8 Inspirational Books for Entrepreneurs

When it comes to running your own business, experience is certainly the best teacher, the second best is following in the footsteps of a great mentor. The written word of successful entrepreneurs and economists that can give you insights and inspiration. There is a plethora of business books out there, but there are few that can truly substitute a mentor and help you shape your business decisions into success. Here you will find books for enrepreneurs with cult followings, as well as new unorthodox approaches that have become best sellers in recent years.

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How To Win Friends and Influence People

Since it was published in 1936, this book by Dale Carnegie has sold over 15 million copies and has become a timeless bestseller. It has helped many successful people to grow in their fields by enriching their social interactions. It gives principles on how to make people like you, how to make people follow your way of thinking and gives ways to change people without making them resent you. Not just a book for entrepreneurs, this is a book for everyone that will teach you to improve your social interactions in and outside out of the office effectively improving your quality of life.

Think And Grow Rich

This book was published in 1937 by Napoleon Hill and was inspired by Andrew Carnegie. Hill has compiled a list of timeless principles after studying successful people for over twenty years. The book has a lot to do with income and monetary well-being, but the author insists that you can apply its principles to any aspect of life. Using this guidance, you can achieve anything you can possibly imagine. Since its publication, the book has sold 100 million copies worldwide making it one of the best-selling business books of all time.

Rework

Rework by Jason Fried is one of the new wave of books for entrepreneurs that take an unorthodox approach to entrepreneurship. This counterintuitive book tells you that you can break all the rules and still be successful. Mr. Fried insists that there is a faster and better way to succeed than following the well-beaten path, that making plans is harmful, that you don’t need outside investors and you should ignore the competition. This book’s philosophy is that you need less than you think to succeed, you don’t need to be a workaholic and don’t need the traditional business structure with an office and regular meetings. Just stop thinking and start working.

Four-Hour Work Week

The 4-Hour Work Week is a cutting edge read on ‘lifestyle design’ and how to escape the 9 to 5 grind and travel the world while you automate many of your tasks, both personal and business. Tim Ferris was an overworked entrepreneur who switched to traveling and working remotely and in the process came up with ways to run a business on the go. He tells you how to cut down your hours by using technology and outsourcing routine tasks and how to eliminate tons of your work using economical principles. How to create an automated income stream and to value performance over presence. He explains that too much information can be harmful and above all illustrates how to travel the world intelligently and live better.

War of Art

Written by Steven Pressfield, War of Art is a brilliant insight into the struggles of artists, writers, athletes, entrepreneurs and the like, trying to break through obstacles. This is an engaging and inspiring guide on how to grow in any field, how to get unstuck and reach a consistent order of creativity. He explains why you have an inner voice that tells you that you will fail and how to address it and overcome negative thoughts. The book shows how to reach high levels of discipline in creativity and realize the potential within you.

Good to Great

Written by James Collins after research he conducted with his team, this book takes a look at a select group of successful companies and compares them to the rest of the market. Using mountains of data and conducting countless interviews for this book, Mr. Collins finds how great companies approach challenges, technology, and change and how that sets them apart from their counterparts. The book uncovers findings in management practices including leadership, competence, discipline, technology implementation and intelligent effort that will surprise many readers.

Grit: The Power Of Passion and Perseverance

This must-read book is written by pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth. She uses her own experiences as well as interviews with people from all walks of life, young and seasoned, just starting out and successful. Ms. Duckworth proves that success does not rest on ‘talent’ but is a combination of passion and perseverance she dubs ‘grit’. Having a clear path, being disciplined and committed to your goals is in the essence of achieving them. Being talented is merely a starting point, your drive is what gets you there. This is a very insightful read that can change the way you think and create the right mindset for success.

Purple Cow

Seth Godin ventures to explain that in the world of oversaturation with marketing messages and overused techniques with reduced effects, the way to have a successful product is to build marketing into it. To create a product that (much like a purple cow) is unique, memorable, and useful to an audience that will promote it by the word-of-mouth. The book teaches that the one chance to be successful is to have a remarkable product and engage your audience in a remarkable way. It explains that traditional advertising is losing its effectiveness and you have to find new unique ways to grab people’s attention.