Have you ever wondered about that one thing common in world’s wealthiest people? Most of them have acclimated themselves in reading books. Books lead us to a new way of thinking and teach us how to become successful in life.
If you aspire to join the level of wealthy entrepreneurs, reading is a priceless skill. To grow a healthy and thriving business, you need to read books just like a regular part of the diet.
It’s been stated that most CEOs read at least three books per month. If you are interested in finding a couple of engaging business books to your must-read list, then the following list will help you.
Here is the list of 20 books that should be on every entrepreneur’s reading list. You can dive into the following books and begin learning new skills or seek some inspiration for your business.
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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill:
This book is one of the bestselling self-help guides of all time. Napoleon says in this book that riches begin with a state of mind. If you want to become rich, change your mindset. You must think yourself rich. The term rich could mean any form of wealth such as money, happiness, healthy relationships, or success in the business, etc. This book offers some deep insight into the ways to become money conscious. It depicts how you can think yourself as a rich person, and control our mindsets to become rich.
When you think rich, you will grow rich. The state of mind has a definitive purpose on your richness. Until you become success conscious, you won’t achieve it. Don’t let your mind think indifferently or become failure conscious. The initial point of all achievement is desire. Set a definitive goal in your mind and go forward.
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How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie:
You need to influence and deal with people to get success in your business. This book provides you an overview idea of how to make people think like you, how you can win them without any resentment. The ways to like people, techniques in handling them, and giving sincere appreciation are depicted in this book. Let the people indulge in your way of thinking and admire you emphatically.
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Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelly:
The fundamental and core thing in the book is simple. Tom and David make a persuasive case that creativity is innate in all human beings. The difference is some of the people recognize the creativity inside and others don’t. The ultimate goal of the book is to guide and bring out creativity within people. Everyone is creative, but not everyone has the courage to be create. They need guidance when to take action and how to start a project.
Many people don’t dare to be creative and afraid of failure. But failure eventually gives a breakthrough to success. The author says you need to give yourself permission to fail to become successful. The author also depicts the steps for sparking creativity in one chapter “Spark: From Blank Page to Insight,”
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The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson:
The ‘Slight Edge’ is a book about new ways of thinking. This book helps to make daily choices and take action by creating multiple outcomes to deliver the lives we desire. It outlines how to apply the daily discipline and consistently use the Slight Edge principles to turn around any aspect of your life. It represents the way of thinking: what we know, how we hold that knowledge, and what we do.
The secret factor is straightforward: Do the small things over and over again until success kicks in. As most of the small things are extremely easy to do, these small things produce massive results after some time. Jeff Olsen also outlined several powerful ideas to help us embark on the road to mastery.
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The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris:
Do you feel overwhelmed or overworked? The book by Tim Ferris can surely help you out. You’ll get to know about the lifestyle design, which will eliminate 50 percent of the work and help you in living the life you want.
The book states the step-by-step blueprint to free yourself from the chains of a corporate job, create a business to fulfill your dreams, and live life like a millionaire.
This book is perfect for those who are sure there must be more to life than just living to work. If you’re thinking about starting your business but certainly not sure how to take steps, go for this book.
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The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett:
Why some people are considered as genius while others not? What additional insights they have? Or is it because of the creativity? The author offers a model to reverse engineer the creativity so we can potentially reach success.
According to the author, the creative arc is a bell-shaped curve that examines the relationship between preference and familiarity. The more it is exposed, the popular it becomes. When it reaches a peak, the idea overstated and leads become infamous. The crux of the book devises four laws of the creative curve: consumption, imitation, creative communities, and iterations.
One need to be familiar with the chosen field, should learn from successful predecessors, find mentors to guide, and progressively elaborate their ideas to formulate the success.
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This is Marketing by Seth Godin:
This book largely aimed at marketers and encourages them to work in different ways. The entrepreneurs can find it helpful as it provides the functional requirements of the business. The book perhaps described as the magnum opus of Seth Godin, and describes how the Internet has transformed media from being colossal.
It helps the people to become who they want to be and knowing about the ideal form of marketing. The book “This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen until You Learn to See” also depicts how a change forces marketers to adopt an approach of identifying their targets’ underlying goals.
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The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker:
One of the most popular books “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker is the top picks for most of the entrepreneurs. The book will definitely elevate your effectiveness to the top notches. It is one of the best books that can change your life. It illustrates how personal effectiveness (Doing the right things) can be developed through several key practices.
The author explains in the book how efficiency is the primary function of executives. Being efficient is simply doing what is necessary. The key to being efficient for an executive is to apply the efforts and bear the responsibilities.
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Business Adventures by John Brooks:
Business Adventures by John Brooks is one of the beloved books of business tycoons like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The evergreen lessons it contains are being admired by these business magnates.
The book talks about 12 critical moments in American industry. It details the surprising case studies of American business in the past century. You can discover the reasons for all the events described in the book according to your perspective. Perhaps, business adventures teach lessons to the people on how to act. The chapters depict human nature in the context of business, technologies and change in best practices that people never do.
