Download or read book Business Adventures written by John Brooks and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-14 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The best business book I've ever read.' Bill Gates, Wall Street Journal 'The Michael Lewis of his day.' New York Times What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety. These notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened. Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks's insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself. This business classic written by longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks is an insightful and engaging look into corporate and financial life in America.

Download or read book The Ride of a Lifetime written by Robert Iger and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-09-23 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A memoir of leadership and success: The executive chairman of Disney, Time’s 2019 businessperson of the year, shares the ideas and values he embraced during his fifteen years as CEO while reinventing one of the world’s most beloved companies and inspiring the people who bring the magic to life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger—think global—and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets. Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era. In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including: • Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming. • Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity. • Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale. • Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them. This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology. “The ideas in this book strike me as universal” Iger writes. “Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.”

Download or read book The 100 Best Business Books of All Time written by Jack Covert and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of business books are published every year— Here are the best of the best After years of reading, evaluating, and selling business books, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten are among the most respected experts on the category. Now they have chosen and reviewed the one hundred best business titles of all time—the ones that deliver the biggest payoff for today’s busy readers. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time puts each book in context so that readers can quickly find solutions to the problems they face, such as how best to spend The First 90 Days in a new job or how to take their company from Good to Great. Many of the choices are surprising—you’ll find reviews of Moneyball and Orbiting the Giant Hairball, but not Jack Welch’s memoir. At the end of each review, Jack and Todd direct readers to other books both inside and outside The 100 Best. And sprinkled throughout are sidebars taking the reader beyond business books, suggesting movies, novels, and even children’s books that offer equally relevant insights. This guide will appeal to anyone, from entry-level to CEO, who wants to cut through the clutter and discover the brilliant books that are truly worth their investment of time and money.

Download or read book The Second Best Business Book Ever Written written by Tom Marks and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2024-07-16 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honesty in thought leadership matters. And so does seeing the light. Honesty, in its purest form, is a key characteristic of all thought leaders, so I’m going to hit you with the truth. Many business books today are written for the purpose of winning more business for an author, or acquiring new speaking gigs, and anyone who fits into that camp is A-OK with me. It’s a smart move. But after more than four decades in sales and marketing, I’m beyond those goals. Frankly, it feels great that I’m not anchored to those intentions anymore. I have only one intent in The Second-Best Business Book Ever Written, and that’s to teach the ins and outs of thought leadership to as many people as possible because that’s how corporations, and the individuals who run them, succeed. There’s a process to becoming a thought leader; it’s methodical, detailed, and rewarding. After all, where’s the amusement in being a price-chopper? Or even a technology leader where the tenure is as short as my nephew’s attention span? The greatest thought leaders started sharing their thinking 2,500 years ago through the teachings of my four favorites: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aspasia. I’m going to travel with you down the thought leadership road, known as the Via Egnatia, from the foothills that rise above Athens to the skyscrapers that tower above Madison Avenue. And along the way, I’m going to show you how I did it for Fortune 500 companies, and for small and midsize businesses, with a few wild detours along the way. By all accounts, the Green Bay Packers future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers was born with a rock-solid throwing arm and an annoying chip on his shoulder. I’m no Rodgers fan; after all, I was born and raised in inner-city Chicago and have been a Bears fan since birth, but I recognize greatness, and Aaron Rodgers is a great football player. Some of his other qualities? Not so much. But these aren’t lessons about tackle football. They’re insights about leadership; about what happens off the football field, and on a more important playing field; about greatness in sales, marketing, and business; and about thought leadership, the single most important differentiator in the business playbook. Or, as Plato not so recently said, obviously unaware of Aaron Rodgers’s famous retreat into darkness, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” I’d like to shed some light on what’s required in business, but frequently misunderstood. What every salesperson needs to know, but doesn’t always know how to achieve it. And what every marketing expert wishes they had in their bag of tricks. To simply say that thought leadership is an essential part of the disciplines of market leaders is like saying a stick is an essential part of a Popsicle. Well, it is, assuming you’re not interested in taste, color, packaging, name, price, quality, and the beat goes on. Tom Marks survived forty-seven years in the advertising business and has lived to write about it. He’s the founder of TMA+Peritus, one of the leading marketing, thought leadership, and corporate ethics firms in North America and has won more than sixty-five American Advertising Awards for his writing. He spent many years on the professional speakers circuit and survived that, too. His thought leadership workshops for Fortune 500 companies have brought him national acclaim and has made him a favorite among the nation’s CEOs.

