Statistics have shown time and time again that those who read are more likely to have higher incomes and successful businesses. Why is this the case?
The best self-help books that will help you with your business contain the priceless thoughts and experiences of those who have achieved the seemingly impossible in and out of business and amassed real wealth. Reading such books can be as enlightening as though you lived with and spent every moment of your professional life with these towering personalities.
There are numerous books that present helpful strategies that will help you to grow and succeed specifically in business. If we were to pick five, then the books listed below are undeniably the cream of the crop.
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This book might be one of the most quoted self-help books in existence. It’s solution to the problem of either winning friends or influencing people begins with introspection. If you want to change the behavior of others, it’s best to do so by correcting your own.
That is, this book encourages leadership. The concepts covered in How To Win Friends and Influence People are:
- Fundamental Techniques for Handling People
- Six Ways To Make People Like You
- Twelve Ways To Win People To Your Way of Thinking
- Nine ways To Change People Without Giving Offence Or Arousing Resentment
- Letters that produced miraculous results
- Seven rules for making your home life happier.
The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
Some of the most successful people in the world have figured out that both actions and consequences have their starting point in the mind.
Allowing negative thoughts to dominate the mind is the same as expecting negative results, but if you focus on positivity and possibility, then these will manifest in your life.
It is on this premise of the life-changing power of thoughts that The Magic of Thinking Big illuminates our path to success in business and life in general.
The ideas that are explored in this book are:
- Believe You Can Succeed and You Will
- The Failure Disease: Cure Yourself of Excusitis
- Build Confidence and Destroy Fear
- How To Think Big
- How To Think and Dream Creatively
- You Are What You Think You Are
- Manage Your Environment: Go First Class
- Make Your Attitudes Your Allies
- Think Right Toward People
- Get The Action Habit
- How To Turn Defeat Into Victory
- Use Goals To Help You Grow
- How To Think Like a Leader
The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
This book can aptly be described as a smart work manual. It helps professionals and entrepreneurs with insight on how to get more done in less time. It shows how to achieve what seems impossible in this fast-paced world: automate your earnings and free up time.
In The 4-Hour Work Week, Ferriss differentiates between the New Rich and the Deferrers. For example, while the Deferrers just want to make an endless amount of money, the New Rich care about quality of life and having few things that truly matter.
He also argued that time can be more powerful than money. Those who are financially secure with time to enjoy their lives have more power than those who have amassed wealth, but have no time for anything other than making more money.
You don’t necessarily have to be an entrepreneur to enjoy life as the New Rich. Even as an employee, there are strategies you can utilize to gain more freedom.
For example, to convince your boss that your job can effectively be done remotely, you might call in sick and use the opportunity to make your point. This is just one of the many ways by which the New Rich are liberated.
In this book, you will learn about:
- Cautions and Comparisons
- Rules That Change The Rules
- Dodging Bullets
- System Reset
- The End of Time Management
- The Low Information Diet
- Interrupting Interruption and The Art of Refusal
- Outsourcing Life
- Income Autopilot
- Disappearing Act
- Beyond Repair
- Mini Retirements
- Filling The Void
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
According to Hill, Andrew Carnegie, the great philanthropist and business mogul, had challenged him to come up with a definitive philosophy of success by interviewing the greatest achievers.
This launched research that spanned more than two decades and scrutinized the achievements of more than 500 self-made millionaires. The result of the research are the thirteen principles that make up Think And Grow Rich.
This book shows that path through which the reader can become self-aware and take charge of their destiny.
The thirteen principles discussed in this book are:
- Desire
- Faith
- Auto Suggestion
- Specialized Knowledge
- Imagination
- Organized Planning
- Decision
- Persistence
- The Power of The Master Mind
- Sex Transmutation
- The Subconscious Mind
- The Brain
- The Sixth Sense
The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
There is a common misconception that only sales professionals are required to gain deep knowledge about sales.
Whichever job you are involved in and whatever position you hold, you must know how to sell. Even in an interview, you should be able to sell your worth to the interviewer.
This means that The Psychology of Selling is a book for everyone.
This book will cover such topics as:
- The Inner Game of Selling
- Setting and Achieving Sales Goals
- Why People Buy
- Your Level of Creativity In Selling
- How To Get More Appointments
- The Power of Suggestion
- Making The Sale
- 10 Keys To Success in Selling
Use a table like the one below to write ten things that you learned from reading any of the books listed in this article, and how they can be immediately applied to help your business.
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What You Can Learn From Self-Help Books about Business
- Create business plans and set goals. To give yourself the best chance at success in business, you need to have a plan.
Business plans prepare you for the challenges you are sure to face in your chosen market, and having goals will keep you focused.
If you have employed people to work with you, then they need to be clear on the priorities of your company.
Beyond knowing the importance of good business plans and goal setting is gaining information on how to write them correctly. Buying books to help you in this aspect is actually an investment.
- The best way to execute. Some businesses either fail to take off or go down way too soon because of poor execution. It often has little to do with the idea itself.
Although it takes some work, coming up with a winning idea and writing a business plan are the easy part. To bring that idea to life, a lot of hard work, experience, and knowledge will be required.
