October is National Book Month! Now’s the time to crack open some business reads and get some learning done for the end of the year. (Or, if you’re looking for a great gift for the entrepreneur in your life, these eight books are a perfect fit!) We’ve got funding advice, tips for new business owners, customer experience strategies, networking secrets, and much, much more.
Our 8 recommended reads:
The Funding Is Out There!: Access the Cash You Need to Impact Your Business
by Tiffany C. Wright
Learn how to raise capital by pursuing business-friendly community banks, forming strategic alliances, tapping supplier financing, crowdfunding, and more.
The Funding Is Out There! is unlike other business books because most titles about capital focus on the obvious sources of funding without intimate discussion on how to navigate the financing process.
The Funding Is Out There! provides a roadmap of how to finance a business with step-by-step options, their processes, and real-life examples. The author pulls from her experience as a CFO and business financial and strategic advisor to infuse the text with helpful advice and down-to-earth facts. The result is an easy-to-read funding manual applicable to any business with earnings from $300,000 to $20 million.
Your First Year: What I Wish I’d Known Paperback
Edited by Deborah Kevin & Jill Celeste
Are you a new woman entrepreneur or one waiting in the wings…? Do you want to do things the “right way?” Worried about making mistakes?
Here’s the truth: there is no one “right way,” and you will make mistakes. That’s part of growing.
The generous and hard-won wisdom shared in this book won’t be a cure-all, but it will reassure you that following your internal GPS is just as (or maybe more) important as getting advice. From legally setting up your business to keeping clean bookkeeping records and effective marketing strategies through thriving through major health and life crises, this book will be your “go-to” guide as you step fully into a CEO role.
The women authors in this book want you to succeed. They’re cheering you on as you make an impact in Your First Year… and beyond!
Rapid Growth, Done Right: Lead, Influence and Innovate for Success
by Val Wright
Companies that rapidly grow have one thing in common: their leaders create symbiotic relationships between technical, creative and business minds. Innovation and leadership consultant, Val Wright, provides the tools needed to nurture and harness these connections, the right way.
An inspirational CEO who influences and innovates successfully will become the pivotal power in any business by orchestrating an organization that helps everyone dream big while staying grounded and rapidly putting ideas into action.
Using examples from a number of leading corporations to provide advice to existing and aspiring CEOs, and featuring interviews with C-suite executives at some of the world’s most innovative businesses, Rapid Growth, Done Right is an essential guide to creating products and services that customers will love while delivering consistent growth.
Next Act Give Back: Discover Your Personal Path to Go From Being Charitable to Being a Changemaker
by Kirsten Bunch
This book is for the person who wants to get serious about playing her part in creating better, more sustainable and more equitable communities. If you have been thinking about how you can devote the next phase of your life to making a difference, whether through a new career or a total reinvention of yourself, this book will help you transform your life.
You have the potential to have a huge impact on your community and the world. You are off to a great start, you give money and time to the causes that you love. But a voice inside your head (and heart) tells you that you could do more. You wonder how you could help more people and find more personal fulfillment in your life and work.
Whether you already have an idea for the change you want to create in the world through a heart-centered business, social enterprise or non-profit, or you simply feel pulled to become more connected to your life, work and community, this book will give you the tools, motivation and information you need to take your idea out of your “someday” file and put action behind it to become the person you already know you can be.
ACT On Your Business: Braving the storms of entrepreneurship and creating success through meaning, mindset, and mindfulness
by Lee Chaix McDonough
Are you ready to grow your business, change your relationship with yourself, and transform your life?
Right now, you’re doing all the right things. You’re checking all the right boxes. You’re showing up, diving in, hustling, giving it your all – and then some. On the outside, it looks like you’ve got it all together. But if you’re really honest, you’re not sure that you have what it takes to make it.
What if you could have the external signs of success and feel really good internally about your impact and your income? What if you could show up authentically in your business, confident that you have the skillset and mindset to weather whatever storms come your way?
In ACT on Your Business, therapist and business coach Lee Chaix McDonough will introduce you to the six keys to unlocking greater fulfillment, success, and joy. Using her evidence-based methodology for entrepreneurial flexibility, she’ll teach you the tools you need to get in touch with what’s most important to you (and why that’s the key to sound decision-making), to transform your deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings from enemies to allies, and to anchor yourself in the midst of any storm.
Revenue or Relationships? Win Both: A Customer Experience Primer to Shift Your Perspective of Business
by Mary Brodie (Author), Melody Christian (Illustrator), Jodi Brandon (Editor)
To create engaging customer experiences, you need to shift your perspective of business. The basics of business hasn’t changed. You still need a vision, a mission, a brand, an operations and action plan, and a way to measure success. But how you view your customers and inspire them to make decisions has changed with automation. Today, companies and their employees can directly interact with customers, creating a type of community. Add to that the emergence of more people-driven work methodologies, and you can see how successful business relationships are emerging to be as important as transactions in how they impact the bottom line.
Business is about people, conversations, solving problems, and customer experiences. Closing a sale requires a successful customer relationship built over many interactions, digital or live. It’s hard to make a useful product without customer input and feedback. To keep a customer returning, you need to earn their trust and respect them during each experience of your brand. Such events can provide your employees the information they need to respect your customers and continue to build a relationship with them. Imagine what we could learn about our customers, our companies, and our customer experiences if we could measure that relationship value and contribution to the business? With automation, this may be possible.
Discover the connection between relationships and revenue through customer experiences so your company can succeed in our automated world.
Mogul, Mom, & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman
by Liz O’Donnell
The state of working women has been declared, debunked and debated since the days of Rosie the Riveter. The headlines, and the statistics behind them, however, don’t tell the whole story. The truth is, many women today are breadwinners; and these breadwinners are struggling. They are caught in a perfect storm of male-dominated culture at work, traditional social norms at home, and outdated schedules in the schools.
Mogul, Mom, & Maid takes an honest look at how women are balancing home life and career. The pressures of child rearing, coupled with an unfulfilling corporate culture, are too great to be ignored. Author Liz O’Donnell goes beyond statistics and tells the stories of women all across America who are juggling careers, motherhood, marriage, and households. Mogul, Mom, & Maid looks at the choices women are making, the options they have, and the impact these decisions have on themselves, their families, and the businesses that employ them.
Gutsy Women Win: How to Get Gutsy and Get Going
by Pat Obuchowski
In Gutsy Women Win, speaker, executive and leadership coach, and author Pat Obuchowski describes a new model for success. It will help you identify your passions for leadership and life and then empower you to pursue them. This book offers you an opportunity to examine how the model works through the lens of the stories of seven women. The model introduces nine elements that will help you take action and do what it is you want to do in your world to make a difference. If you hunger for a more fulfilling life, this book is for you.
Want to get more reading done, but don’t have any spare time? Become a Lioness Member and join our Too-Busy-to-Read Book Club!
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