As quoted in the Huffington Post, March 3rd, Campbell says, “Whatever your idea is, you’re going to need bags of enthusiasm to make it work.” Many creative founders and freelancers share a longing for connection, reassurance and motivation.
In this book I’ve interviewed inspiring, brave and creative experts across the UK and US, tapping into some incredible insights and pulling them together into this friendly guide, to offer that support which we all need from time to time. This book’s for you if you’ve stopped feeling ‘hungry’ for new client work, you’re starting up for the first (or second or third!) time, or you’ve simply run out of steam. My intention is to offer a wealth of ideas and fresh perspectives to inspire you at any stage of your independent creative career.
Even though it is seldom acknowledged, the truth is that business runs on emotion—yours and almost everyone else’s. And that emotion is often negative, leading us into bewilderment, dysfunction, and failure.
This book explains how to face up to this reality and respond by building street smarts and business emotional intelligence (BEQ). It supports your business success by developing your ability to recognize and effectively manage the destructive emotional tendencies, hidden agendas, and behaviors that exist all around you, and sometimes within you, that block business progress.
Emotions don’t belong in the business process, we are told. And that’s absolutely correct when destructive feelings disrupt the workplace. But here is the dirty little secret: Irrational and runaway feelings nevertheless dominate in many businesses and hold back professionals who are crippled by emotional dynamics that often play out beyond conscious awareness and their control.
Learn how and why emotions are a controlling factor in every career or business success and failure, and how to work with them to achieve your full potential by developing (BEQ). Expand and transform your business thinking and approach, by learning to recognize common, hidden emotional issues in a simple and straightforward manner. Strengthen your BEQ to achieve more accurate self-analysis, improved awareness, and effective functioning that creates predictable and positive results immediately.
“By far the best current guide to help you succeed in the music industry in 2021+. Great overview, especially the specific action steps at the end of each section. If you’re ambitious, read this and act on it now!” —Derek Sivers, Founder, CD Baby
“Tom’s book provides essential, practical and real-world strategies and advice that melds art with business that not only informs, but also inspires a level of confidence for readers to successfully manage their own artistic journey and career.” –Sean P. Hagon, Associate Dean of Career Education and Services, Berklee College of Music
“An incredible piece of work that blends a number of different disciplines including business, communication, psychology, leadership, interpersonal communication, sales, marketing, and more that all point toward the music industry and succeeding in it. Bravo.” –Bobby Borg, Author of Business Basics for Musicians and Music Marketing for the DIY Musician
“Tom Stein is a real shaman when it comes to the business of music. His knowledge is vast. He writes fluently and clearly, he is thorough yet organized, and you can’t stop reading him. Recommended, you need this book!” –Ady Cohen, Film Composer, Professor, Speaker
“Easy to digest book on how to make a living and find success in the music industry today.” –Lauren Gehle, Berklee College of Music Student
This book highlights vital and accurate information about the music business, how musicians get paid, and the legal framework for business. Readers will learn to recognize and leverage opportunities through overcoming the inevitable obstacles to success in a rapidly changing industry as well as gain valuable insights into the niche they might fill with their career and discover their unique path to success. The goal of this book is to ensure the reader comes away with a greater understanding of the scope and demands of the music and entertainment industry.
“Design Cube is a contemporary portrayal of business modelling process aimed at businesses growth within social ecosystem. Co-creating business models and coevolving businesses in the marketplace is the new normal today. This book introduces an integrated approach through triadic domains of market, society, and customer values in business modelling for analyzing innovation-management and business design. A good read for everyone in business.”–Tanya Zlateva, PhD, Dean, BU Metropolitan College, Boston University
“Convergence of societal and customer values with business modeling process is central to the innovative Design Cube concept. This book blends cognitive values, social strategies and marketing processes with design thinking to build hybrid knowledge with live examples. Overall, this is an insightful contribution.”–Angappa Gunasekaran, PhD, Dean and Professor, School of Business and Public Administration, California State University
“Design Cube provides a true playbook for readers interested in business growth and strategic advantage. With co-creation of business models becoming an imperative for customer-centric companies, this book brings together concepts at three different levels including individual, market, and society in order to develop an integrative framework. A good read for practitioners to create distinctive customer value and implement a winning strategy.” –Raj Echambadi, PhD, Dunton Family Dean D’Amore-McKim School of Business Northeastern University
This book discusses the three facets of the design-cube identified as design-to-market, design-to-society, and design-to-value through theoretical foundations, design arguments, managerial analysis, and best practices of companies.
The design-to-market concept has been critically examined for customer-centric companies with focus on the current trend of coevolution and crowdsourcing approaches that drives the companies to practice critical thinking.
“A timely publication for a post COVID19 world and for the new greener and socially orientated entrepreneurs seeking to make an impact.” —Dr Dane Anderton, Alliance Manchester Business School, Manchester University
THESE STRATEGIES WILL GIVE YOU SUPERPOWERS
Many books have been written about the high-performance habits successful entrepreneurs adopt, from their daily meditation to how they lead their teams. For Marina Nicholas, her fascination was more about their entrepreneurial journey.
From Zero: When starting a business, what strategies did they adopt to overcome the odds?
