Business books can be an affordable way to get professional advice, tips and tricks before starting a business. Authors of such books highlight the mistakes startups made and usually make. They provide problems and solutions by making it easier to avoid doing the same. The advice in books related to startups can be applied to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Whether you are an ambitious tech entrepreneur or an artist looking to tell your work, these books have useful and valuable insights into the world of commerce.
When you are starting a new business, you usually need advice on where to start, what pitfalls to expect, and how best to spend your time and money to get your idea off the ground. While people are usually tempted to opt for classes, seminars, lectures and training sessions, books are the most accessible and reasonably priced way to start learning.
1. Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money
Usually, people rush into starting businesses from misguided theories, half-baked ideas and other forms of self-delusion. Lacking proper validation often kills businesses more than anything else, and Joel Barker said that speed is only useful if people are running in the right direction.” The book Will It Fly? helps you to make sure you are clear for business take-off. It provides answers to FAQs like “Does your business idea have merit? Will it succeed in the market you are trying to serve, or will it just be a waste of time and resources? Is it a good idea for YOU?”In other words, will it fly? This book consists of chock-full practical suggestions that can be applied to business ideas today. It combines small-scale litmus tests, action-based exercises, and real-world case studies with anecdotes from the author. He has personal experience of making money online by hosting successful podcasts, testing niche sites, and launching several online businesses.
2. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Most of the startups always end up as failures, but many of these results are preventable. The book named the Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the world, changing the way new products are launched and companies are built. The author of this book, Eric Ries, defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is true for both ‘one person in a garage’ or ‘a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom’. Both of these enterprises have a common mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach nurtures companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. These lessons rely on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, and much more.
3. Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity
Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity is one of the New York Times Bestsellers. This book is from the author of the Power of Habit that explores the science of productivity. Also, why managing how you think is more important than what you think. It has an appendix of real-life world lessons that can be applied to your life. At its core, Smarter Faster Better has eight key productivity concepts from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making. It explains why some people and companies get so much done when compared to others. Moreover, this book draws on the latest finding in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural economics. Furthermore, it contains the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, aeroplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters. This book has been painstakingly researched to explain the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. These people view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.
4. Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
Lost and Found’s author, Rand Fishkin, is also the founder and former CEO of Moz. He reveals how traditional Silicon Valley “wisdom” leads far too many startups astray using transparency and humour, which is loved by his hundreds of thousands of blog readers. Generally, everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go where a young, brilliant entrepreneur has a cool idea, drops out of education, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes millions/billions, and becomes the idol of the technology world. However, this is not that story, and it’s not because things went badly for Rand Fishkin; they just weren’t quite so Zuckerberg-esque. His company, Moz, makes marketing software, is now a $45 million/year business, and he is one of the world’s leading experts on Search Engine Optimization. However, his business and reputation took fifteen years to grow. Also, his startup began not in a Harvard dorm room but as a family business that fell deeply into debt. You can learn about his story, the ups and downs of startups, hard-won lessons, and much more in this book.
5. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is one of the New York Times Bestsellers. This book can help build a better future if you believe in its secrets. The great secret of modern time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and create new inventions. In the book, Zero to One, renowned entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find remarkable ways to create those new things. He begins with the premise that we live in an age of technological unproductivity, even if we are too distracted by mobile devices to notice. IT has improved rapidly, and there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers/Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry, even in the area of business. It originates from the most important skill that every leader must master, which is learning to think for yourself. Doing something that someone else already knows how to do just adds more to something familiar. But when you do something new, people are going from nothing to something.
6. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
The $100 Startup shows how to lead a life of adventure, meaning, purpose, and earn a good living. This book is thoughtful, funny, and compulsively readable as a guide that shows how ordinary people can build solid livings, with independence and purpose, on their own terms. Chris Guillebeau, in his early thirties, completed a tour of every country on earth and yet he has never had a real job or earned a regular paycheck. He has a unique genius for turning ideas into income and uses what he earns to support his adventurous life and to give back. Guillebeau identified more than a thousand individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment and focused on the 50 most intriguing case studies. In almost all cases, people with no special skills discovered their personal passions that could be monetized and restructured their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfilment. Here, distilled into one guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who have learned about the gateway to self-fulfilment.
7. Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too
Crushing It! is written by four-time New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk. He offers new lessons and inspiration gathered from the experiences of many influencers and entrepreneurs who rejected the corporate path in favour of pursuing their dreams by building thriving businesses and extraordinary personal brands. In his international bestseller book, Crushing It, Gary insisted that a vibrant personal brand was crucial to entrepreneurial success. He explains why that is even truer today and offers his unique perspective on what has changed and what principles remain timeless. Gary also shares stories from other entrepreneurs who have grown wealthier than they ever imagined possible by following Crush It principles and not just financially. The secret to their success and his own, Crush It! has everything to do with their acceptance of the social media platforms and their willingness to do whatever it took to make these tools work to their utmost potential.
8. How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
‘How I Built This is one of the bestselling business books of the Wall Street Journal. It is based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast and offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on a successful venture. Usually, great ideas often come from a simple spark like the people behind Allbirds, Headspace, Stacy’s Pita Chips, etc., did. Guy Raz, an award-winning journalist and NPR host, has interviewed more than two hundred highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In this book, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating the idea to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a good read for anyone who has dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.
9. Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online
Launch by Jeff Walker helps build your business fast whether you have already got a business or you are itching to start one. This book is a recipe for getting more traction and think about all the successful businesses like Apple or the big Hollywood studios. Jeff Walker, since 1996, has been creating hugely successful online launches, and after bootstrapping his first Internet business, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unparalleled success. His success train was just getting started, and once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Now and in the past, tiny home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches. Launch is the treasure map into that world, which is an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create paydays with their product launches and business launches.
10. Starting a Business QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Launching a Successful Small Business
Starting a Business QuickStart Guide is the ultimate beginner’s guide to starting a business in 2021. This book is for the people who dreamt of starting their own business and living life on their terms. This guide shows exactly what such people need to know to stand out from the crowd. If you have an idea for an amazing product or service, but you are not sure how to shape a business around it, then you need this book to take a step forward. This is the complete guide ever developed for starting and growing a business. Starting a Business QuickStart Guide is sourced from over twenty years of firsthand experience working with entrepreneurs, new ventures, and high-growth startups. In this book, the author concisely presents the primary fundamentals that all new entrepreneurs need to know to get started and find success while living the life of their dreams.