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Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson:
When you see a biography of an iconic, historic figure like Benjamin Franklin, it is really worth to get it. Although he was the most sparkling characters of history, there were stark differences.
The book states the account of the activities of Benjamin Franklin from the humble beginnings to a clever and practical person. From the apprentice of a printer to a wise sage and practical philosopher, he got international status and outshined in the world.
Isaacson has specified several things about Benjamin Franklin in a plain and straightforward manner in the book. You’ll see a perceptive analysis on Franklin as a real man with strong emotions and human weaknesses. It focuses on his pro-democratic views and his relationship to modern culture. This book would probably be the best choice for entrepreneurs to know how to look at life in multiple ways.
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The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday:
This book helps you undergo the struggles of your life with elegance and resilience by drawing lessons from ancient heroes, former presidents, actors, and athletes. It depicts how their adversity life turned into the pillar of success with the help of their perception and willpower. The whole book is packed full of anecdotes that illustrate the timeless stoical lessons about the greatest men and women who have ever lived.
It tells to focus on the things you can control. Let the other things go and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity for a better and stronger life. This book also depicts the perception, action, and will power.
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Connect The Dots by Rashmi Bansal:
The book tells the stories of courage, determination, and inspiration of 20 people who became entrepreneurs without doing an MBA.
The book is one of the most inspiring books the entrepreneurs should read. The different stories of how people have come from nowhere to the scenario. Each of the stories will be amazingly inspirational for the readers.
The book shows that it is not necessary to do an MBA to become an entrepreneur as academic qualifications shouldn’t decide a person’s future. The entrepreneurs need to be ready to tackle during their challenging period.
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You Can Win by Shiv Khera:
The book is a self-help book that motivates most of the people and takes things right from their daily life and gives them a positive thrust. The book is mostly for those who pursue a balanced personality and want to move towards the zenith of success with a positive vibe.
It stresses for those who have the desire to succeed and want to live their life in a better manner than they are currently now. The action plan for life has stated in the book with the importance of attitude, motivation, and success. Further, it provides steps to adopt a positive attitude in life.
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EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey:
EntreLeadership is a must-read book for business owners. It shows how Ramsey grew his own company from a card table in the living room to a multimillion company. He depicts all the mistakes he made along his way along with his success.
According to Dave Ramsey, the modern world belongs to neither entrepreneurs nor the leaders. You have to be both. i.e., EntreLeader. A leader has characteristics like discipline, vision, passion, and charisma. While an entrepreneur is driven, determined, creative, and courageous. To handle the entrepreneurial endeavor, a combination of both qualities is necessary.
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The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav:
The real strength of a person derives from silence, and praising the virtues of others will reflect through your politeness. The book deserves all the praises and is suitable for the broader audience regardless of cultural or religious background. The key purpose of this book is to explain people to nurture inner power so that they can deal easily with any kind of adversity.
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The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen:
The book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is a business standard that explains the power of interruption. It depicts why market leaders are often failing gradually as the technologies and industries change. Sometimes the disruptive technologies will result in worse product performance in the organization. It also states what incumbents can do to secure their market leadership for a longer period of time.
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Good to Great by Jim Collins:
The author explains from his experience how to make good companies great. Moreover, Good to Great phase needs systematic stages and essential segments. If we had to describe the key purpose of the book in a single word, then Discipline will be the perfect hotel. You need disciplined people, great thought, and action to be in focused and excellence.
The author says “Good is the Enemy of Great”. Many organizations don’t even try to be great. Instead, they want to be good because it is an easier process. The companies are not determined to be the best in the industry. Thus, it opens the door to competitors. It’s the same with our lives. Few people want to live a great life. This is just because they’re happy with living a good life.
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The power of habit by Charles Duhigg:
This book by Charles Duhigg is perfect for those if you are under the delusion that you’re under the control of your life. If you are planning to start a new habit but just can’t stick to it. If you want to go out of a bad habit but keep falling off the wagon. The author demonstrates that habits dictate most of the things that go around us. I believe every entrepreneur should read this book to take control of their life. It explains perfectly the practical strategies and techniques to apply changes on the individual and organizational level.
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Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki:
“Rich Dad Poor Dad” is about Robert Kiyosaki and his experience with two of his father one is his real father (poor dad) and other is his best friend’s father (rich dad). He explains both the ways in which they shaped their thoughts about money and investing. He says “You don’t need to earn a high income to be rich”.
The author compares his poor dad to those people who are perpetually running in the Rat Race to need more money in their life but never able to satisfy their dreams for wealth because of financial literacy.
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The Greatest Salesman in the World- Og Mandino:
The author says in this book “Never feel shame for trying and failing for he who has never failed is he who has never tried.” The book is dealing with the philosophy of salesmanship and success. The author tells an anecdote of Hafid, a poor camel boy who achieves a life of abundance and became the owner of the most powerful trade empire of his time and was known as the greatest salesman in the world.
There are 10 scrolls that hold the secret of learning and lays the foundation, each containing a key principle each for mastering the art of selling.