When I first started becoming an entrepreneur, I was watching lots of videos, and taking many courses, all after a college degree in business administration. Yet, I knew there were aspects of entrepreneurship I needed to attain from other people’s experiences before my own. I asked over 20 extremely successful business professionals and entrepreneurs which books they recommend and that have changed their lives drastically.
After compiling the results, I came to these entrepreneur books, and have been appreciate and successful ever since. Now, I’m sharing these great books that guided me with you.
When I first started sales, the most important book I read was called, “SPIN Selling.” It definitely changed how I felt and thought about the process of selling. It takes you through the four criteria of a selling technique: Situation ( questions ) Problem ( questions ) Implication ( questions ) Need-payoff ( questions ). By going through these questions, you are able to better understand the pain points/ needs of your potential customers, and how to use that to provide them with a solution, aka your product/ service.
If we’re still talking about selling, “How to Win Friends and Influence People (Digital age edition)” really does play a huge role in this. It’s not a book about sales, it’s a book about people, and how to treat them. That may sound naïve, making it seem that it’s going to summarize politeness or manners. It doesn’t, however, it really just drives deep into how people think, and how you can learn to find the right time and things to say to get your point across, change a mindset, and change the direction of the world.
“Think and Grow Rich” was a game changer for me. The mind is the most powerful force on the planet. You can control your own future and destiny if you decide to plan. Here’s a great quote from the book, “Wishing will not bring riches,” Hill writes. “But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.”
A great, and very practical, book that helped me growing up is called, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and it’s basically just summarizing the main 7, (technically 8) habits of successful people. It’s about what steps to take to get things done and do them well. Here’s a few of the habits listed: “begin with the end in mind, put first-things-first, and think win-win.” It’s definitely a must read.
The last book that’s so important for business is called, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t.” The reason I chose this book is because it really speaks to the details of how businesses become, and continue to stay, successful. Now, this book was written a number of years ago. That may not be a problem for the personal development books, but it can raise some questions for a book on businesses, since they continue to change so much with our culture. Yet, I find it very sad to see that these practices are not instilled within most businesses today. Even in new and upcoming startups! Here’s a quote from the author that sadly, still stands true today “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, “fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Make sure you lift up your company in every way you can to modernize and constantly adapt to the modern, and future multi-cultural world.
