The Street Smart Entrepreneur

Small firms in Chicago employ more than 1.6 million individuals—nearly 50 percent of the private work force, according to a new study released this fall by the Small Business Administration. The survey, which defines small firms as those employing less than 500 people, also shows that these businesses generate 47 percent of the area's total receipts of $278 billion dollars. However, SBA statistics also reveal that, on average, of the small businesses starting today, 53 percent will not be in business four years from now. Of these closings, it's estimated that 15 percent will close due to business failures. Chicago businessman Jay Goltz understands what it takes for a small business to succeed. During the past twenty years he has owned and operated Artists' Frame Service in Chicago. Goltz started the business in 1978, and today it's the largest, custom retail picture framing facility in the world. Now, Goltz shares some his secrets of success.

"One is tempted to say 'the only book you'll need on starting a business.' Brilliant! Genius! Choose your superlative-it'll fit."-Tom Peters People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, there's a mentality that helps street-smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise.

The poor health of today's roads--a subject close to the hearts of motorists, taxpayers, and government treasurers around the world--has resulted from faulty incentives that misdirect government decision-makers, according to the contributors to Street Smart. During the 1990s, bad government decision-making resulted in the U.S. Interstate Highway System growing by only one seventh the rate of traffic growth. The poor maintenance of existing roads is another concern. In cities around the world, highly political and wasteful government decision-making has led to excessive traffic congestion that has created long commutes, reduced safety, and caused loss of leisure time. Street Smart examines the privatization of roads in theory and in practice. The authors see at least four possible roles for private companies, beyond the well-known one of working under contract to design, build, or maintain governmentally provided roads. These include testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. Two chapters describe the history of private roads in the United Kingdom and the United States. Contemporary examples are provided of road pricing, privatizing, and contracting out are evident in environs as diverse as Singapore, Southern California, and Scandinavia, and cities as different as Bergen, Norway, and London, England. Finally, several chapters examine strategies for implementing privatization. The principles governing providing scarce resources in free societies are well known. We apply them to such necessities as energy, food, and water so why not to "road space"? The main obstacle to private, or semi-private, ownership of roads is likely to remain the reluctance of the political class to give up a lucrative source of power and influence. Those who want decisions about road services to be controlled by the interplay of consumers and suppliers in free markets, rather than by politicians, will have to explain the need for change. Street Smart makes a powerful case for the need for change and sheds light on the complex issues involved. Gabriel Roth is a transport and privatization consultant and a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Street Smart Disciplines by John A. Kuhn and Mark K. MullinsThese are the Disciplines that can change everything!Street Smart Disciplines gives you access to decades of successful real world, street smart business experience and best practices mined from successful people and businesses encapsulated into 7 easy to understand and executable action plans for Breakout Success.The authors identified the 7 essential and vital disciplines that people must incorporate into their playbook to reach the pinnacle of business success. Kuhn and Mullins speak from experience. One of their first businesses was started for less than $1,000; built it into a multimillion-dollar success and sold debt-free to a Fortune 500 company using these very same disciplines. They continue to use these disciplines to achieve ongoing success and personal fulfillment.The eye-opening insights and practical wisdom will inspire and guide go-getters who want to climb the corporate ladder, aspiring entrepreneurs looking to launch new businesses and established business owners who want to take their organizations to the next level. These indispensable disciplines are drawn from real people, real experiences, real successes, real problems, and real solutions. They are tried and true, time tested, and proven on the street by the authors, successful companies, and successful people—from Wall Street to Main Street—and include a compilation of advice, tips, tactics, techniques, and strategies that work.This is the first book that explains the how and why of Disciplines. Street Smart Disciplines captures the essence of good business practices and distills them into simple, straight- talking, and no-nonsense language. Kuhn and Mullins demystify the process of achieving Breakout Success. You can immediately start applying this vast storehouse of knowledge that combines the winning perspectives of successful entrepreneurial, corporate and academic experts.Learn how to: • Develop a Dynamic Plan for Break-Out Success • Maximize Yourself and Your Ideas• Duplicate Winning Strategies of Successful People • Manage Change and Complexity • Master the Mental Game of Doing Business • Establish Bulletproof Financial Systems and Controls • Create Powerful and Compelling Presentations • Seek out Role Models, Mentors and Smart People • Optimize your Resources …and much more. Integrate the disciplines one by one into your life and business and achieve more success and personal fulfillment in your life than you ever thought possible! “Straight talk! The only book that shows what it should really take takes to succeed in business. One of most honest books I've read.” Michael Kenny, Founder, Agoda.com (subsidiary of Priceline.com)

Experienced franchisees and franchisors tell entrepreneurs what they need to know before they buy a franchise. Second edition includes a sample copy of the entire UFOC plus 40% new and updated examples. This straight-shooting franchise guide goes beyond the “how to” to teach potential franchisees what to expect when starting a franchise. Real life stories from the trenches illustrate how to cope with the difficulties a franchise presents. The author reveals the personality types most likely to succeed at franchising, and identifies entrepreneurial traits that may increase risk of failure. Plus, it takes an in-depth look at the research and investigation of a franchise, something glossed over in most franchise books.

Examines the traits that define most people who achieve success, heart, smarts, guts, and luck, and helps readers to determine which traits they possess.

GROWING UP IN POVERTY, every day is a battle with fear, stress, and anxiety. Mistakes, misreads, misplays, miscalculations: all can end in missed opportunities that may never come again. The struggles of the poor demand courage, stamina, constant re-ordering of priorities, and the need for winning strategies. Salespeople from entry-level cold callers to wily veterans suffer much the same anxieties but lack the street-smart skills that a deeply deprived childhood demands: adapt or die,while still having fun! Author Anthony Belli is a millionaire high-performance salesman and sales force manager who grew up dirt poor in East Harlem, New York. Often hungry and without a cent in his pocket, as a child, Belli became expert in the highly creative art of person-to-person negotiation using a variety of risk- managed, cash-producing techniques to underwrite his next slice of pizza, tactics he describes as "eating without stealing." The Street-Smart Salesman imparts Belli's hard-earned wisdom and advice to the lasting benefit of a salesperson's bottom line and ability to sleep at night. Populated with real-life characters from Belli's old neighborhood deadbeat landlord, hooker with a heart, mobbed-up candy store owner, countless junkies, winos, and wiseguys this unflinching memoir teaches how the survival skills of the honest poor can be used to maximize success in sales. Belli's wholly unconventional, ghetto-tested strategies include: Minimize cold-calling: Using customers' networks to supply your pipeline Recognition that sales are driven by emotions not logic, and not price Playing dumb: When to talk and when to shut up Why hope is your enemy and reality your friend Ways to play a last-minute balky customer Prioritizing for profit And more! Belli's hard-earned insights defy conventional sales training wisdom by valuing humility, creativity, attention, and improvisation over the vaunted one-two punch of ceaseless script recitation accompanied by free samples. Take his advice to heart, and watch your anxiety recede as your fortunes grow.