You can gain knowledge and cut down on time needed to learn from experience by reading relevant business books.
- Why do you want to start a business? Indeed, why do you even want to succeed in business? These may not be at the top of your list of questions, but they are relevant.
For some, the answers to these questions might be that they like being called an entrepreneur and want to be able to afford certain things.
Can you see what’s wrong with such answers? There’s no part about their love for the product or how it might solve any of their customers’ problems.
The right books can provide you with the right motivation to begin your business. They can also guide you to the right market.
- How to make the right decisions. To be fair, this is almost impossible without experience in your business. If you’re just starting out, you’re more likely to make mistakes than the correct choices.
So, while you are encouraged to jump in and learn quickly from your mistakes, there is a way to reduce how much mistakes you make. And this is by reading good business books.
Some avoidable mistakes include knowing when to employ new hands and which people to hire.
- How to treat your employees and customers. One of the things you have to manage as a business owner is relationships.
How you interact with your customers and employees will not only determine your company’s level of productivity, but longevity too.
If you’re too informal, disrespect for your position and laziness could set in among the employees. Too much formality, and communication might be hampered.
Your customers and employees should be free to share their thoughts with you, know that you respect them, and hold you in high esteem.
- Dreaming big is important. You hear said by almost every success coach and motivational speaker: dreaming big is a key to success.
Yet, you would need a good business book to explain what exactly is meant by having big dreams.
Can you see yourself changing the world, in some substantial way, for the better? Now, that’s a big and worthy dream!
- What is company culture? Without acquiring the right knowledge about this subject matter, you might just think it ends with game and exercise rooms in the workplace.
But it involves so much more. Company culture guides interactions in the workplace. It fosters friendships, teamwork, and open communication. It also prevents things like harassment and intimidation.
Creating the right culture is more than just declaring the rules and regulations of the company. Consider getting a good book on this subject.
- How much should you advertise? Marketing is the key to gaining new and more customers, but effective strategies must be implemented to guarantee the best results.
if done wrong, you might end up spending too much and not getting any new business. In fact, it can be annoying to potential customers.
You can get books to teach you when and how to market to the right audience. They would also teach you what exactly moves people to buy, and how you can focus your resources on that.
Additionally, you might want to learn how to organize your budget so that you never overspend on advertisements.
- Failure is truly a part of the process. How you react when your best plans fall through is a testament to your character and perseverance.
Did you know that how you handle failure is even more important to your eventual success than what you do when you win?
Even the most solid ideas get rejected or run out of funds. Entrepreneurs who have been prepared for this may still succeed with that same idea.
Here’s something: you also need to know when to give up on an idea entirely. What are the signs of a bad idea?
- Data is everything today. Businesses have always been driven by data. But this is more pronounced today than ever before.
Data is often the advantage that big businesses have over smaller ones—they can spend more on things like surveys.
A business book can teach you about which data you need the most and how to get them. Finally, you should learn how to utilize the data you receive.
- Know your assets and liabilities. Everything from employees to business strategies can be divided into assets and liabilities.
Some work and others are just a waste of time, money, and efforts. Assets, of course, should be kept and scaled, while the liabilities must be done away with.
But you must know, with accuracy, what are assets to your business and what are liabilities. Without a deep understanding of business, you might confuse the two concepts—this will be detrimental to your company.
- Perception is everything, not the products. Have you been spending time and money trying to get people to like your products?
You’ve been spending money on ads that describe your products glowingly. Yet, people are not forming long queues outside your store or storming your social media DM.
The problem could be that you have not spent enough time creating a brand image that will pull thousands of the right customers.
Sometimes, the way in which people perceive your brand is more important than what you’re selling.
- Micromanaging can be dangerous. Stay away from dangerous managerial practices like not giving your employees enough autonomy.
If you notice that you operate a work environment where employees never suggest new ideas and are often surly, the problem could be your leadership style.
If your workers know their duties and the priorities of your company, then they should be given the opportunity to do their jobs without your constant supervision.
Micromanagement stifles creativity and creates the impression that you do not trust your employees.
Indeed, there is no point working with people whom you do not trust.
- The wisdom of niches. Which is the more productive strategy for a new business? Is it choosing a niche market or selling products in an overcrowded market?
You should choose industries with less competition. Information on how to find such markets are stored in business books.
- Analyzing the competition. Before starting any business, you should figure out who your competitors are.
This is useful for two reasons. You can find out what you’re up against and apply some of their successful strategies to your own business.
First, you need to learn how to correctly identify your competitors. Get a book on this.
- The Importance of maintaining your health. It might be impossible for you to apply what business principles you learn or enjoy your success if your health is bad.
As such, reading books on how to maintain your lth may also positively affect your business.health
FAQ about Business Ventures
How much capital should I invest in my start-up business?
You must understand that new businesses are unlikely to make any real revenue within the first six to nine months. So, invest as much as you can without going broke.
What is the biggest challenge for new businesses?
In many cases, it’s cash flow.
Conclusion
In today’s internet-enabled world, the biggest obstacle to success in business is not money, but how much information one possesses. You can gain priceless knowledge by reading the books of the greatest sales professionals and business people.