From Passion to Profit

Author: Claire Hughes
Publisher: David & Charles
ISBN: 144636920X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
How to turn a hobby into a home-based business—and successfully market what you make via the internet. With the help of this step-by-step business start-up guide, you can get your own online enterprise up and running in six weeks or less. Featuring a combination of highly practical advice and warm encouragement, the book provides worksheets, checklists, and step-by-step instructions. You will learn: · The process of deciding what to sell · How to develop a brand · How to choose the right platform · How to get your online shop live and ready to take orders from customers around the world The directory of online marketplaces and online shop solutions will help you decide which are the best options for you, while the case studies and real-life stories from successful online shop owners offer both insight and inspiration. This guide will help not only crafters and handmade sellers but anyone with a home-based business such as vintage finds, designer prints, customized T-shirts, wedding stationery, upcycled jewelry, patterns, ebooks, and more!

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, Revised

Author: Elaine Pofeldt
Publisher: Lorena Jones Books
ISBN: 0399578978
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
The self-employment revolution is here. Learn the latest pioneering tactics from real people who are bringing in $1 million a year on their own terms. Join the record number of people who have ended their dependence on traditional employment and embraced entrepreneurship as the ultimate way to control their futures. Determine when, where, and how much you work, and by what values. With up-to-date advice and more real-life success stories, this revised edition of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business shows the latest strategies you can apply from everyday people who--on their own--are bringing in $1 million a year to live exactly how they want.

Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0593137027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Online Marketing for Your Craft Business

Author: Hilary Pullen
Publisher: David & Charles
ISBN: 1446369021
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
For crafty entrepreneurs, a highly focused guide to using social media and blogging to measurably impact your sales. If you want to earn income from your creative crafts, social media and craft marketing expert Hilary Pullen will help you develop a 360 degree strategy for online networking, outlining the resources and time you need to commit. She will take you through how to identify who you want to connect with, where you will connect with them, and what type of things you want to share and say to them—all with relevant examples and case studies. You’ll see that with a little planning and management, you can learn to love blogging and social media—and experience it not as a chore but an additional way to make use of your natural creativity! “I know what it takes first hand to market your crafts online and Hilary’s book is one of the most detailed marketing books out there for creative business owners . . . If you are looking for a marketing guide to help your craft business thrive, then you need to pick up Hilary’s book.” —Timothy Adam, Handmadeology

The Mom Test

Author: Rob Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Robfitz Ltd
ISBN: 1492180742
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
The Mom Test is a quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak. They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little . As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right . Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.

UNSCRIPTED

Author: MJ DeMarco
Publisher: Viperion Publishing Corp
ISBN: 0984358188
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Book Description
What if Life Wasn't About 50 Years of Wage-Slavery, Paying Bills and then Dying? Tired of sleepwalking through a mediocre life bribed by mindless video-gaming, redemptive weekends, and a scant paycheck from a soul-suffocating job? Welcome to the SCRIPTED club— where membership is neither perceived or consented. The fact is, ever since you’ve been old enough to sit obediently in a classroom, you have been culturally engineered for servitude, unwittingly enslaved into a Machiavellian system where illusionary rules go unchallenged, sanctified traditions go unquestioned, and lifelong dreams go unfulfilled. As a result, your life is hijacked and marginalised into debt, despair, and dependence. Life's death sentence becomes the daily curse of the trivial and mundane. Fun fades. Dreams die. Don't let life's consolation prize become a car and a weekend. Recapture what is yours and make a revolutionary repossession of life-and-liberty through the pursuit of entrepreneurship. A paradigm shift isn't needed—the damn paradigm needs to be thrown-out altogether. The truth is, if you blindly follow conventional wisdom pushed by conventional people living conventional lives, can you expect to be anything but conventional? Rewrite life’s script: ditch the job, give Wall Street the bird, and escape the insanity of trading your life away for a paycheck and an elderly promise called retirement. UNSCRIPT today and start leading life— instead of life leading you.

Profit First

Author: Mike Michalowicz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 073521414X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. 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. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Modern DIY Upholstery

Author: Vicky Grubb
Publisher: David and Charles
ISBN: 1446372804
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
Ten simple projects using quick and easy modern methods. QR codes will take you to time-lapse videos of the construction of each piece of furniture! Modern DIY Upholstery shows the hobby sewer or complete newcomer how to make the leap into home upholstery taking you gently by the hand, demonstrating the simple techniques you need to bring your love of fabric to upholstered items for the home. Not a dry, highly technical professional manual, this bright and accessible book takes you step-by-step through the process of upholstery of desirable pieces of furniture—using items found at antique markets, street sales and thrift stores that are designed up and given a modern twist. You will then learn all about fabric choice and other materials, discover the essential techniques and then embark on the projects which include a simple stool, a vintage sewing box, a blanket box or ottoman, a fluted headboard, a Danish dining chair, a bedroom/nursing chair, a patchwork armchair and a mid-century design two-seater sofa, all guided by the author’s expert instruction. “This book has really set me on fire to go prowling for an ottoman or two, or maybe even a settee. The pictures are lovely, the instructions seem clear upon reading, and there are even time-lapse videos!” —A Dress a Day “Newby furniture upholsterers will be inspired to start their first projects and intermediate to seasoned ‘wrappers’ will definitely be challenged to stretch their fabrics and repertoire with more advanced instructions.” —Home Jelly

The Lean Startup

Author: Eric Ries
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307887898
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months

Author: Melinda Emerson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440584362
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
"Become Your Own Boss is a must-read if you're thinking of launching a business of your own." --Jean Chatzky, bestselling author of Money 911 and Financial Editor, NBC Today Create a successful business this year! Written by America's #1 Small Business Expert, this essential handbook shows you how to launch your own business in just twelve months. Using her years of experience in business development, Melinda Emerson guides you through the process with step-by-step instructions for developing an effective marketing plan, setting a budget, and maintaining your business once it's up and running. She also offers brand-new strategies for obtaining financing through means like crowdsourcing as well as social media techniques that help build your business--all of which has been updated for today's market. With Emerson's expert business advice, you will finally follow your dreams and become your own boss!