Download or read book Life Business written by Brad Burton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A motivational smack in the face! “Beneath the bluff exterior of the self-styled “fat bloke from Manchester” is a shrewd business brain.” The Times “…a northern Anthony Robbins!” Theo Paphitis Brad Burton, once a regular in the dole queue, burdened with unbearable levels of debt, is now the MD of a multi-million pound international business. If anyone knows about sorting your life out, it’s Brad. But this isn’t Brad’s story – this is about YOU. Brad is here to share practical, actionable steps – stuff you can actually do – to improve your life, both at home and in business. He’s learnt exactly how to motivate yourself, focus on your passion, face setbacks and keep on moving forward – and now Brad wants to share these lessons with as many people as possible. We all have it in us to improve our lives and succeed – we just need a friendly kick in the pants from Brad! Chapters include: If your only motivation is money it’s not enough 2 year plan. Forget it. More like 2 week plan No passion. No point Buy my stuff Eject. Eject. Eject. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore

Download or read book The Only Business Writing Book You ll Ever Need written by Laura Brown and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-have guide for writing at work, with practical applications for getting your point across quickly, coherently, and efficiently. A winning combination of how-to guide and reference work, The Only Business Writing Book You’ll Ever Need addresses a wide-ranging spectrum of business communication with its straightforward seven-step method. Designed to save time and boost confidence, these easy-to-follow steps will teach you how to make clear requests, write for your reader, start strong and specific, and fix your mistakes. With a helpful checklist to keep you on track, you’ll learn to promote yourself and your ideas clearly and concisely, whether putting together a persuasive project proposal or dealing with daily email. Laura Brown’s supportive, no-nonsense approach to business writing is thoughtfully adapted to the increasingly digital corporate landscape. Complete with insightful sidebars from experts in various fields and easy-to-use resources on style, grammar, and punctuation, this book offers essential tools for success in the rapidly changing world of business communication.

Download or read book Good to Great written by Jim Collins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Download or read book The Most Dangerous Business Book You ll Ever Read written by Gregory Hartley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hone your professional approach to a razor's edge using lessons from military and civilian intelligence The Most Dangerous Business Book You'll Ever Read brings expertise from military and civilian intelligence operations into your business life. It lays out hard-hitting interpersonal skills to raise your level of professional effectiveness and vanquish your competition. The Most Dangerous Business Book You'll Ever Read features former Army interrogator Gregory Hartley's unique system of profiling, formula for persuasion, and framework for establishing expertise quickly. Gregory makes his system concrete with case studies, tables, diagrams, and more. Question like a Polygrapher Sort Personalities like a Profiler Close a Deal like a Hostage Negotiator Interview like an Interrogator Network like a Spy Research like an Intelligence Analyst Decide like a SEAL Team-Build like Special Ops Take your career focus to the next level. Discover the skills they don't teach in business school with The Most Dangerous Business Book You'll Ever Read.

Download or read book Who Is Michael Ovitz written by Michael Ovitz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you're going to read one book about Hollywood, this is the one. As the co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz earned a reputation for ruthless negotiation, brilliant strategy, and fierce loyalty to his clients. He reinvented the role of the agent and helped shape the careers of hundreds of A-list entertainers, directors, and writers, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Sean Connery, Bill Murray, Robin Williams, and David Letterman. But this personal history is much more than a fascinating account of celebrity friendships and bare-knuckled dealmaking. It's also an underdog's story: How did a middle-class kid from Encino work his way into the William Morris mailroom, and eventually become the most powerful person in Hollywood? How did an agent (even a superagent) also become a power in producing, advertising, mergers & acquisitions, and modern art? And what were the personal consequences of all those deals? After decades of near-silence in the face of controversy, Ovitz is finally telling his whole story, with remarkable candor and insight.

