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Discover five impactful business books that go beyond inspiration, offering actionable steps for your next moves. These books steer clear of lifestyle boasts and rags-to-riches tales, focusing instead on equipping readers with essential skills and knowledge to effect real change in their lives. Prepare to be inspired and gain practical insights on what works, what doesn’t, and the concrete steps to attain your goals.
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Shut Up and Listen!: Hard Business Truths that Will Help You Succeed by Tilman Fertitta
Synopsis:
For entrepreneurs ready to reach the next level of success, small business owner turned multibillionaire Tilman Fertitta shares the commonsense principles that have rocketed his worldwide hospitality empire to the top.
For aspiring entrepreneurs or people in business, this book will help you take your company to the next level. When you put this book down, you’ll know what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong to operate your business, and if you’re just getting started, it will help set you up for success.
Tilman Fertitta, also known as the Billion Dollar Buyer, started his hospitality empire thirty years ago with just one restaurant. So he knows the challenges that business owners face, as well as the common pitfalls that cause them to go under. Over the years he’s stayed true to the principles that helped him scale his business to what is believed to be the largest single-shareholder company in America, with over $4 billion in revenue, including hundreds of restaurants (Landry’s Seafood, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Morton’s Steakhouse, Mastro’s, The Chart House, Rainforest Café, and over forty more restaurant concepts) and five Golden Nugget Casinos. He’s also the sole owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. In Shut Up and Listen!, he shares the key insights that made it all possible.
When entrepreneurs appear on Billion Dollar Buyer, the biggest obstacles they often face are ones they don’t suspect: not knowing your numbers, not knowing your strengths and weaknesses, or not being willing to go that extra mile with your customers. Fertitta has seen it all. He knows that what you aren’t paying attention to can either sink your business or become the very things that launch you to the top. As Fertitta says:
“You might think you know what you’re doing, but I’m going to show you what you don’t know.”
Fertitta shares straight-talk “Tilmanisms” around six key action items that any entrepreneur can adopt today:
- Be the Bull
- No Spare Customers
- Change, Change, Change
- Know Your Numbers
- Follow the 95/5 Rule
- Take No Out of Your Vocabulary
A groundbreaking, no-holds-barred book, Shut Up and Listen! offers practical, hard-earned wisdom from one of the most successful business owners in the world.
About the Author:
Tilman Fertitta, a Houston native, is an accomplished businessman and recognized as a world leader in the dining, hospitality, entertainment, and gaming industries, and who Forbes referred to as “the richest restauranteur in the world.” Fertitta is the star of his own reality TV show on CNBC, Billion Dollar Buyer, and is also the sole owner of Fertitta Entertainment, which owns the restaurant giant Landry’s, the Golden Nugget Casinos and Hotels, and the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

No B.S. Trust Based Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Trust in an Understandably Un-trusting World by Dan S. Kennedy and Matt Zagula
Synopsis:
My research shows we are heading into a major shake-out in business that will determine the leaders for decades to come. This will REQUIRE creative marketing and positionin, and there is no better source than Dan Kennedy on this topic. His book No B.S. Guide to Trust-Based marketing is rich with vital insights.” -Harry S. Dent, Jr., author, The Great Crash Ahead
Trust Between Consumers and Businesses is Gone
Here’s How to Fix It
Internationally recognized millionaire maker,” Dan S. Kennedy, joined by entrepreneur and financial consultant, Matt Zagula, show you how to break down the barriers caused by the trust no one” mantra invading every customer’s mind today.
They deliver an eye-opening look at the core of all business trust, and teach you the secrets to gaining it, keeping it, and using it to build competitive differentiation, create price elasticity, attract more affluent clients, and inspire referrals. You’ll get the essential strategies required to build trust in an understandably untrusting world, and in turn, attract both business and profits.
Covers
8 ways to demonstrate trustworthiness to prospective clients
The #1 secret desire of today’s untrusting prospects how to understand it, respond to it, and use it to transform marketing, prospecting, and presentations
How to avoid dumb mistakes that scream salesman” to prospects
Why Where can I find clients?” is the wrong question. The right question is: How can I construct a business persona and life so that clients seek me out, with trust in place in advance?
How to keep products, services and prospects away from the avalanche of competitive and confusing information online
The incorrect assumption that trust is built by imparting information and knowledge and a breakthrough technique to replace this mistake.

