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November 22, 2011

LeaveSmarter: Carol Roth

Filed under: Blog,Entrepreneurship,Events,Small Business — Jon @ 4:18 pm
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Business Strategist and Deal Maker Carol Roth visited Milwaukee last week for our LeaveSmarter series, sponsored by M&I Bank/BMO Financial Group, and Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek.

For those unfamiliar with Carol’s work, she comes from the investment banking industry, having raised over a billion dollars in venture capital, as well as completing multi-millions of dollars in mergers and acquisitions for her clients. Her philosophy is solid, but straight-truth, as she calls it, “Tough Love For Business.” These ideas are gathered and presented in her New York Times Bestselling book, The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business.

For this event, the audience consisted mostly of established business owners and executives, so Carol focused her entrepreneurial principles on new product development, growth, partnerships, and other areas of expanding business. One of the most well-attended LeaveSmarter events yet, the captive audience asked many interesting questions – which I would gladly have posted video if our camera were not in for repairs.

For now, to see the event, you’ll have to use your imagination along with Dylan’s photographs above, and be sure to pick up a copy of Carol’s book if you haven’t yet. Also, catch her sometime on the Fox Network. Maybe someday she’ll have her own show?

 

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July 21, 2011

Carol Roth + Phil Gerbyshak: Tips for Small Businesses

Filed under: Blog,Small Business — Jon @ 3:54 pm
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I spent some time in Chicago yesterday with author and business strategist Carol Roth, and marketing technology strategist Phil Gerbyshak. We talked about a wide range of perspectives, from small business, to authors, bloggers, and more, and one central theme started to develop: small organizations have the flexibility to change, and the proximity to their customers, to make big things happen.

Here’s a glimpse into one of those conversations:

Feeling inspired to start your own small business? Check out Carols hard but smart advice in her new book The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business. And pay a visit to Phil Gerbyshak to read his latest advice on the always developing world of marketing and technology.

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September 22, 2010

LeaveSmarter with Jonathan Byrnes

Filed under: Events,General Business,Interviews,Leadership,New Releases,Sales,Small Business — dylan @ 3:05 pm
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We were thrilled to have Jonathan L. S. Byrnes, author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, in Milwaukee yesterday to speak at our latest LeaveSmarter* event, held on the third floor of the breathtaking Grohmann Museum. Jonathan’s book won’t be released until next month, but Portfolio was kind enough to provide us with some copies in advance, and Jonathan was kind enough to sign them. An autographed book wasn’t the only thing the attendees left with, though.

Mr. Byrnes, a senior lecturer at MIT, dropped a lot of knowledge on the room, telling us that, “In almost every company, including leading ones, 30-40% of the business is unprofitable by any measure,” and that “20-30% is so profitable it provides all the reported earnings and subsidizes the losses.” He has advised more than 50 major companies and studied many more, and has found these numbers to hold true in almost every case. But he has also uncovered ways to turn the situation around, which he explains in great detail in his book and was able to cover with surprising depth (given the amount of time he had) yesterday.

Jon sat down with him after the event and asked him a few questions.

For the majority of you, unable to attend yesterday, don’t despair… we will have the video of the event itself available for you soon and Jonathan’s book, Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, comes out on October 14th. Until then, here are some pictures and video from LeaveSmarter* with Jonathan L. S. Byrnes.

*We began our LeaveSmarter series in 2006 to bring nationally recognized business thinkers and their books to our hometown. M&I Bank approached us soon after the first event to discuss partnering with us on the series and, along with local law firm Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, they have been the series sponsor ever since. If you’re interested in partnering with us to create a future event, let’s talk. You can contact me at dylan[at]800ceoread[dot]com.

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July 1, 2010

Inc.Live

Filed under: Big Ideas,Leadership,Small Business — dylan @ 12:09 pm
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Innovation is a word that gets thrown around a lot in business and business writing, but in can be hard to catch—to understand and implement—in your daily operations. It’s like a knuckle ball… hard to deliver (only a few people seem to really master it at any given time) and you never know where it’s going to go next. Bob Ueker famously said that “The way to catch a knuckle ball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.” The problem with innovation is that it never stops rolling—it’s not going to stop for you to pick it up. If you’re in business, you either have to create it or follow along as closely as possible.

And, if that sounds like you, our friends over at Inc. Magazine have an ongoing series of live chats that I hope you’re keeping up with. These chats have gleaned great insights from the likes of Jake Nickell, co-founder of Threadless, and Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger. If you enjoyed Rework (which if you read, you did), you’ll love the live-chat with its author, 37signals founder Jason Fried.

