Bo Burlingham

Profiles fourteen companies that have achieved high levels of success by focusing on the quality of their products and services, rather than their bottom-line profits, in a guide for small businesses that reveals how to earn consistent revenues by becoming purpose-driven. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

Small Giants

Norm Brodsky

A columnist for Inc. outlines his theories about street-smart businesspeople who appear to possess unique intuitive gifts, in an anecdotal guide that shares real-life stories about how companies met various challenges by identifying potential problems, focusing on goals, and maintaining perspective. 30,000 first printing.

How Street-smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up

The Knack

A veteran company-builder offers practical advice for solving the everyday problems of starting and running a new business and tips for recognizing the opportunities that will ultimately make it successful.

An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs

Street Smarts

Jack Stack

In this expanded 20th Anniversary Edition of the book that started a business revolution, a successful businessman shares his philosophy of management that puts the concerns of the employees first and creates a company that will provide people with lifelong livelihood. Original. 50,000 first printing.

The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company

The Great Game of Business

"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.

Bo Burlingham, the bestselling author of Small Giants, returns with Finish Big, an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully."Finish Big is for all those founder/leaders who want to do more than take...it is for the ones who want to leave something behind." Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last"Practical and profound, fast-moving and thought-provoking, masterful in its clear prose and compelling stories- Bo Burlingham has once again done a tremendous service in deploying his craft." Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last and Great by ChoiceNo two exit experiences are exactly alike. Some people wind up happy with the process and satisfied with the way it turned out, while others look back on it as a nightmare. The question I hope to answer in this book is why. What did the people with 'good' exits do differently from those who'd had 'bad' exits?'Bo Burlingham's first book Small Giants became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem: how to handle the pressure to grow. Now he is back to tackle an even more common problem: how to exit your company well.Sooner or later, all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated. Whatever your preferred outcome, if you start planning for it while you still have time and options, you can build a stronger, more resilient company with a higher market value. Unfortunately, most don't - and they pay a steep price for their procrastination.Through dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs across a range of industries, Burlingham identifies eight key factors that determine whether owners leave their businesses happily. He showcases the insights, exits and cautionary tales of entrepreneurs across an array of industries including manufacturing, food and services. Finish Big is an illuminating and inspirational guide to one of the most stressful, and yet potentially rewarding, processes business owners must go through. Bo Burlingham is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, a finalist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year in 2006. An editor at large at Inc., he has reported on the entrepreneurial revolution in America since the early 1980s and has witnessed up close the birth and development of the companies that have reshaped our world.

How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top

Finish Big

John Warrillow

From the Publisher: America's 27 million business owners want to build sellable companies so that they can retire, travel, cash out, or just sleep well at night knowing they could sell. Unfortunately, just 1 out of 100 business owners are successful in selling their company each year because too many have built unsellable companies. Readers of Built To Sell will learn: -The 8 steps to creating a sellable company -How to attract multiple strategic bidders for their business -How to maximize their valuation and get the highest possible price for their business -The secret to getting their cash up front and avoiding a lengthy earn out Described by one reader as "John Grisham meets Jim Collins", John Warrillow's new book provides business owners with a blueprint for creating a sellable company.

Turn Your Business Into One You Can Sell

Built to Sell

“No two exit experiences are exactly alike. Some people wind up happy with the process and satisfied with the way it turned out while others look back on it as a nightmare. The question I hope to answer in this book is why. What did the people with ‘good’ exits do differently from those who’d had ‘bad’ exits?” When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem—how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem—how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated. Whatever your preferred outcome, you need to start planning for it while you still have time and options. The beautiful part is that if you start early enough, the process will lead you to build a better, stronger, more resilient company, as well as one with a higher market value. Unfortunately, most owners don’t start early enough—and pay a steep price for their procrastination. Burlingham interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs across a range of industries and identified eight key factors that determine whether owners are happy after leaving their businesses. His book showcases the insights, exit plans, and cautionary tales of entrepreneurs such as Ray Pagano: founder of a leading manufacturer of housings for security cameras. He turned down a bid for his company and instead changed his management style, resulting in a subsequent sale for four times the original offer. Bill Niman: founder of the iconic Niman Ranch, which revolutionized the meat industry. He learned about unhappy exits when he was forced to sell to private equity investors, leaving him with nothing to show for his thirty-five years in business. Gary Hirshberg: founder of organic yogurt pioneer Stonyfield Farm. He pulled off the nearly impossible task of finding a large company that would buy out his 275 small investors at a premium price while letting him retain complete control of the business. Through such stories, Burlingham offers an illuminating and inspirational guide to one of the most stressful, and yet potentially rewarding, processes business owners must go through. And he explores the emotional challenges they face at every step of the way. At the end of the day, owning a business is about more than selling goods and services. It’s about making choices that shape your entire life, both professional and personal. Finish Big helps you figure out how to face your future with confidence and be able to someday look back on your journey with pride.

