The Rugged Entrepreneur

Have you ever dreamed about owning your own business? Maybe becoming a market disruptor? Would you know where to start? Do you have a coach, a mentor, or a teacher who can show you how? Well, now you do. If we are lucky, we have been taught to dream since the time we were very young. If we are luckier still, we have also been taught to establish a sturdy foundation for those dreams to stand upon. When building the business you’ve always dreamed of, you must first establish a rock-solid foundation, something I’ve learned from many years of experience as a Rugged Entrepreneur. What is a “Rugged Entrepreneur”? It’s what I call a special breed of entrepreneur. Ruggeds make the leap toward success in a way that separates them from the millions who fall short because they invest the time and effort to develop and hone the specific set of powerful skills you’ll discover in these pages. I’ve identified four elements to becoming a Rugged Entrepreneur. These elements can be developed by anyone and are helpful to every type of entrepreneur. But all four of them are necessary to do the job well. The Four Foundational Elements of being a Rugged Entrepreneur are: A fervent work ethic A humble and healthy pride (what I call “Rugged Pride”) Fortitudo mentis (aka, mental toughness) Faith The Rugged Entrepreneur provides a roadmap to your journey of lasting self-discovery. It’s about identifying and acquiring the skills to achieve sustained success and to build on top of that success. It’s about passionately pursuing a productive business life for yourself and your family using the economic engines accessible to us all. But be warned: do not read this book if you do not want to be challenged.

A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneur’s Spirit – find your passion and live the dream features entrepreneurs’ true short stories written to inspire, energize and teach the reader. The stories include adversities, challenges, triumphs, and successes experienced by the entrepreneur to help readers discover passion and basic principles they can use to live the entrepreneurial dream. Touching both the head and the heart, the stories feature entrepreneurs from ages 21 to 94 representing a diverse range of business types, sizes, and income levels. Stories are presented in a “can do” optimistic format, opened with relevant inspirational quotes, and closed with key success factors, recommended books, entrepreneurs’ websites, and editor’s notes. Featured entrepreneurs include Scott Klososky from Oklahoma, who sold his last company for $115M. Scott believes that building businesses is a noble act and that entrepreneurship has made the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is. Evelyn Echols, an entrepreneur from Chicago recently celebrated her 94th birthday and is still involved in entrepreneurial ventures. Ms. Echols believes that this era is the perfect time for young people to consider entrepreneurship. Evelyn owned and operated Echols International Travel School for 35 years and just published her second book with Walter Cronkite writing the foreword. Particularly relevant in today’s economy, Katherine Sansone of SANSONE+ PR and Marketing firm in Oakland, California started a business because she was tired of being laid off and wanted to control her own destiny. She now represents notable clients worldwide and discusses changes she had to make in her business with personnel including using contract management rather than having employees. Tamara Dujmovic and Robert Sterpin, two successful entrepreneurs from Izola, Slovenia, Europe (the former Yugoslavia), discuss their business strategies and illustrate the possibilities of entrepreneurship in a society where owning a business was not an option prior to 1991. In the current economic climate, entrepreneurs must work harder than ever before to differentiate their businesses from the competition. Key success factors such as passion, customer service, relationships, work ethic, integrity, determination and perseverance are reiterated throughout the book. A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneurs’ Spirit – find your passion and live the dream will include a series of books with the first book featuring 58 entrepreneurs from five countries and 18 states within the U.S. Future books will be published as editions of A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneur’s Spirit. The series will include Volumes I, II, and III, a Women Entrepreneurs’ Edition, an Internet Entrepreneurs’ Edition, a Global Entrepreneurs’ Edition, a Disabled Entrepreneurs’ Edition, an African American Entrepreneurs’ Edition, a Native American Entrepreneurs’ Edition, a Social Entrepreneurs’ Edition, an Australian Entrepreneurs’ Edition and others. Over 50 potential editions have been identified. CDs with selected stories in the entrepreneur's voice will follow. A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneur’s Spirit will bring inspiration, motivation, and knowledge to entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs worldwide. A portion of the proceeds from the book will be put in a fund to help the next generation of entrepreneurs with start-up funds. To inquire about being an Editor for A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneur’s Spirit send an e-mail and your vita to the founder Jeretta Horn Nord at [email protected]. For the format and guidelines for writing a story, click on "Submit Story." www.acupofcappuccino.com

Agricultural entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict regions face special challenges; not just everyday personal risks, but also the difficulties of building small businesses when real or threatened violence can disrupt business growth cycles and economic security. Alongside establishing secure institutions, building a secure economy is rightly seen as the best way for conflict-torn regions to establish a peaceful future. But current agricultural entrepreneurship training and development starts from an assumption of peace, meaning that it is not always fit for purpose. The result is sub-optimal program design and inefficient use of resources. A product of a collaboration of experts in the fields of agri-business, agricultural marketing, and international development, this book gives officials and agencies developing entrepreneurship programs the practical real-life examples they need.

