Best Business Books Like Blue Ocean Strategy

Best Business Books Like Blue Ocean Strategy Looking for the best business books like Blue Ocean Strategy? Reading books that are similar to the ones you love definitely helps in finding impactful books. To reach the next level in your career, it is helpful to learn from those who have proven it can be done. And if you want to develop business skills books are one of the cheapest ways to obtain a crash course on a particular skill or area of expertise today. For the cost of a cheap dinner, you can get a business book that can transform your life. It's a bargain. Below are our handpicked recommendations, if you are looking for the best business books like the Blue Ocean Strategy. These business books are great for those of you looking to do anything from joining a management consulting firm, to advancing your career, learning or strengthening skills, building or growing a business, becoming more productive, making a bigger impact, preparing for a recession, increasing your earning potential and the value of your work, and everything in between. Hundreds of great business books come out every year. For most people, it is not possible to read them all.…

Business Case Analysis in a Consulting Study

Business Case Analysis in a Consulting Study Recent clients’ feedback indicates that most people do not know what the point of a study is, or what is the most important output to a client. Well, the point of any study in management consulting – whether it is a strategy, pricing, organizational optimization, salesforce effectiveness, operations or implementation study – is to ultimately present a business case analysis to the client. https://youtu.be/gzh4n5z0tjM Different but similar It is true that all these reports are different in their content; contents types like analysis and recommendations are starkly different in each of these study types. However, all studies share the same underlying analytical process around top-down, bottom-up, and hypothesis, etc. It doesn’t matter what type of study being carried out, the ultimate output to the client is a business case analysis, or what we in consulting also call the benefit case (the latter makes it clearer to anyone that you are presenting to the client the benefits of your recommendation). This article shows you the general steps you need to follow to generate business case analysis a client can effectively use. The Importance of Business Case Analysis The business case analysis, or of the benefit case analysis as its name implies, simply helps the…

Starting a consulting business with no experience

Starting a Consulting Business With No Experience Welcome to another episode from the series where we discuss the business of starting and growing a consulting business. This is episode number 5, called, "Starting a consulting business with no experience." We have two other podcast channels. One is the Strategy Skills iTunes channel which focuses on problem-solving within an actual strategy engagement. The other is focused on case interviews and management consulting (Case Interviews & Management Consulting iTunes channel). Now, many of you may say, “Well, I’m not interested in interviewing at McKinsey.” I understand. But we teach basic problem-solving skills there, such as how to make decision trees, how to build frameworks, how to set up objective functions, etc. For many people, we would recommend starting there and focusing on the episodes around problem-solving and the culture of management consulting firms. This is because you would need those skills to learn some of the more complex aspects that we teach. https://youtu.be/XQ85Qgo6tLA Starting a consulting business with no experience. Meaning, if you have never worked at a consulting firm Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I am going to focus on the question which I get often.…

Consulting Sales: How Should You Develop Your Strategy?

Consulting Sales: How Should You Develop Your Strategy? Welcome to the next episode of our management consulting iTunes channel How to Build and Grow a Consulting Firm, where we discuss the business of running and growing a consulting fir. In today's episode, I want to talk about a question everyone faces frequently. Every time things do not go well when it comes to growing a consulting firm you are forced to confront the question, “What should your consulting sales strategy be?” For example, let's imagine you are leaving a consulting firm to set up your own firm or working in an industry and want to consult back to your former employer and their competitors. You are going to have to ask yourself, what should your consulting sales strategy be. I am going to answer this question and we will discuss it with an anecdote from my past. https://youtu.be/xtHV80gjnME When you start a consulting firm, it is easy to get caught into a long process to study the market, think about your skills, understand the business models you have, and then develop your strategy. All of that is a waste of time. Many years ago, when I was a senior partner in corporate…

How to Sell Consulting Services: Secrets to Selling High Priced Consulting Services