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. Today it's one of the most successful and competitive companies in the United States, with a share price 3000 times what it was thirty years ago. This miracle turnaround is all down to one man, Jack Stack, and his revolutionary system of Open-Book Management, in which every employee understands the company's key figures, can act on them and has a real stake in the business. In Stack's own words: 'When employees think, act and feel like owners ... everybody wins.'As a management strategy, 'the great game of business' is so simple and effective that it's been taken up by companies from Exxon to The Body Shop and Ben & Jerry's (and possibly even Profile Books).

Bo Burlingham, the bestselling author of Small Giants, returns with Finish Big, an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully. No two exit experiences are exactly alike. Some people wind up happy with the process and satisfied with the way it turned out, while others look back on it as a nightmare. The question I hope to answer in this book is why. What did the people with 'good' exits do differently from those who'd had 'bad' exits?' Bo Burlingham's first book Small Giants became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem: how to handle the pressure to grow. Now he is back to tackle an even more common problem: how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated. Whatever your preferred outcome, if you start planning for it while you still have time and options, you can build a stronger, more resilient company with a higher market value. Unfortunately, most don't - and they pay a steep price for their procrastination. Through dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs across a range of industries, Burlingham identifies eight key factors that determine whether owners leave their businesses happily. He showcases the insights, exits and cautionary tales of entrepreneurs across an array of industries including manufacturing, food and services. Finish Big is an illuminating and inspirational guide to one of the most stressful, and yet potentially rewarding, processes business owners must go through. Bo Burlingham is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, a finalist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year in 2006. An editor at large at Inc., he has reported on the entrepreneurial revolution in America since the early 1980s and has witnessed up close the birth and development of the companies that have reshaped our world.

The First Management Classic of the New Millennium! A bold experiment is taking place these days, as leading-edge companies turn upside down the management paradigm that has dominated corporate thinking for more than one hundred years. Southwest Airlines is perhaps the most visible practitioner, soaring through economic downturns while its competitors slash their budgets and order massive layoffs, but you can find other pioneers of the new approach in almost every industry and market niche. Their secret: a culture of ownership that allows them to tap into the most underutilized resource in business today–namely, the enthusiasm, intelligence, and creativity of working people everywhere. No one knows more about building a culture of ownership than CEO Jack Stack, who’s been working on one for the past twenty years with his colleagues at SRC Holdings Corporation (formerly Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation). Along the way, they’ve turned their company into what Business Week has called a “management Mecca,” attracting thousands of people representing hundreds of businesses to SRC’s home in Springfield, Missouri. There the visitors learn how to incorporate the ideals and values of SRC’s remarkable corporate culture into their own organizations–and then they go back and do it. Now, in A Stake in the Outcome, Stack offers a master class on creating a culture of ownership, presenting the hard-won lessons of his own twenty-year journey and explaining what it really takes to build for long-term success. The pioneer of “open-book management” (described in the best-selling classic The Great Game of Business), Stack and twelve other managers began their journey in 1982, when they purchased their factory from its struggling parent company. SRC grew 15 percent a year, while adding almost a thousand new jobs, and the company’s stock price rocketed from 10 cents to $81.60 per share. In the process, Stack discovered that long-term success required constant innovation–and that building a culture of ownership involved much more than paying bonuses, handing out stock options, or setting up an employee stock ownership plan. In a successful ownership culture, every employee had to take the fate of the company as personally as an individual owner would. Achieving that level of commitment was extraordinarily difficult, but Stack realized that the payoff would be enormous: a company that was consistently able to outperform the market. A Stake in the Outcome isn’t about theory–it’s about practice. Stack draws from his own successes and failures at SRC to show how any company can teach its employees to think and act like owners, including how to implement an effective equity-sharing program, how to promote continuous learning at every level of the organization, how to fire up employees’ competitive juices, how to broaden the concept of leadership and delegate responsibility for the business, and how to build a workforce that is fast on its feet and ready to take advantage of every opportunity. You’ll also learn about other companies that have succeeded in building cultures of ownership–and the lessons they can teach the rest of us. Written in Jack Stack’s straightforward, witty, no-beating-around-the-bush style, A Stake in the Outcome is like having a one-on-one session with a master entrepreneur and business innovator. It shows managers and executives of companies both large and small how to build a ferociously motivated workforce that is energized and committed to meeting and overcoming the most daunting challenges a company can face.

Building a Culture of Ownership for the Long-Term Success of Your Business

A Stake in the Outcome

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. Today it's one of the most successful and competitive companies in the United States, with a share price 3000 times what it was thirty years ago. This miracle turnaround is all down to one man, Jack Stack, and his revolutionary system of Open-Book Management, in which every employee understands the company's key figures, can act on them and has a real stake in the business. In Stack's own words: 'When employees think, act and feel like owners ... everybody wins.' As a management strategy, 'the great game of business' is so simple and effective that it's been taken up by companies from Intel to Harley Davidson.

Bo Burlingham

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