Ontario Boys explores the preoccupation with boyhood in Ontario during the immediate postwar period, 1945–1960. It argues that a traditional version of boyhood was being rejuvenated in response to a population fraught with uncertainty, and suffering from insecurity, instability, and gender anxiety brought on by depression-era and wartime disruptions in marital, familial, and labour relations, as well as mass migration, rapid postwar economic changes, the emergence of the Cold War, and the looming threat of atomic annihilation. In this sociopolitical and cultural context, concerned adults began to cast the fate of the postwar world onto children, in particular boys. In the decade and a half immediately following World War II, the version of boyhood that became the ideal was one that stressed selflessness, togetherness, honesty, fearlessness, frank determination, and emotional toughness. It was thought that investing boys with this version of masculinity was essential if they were to grow into the kind of citizens capable of governing, protecting, and defending the nation, and, of course, maintaining and regulating the social order. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Ontario Boys demonstrates that, although girls were expected and encouraged to internalize a “special kind” of citizenship, as caregivers and educators of children and nurturers of men, the gendered content and language employed indicated that active public citizenship and democracy was intended for boys. An “appropriate” boyhood in the postwar period became, if nothing else, a metaphor for the survival of the nation.

From the editor team of the ground-breaking Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theory and Practice comes this new volume. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships is a collection of innovative research and management insights that build upon the foundations of the first book, but takes the study of brand relationships outside of traditional realms by applying new theoretical frameworks and considering new contexts. The result is an expanded and better-informed account of people’s relationships with brands and a demonstration of the important and timely implications of this evolving sub-discipline. A range of different brand relationship environments are explored in the collection, including: online digital spaces, consumer collectives, global brands, luxury brands, branding in terrorist organizations, and the brand relationships of men and transient consumers. This book attends to relationship endings as well as their beginnings, providing a full life-cycle perspective. While the first volume focused on positive relationship benefits, this collection explores dysfunctional dynamics, adversarial and politically-charged relationships, and those that are harmful to well-being. Evocative constructs are leveraged, including secrets, betrayals, anthropomorphism, lying, infidelity, retaliation, and bereavement. The curated collection provides both a deeper theoretical understanding of brand relationship phenomena and ideas for practical application from experiments and execution in commercial practice. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships will be the perfect read for marketing faculty and graduate students interested in branding dynamics, as well as managers responsible for stewarding brands.

The book's central focus explores several "myths" associated with American entrepreneurship: the idea that small business owners are "job creators"; that entrepreneurs are the "backbone" or "engine" of the economy; that entrepreneurship provides a path of economic mobility for immigrants, ethnic and racial minorities, and women; that the Horatio Algiers "rags to riches" story is possible for anyone willing to work hard. Instead, I provide a critical perspective that challenges these myths of American enterprise, arguing that successful entrepreneurship requires access to social and economic capital resources and support that are often distributed along the lines of race, class, and gender in the highly stratified American economy and society.

This book examines entrepreneurship from three interrelated perspectives. Firstly, it links entrepreneurship to innovation and to the generation, transformation and use of knowledge. Secondly, it inserts entrepreneurship in innovation systems of various types- national, sectoral and local. Thirdly, it views entrepreneurship not as a single event but as a process that evolves in time, from the pre-entry experience, to the entrepreneurial act, to the evolution of the entrepreneur and the new company. With chapters from a range of international contributors, the book answers questions such as; what are the main dimensions of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship? What are the factors affecting its emergence, evolution and performance? How important is knowledge intensive entrepreneurship for European growth and competitiveness? Is the situation of Central and Eastern Europe, engaged in a process of major economic and institutional transformation, similar or different from the one of Western Europe?

A vital resource for lecturers and those interested in entrepreneurship, this book defines the difference between teaching entrepreneurship to postgraduates and teaching it to undergraduates. Attention is given to both subtle and major differences, suc