This is a guest post from best selling author Shama Kabani on how to be a more effective entrepreneur. Shama shares her lessons learned on finding your spark, following your passion, and succeeding in business.

This is a guest post from best-selling authors Roger Conners and Tom Smith on personal accountability and how it’s the key to your success.

This is a guest post from Weldon “Wally” Long on how changing your thoughts, changes your life. Weldon learned to change fear into a positive motivating force in his life. With that force, he transformed an idea into a multi-million dollar business just six years after he was released from prison.

This is a guest post from Neil Senturia on his lessons learned as an entrepreneur. Neil is the current CEO of Blackbird Ventures and the author of I’m There For You, Baby; The Entrepreneur s Guide to the Galaxy.

This is a guest post from Gino Wickman. Gino is the author of the award-winning book, “Traction: Get a Grip on your Business.” Gino is also an entrepreneur with skill and his passion is helping business owners and leaders get what they want out of their business.

“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera

I’ve put together a comprehensive list of marketing books that I’ve found to be insightful or useful in some way.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

One of the best ways to deal with change is to anticipate it. At the beginning of each year, I take a step back to see the forest for the trees.

“Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.”

One of the questions I keep asking is, what skills do we need to survive or thrive in our new world?

“A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.” — Michael Porter

Strategy guides your tactics. One of the most effective tools I’ve used for designing a strategy is a Strategy Diamond, which outlines the five key components of your strategy: arenas, vehicles, differentiation, staging, and economic value.

“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” — John Mason

In a world that’s over-crowded and over-flowing with competition, what makes some brands stand out? I’ve been trying to answer that question, and then I came across The Trouble with Brands, an article by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar.

“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” — Walt Disney

Whether you are a “one-man band” or a large organization, your customers are why you are in business. By having clarity on the customer segments, the customer needs, and the potential profitability of each segment, you can choose more effective segments to serve for a more sustainable business.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill

To predict explosive change before it occurs, you need to be able to distinguish a “spider” from a “starfish.” A starfish can replicate and spread a fluid set of ideas, beliefs, values, and norms. This is the hidden power behind things like Wikipedia, craigslist, Skype, and even the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

What are the key stages in an innovation life cycle? What is the end-to-end value chain for bringing innovation to market? In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the four key stages of innovation that the 94 high-leverage innovators have in common.

I’m a fan of learning from the best. What are the high-leverage strategies that the leaders in innovation use? In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the successful strategies that the 94 high-leverage innovators use.

“What do you want to achieve or avoid? The answers to this question are objectives. How will you go about achieving your desire results? The answer to this you can call strategy.” — By William E Rothschild
How do you create effective objectives?  Effective objectives are not straightjackets.  Instead, effective objectives are more like flight plans.  They set directions and guide the resources and energies. 
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about creating and setting effective objectives.
Key …

What is your business?  What will it be?  What should it be?   These are powerful questions to ask.
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about asking what your business is, will be, and should be to avoid spending your energy defending yesterday and instead, spend your energy exploiting today and the future.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Ask what your business should be.
Systematically abandon what no longer adds value. …

What leads to the downfall of established companies?  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about five bad Entrepreneurial habits that let small companies leapfrog over the big companies.
The Five Bad Entrepreneurial Habits
According to Drucker, the five bad habits are:

NIH (Not Invented Here)
“Cream” a market.
The belief in “quality.”
The illusion of the “premium” price.
Maximize rather than optimize.

The Downfall of Established Companies
Drucker writes how the bad habits let small companies use Entrepreneurial judo:
There are in particular five fairly common …

Working on your business, is working on your life.  Life if what business is about and your business should create more life for everyone.  In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about how going to work on your business, is going to work on your life.
Going to Work on the Business, is Going to Work on Your Life
Gerber writes that working on your business development is a metaphor for working on your life:
“On a more practical level, …

According to Michael E. Gerber, Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration are the backbone of every extraordinary business.  They are the essence of your Business Development process.   In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Gerber explains how Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration are key to your business development process.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration are the keys to your business.  Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration are the backbone of business development.
Innovate in how you do things.  Innovate in how your business …

How do you make an idea stick?  Mark Twain noted, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."  Meanwhile, people with important ideas, struggle to make their ideas stick. In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath write about six principles to make your ideas stick and help you get your point across.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Be a master of exclusion.   Less is more.  Ruthlessly prioritize …