clients to embark on a course of effective counselling which has a clear beginning and end. This book discusses techniques and solutions to common problems and also provides guidance on conducting group work. Its comprehensive coverage includes additional material on techniques such as skills training, relaxation methods, hypnosis and biofeedback.