In the month of June alone, they had Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness, and Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make Magazine, co-founder of Boing Boing and author of Made by Hand.

With its live-chats, Inc. is doing something innovative itself, offering you a chance to pose your own questions to some of the brightest minds in business today. So stay tuned and join in…
they have three more live-chats scheduled in the near future.

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September 14, 2009

Crowdsourced Entrepreneurial Reads

Filed under: Lists,Small Business,Start-ups — Todd Sattersten @ 2:17 pm
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A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson from avc.com kicked up interest in books that entreprenuers should read. Fred, in particular, made the point that “there is way more insight to be gained from stories than from business books.” He suggested Kavalier and Clay, Atlas Shrugged, The Prince, and anything by Shakespeare.

At the end of his post, he asked for more suggestions. The post generated 191 comments and prompted the creation of a wiki.

I pulled all the books from the wiki over into this post and linked to the books. The [FW] tag denotes that it was endorsed by Mr. Wilson himself directly or in the comments of the original post.

  • Atlas Shrugged [FW]
  • The Prince [FW]
  • All of Shakespeare’s Histories & Tragedies [FW]
  • Founders at Work
  • Autobiography of Malcolm X
  • Catch-22 [FW]
  • The Gold Coast
  • State of Fear
  • Confessions of a Street Addict
  • Selling the Wheel
  • Plato’s Republic
  • The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
  • Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
  • Moby Dick [FW]
  • The Art of War [FW]
  • Exodus
  • Taking on the World
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • Garp [FW]
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull [FW]
  • Rossi: MotoGenius
  • The Puritan Gift
  • The Fountainhead [FW]
  • Pillars of the Earth
  • The White Tiger
  • The Monk and the Riddle
  • Outrageous Optimism: Wisdom for the Entrepreneurial Journey
  • The E-Myth Revisited
  • Setting The Table [FW]
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
  • Siddartha [FW]
  • Confederacy of Dunces
  • Dark Star Safari
  • Project X – Nissin Cup Noodle
  • The Red Horse
  • St. Augustine’s Confessions
  • Mastery
  • The Four Agreements (Miguel Ruiz)
  • Tao Te Ching (Lau Tzu)
  • The Sharper your knife, the less you cry (Kathleen Flinn)
  • What Would Google Do? (Jeff Jarvis)
  • Burn Rate (Michael Wolff)
  • Startup (Jerry Kaplan)
  • The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell)
  • The Alchemist (Coelho)
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
  • The Wealth of Nations (Smith)
  • Absalom, Absalom (Faulkner)
  • The 33 Strategies of War
  • The 48 Laws of Power
  • Hide a dagger behind a smile
  • Cold Calling For Chickens
  • Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity (Flores)
  • The Art Of Profitability
  • The Innovator’s Dilemma
  • Crossing The Chasm
  • Blue Ocean Strategy
  • What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20
  • The Compassionate Samurai
  • The Art of Learning
  • The Selfish Gene
  • Capital (Karl Marx)
  • Mein Kampf
  • The Singularity is Near
  • How to Win Friends & Influence People
  • Hope is not a Strategy
  • The Four steps to the Epiphany
  • The Principles of Product Development Flow – Second Generation Lean Product Development
  • One Hen
  • Blueprint To A Billion
  • Moneyball
  • The Places In Between
  • Mavericks at work
  • Blink
  • The Tipping Point
  • Outliers
  • Freakonomics
  • Behind Closed Doors (Secrets of great management)
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July 28, 2009

BusinessWeek's Summer Reading '09

Filed under: Careers,History and Biographies,Leadership,Lists,Marketing,Small Business,Strategy — Todd Sattersten @ 7:46 pm
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We know summer is already starting to wane, but we haven’t linked to Business Week’s recommending reading for the season. Having recommended quite of few of these, we think this is a great list.

  • Rubies in the Orchard by Lynda Resnick with Francis Wilkinson
  • Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki
  • Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn by Ram Charan
  • The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
  • How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
  • The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers by Keith McFarland
  • In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman

BW also recommends a variety of podcasts including The Small Business Podcast, Get-It-Done Guy, Manager Tools, Help! My Business Sucks!, and SBA Podcasting.

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June 23, 2009

Penguin Launches New Online Promotion Tools

Filed under: Innovation,Retail,Small Business — Todd Sattersten @ 10:15 am
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Last week, Penguin launched a set of micro-sites for their newly published books. Called From the Publisher’s Office, the initiative uses text excerpts, audio interviews and video clips to promote upcoming titles.

