What Books Should Entrepreneurs Read? (Best Business Books)

In this article, I go over what are the best business books that I have read over the years. These books have made a massive impact on my life and on my coaching clients.

As business owners, we want to reach our goals/dreams and create the lifestyle that we always dream about, but sometimes we’re not sure how to do it.

In this article you will discover:

• Why we should read books as entrepreneurs?

• How to choose the right book?

• What type of books you should read?

• What books should entrepreneurs read?

• A proven list of best business books that will help you achieve your goals

• Bonus: 6 practical Tips on reading books for business owners 

• Best books to read for entrepreneurs

So, we need to study and learn new information, techniques, tools and skills & this process takes time, effort, and discipline.

4 reasons why entrepreneurs must constantly read:

Reading books and learning new information helps us:

1. Get clarity on what we need to do to achieve our goals
2. Discover tools, techniques, and skills that will help us along the way
3. Find mentors and gurus to learn from
4. Build confidence, energy, and self esteem, something we need every day to push forward

How should I pick a business book to read? (5 step process)

1. Set a clear goal and write it down
2. List all the challenges, skills, and knowledge … that you need to learn about to achieve your goal.
3. Prioritize the list above in order of importance, (think 80/20)
4. Pick a book to help you with the most important item from the list above. It must pass the test. If it doesn’t pass or if you are not sure, move on to the next book.
5. (test: Does this book help me reach my goals?)
6. OR read a book to help you overcome an important challenge. It must pass the following test:
7. (test: Does this book help me overcome my top challenge?)

Should I Only Read Business Books?

No, once in a while you should read a fiction book to relax and activate your imagination and fantasy.

As an entrepreneur, you really need that.

Most business owners are like an ocean of knowledge but they can not make anything out of what they know.

Reading fiction books gives you a chance to digest the information you learned from business books.

I alternate between fiction and non-fiction myself. Reading fiction books helps me relax, take my mind off work and activate my imagination, and that, my friends, is when I come up with some amazing new ideas.

It will do the same for you.

The creative mode is when you can put the pieces together and make something new out of what you know.

Check out my blog: Fiction or Nonfiction? What types of books should business owners read?

Here is the list of 7 types of business books for business owners:

1. #Mindset
2. # People / Human Resources
3. #Strategy
4. #Execution
5. #Cash/ #Profits
6. #Marketing & Sales
7. #Business/ #Entrepreneurial Fiction, Inspiring Stories

Note:

I have read most of these books by recommendations of other successful entrepreneurs and business owners. The ones that I have not read are on my to-read list.

The list is not in any order of importance; pick and choose depending on the what stage of the game you are at.

Some books fall into multiple categories, so I picked the category that I felt supported me the most. It will be different for every person.

Enjoy! 🙂

What Books Should Entrepreneurs Read? (Best Business Books)

Top 17 Mindset books for business owners and entrepreneurs 

1. The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles
2. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
3. Working with the Law: 11 Truth Principles for Successful Living by Raymond Holliwell
4. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch
5. Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Gregory Mcewan
6. Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki
7. Start with Why, Simon Sinek
8. Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
9. The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightingale
10. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg, John David Mann
11. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
12. The Little Gold Book Of Yes Attitude, Jeffery Gitomer
13. As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
14. First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety by Sarah Wilson
15. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie
16. The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder’s Complete and Original Lesson Plan for Achieving Your Dreams by Napoleon Hill
17. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Top 8 books on People, Human Resources, and team building for business

1. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray(Yes, this is my number one!)
2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
4. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
5. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry
6. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
7. Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
8. No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits by Dan S. Kennedy

Top 13 books on business strategy

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
2. Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow
3. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
4. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by Kim, W. Chan
5. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
6. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
7. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
8. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
9. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
10. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance by Michael E. Porter
11. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
12. Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands by Douglas B. Holt, Douglas Cameron
13. Getting Real by 37 Signals

Top 7 books on Business Execution

1. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker
2. Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
3. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
4. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey
6. High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
7. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

Top 7 business books on Cash/Profits

1. Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
2. The Automatic Patient: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry by John Warrillow
3. No B.S. Price Strategy by Dan S. Kennedy, Jason Marrs
4. Profit First: A Simple System To Transform Any Business From A Cash-Eating Monster To A Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
5. Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom by Robert Kiyosaki
6. The Wealthy Barber Returns by David Chilton
7. Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! by Greg Crabtree, Beverly Blair Harzog

Top 12 business books on Marketing & Sales

1. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk by Al Ries
2. Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
3. Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini
4. Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins
5. Speak and Get Results: Complete Guide to Speeches Presentations Work Bus by Sandy Linver
6. The One-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Patients, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd by Allan Dib
7. The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource by Jeffrey Gitomer
8. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino
9. How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger
10. Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users – And Losing $78 Million by Cliff Lerner
11. The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge
12. The (7L) The Seven Levels of Communication: Go From Relationships to Referrals by Michael J. Maher

Top 7 fiction books for entrepreneurs, Business/Entrepreneurial Fiction, Inspiring books

Here is the list of best fiction books for entrepreneurs:

1. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
2. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
3. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
4. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
5. The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
6. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
7. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

6 Book Reading Tips for business owners and entrepreneurs 

Tip # 1

Always check the ranking of the book on Goodreads before you buy it. If the ranking is higher than 4.0, it is good to go.

Generally, Goodreads rankings are lower than Amazon’s or other websites, because Goodreads’ readers are more advanced. So a ranking of 4.0 out of 5 is really good in my experience, but you’ve got a try it yourself.

Tip # 2

Try to do your reading first thing in the morning or right before you go to bed to make sure that you don’t have much on your mind and to absorb information faster and better.

When you read during the day, because your mind is active and you have a lot going on, it takes you a bit longer to read and understand the information.

Tip # 3

Make sure you read a minimum of 30 minutes a day, religiously. 30 minutes a day doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but when you do that on a daily basis, you’d be surprised how much reading you get done within a week. I read 24–30 books a year following this tip.

Tip # 4

If you’d like to read more and faster and you don’t have enough time, check out Tim Ferriss’s video here.

Tip # 5

Use Goodreads’ app to scan the cover of a book and get its rating in no time. Use that when you’re walking around in a book store so you know which book to buy.

Tip # 6

You may have a few topics you want to read about at the same time. I know how hard that is.

Do the 80/20 analysis on them and figure out which one helps you the most. Tackle them one at a time.

Hope this helps, gang

To your Massive Success

Mostafa Hosseini

 

In this article:

• best entrepreneur books 2021

• books recommended by successful entrepreneurs

• Top business books

• Top must read books for entrepreneurs

• entrepreneurship books for beginners

• best books for aspiring entrepreneurs

• books every entrepreneur should read in 2021

What are the best books to read for entrepreneurs

In this article, we have gathered a list of top business books for entrepreneurs from 7 different categories including Mindset, People/Human resources, Strategy, Execution, Cash/profits, Marketing & Sales, and business fiction.

What are the top business books in 2021?

Read the article for a list best business books that will help you in various parts of your business in 2021. The article also includes tips for why you must-read business books, picking the right book, practical tips for reading business books, and more.