Download or read book True Professionalism written by David H. Maister and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are some technically competent professionals who work hard and long hours 'true professionals' or are they just cruisers? In this deeply illuminating call to arms, David Maister, the world's premier consultant to professional service firms, vigorously challenges individuals to examine closely the meaning of their work and reach beyond their grasp. The pursuit of the highest standards, Maister argues, is the primary road to commercial success. He presents a visionary reconception of professionalism that encompasses a lifelong dedication to self-improvement, a personal commitment to excellence, and a true spirit of service to clients. Looking first at the individual professional, Maister dares those good corporate citizens who 'do their duty' to discover what they truly love to do. Turning to the institution, Maister focuses on what he calls the 'instability' of professional service firms today, and offers advice on how to invest in skill building. David Maister's message is a recipe for success and for professional satisfaction making TRUE PROFESSIONALISM a worthy successor to his previous writings.

Download or read book The BEST Small Business Book Ever Written written by David Larson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Business for Punks written by James Watt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forget about building a business—businesses fail and fade into oblivion. Start a revolution instead. James Watt started a rebellion against tasteless mass market beers by founding BrewDog, now one of the world’s best-known and fastest growing craft breweries, famous for beers, bars, and crowdfunding. In this smart, funny book, he shares his story and explains how you too can tear up the rule book and start a company on your own terms. It’s an anarchic, DIY guide to entrepreneurship—and a new manifesto for business. After spending seven years on the high seas of the North Atlantic, James Watt started BrewDog craft brewery in Scotland with his best friend, Martin Dickie. They didn’t have a business plan. All they had was a mis­sion to revolutionize beer drinking and make other people as passionate about craft beer as they are. They’ve succeeded. Within a few years, BrewDog was huge—a world-famous craft brewery with beer bars around the globe and hundreds of thousands of fans. Those fans became literal backers of their business with the introduction of an unprecedented crowdfunding movement, Equity for Punks. And in rewriting the record books and kickstarting a revolution—James and BrewDog inadvertently forged a whole new approach to business. Business for Punks bottles the essence of James’s methods in an accessible, honest mani­festo. Among his mantras: · Cash is motherf*cking king. Cash is the lifeblood of your company. Monitor every penny as if your life depends on it—because it does. · Get people to hate you. You won’t win by try­ing to make everyone happy, so don’t bother. Let haters fuel your fire while you focus on your hard-core fans. · Steal and bastardize from other fields. Take inspiration freely wherever you find it— except from people in your own industry. · Job interviews suck. They never reveal if someone will be a good employee, only how good that person is at interviews. Instead, take them for a test drive and see if they’re passionate and a good culture fit. Business for Punks rethinks conventional business wisdom so you can go beyond the norm. It’s an anarchic, indispensable guide to thriving on your own terms.

Download or read book The Go Go Years written by John Brooks and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A humorous and keen look at the roller-coaster boom and bust of the 1960s and 1970s by the New York Times–bestselling author of Business Adventures John Brooks blends humor and astute analysis in this tale of the staggering “go-go” growth of the 1960s stock market and the ensuing crashes of the 1970s. Swiftly rising stocks promised fast money to investors, and voracious cupidity drove the market. But the bull market couldn’t last forever, and the fall was just as staggering as the ascent. Including the astounding story of H. Ross Perot’s loss of $450 million in one day; the tale of America’s “Last Gatsby,” Eddie Gilbert; and the account of financier Saul Steinberg’s failed grab for Chemical Bank, this book is replete with hallmark financial acumen and vivid storytelling. A classic of business history, The Go-Go Years provides John Brooks’s signature insight into the events of yesteryear and stands the test of time.