To Hero: As a highly successful entrepreneur, how did they use their wealth to help humanity and the planet?
After years of extensive research, Marina discovered that just eight strategies were adopted by billionaire entrepreneurs. PROBLEM—PERSEVERANCE POSITIONING—PROXIMITY—PEOPLE—PARTNERSHIPS—PROCESS—PLANET
Whether you enjoy inspirational stories or seek to discover your superpower, the strategies and exercises in this book will help you. Each of the eight strategies is illustrated by real case studies. Over 25 case studies like these:
A white trouser problem led to a billion-dollar empire
The invention of a passionate surfer leads to sales of 35 million cameras
A 7-year journey of poverty and rejection led to a $500 million franchise
A happy tribe built a $1.2 billion company
A monk builds a tribe of 35 million followers within 4 years
A village visit resulted in 100 million pairs of shoes gifted
No one will forget the year 2020.
The year that a pandemic shut down social, work, and public contact. There are two particular changes that have had a pronounced effect on business and finance, which this book will provide the guidance currently lacking in traditional business school texts.
The first is the change from commuting to work to sheltering-in-place, with students and professionals on videoconferencing apps such as Zoom. Likely a lasting change, we can expect many office spaces will remain empty and many businesses will stick with the new work-from-home change.
The second change is that the younger generation is the first to suffer a setback in terms of the standard of living compared to their parents. Not only do more than half of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, but they eschew traditional corporate cubicles, preferring instead to juggle multiple and new ‘hustles and side gigs.’
This book is primarily focused on the post-pandemic Gen Z and Millennial business opportunities, most of which didn’t even exist a generation ago.
CRM first entered the business vocabulary in the early 90’s; initially as a systems driven technical solution. It has since escalated in importance as system providers increased their market penetration of the business market and, in parallel, CRM’s strategic importance gained more traction as it was recognized that CRM was, at its heart, a business model in the pursuit of sustainable profit. This was accentuated by the academic community stepping up their interest in the subject in the early 2000’s. Today, it is a universal business topic which has been re-engineered by the online shopping revolution in which the customer is firmly placed at the center of the business. The current reality, however, is that, for the vast majority of businesses, CRM has not been adopted as a business philosophy and practicing business model. It has not been fully understood and therefore fully embraced and properly implemented.
The author addresses this head-on by stripping CRM down into its component parts by delving into and explaining the role and relevance of the C, R, and M in CRM. This is a practical guide but set within a strategic framework. The outage is clear actionable insights and how to convert them into delivery. It is written in an easily digestible, non-jargon style, with case studies to demonstrate how CRM works. This book can be immediately used as the primary practical reference to guide the development and implementation of a CRM strategy.
Business sustainability is advancing from the greenwashing and branding to, very recently, business imperative as shareholders demand, regulators require, and companies report their sustainability performance. Sustainability has become economic and strategic imperative with potential to create opportunities and risks for businesses.
Business Sustainability Factors of Performance, Risk, and Disclosure examines sustainability factors of performance, risk and disclosure. The five dimensions of sustainability performance are economic, governance, social, ethical, and environmental (EGSEE). Sustainability risks are reputational, strategic, operational, compliance, and financial (RSOCF). Sustainability disclosures are relevant to financial economic sustainability performance (ESP) and non-financial environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability performance with ethics are integrated into all other components of sustainability performance.
This book offers guidance for proper measurement, recognition, and reporting of all five EGSEE dimensions of sustainability performance. It also highlights how people, business, and resources collaborate in a business sustainability and accountability model in creating shared value for all stakeholders. The three sustainability factors of performance, risk and disclosure are driven from the stakeholder primacy concept with the mission of profit-with-purpose. Anyone who is involved with business sustainability and corporate governance, the financial reporting process, investment decisions, legal and financial advising, and audit functions will benefit from this book.
Without question, some people accomplish so much more than others in their careers and their lives. And they do it so much more quickly. Surprisingly, there is nothing in the research that adequately accounts for this difference in success, except one thing. The most successful people invariably practice three skill sets that give them a distinct, get-ahead, accelerated edge at work and at home. It’s called The Champion Edge and is comprised of purpose, passion, and process, all of which can be learned, adopted, and mastered by the reader.
This book gives specific skills and step-by-step strategies that will empower the reader to clarify their purpose, align their life and career with that purpose, build a more positive attitude, remain persistent, make decisions guided by character, achieve goals through the use of affirmations, communicate more effectively, and listen to what is said and left unsaid.
Customer value starvation is a common disease in companies, both small and large – which is difficult to diagnose. It is a silent killer, like many cancers. By the time it is diagnosed, it is generally late, sometimes, too late! Mahajan and Vieira have put their expertise together to show how companies overlook value starvation. This causes irritation and frustration to customers in their interaction with the company and its personnel – in person, on telephone, net or mail. The book identifies customer DNA (Do Not Annoy) factors, and suggests how to minimize complaints; ensure customer loyalty; and long term company profitability and success. Philip Kotler, the world’s guru on marketing, said, “This book will help you think freshly about your business mission and success.” Seven well-known experts on the subject like Shep Hyken have contributed to this book. Read Customer Value Starvation Can Kill, and make life easier for your customers and yourself, and win in the marketplace!!
