Top Selling Books for Startups

Are you considering a startup? Are you looking to improve the business, sales, and operations of your startup? There are plenty of books for startups available on Amazon. Here are the top sellers.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businessesby Eric Ries

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Futureby Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs by Sam Altman and Gregory Koberger

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup by Bill Aulet

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

All of the above have at least four and a half stars. I really enjoy The Lean Startup and The $100 Startup. I haven't had a chance to read the others yet.

Read on!!!

Book Review: The Sustainable Edge

The book, The Sustainable Edge: 15 Minutes a Week to a Richer Entrepreneurial Life, by Ron Carson and Scott Ford, is a guide to help entrepreneurs with their work-life balance. With the spectacular growth of startups, many startup founders and entrepreneurs have their entire lives revolving around their businesses. The authors can help business owners improve in the four areas of business, teams, clients, and personal lives.

The book covers everything from knowing your core competencies to listening to your customers to setting your company's one clear annual goal to creating your brain trust to measuring your progress to time management to delivering value.

One nice feature of the book is that at the end of every chapter, there is a quick exercise to help you apply the principles of the book.

In addition, the appendix section has extensive charts, worksheets, and resources to provide further support for the reader.

The authors relate many of their personal experiences from their financial services businesses (both authors are CEOs of wealth management companies).  The authors obviously know what they are talking about as they are very successful in their fields. As a matter of fact, Barron's ranked Carson Wealth as one of the Top 100 Financial Advisors for 2015.

If you want to improve your business life while maintaining a balance with your personal life, you should check out  The Sustainable Edge.

Hey Startupers! Here are the Top 10 Books on Startups

Are you looking to start a startup? Or maybe you are already a startuper, trying to grow your startup, find venture capital, increase followers, or go public. Need advice on what to do? Try some of these books. They are the top selling books on Amazon in the category of New Business Enterprises (that's what Amazon calls Startups).

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Steven Kotler

How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It by Mark Cuban

Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble by Bernard B. Kamoroff (Note: This is a classic book that has been around for many years - recently updated)

How to Make $1,000 Per Day Clear Profit on Amazon with One Single $35 Product You Choose by Bradford Sullivan

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime. by MJ DeMarco

Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore

The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success (Touchstone Books) by Nicholas Lore

Hopefully a few of these books will be useful to you and your business. Read on!

How to Get on Shark Tank

Shark Tank is the reality TV show for entrepreneurs. It has been the most watched TV program for the 18 to 29 year old demographic for Friday nights, garnering over 6 million viewers for each episode. If you can get on the show, even if none of the sharks invest with you, the free advertising you get for your startup is priceless. The sharks include Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, and Kevin O'Leary.

So what do you do to get ready for and get on the show? There are actually just a few simple steps, but each step can take some work.

Are Your Ready?

1. First, determine if you are ready. If a venture capitalist came to visit you right now, would you be able to make your presentation immediately? Do you have your business plan and pitch deck ready? Have you memorized it?

Getting Ready

2. Next, watch a couple shows and write down every question the sharks ask. Then have a co-worker or friend ask you every one of those questions. Standup when you respond. You may think that this step is putting the cart before the horse but it's not. Often, these shows want you to act quickly with the producers wanting to meet you within a couple days. You need to be ready way ahead of time.

No Confidentiality

3. Understand the lack of confidentiality with your proposal, and the terms of service. If you are concerned about someone stealing your idea, then maybe you should reconsider being on Shark Tank. The (Shark Tank, ABC, Disney) Terms of Service can be found at:  Terms of Service

How to Apply

3. Apply. There are actually two ways to apply; the first is to send in your proposal by email. Send your name, age, contact information, a recent photo, and a description of your business that will not remain confidential. You can email your proposal to: SharkTankCasting [ at ] yahoo {dot} com
More information about applying can be found here.

Open Calls

4. The other way to apply is through an Open Call. An Open Call is when an event is held in a certain city and you just show up to give your proposal without an appointment. To see a list of Shark Tank Open Calls, you can go to the following link:  Open Calls

Responding

5. If they contact you, respond immediately. If they want to meet you, drop everything and cancel everything to meet with the producers when they want to see you. 

Practice

6. If they decide they want you on the show, then practice, practice, practice and make sure you have all responses that you can answer with ease. (See step 2.)

At this point it's now in your hands. Best of luck!

Build-A-Business Competition Starts October 1, 2013 with $50,000 Cash Prizes

The Build-A-Business Competition was started four years ago by 4 Hour Workweek's Timothy Ferriss and Shopify's Tobias Lutke, for would-be entrepreneurs interested in starting their own business.

If you are thinking of starting a business selling products, tangible or intangible, this Competition is for you. First prize if $50,000. In addition to the prize, many of the entrepreneurial winners ended up generating sales in the millions.

Here is a list of the mentors:

Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post)

Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks, Shark Tank)

Daymond John (FUBU, Shark Tank)

Chase Jarvis (Photographer, Director)

Tina Eisenberg (Swissmiss, CreativeMornings)

Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library, Vaynermedia)

Selita Ebanks (Victoria’s Secret Angel, Cause Marketer)

Lil’ Jon (DJ & Producer)

Amber Mac (TV Host, Author)

Tim Ferriss (Angel Investor, Bearclaw Eater, Author: The 4-Hour Workweek)

For more info, go here.

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