Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead
Couldn't load pickup availability
Success Made Simple
An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive
Erik Wesner (Author), Donald B. Kraybill (Foreword by)
9780470442371, Wiley
Hardback, published 16 April 2010
256 pages
23.6 x 16.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.458 kg
"I loved Wesner's comment that the Amish ‘don't need an M.B.A. to run an effective business....There's life in commerce for those more dedicated to the Golden Rule than the Golden calf.’ Nonprofit managers and employees would do well to take the lessons of personal responsibility, hard work, and a cheerful attitude to heart. After all, they really do engage in work that matters." —About.com, April 11, 2010 "Erik Wesner's new book, "Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive," might have been titled "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Being Amish." This fascinating and engagingly written book spells out the principles that guide Amish business owners, based on interviews with 60 Amish CEOs employing about 400 people in various enterprises." —LancasterOnline.com, April 10, 2010 "How can a people whose preferred mode of transportation is a horse and buggy do so well in the modern marketplace? That question intrigued Erik Wesner, a former sales manager. His exploration of the Amish approach to business can be found in his fascinating book Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive. Despite the group's insular nature, Wesner was able to live and work among its members for three years. ‘We're not going to become Amish,’ he says, ‘but I think some of the cultural values that the Amish display consistently are things that non-Amish people can adopt and incorporate.’"
—Time magazine, April 8, 2010
Articles, excerpts, slideshows, and mentions with the author also from:
—MSNBC Live with David Shuster, April 2, 2010
—Slideshow, FastCompany.com, April 1, 2010
—Michael Dresser, Business Talk Radio, March 23, 2010
—Q&A, The New York Post, March 22, 2010
The keys to better business from a thriving group of business owners-the Amish Business can be discouraging. According to US Department of Labor figures, only 44 percent of newly-opened firms will last four years. Amish firms, on the other hand, have registered a 95% survival rate over a five-year period. And in many cases, those businesses do remarkably well-as Donald Kraybill writes: "the phrase 'Amish millionaire' is no longer an oxymoron." Success Made Simple is the first practical book of Amish business success principles for the non-Amish reader. The work provides a platform of transferable principles--simple and universal enough to be applied in the non-Amish world, in a wide variety of business and management settings. With a focus on relationship-building and the big picture, Success Made Simple offers business owners everywhere the tools for better, smarter, more successful enterprises.
Foreword ix Preface: Unearthing the Secrets xiii A Note on Names xix 1 Eye to the horizon 1 Cultivating a Vision and Thriving Through Crisis 2 Getting smart 27 Hands-On Versus the Hallowed Halls 3 Market-bound 49 Excelling at Sales and Marketing 4 Doing unto others 75 The Crucial Customer Relationship 5 Choosing up sides 103 Getting the Right People in Place 6 Fishing lessons 127 Empowering Your Most Valuable Asset 7 Around the edges 155 Honing an Efficiency Mentality 8 The big picture 183 Getting What You Came For conclusion 205 Barn Raising appendix 207 Research and Interview Methodology Bibliography 211 Acknowledgments 215 About the Author 217 Index 219
By Donald B. Kraybill
Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ]
