Business & Economics Audiobooks

The Pampered Chef: The Story of One of America's Most Beloved Companies

"The Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher’s extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation (now owned by Berkshire Hathaway) with tens of thousands of independent Kitchen Consultants who present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people. The Pampered Chef is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a “one-woman show,” chronicles the company’s gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including: • Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneurs • How to create a business concept and set your priorities • Knowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn’t overwhelm your operations or supplies • How to counter the naysayers and deal with adversity Today, as at the company’s founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef’s mission. The Pampered Chef brings Christopher’s recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere."

Doris Christopher (Author), Kimberly Farr (Narrator)

Audiobook

The 11 Immutable Laws Of Internet Branding

"As we move into the twenty-first century the most important question for businesses everywhere is: What are we going to do about the Internet? The two most qualified people in the country to answer that question may be Al Ries and Laura Ries. Not only are they the authors of the BusinessWeek bestseller The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, they are also consultants to dozens of Fortune 500 companies. This book is the result of their hands-on work with both large and small companies as well as Internet start-ups and established Internet brands. Brash, bold, and mercifully succinct, The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding is the definitive text for businesses eager to jump on the Internet expressway. In the book you'll learn why: - The Internet can be a business or a medium for your brand, but not both.- Interactivity is the single most important ingredient of any Internet site.- The kiss of death for an Internet brand is a common name.- Being second in a category is tantamount to being nowhere.- You have to be fast. You have to be first. You have to be focused.- Everyone is talking about convergence while just the opposite is happening. The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding will also give you tangible information on how to successfully build your company, product, service, or self into a hot and profitable brand on the Internet. Specifically you'll learn how to: - Build a brand that will dominate a category over an extended period of time.- Find a proper name (instead of a common one) for your Website.- Take your brand into the global marketplace.- Avoid the biggest mistake in Internet branding: the belief that you can do everything.- Take advantage of the transformations that will occur in all aspects of life, thanks to the power of the Internet. With characteristic counterculture observations and signature marketing savvy, Ries and Ries bring their expertise to branding on the Internet, the most challenging problem in the world of marketing today. No one who wants to turn a brand into a global phenomenon should ignore their sage advice."

Al Ries, Laura Ries (Author), Uncredited (Narrator)

Audiobook

Focus

"Every company has it at one point. But all too often, it gets lost along the way, leaving the company--and its workers--with an unclear sense of direction. Now the co-author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing offers solutions for restoring the dispersed focus of a company back to its key service, and discarding everything else. With clear examples from a variety of industries, Al Ries demonstrates how crucial focus can be. Certainly it helps explain why Coca-Cola's stock is worth two times that of Pepsi-Co., even though Pepsi has twice the sales and twice the assets. And it is a key component to the success of on-track companies such as Volvo, Sun Microsystems, and Little Caesars. Al Ries's extensive marketing experience gives his managerial advice a cutting-edge angle as he defines a new standard of corporate competitiveness for companies big and small. So get focused! Your future depends on it."

Al Ries (Author), Al Ries (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fast Innovation: Achieving Superior Differentiation, Speed to Market, and Increased Profitability

"“How can I create an innovation engine that will consistently deliver substantial organic growth?” This question is the number-one issue for most CEOs and senior executives today. Innovation is a critical driver of organic growth, yet based on the authors' research, only a small percent of companies effectively use innovation to sustain long-term, profitable growth. And the stakes couldn't be higher-failure to create successful new products, services, and business models causes stagnating or declining profits. Now, for the first time, experts Michael George, James Works and Kimberly Watson-Hemphill explain the surprising and significant gap between the CEO's growth goals and actual performance. The authors, who are experts at connecting strategy to execution, give you a complete blueprint for exploiting the strategic and operational dimensions of innovation. Using fresh insights about the true drivers of fast time-to-market and the inadequate success rate of innovation, Fast Innovation reveals: - Why current approaches to innovation fail - A new strategic and tactical plan that will help your company dramatically reduce time-to-market by 50 to 80 percent - The secret for finding out what your customers really want (not just what they say they want) - Tools and methods for turning customer insights into ideas that will generate significant ROI - The key levers that senior leadership must engage to create innovation capability across the business You'll receive specific actionable solutions for driving disruptive and sustaining innovation at the strategic, portfolio and project level. You'll also learn how to improve how much time your innovation teams actually spend innovating, and discover the changes that must be launched at the corporate level in order to enable the whole business to embrace and get results from this approach."

Clayton M. Christensen, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill, Michael L. George (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Intelligent Investor

"''By far the best book on investing ever written.'' —Warren Buffett The definitive book on value investing, this hardcover edition feature’s Benjamin Graham’s original wisdom from 1949 and includes a foreword by John C. Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of “value investing”—which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies—has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication. Vital and indispensable, The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals."

