1. Miracle On 34th Street
What You’ll Learn: The greatest lesson in salesmanship that no one follows.
The Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Santa Claus, working at Macy’s, goes out of his way to help cus-tomers, often encouraging them to shop elsewhere for the best deals. Instead of losing custom-ers, Macy’s becomes overwhelmed with customers seeking Santa’s help. Macy’s sales in-crease simply by doing what’s best for the customer – too bad they don’t do this in the real world, but you should.
2. Click
What You’ll Learn: What it’s like to fast-forward life.
The Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Adam Sandler wants to keep fast-forwarding to the major accom-plishments of his career. He loses the balance between work and home, and misses the les-sons hidden in life’s daily routine. Entrepreneurs are generally of the “I want it all now” breed, and this movie will show you how wrong that is. Take the good with the bad, and never stop pursuing your entrepreneurial AND family dreams.
3. Glengarry Glen Ross
What You’ll Learn: Lying, cheating and stealing never work long-term.
The Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Hard-close sales work…for a single sale. Ultimately your reputa-tion is ruined, and deceived people lie in your wake. This movie is all about what not to do as an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, too many businesses still follow these practices. Get in an industry with a “Glengarry” reputation and be honest, reliable and go out of your way to be helpful. Your business will flourish.
4. Office Space
What You’ll Learn: If you don’t like what you are doing, change.
The Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Follow your gut. If you hate what you do, change. Just don’t steal – that never works. Instead, find your passion and pursue it. And if you already own a business you love, don’t mess with Melvin. He might just burn down your entire building.
5. Jerry Maguire
What You’ll Learn: What you expect when launching your business never comes true.
The Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Hands down, the best movie of all time for entrepreneurs. Jerry leaves his big-money agency position to go out and start his own shop. Just like any entrepre-neur who leaves to start their own business, he suspects every client will leave with him. There is no easier way to start a business, right? This movie shows the real deal. Nothing ever goes as planned.
MIKE MICHALOWICZ (pronounced mi-KAL-o-wits) started his first business at the age of 24, moving his young family to the only safe place he could afford – a retirement building. With no experience, no contacts and no savings, he systematically bootstrapped a multi-million-dollar busi-ness. Then he did it again. And again. Now he is doing it for other entrepreneurs. Mike is the CEO of Provendus Group, a consulting firm that ignites explosive growth in companies that have plateaued; a former small-business columnist for The Wall Street Journal; MSNBC’s business makeover ex-pert; a keynote speaker on entrepreneurship; and the author of the cult classic book The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His newest book, The Pumpkin Plan, has already been called “the next E-Myth!” For