Download or read book The Business Book Bible written by Derek B Lewis and published by Derek Lewis Ink. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Tracy said, "This book gives you a proven strategy to write and sell an excellent book on any business subject you know and care about." Todd Sattersten, co-author of "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time," said, "No one tells you how hard it is to write a business book. Luckily, Derek's 'Bible' makes it easier-much easier." Literary agents, publishers, Fortune 500 consultants-they've all had rave reviews for "The Business Book Bible," the only full-length, in-depth book on how to put together a great thought leadership book. There are plenty of writing guides out there for memoirs, general business communication, crime thrillers, or romance novels. But until now, there's never been anywhere would-be business authors could turn to for help. That's unfortunate because business books present a completely different set of challenges. For example: - How do you connect with your readers so they trust you and your advice? - How do you artfully point to your products and services without coming off like a late-night infomercial? - How do you keep your reader engaged throughout the book, especially if your material is--shall we say--less than thrilling? No other writing guide can teach you what you need to know...and do you really want to learn the hard way? With writing your book, you want to get it right the first time. Written by a business ghostwriter, "The Business Book Bible" covers everything you need to know, from framing your authority to picking the perfect title, plus: - Figuring out how long your book should be - Winning the battle of writer's block - Nailing down your real reader (and what to do when they're different than your ideal client) - Giving away the secret sauce - The unforgivable sin in writing - Looking like a pro (and not a rank amateur) - Acting like a publisher (even if you have one) ....and much, much more. You'll learn how to follow the same 5-step process the author uses to write and ghostwrite multiple books a year. You'll see how to keep your book focused and how to cut the unnecessary material. You'll discover multiple methods of getting your ideas out of your head--and most of them don't even involve writing! John Spence, voted one of the top 100 business thought leaders in America, said, "As the author of five business books, I sure wish I had read this one earlier in my career. It's would've saved me a lot of time, headache, stress, and money." Here's a startling example of just one of the great tips and tricks contained in the book: you don't start writing a book by actually writing the book. One of the biggest mistakes first-time authors make is sitting down at their computer, expecting to start with the first word of chapter one, and then write all the way through to "The End." If only it were that easy! Amateurs try to get it perfect right from the start. The pros know that writing is a process. You start by getting all your ideas out of head and onto paper first. You'll have a jumbled mess that looks like a new jigsaw puzzle. You have to sift and sort through it to find the material worth using. Then and only then can you start piecing the puzzle together. It's a painstaking, time-consuming process-but one that's well worth it. Peter Economy, "The Management Guy" at Inc. said, "Derek Lewis's 'The Business Book Bible' is by far the most comprehensive book I have ever seen on the nuts and bolts of writing a business book. If you're planning to write a business book, then you would do well to read this book first." Start writing your book by reading this one!"

Download or read book Getting Everything You Can Out of All You ve Got written by Jay Abraham and published by Truman Talley Books. This book was released on 2000-02-21 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A trusted advisor to America's top corporations and recognized as one of today's preeminent marketing experts, Jay Abraham has created a program of proven strategies to help you realize undreamed-of success! Unseen opportunities face each of us every day. Using clear examples from his own experience, Jay explains just how easy it can be to find and/or create new opportunities for wealth-building in any existing business, enterprise, or venture. And just how easy can it be? One entrepreneur took the concept of the ballpoint pen and refined it into a multimillion-dollar idea: roll-on deodorant. Fred Smith of Federal Express took the methods that banks use for clearing checks to develop an overnight delivery company that has revolutionized the way we do business. Now, what have you seen--or are going to see--that you could take and turn to your advantage? In Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition, the program focuses on helping you spot the hidden assets, overlooked opportunities, and untapped resources around you, and gives you, and gives you fresh eyes with which to see and capitalize on them. You'll also learn how to adapt and apply these tools to your unique circumstances to maximize your income, influence, power, and success.