Accessing the Media: How to Get Good Press by Jill Osborn
Synopsis:
Accessing the Media takes the reader behind the scenes to understand how best to work with press to get publicity. Perfect for politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, and media junkies, this reference provides an insider’s look at how the modern newsroom works, detailing the different roles of reporters, editors, and producers. Readers will learn how to forge relationships with media personnel in television, radio, print, and the web to craft the press coverage they want.
Award-winning journalist Jill Osborn exposes the three strategic steps that must be used to gain favorable coverage with the media at just the right time. She gives you the inside scoop on how to think like a national or local journalist so you can control the headlines. And she even provides sample press releases to help shape your message. When reading Accessing the Media, you will have a personal media consultant without the cost of hiring one.
Whether you are running for office, looking to improve visibility for your business, or simply want a deeper understanding of what you see and read in the news, Accessing the Media is the perfect guide to getting your story out to the world.
About the Author:
Jill Osborn is an award-winning columnist and political correspondent. She worked in a congressional office on Capitol Hill and for a top DC lobbying firm and went on to be a contributor at FOX News. Jill lives with her husband and children in North Carolina.

The Toyota Way, Second Edition: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker
Synopsis:
How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry
In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota’s worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.
Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota’s principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:
- Eliminating wasted time and resources
- Building quality into workplace systems
- Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology
- Producing in small quantities
- Turning every employee into a quality control inspector
About the Author:
Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is a professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and cofounder and director of the Japan Technology Management Program at the University of Michigan.

Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons by Lewis Schiff
Synopsis:
In Business Brilliant, Lewis Schiff combines compelling storytelling with ground-breaking research to show the rest of us what America’s self-made rich already know: It’s synergy, not serendipity that produces success.
He explodes common myths about wealth and explains how legendary entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Suze Orman, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffet have subscribed to a set of priorities that’s completely different from those of the middle class.
Schiff identifies the seven distinct principles practiced by individuals who may or may not be any smarter than the rest of the population, but seem to understand instinctively how money is made. This guide also reveals how these business icons excel in areas of team building, risk management, and leadership development to accumulate their wealth.
He offers a practical four-step program, from choosing one’s livelihood and pinpointing skills to focus on, to negotiating job terms and salary, in order to bring upon greater success.
Business Brilliant by Lewis Schiff, coauthor of The Middle Class Millionaire: The Rise of the New Rich and How They are Changing America and The Armchair Millionaire, can help you can achieve better results in your business and in your career.
From the Back Cover:
Ask a member of the middle class what it takes to become wealthy, and she’ll tell you it takes a bold new idea. Tell that to a self-made millionaire, and he’ll vehemently disagree. What explains the difference in mind-set between the self-made wealthy and the rest of us? It’s not what you think, as journalist and entrepreneur Lewis Schiff convincingly illustrates through groundbreaking research and compelling storytelling.
For decades, the middle class has believed that the road to success meant working hard and playing by rules passed down from previous generations. But as the 2008 economic crisis has made clear, the old rules no longer apply. While household net worth has declined for most, self-made business leaders—entrepreneurially minded individuals born into the middle class who have accumulated significant wealth—have prospered. What makes these have-mores financially successful while the rest of us have never felt more uncertain about our professional and financial futures?
In Business Brilliant, Lewis Schiff reveals the eye-opening findings from a national survey of middle-class workers and self-made millionaires, offering practical guidance to show the rest of us what America’s self-made rich already know. Through his research, he holds a mirror to our most commonly held beliefs about success and then reveals the truth about how wealth is really created by surveying the truly wealthy. In doing so, he explodes the conventional wisdom and identifies the distinct principles practiced by individuals who may or may not be any smarter than the rest of the population but seem to understand instinctively how money is made. They don’t employ business-as-usual practices; they adopt a “Business Brilliant” mind-set. The book illustrates how these self-made millionaires choose their careers, negotiate to win, and leverage social networks to accumulate their wealth.
Schiff argues that it is the synergy behind seven uncommon practices, not serendipity or luck, that produces success. He offers a practical four-step program anyone can follow to position themselves to succeed more often and a roadmap to compare your own Business Brilliance to the executives and entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated our rapidly changing economy. While Business Brilliant doesn’t promise to make you rich, it can help you achieve better results in your career and accumulate wealth faster.
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