How to Sell Consulting Services: Secrets to Selling High Priced Consulting Services Hi everyone and welcome to another podcast about How to Build and Grow a Consulting Firm or Practice. In today's episode, I would like to talk about new clients and address how to sell consulting services. I want to mention that this entire series is based on our experiences while helping numerous boutique consulting firms and offices of large firms as well as on our personal experiences. For FC Insiders, our loyalty members, we are launching an Insider version of this program, which is slightly difficult and a little bit different. While we will cover the same concepts, in the Insider version if the program we will discuss a case study of a fairly large firm with revenue of about two million dollars and how we help the firm to significantly increase that revenue, change their client mix, and so on. We will show you how to use each of the tools and techniques and how we took the client through each step. You can also go to our YouTube channel and watch the YouTube version with graphics (also inserted below). https://youtu.be/4nxU5V3xjCY How to sell consulting services: tip…

How Willpower Works: Decision Fatigue and 10 Ways Reduce It

How Willpower Works: Decision Fatigue and 9 Ways to Reduce It Have you noticed as the day progresses you become mentally tired and it is harder to make good decisions? By the end of the day, you do not understand what happened with your willpower. You are running on empty, often making poor choices and feeling cranky. This happens because of decision fatigue, also sometimes called choice fatigue, decision exhaustion or willpower fatigue. So today we going to speak about discuss 10 ideas to help you reduce making small and mundane decisions throughout the day, and in turn, reduce decision fatigue. Dr. Roy F. Baumeister: Willpower, Ego Depletion and Decision Fatigue This is a syndrome coined by social psychologist Dr. Roy F. Baumeister, which is based on the Freudian hypothesis of what he called "ego depletion." Through his experiments (decision fatigue research), Dr. Baumeister came to a conclusion: our willpower is finite. The more challenging and stressful the day, the more decisions we have to make, the faster we get to a point where it is very hard to make any additional good decisions. And this is when we start making unproductive and unhealthy choices. Decision fatigue is closely related to…

The role of a leader in a recession 2020

The Role of a Leader in a Recession 2020 In the previous article "How Can You Prepare for a Recession," we addressed the importance of taking the upcoming recession 2020 very seriously. As a leader, whatever you can do to protect your family, current clients, your organization, and your job, you must do it. In this article, we look at what is the role of a leader in a recession. A Good Leader Protects Their Family, Job, Clients, and Organization A leader does not kick back in a crisis. And certainly, a leader does not give up or hope that things will work out somehow. A leader intends to use a crisis to change the trajectory of their family, career, department, and organization. They use it as a time to show "what they're made of." Changing Jobs During a Recession Changing jobs in this market is very hard. If you are here on an H1B visa (permits a foreign national to work in the United States for a temporary period) or something like this, if we were in your place we would not be trying to change jobs now. You going to have a lot of problems. Instead, do what you…

Best business podcasts in 2020

Best Business Podcasts in 2020 Today we are going to talk about the best business podcasts. I was listening to podcasts well before it was popular. As many of you know, our company, FIRMSconsulting, was one of the first companies to go into podcasting and we published well over 500 free podcasts to date. And, thanks to our wonderful listeners, our 2 main channels are ranked top 1-10 for careers in many countries. And, obviously, I had to include them in the list here, as I believe they are some of the most valuable business podcast channels out there. Why should you listen to podcasts? So why should you listen to podcasts? Podcasting makes learning easy and convenient. I remember even at times when I had no free time to dedicate to learning, I would listen to podcasts on the way to work, on the way from work, and sometimes at lunch. I would listen to it while doing errands, doing things around the house or working out. And it allowed me to learn when I did not have any free time to learn. Most of us are incredibly busy. Right? We have family obligations, work obligations, community obligations. And sometimes…

The Confidence Myth: How to Succeed Despite Low Self Esteem

The Confidence Myth: How to Succeed Despite Low Self Esteem We can describe confidence as a belief in oneself. Belief in one's ability to figure things out and succeed, and acting in a way that conveys this belief. It is great to have a high level of confidence. It generally makes life easier. A great news is that confidence is not an innate, fixed characteristic. You can build it. But while you are still developing your confidence, remember that confidence should not stop you in achieving everything you set out to achieve. You don’t need confidence to succeed in life. What do you need instead? Play the cards you were given NOW and get things done. How Lack of Confidence Did Not Impact Career “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” -- Napoleon Hill Let me share a personal story that illustrates the confidence myth. At the beginning of my career I was working in the research back office of a major consulting firm. At that time, I had recently transferred from my previous job where I was serving as a manager at a small defense company. (I actually started as a front desk receptionist at that…