Benjamin Graham (Author), Bill McGowan (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Branded World: Adventures in Public Relations and the Creation of Superbrands

"Branding is ultimately a way of differentiating your product from the competition. Whether you're selling a celebrity image, automobiles, or a financial service, your goal is to make your brand the most recognizable by the consumer. But there's much more to effective branding than ubiquitous advertising and a memorable slogan. Public relations is becoming key to the entire strategy. PR is much more than just damage control for when something goes wrong; it's an effective way to communicate the story of your brand through media outlets that the public trusts. Filled with engaging stories and nuts-and-bolts tips, A Branded World shows marketers and brand managers how to tap into the power of PR to build stronger brands."

Michael Levine (Author), Lloyd James (Narrator)

Audiobook

Guerrilla Negotiating: Unconventional Weapons and Tactics to Get What You Want

"In this sequel to the successful Guerrilla Selling, listeners learn insider secrets such as the ten most common mistakes made in negotiation, one hundred negotiating weapons, and twenty things you can expect to gain in a negotiation. Guerrilla Selling® tactics help you get the most out of any negotiation."

Jay Conrad Levinson, Mark S. A. Smith, Orvel Ray Wilson (Author), Edward Lewis (Narrator)

Audiobook

Guerrilla P.R. Wired: Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere In-Betw

"Guerilla P.R. Wired transports Michael Levine’s legendary street-fighting P.R. tactics to the wide-open domain of the World Wide Web. Motivating, brilliant, and filled with invaluable strategies for getting maximum attention regardless of your budget, Guerrilla P.R. Wired will show you how to get noticed now and help you craft a message that is both powerful and profitable in today’s fast-moving, wired world."

Michael Levine (Author), Lloyd James (Narrator)

Audiobook

Guerrilla Teleselling: New Unconventional Weapons and Tactics to Sell When You Can’t Be There in Per

"The first book to apply guerrilla sales and marketing tactics to the unique, high-pressure environment of electronic communications, this groundbreaking resource is packed with valuable tips, expert advice, and insider secrets on finding, closing, and increasing sales by phone and fax as well as via e-mail and the Internet."

Jay Conrad Levinson, Mark S. A. Smith, Orvel Ray Wilson (Author), Edward Lewis (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Chain Gang: One Newspaper versus the Gannett Empire

"One of the biggest under-told stories of the past twenty years is the swallowing up of small independent newspapers by large corporations. This is the dramatic account of two battles waged by Richard McCord with his independent newspapers against the Gannett Company, one of the country's largest newspaper chains. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, McCord owned one of two small local papers. When Gannett purchased his competing paper, McCord set out to investigate the tactics Gannett had used in the past to obliterate independent competition. His research yielded such ominous reports that McCord decided to publish them in a preemptive strike against the competition. Now it was war—and McCord would soon learn first-hand what he was up against in keeping his paper alive."

Richard McCord (Author), Richard McCord (Narrator)

Audiobook

The On-Time, On-Target Manager

"Ken Blanchard's phenomenal bestsellers, such as The One Minute Manager® and Raving Fans®, have made him a globally recognized business legend. Now, he has joined with noted business author Steve Gottry to explore one of the most common and insidious problems plaguing the workplace -- procrastination. The On-Time, On-Target Manager tells the highly recognizable story of Bob, a middle manager who tends to put things off to the last minute. He misses deadlines, rationalizes, justifies, and tries to explain. Luckily, Bob is sent to his company's CEO -- a new kind of CEO -- the ''Chief Effectiveness Officer'' -- who helps him deal with the three negative side effects of procrastination: lateness, poor work quality, and stress to himself and others. Bob learns how to overcome procrastination, and transforms himself into a productive On-Time, On-Target Manager through the Three P strategy. With this engaging parable, Blanchard and Gottry tackle the problem of procrastination head-on, offering practical strategies any professional can immediately put into practice to improve his or her performance."

Ken Blanchard (Author), Brian Corrigan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cracking Your Retirement Nest Egg (without Scrambling Your Finances): 25 Things You Must Know before

"Whatever you have-or haven't-put away, if you are getting serious about retirement, this book can show you the right moves to make and the pitfalls to avoid. You may not be sure where to allocate your investments or how to structure a comfortable income that won't run out. You may never have heard of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that can make retirement savings-capital gains and income-tax free, if you can control what you earn in your last year before retiring. By understanding what you have to decide and when, you can move into retirement on solid financial ground. The cost of not knowing the rules and of missing key deadlines is too high."

Margaret A. Malaspina (Author), Celeste Lawson (Narrator)

Audiobook