28 Business Tips & Lessons from the Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf

You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken nuggets from our library and provide them for entrepreneurs and business owners.

1. Unconventional thinkers rarely find mentoring through formal education, but they can find it informally. I spent a lot of my life reading books, attending seminars and seeking out my own teachers and experts to help me learn what I need to know. (Cracking The Flourishing Code)
2. The key to learning it's memorization, it's application on his pad, followed by touch, feel, experiment, hands-on experience, and brain-on experience. (Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online)
3. One of the main drivers of any negotiation is the why. This goes to the heart of your motivation: your fear or desire surrounding a deal. It's critical to know your why. (A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done)
4. Remember, champions stay focused on the Little Things. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)
5. Video is the ultimate tool for controlling the message and communicating your passion. (Pocket Man: The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Passionate, Personal Promoter)
6. Intent drives the road map for your presentation moment. (Communicate That!: Your Toolbox for Powerful Presentations)
7. Unconventional thinkers embrace mistakes as the stepping stones to success. (Cracking The Flourishing Code)
8. One of the goals with online content is to engage the student with the content…when content is less formal, and is presented more as a fireside chat than a podium lecture, it's easier for the students to connect and engage with the content. (Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online)
9. Champions know that mental toughness is nothing more than exerting control over your thoughts. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)
10. You double the amount of opportunities if you consider negative opportunities as opportunities too. (Pocket Man: The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Passionate, Personal Promoter)
11. Successful people tend to lean heavily toward the growth mindset. They do not give up at the first sign of trouble or based on the first criticism of their ideas. When they believe in what they are doing, they persevere. A growth mindset is especially important for unconventional thinkers and outliers. Their ideas and projects tend to run counter to the normal flow and are beyond what is known and accepted. Because of this, they will experience even more setbacks and seeming failures. (Cracking The Flourishing Code)
12. A great presentation moment always starts with positive self-perception. (Communicate That!: Your Toolbox for Powerful Presentations)
13. Successful business teams are also comprised of players with another key attribute: the fire in their belly for excellence. Building a winning business team is hard work. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)
14. To me, Finding Common Ground is the key to making a negotiation or any business relationship greater than the sum of its parts. (A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done)
15. It takes more than passion, promotion and money to sustain a business. It requires leadership and management (and a dozen other things…) (Pocket Man: The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Passionate, Personal Promoter)
16. One of the interesting things you can do with online content is actually view statistics on who has accessed the content and when this access occurred…. A review of these reports can provide valuable information into how active students are with the course material. (Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online)
17. There's an extremely important concept to keep in mind as you review and critique your team's performance: hold yourself to an even higher standard than you expect of your team, and publicly critique your own performance. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)
18. The only place that you are powerful is in changing yourself. People who flourish know this. When something goes not according to plan, they focus on what they personally can do to turn it around, not what others could or should have done. They double check their own attitudes and actions to see how they might have contributed to the issues rather than pointing fingers and waiting for someone to rescue them or the situation. (Cracking The Flourishing Code)
19. One primary reason people do not like to negotiate is fear–fear of confronting the gap between where they are and where they want to be. (A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done)
20. Online classes need regular care and feeding. (Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online)
21. You cannot get a precise result if you don't know exactly what you want. (A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done)
22. Preparation means success, period. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)
23. One of the basic things to understand about being an entrepreneur is that it isn't a job, it's a career. It's work that you can be – and must be – passionate about. (Cracking The Flourishing Code)
24. Frame the heaviest questions with a confident pause and plenty of patience. Know that as long as you build your pauses with expectation and not arrogance, they can be a powerful too. (A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done)
25. Influential people are passionate people. Ignite their enthusiasm for you and your brand, and amazing things will follow. (Pocket Man: The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Passionate, Personal Promoter)
26. The success of an online class depends on the effectiveness of the course design and the instructor's facilitation. Which technology is used is secondary. (Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online)
27. Leave 'em wanting more by using less is more as a theme for your preparation. (Communicate That!: Your Toolbox for Powerful Presentations)
28. Building a championship business isn't rocket science or brain surgery, but it requires every bit of your heart and soul. (Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team)

The Bookshelf

Cracking The Flourishing Code -Right now, the world is in dire need of unconventional thinkers. Conventional thinking has created enormous problems and issues that only unconventional thinking will be able to address. We need cutting edge businesses and organizations, new technologies, and new approaches. We need YOU to step into your genius, whatever it is, and express your gifts. In Cracking the Flourishing Code, entrepreneur and business thought leader Pat Black gives unconventional thinkers the tools to: Step away from conventional community consciousness to become a confident outlier, debunk the so-called wisdom of conventional beliefs about career and business, create a healthy eco-system of support, build a flourishing mindset and uncover your unique gifts for career success and personal fulfillment.

Online Classes That Work!: Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online – Online Classes That Work! Discovering the Secrets to Teaching Online is a valuable resource for anyone designing or teaching online classes. It is a must-read guide to assist instructors and designers in creating and teaching effective online classes or in combining the best of online with face-to-face teaching in the blended classroom. This book is an ideal resource for an instructor preparing to teach his or her first online class, for new faculty or students learning the education process, and for experienced faculty and designers seeking ways to make their classes more engaging and effective.

A Winner's Guide to Negotiating: How Conversation Gets Deals Done – The strategic guide to getting the most out of every negotiation from “the female Jerry Maguire” (CNN) Effective negotiation is rooted in establishing trust and building relationships–one conversation at a time. In this practical guide, trailblazing sports agent Molly Fletcher reveals her proven approach to landing more than $500 million worth of deals throughout her career.

Team WORKS!: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team – In Team WORKS! former NFL player turned entrepreneur Chris Valletta describes the strategies and tools needed to build a championship-caliber business team, using athletic principles. He has spent his business career perfecting these traits – and has helped produce three multi-million dollar ventures in the process. This book raises the bar for business guides and expands over the normal approach other books preach. It's like having your own personal employee activist, telling you exactly the right moves to make at the right time, to achieve the greatest possible results for your business. With contributions from well-known sport legends, famous entrepreneurs, and a Foreword by Donald Trump, Valletta ties football tactics into building a championship business team. With humorous stories and real-life adventures Valletta's book will entertain football lovers and non-football lovers alike.

Pocket Man: The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Passionate, Personal Promoter – Imagine Bill Gates and Giorgio Armani started a business, then hired PT Barnum to promote it, and Larry David to tell the story. The result is this book. Since starting SCOTTeVEST in 2000 – my clothing business built around tech-enabled pockets – I’ve been featured in thousands of major press pieces, made millions of dollars and had the most memorable appearance of the entire ABC Shark Tank show. I started out as an unhappy lawyer, and I reinvented myself by pursuing my passions and mastering the art of passionate, personal promotion. This isn’t a how to business book, but entrepreneurs will learn a lot from my successes and failures about how to get the attention every business needs to stand above the competition. This isn’t fiction, but some of the stories might make you wonder if they are true. I assure you… they are. We’re going to turn the world of media upside down, shake it and see what falls out of its pockets. You will learn lots of ways to promote yourself and your business, if you have the fire. Welcome to my unauthorized autobiography.

Communicate That!: Your Toolbox for Powerful Presentations – In COMMUNICATE THAT!, Roshini Rajkumar shares her IAP™ Formula: Intent, Audience Analysis & Powerful Performance.This 3rd edition is witty, easy-to-read, and makes IAP™ a straight-forward approach to creating powerful communication moments that will build credibility, boost your earning power, and showcase your WOW!