The 10 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read

It’s literally a coin flip whether or not a new business will make it beyond five years.

So many things are out of your control when you’re starting out, but the one thing you have full control over is effort. You can make sure you’re doing everything you can so when your shot comes, you’re in a position to wring every drop of opportunity from it.

These 10 books will give you a leg up when it’s time to do some opportunity wringing:

1. The Cluetrain Manifesto - Levine Locke, Searls, and Weinberger
The 95 theses are a wake up call to anyone who feels business in the 21st century can be conducted in the same way it was in the 20th century. It describes the fundamental ways the internet has changed marketing forever by putting the emphasis back on conversations with individuals.

2. Customer Satisfaction is Worthless - Jeffrey Gitomer
Quite simply, the best book on customer relations I have ever read. It walks you through real world examples of how simply paying attention is the only difference between a satisfied customer (one who will shop you) and a loyal one. Warning: Don’t read this if you don’t want to be frustrated by every interaction you will have with customer service from now on.

3. Groundswell - Li and Bernoff
A great walk through of how the world is being transformed by social technologies and what you can do to take advantage of it. From listening to your customers, to interacting with them, to finally turning them into fans, this book describes both the tools of the social media trade and how to use them.

4. First, Break All The Rules – Buckingham and Coffman
The only thing great managers have in common is they break every rule of conventional wisdom. They don’t believe people can become whatever they want. They play favorites, and they don’t want their employees to improve on weaknesses. This book explains why they’re right, and provides you a great set of management tools.

5. Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug
This is not a book on theory. This is a book on the best practices of design and why you should employ them. Its basic premise is a user should never have to think when using your site or app. Everything should be intuitive. This book gets the slight nod over WAYMISH (Why Are You Making It So Hard for me to give you money) because it’s deeper, more practical, and comes complete with a checklist to help you stay on track.

6. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
The best explanation you’ll ever get on how a concept goes from an unknown entity to a widespread phenomenon seemingly overnight. Gladwell walks you through how to social engineer connections to get your idea to spread like wildfire.

7. Think Big, Act Small - Jason Jennings
Of over 100,000 companies screened, only 9 met the criteria of 10% or greater growth for at least 10 years. This book dissects these companies and breaks down the 10 building blocks every one of them have in common. You’ll find yourself going back to it often to remember how one of these great companies solved the problem you’re currently facing.

8. Managing With Aloha – Rosa Say
A practical application for creating a culture that understands taking care of your employees is the most important step to ensure you’re taking care of your customers. Rosa Say walks you through 19 Hawaiian values drawn from her time in the hospitality service, giving you examples all along the way on how to implement them into your organization.

9. The Toyota Way - Jeffrey Liker
The book to read to understand process improvement. Toyota was agile before agile was cool. The Toyota Way walks you through the building blocks of eliminating waste and how to deliver the most value to your customer. For a more software focused version, the Poppendiecks have a great book on Lean Software Development  that applies these principals specifically to software development.

10. The Naked Corporation – Tapscott and Ticoll
The only way for companies to survive in today’s hyper-connected, always-on world is to be honest and transparent. This book urges you to be the image rather than trying to create one, and it gives you the business rationale as well as the path to follow to take advantage of this cultural shift.

I would like to finish this post with 3 things:

• My favorite quote on the importance of being a constant learner:
  In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
  – Eric Hoffer
• Backing up my opening statistic:
  Business Failure Rates from the U.S. Small Business Administration (pdf)
• And a reminder: Buzzam is going to be awesome; you’re going to want to:

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