Happy New Year! As we begin a new year many people make resolutions to do something new and different. Such as perhaps starting a new business. This year the Career Center offered a seminar on how to buy or expand into a franchise as well as a series of seminars on how to start a non-profit. We have witnessed a great deal of interest in how to start a non-profit or a business. The Career Center has a whole section of books on how to start your own business, including a few new titles.
Start Your Own Business, 7th edition
by The Staff of Entrepreneur Media
If you see yourself as an entrepreneur or aspire to become one this book is for you. It is designed as a “road map to help you plan a course for your own journey to business ownership”. The team at Entrepreneur provide more than 700 pages of information and lessons to help you make your business dream a reality. It begins with a forward by Jason Feifer that encourages the reader with a revised understanding of what is means to succeed as an entrepreneur. The forty-one chapters are divided into eight parts that cover how to Think, Plan, Fund, Prepare, Buy, Market, Engage, and Profit.
HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business
by Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
Would you like to be your own boss, fashion a company environment that meets your own needs, and profit directly from your success? Roback and Yudkoff offer an alternative to a career path at a big firm or the risk of founding your own start-up. In this book they take a big idea from their popular courses at the Harvard Business School and for the first time share it. That you can buy an existing business right now and run it as a CEO. Twenty-one chapters are divided into five parts: Think Big, Buy Small; Preparing Your Search; Finding the Right Small Business to Buy; Making an Offer; and Completing the Acquisition.
Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
by Rand Fishkin
No one should found a startup alone. Fishkin, founder of Moz (a software provider that creates products for professionals to help client with search engine optimization), shares from his own experience so the reader can avoid the mistakes he made. In addition to covering the difficult realities of founding a startup, Fishkin provides tactical tips and tricks (what he calls the “startup cheat code”). Chapters cover such topics as Great Founders Don’t Do What They Love; They Enable a Vision, Don’t Raise Money for the Wrong Reasons or from the Wrong People, Founding a Top 5 Percent Startup May Not Make You Rich, Living the Lives of Your Customers and Their Influencers is a Startup Cheat Code, and Self-Awareness is a Superpower.
Be Your Best Boss: Reinvent Yourself from Employee to Entrepreneur
by William Seagraves
Becoming an entrepreneur midcareer can be confusing. Perhaps you feel stuck at work, are recently unemployed, or are hanging on to your job. And you want to do something more, something better, something new and different. Seagraves, president and founder of Catchfire Funding, draws on the stories of new and once-reluctant entrepreneurs and offers advice to those wanting to begin a second act in their careers. He breaks down the process of becoming an entrepreneur, explaining how to evaluate yourself and your business opportunity. Chapters cover whether you are entrepreneurially ready, how to be a company of one and a business of many, how to buy a franchise or existing business, how to navigate the first six months to beyond the first two years, when and how to exit, and how to use your 401(k) (without penalty) to fund your new business.
Written by Richard Wright