Our friends at Portfolio are specifically involved with one of the microsites called Penguin Business Thought Leaders. They will be interviewing authors from across the Penguin imprints and featuring a variety of books. Their first episode features retail consultant George Whalin (Retail Superstars), a reading from Small Giants, and TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky (Revolution in A Bottle).

You can find more in the Radio Room.

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June 5, 2009

Twitter Quotes From May

Filed under: Communication,General Management,Personal Development,Small Business — Todd Sattersten @ 9:49 am
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Here are some of the nuggets we have been retweeting over the past month:

@asimburney – Is it that hard to write business books without American sport metaphors?? what the hell is a yardline? come to think of it what’s a yard???

“One of the BEST business books ever is “The Little Engine That Could.” according to @successtool

@outdoor_girly – Theory: successful people read best selling business books, wildly successful read random books (philosophy), normal people just don’t read

@kbarnesrtp Just finished Death by Meeting by Lencioni. Highly recommend esp. if you like biz books in story format (e.g., The Goal).

@mktgdouchebag Start With No is the greatest book written about successful negotiations. I read it twice; most biz books bore me.

@benjonjeffery Business books you disagree with are just as good as the inspirational ones because they reveal what you think. (Amen.)

@alanmwebber First Rule of Holes: when in one, stop digging. Second Rule of Holes: know where you should be digging. #rulesofthumb

@meganauman why must business books always be published in hardcover first? i hate hardcover

@AppointmentPlus There are certain books you should read at least once a year. On the top of the list: E-Myth Revisited.

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June 4, 2009

How to deal with hard times from Jay Abraham

Filed under: Current Events,Lists,Small Business — Tags: Add new tag — Jack @ 3:24 pm
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Jay Abraham is a world class marketer and CEO of Abraham Group, and he has written a book. The Sticking Point Solution is perfectly positioned for our current economic times.

Lately, Todd and I have been asked time and again about books that could apply to our economic situations. Jay Abraham has a list of actions in his book he calls “The Bottom Line,” which suggests that we:

  • Take stock of the psychological impact of the downturn on your competitors.
  • Set up an offense and a defense. Offensively, look for weaknesses and hidden opportunity. Defensively, stop doing anything that isn’t working.
  • Begin to safely and conservatively test new approaches, such as joint venturing.
  • Measure your marginal net worth numbers. Once you determine how much a long-term customer is worth, you’ll know how much you can invest in attracting first-time buyers and converting them to repeat buyers.
  • Now is the time to make deals with the media to get the word out about your business. They’re primed to give you special treatment, because they’re losing business too.
  • Offer your competitions’ salespeople a better deal, and get them on your team.
  • Negotiate friendly takeovers that benefit you and your competitors. But be sure to approach them with empathy and respect.
  • Make offers that are irresistible: Offer guarantees. trial periods, add-on products, and deferred payment plans. Provide even more support than usual so your clients feel comfortable about committing.
  • Penetrate new markets while your competitors are busy focusing on their narrow niche.
  • Remember that not all buying stops in a downturn, even a severe one. If you can tap into the transactions that are still alive and well, you can not only survive but thrive.

This is a list that I think you can take to the bank. Simple yet valuable

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April 6, 2009

"Beam Me Up" is Better Than Business Books

Filed under: Lists,Small Business — Todd Sattersten @ 3:15 pm
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TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington penned a post yesterday titled “Grok This: Forget The Business Books, Go Sci-Fi To Stoke Your Imagination.” The piece caught alot of people’s attention with over 150 retweets on Twitter. As the lead states, Arrington proposes that entrepreneurs should skip all of these silly business books which are filled with “a whole lot of additional junk,” and read science-fiction.

I think there are great lessons to learn in reading fiction. Questions of Character by Joe Badaracco shows how literature can be a wonderful source for studying leadership. Minding The Store edited by Robert Coles and Albert LaFarge takes the similar route (a longer review is coming soon).

We’d prefer keeping the baby and the bathwater, but here are the books that Arrington recommended (essentially a “best of” sci-fi list):

  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • Anathem by Neal Stephenson
  • The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
  • Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Rob May, of LifeStream Backup and formerly Businesspundit, chimed in on Twitter with a worthy thought to close this post: “The problem with Techcrunch’s “forget biz books” post is that most founders already have too much imagination, what they need is biz sense.”

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