Top 10 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read
Whether you thing you can or not, you’re right. As an entrepreneur, your mind set should be like that of other entrepreneurs. For this to be achieved you need to feed your mind with the right information and learn from m the experiences of other entrepreneurs like yourself. Here’s a list of books to read to get you started:
1. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, By Howard Schultz
Starbucks had built a coffee empire selling not just espresso and lattes but selling an experience. The company sought to create a mega corporation whose stores felt local to its patrons. And that empire was built through the ambition and creative genius of Howard Schultz. But this visionary business leader had made a near-fatal miscalculation about how much his customers would pull back on $4 coffee when the economy tanked.
Onward teaches us a fundamental lesson that took me some time to learn: Sometimes you need to check your ego at the door and admit when what you are doing isn’t working, even if it worked in the past. Read Onward to learn directly from one of America’s great entrepreneurs.
2. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
In the wake of his untimely death in 2011, a lot was written about how Steve Jobs permanently changed humanity’s relationship with technology. But none of the tributes and obituaries came close to the intimacy of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography. Isaacson, whose biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein are also both excellent, was given unprecedented access to Jobs in his final years. And the result is a book that every entrepreneur should read when doubts and nay-saying begin to eat away at your determination to succeed.
The idea that the world’s greatest CEO and entrepreneur was somehow born that way is dispelled in this book. Steve Jobs learned through failure. And although I don’t agree with Jobs’ approach to everything, when tough times come, I’ve found this perspective invaluable.
3. The Wisdom of Failure: How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price, by Larry Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey
This book is about some of the greatest business mistakes in recent memory and what we can learn from them. Exhaustively researched and based on interviews with hundreds of executives, the authors offer insights into what key blind-spots have resulted in business failure. The lessons Weinzimmer and McConoughey relay are truly insightful.
This book teaches entrepreneurs to avoid the pitfalls that have tripped up some of the biggest companies in the country. Some key takeaways include: Just because your competition is doing something, doesn’t mean you should adjust your own strategy; Sometimes being innovative can distract from what your business is best at; don’t let you your ego prevent you from knowing when to quit; and many, many more.
4. Mastery by Robert Greene
The value of apprenticeship: Too many entrepreneurs want to “fake it till they make it” instead of taking the time to develop the necessary skills it takes to succeed with their craft. It also acknowledges the fact that mastery is a process, which should alleviate entrepreneurs from the idea that greatness is either achieved quickly, or not at all.
The myth of mastery being reserved for ‘special’ people: It’s easy to look at a successful entrepreneur on the cover of a magazine, or a TED speaker on YouTube and think that the person has been blessed with luck, financing or superior genes. But everyone walks the same path to “mastery.” And that path contains failure, setback and sometimes years of wandering. The only thing “special” about people who achieve mastery is their decision to stay committed.
5. Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
Like growing a plant, the book shows founders how to develop businesses steadily. He advises against growing a business too quickly or borrowing a lot of money in the beginning: wise words.
10. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Even though this book was written in 1937, it is still relevant for understanding what outstanding business people do differently from the rest of us. The author interviews hundreds of successful individuals and identifies common behaviours and traits amongst them.
6. The Ascent Of Money: A Financial History Of The World by Niall Ferguson
If you have never taken a macroeconomic course, this could be a worthy supplement. It explains the evolution of the financial system around the world. This will be crucial in grasping the external elements that will either ensure your business’s boom or bust.
7. How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
As an entrepreneur, you will have to excel at working with people. Not only will you need to lead a team, you will also need to convince others (customers, investors, etc) to believe in your business. This is a mandatory guide for anyone that needs to influence people to advance in their career – oh right, that’s basically everyone.
8. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
As we at Fiverr know, new entrepreneurs are often creative individuals. This book literally helps you “steal like an artist.” It shows you how to find ideas you want to implement and re-appropriate them as your own.
9. Choose Yourself! by James Altucher
It’s not enough to simply want success or to believe in the possibility of success. Instead, every entrepreneur must face the reality that nobody else is responsible for you. Altucher speaks from experience as someone whose story takes so many twists and turns that you may find yourself loving him and becoming frustrated with him at the same time. But ultimately you’ll probably arrive at the same conclusion he did — that we must choose ourselves if we wish to succeed. This book can be is a wake-up call for entrepreneurs who have not taken the reigns of their life and business.
10 . Built To Sell by John Warrillow
You may have heard the advice “Have an exit strategy” when starting a business. But not many entrepreneurs have considered what it takes to actually sell a business. In Built To Sell, John Warrillow presents a compelling case for entrepreneurs to approach their business from the perspective of selling it one day.
While this may seem counterintuitive for the passionate entrepreneur who loves his or her work and wouldn’t want to stop doing it, the real genius of this approach is that it can help readers create more value in their business. Namely, developing a business that is built on systems rather than a legacy business for which the founder has his or her hand in every day-to-day affair. That’s just not scalable.
Mbali Radebe