Download or read book Profits Aren t Everything They re the Only Thing written by George Cloutier and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When small- and medium-sized business owners first hear George Cloutier's rules, they often think he's a madman. His controversial rules for doing business—rules that aren't taught at Harvard Business School—include: The best family business has one member. Weekends are for working, not playing golf or coaching. Never pay your vendors on time. Wear your control freak badge with pride. Quit denial: if your business is failing during a recession, it's your fault. As the founder and CEO of American Management Services, Cloutier has emerged as "the leading advocate for small business" (Reuters), having spent over thirty years guiding business owners through the tough choices that line the road to profitability. He and his company have worked with more than six thousand companies, averting certain ruin for some and generating seemingly impossible growth and profitability for others. Cloutier graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Business School, but the lessons in this book aren't from there. Unlike his classmates, most of whom headed straight to Wall Street, Cloutier has been on the docks at 2 a.m. counting heads of lettuce for food distributors to make sure nothing would disappear without a waybill. He's spent long, overnight hours in truck stops, making sure sticky fingers stayed out of the tills. Cloutier and his colleagues at American Management Services become personal pitt bulls to the CEOs who hire them, doing whatever it takes to bring their clients' businesses back into long-term profitability. Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing is the long- overdue wake-up call for 23 million small- and midsize business owners across America. This book serves up the hard-boiled, unadulterated truth to aspiring and established entrepreneurs, without apologies. His no-nonsense advice may be hard to hear at times, but it works.

Download or read book Never Lose a Customer Again written by Joey Coleman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning speaker and business consultant Joey Coleman teaches audiences and companies all over the world how to turn a one-time purchaser into a lifelong customer. Coleman's theory of building customer loyalty isn't about focusing on marketing or closing the sale: It's about the First 100 Days® after the sale and the interactions the customer experiences. While new customers experience joy, euphoria, and excitement, these feelings quickly shift to fear, doubt, and uncertainty as buyer's remorse sets in. Across all industries, somewhere between 20%-70% of newly acquired customers will stop doing business with a company with the first 100 days of being a new customer because they feel neglected in the early stages of customer onboarding. In Never Lose a Customer Again, Coleman offers a philosophy and methodology for dramatically increasing customer retention and as a result, the bottom line. He identifies eight distinct emotional phases customers go through in the 100 days following a purchase. From an impulse buy at Starbucks to the thoughtful purchase of a first house, all customers have the potential to experience the eight phases of the customer journey. If you can understand and anticipate the customers' emotions, you can apply a myriad of tools and techniques -- in-person, email, phone, mail, video, and presents -- to cement a long and valuable relationship. Coleman's system is presented through research and case studies showing how best-in-class companies create remarkable customer experiences at each step in the customer lifecycle. In the "Acclimate" stage, customers need you to hold their hand and over-explain how to use your product or service. They're often too embarrassed to admit they're confused. Take a cue from Canadian software company PolicyMedical and their challenge of getting non-technical users to undergo a complex installation and implementation process. They turned a series of project spreadsheets and installation manuals into a beautiful puzzle customers could assemble after completing each milestone. In the "Adopt" stage, customers should be welcomed to the highest tier of tribal membership with both public and private recognitions. For instance, Sephora's VIB Rogue member welcome gift provides a metallic membership card (private recognition) and a members-only shade of lipstick (for public display). In the final stage, "Advocate," loyal customers and raving fans are primed to provide powerful referrals. That's how elite entrepreneurial event MastermindTalks continues to sell-out their conference year after year - with zero dollars spent on marketing. By surprising their loyal fans with amazing referral bonuses (an all-expenses paid safari?!) they guarantee their community will keep providing perfect referrals. Drawing on nearly two decades of consulting and keynoting, Coleman provides strategies and systems to increase customer loyalty. Applicable to companies in any industry and of any size (whether measured in employee count, revenue, or total number of customers), implementing his methods regularly leads to an increase in profits of 25-100%. Working with well-known clients like Hyatt Hotels, Zappos, and NASA, as well as mom-and-pop shops and solo entrepreneurs around the world, Coleman's customer retention system has produced incredible results in dozens of industries. His approach to creating remarkable customer experiences requires minimal financial investment and will be fun for owners, employees, and teams to implement. This book is required reading for business owners, CEOs, and managers - as well as sales and marketing teams, account managers, and customer service representatives looking for easy to implement action steps that result in lasting change, increased profits, and lifelong customer retention.