When it comes to business, knowing a little about it won’t get us far — we need to know everything. However, more often than not, it’s practically impossible just to rely on our experience. Most situations can catch us off guard and lead us to a real abyss of overthinking and worrying.
Still, it’s better to deal with something now than worry about it later. That’s why we’ve decided to create a list of the top 50 best business books every entrepreneur out there reads. After all, knowledge is power, and with such power, we can actually hope to make a real change in our industry.
These books are works-of-art of many business experts and professors. Moreover, we have also included books by entrepreneurs who have shown everyone how making a profit is not difficult if you know what you’re doing. There are also books that talk about sales in particular, as well as those that deal with how the Internet has influenced various industries.
Finally, we’ve also decided to include books that will guide everyone through startup development. What’s more, there is also an investing bible here, as well as books that talk about all the different business techniques we should try to incorporate.
Without further ado, here are business books men should put on their reading lists right now.
Advice from Entrepreneurs Who’ve Made It
- Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson
- My Life In Advertising by Claude Hopkins
- Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim
- See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar
- Your First 100 Million by Dan Pena
- The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren E. Buffett
- Maverick by Ricardo Semler
Hiring the Right Employees and Outsourcing
- Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
- Hiring Smart by Pierre Mornell
- The Obsolete Employee by Michael Russer
Business Aspects We Should Know About
- Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
- Competition Demystified by Bruce C. Greenwald
- Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- Bankable Business Plans by Edward Rogoff
- The Toyota Way by Jeffrey K. Liker
- Thick Face, Black Heart by Chu Chin Ning
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Advertising, Marketing, and Standing out from the Crowd
- Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
- Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
- Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
- Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
- Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Sales
- The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer
- Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
Investing
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Internet and Business
- Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
- E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
How to Become an Entrepreneur
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
- The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
- Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling and Mike Taber
- Street Smarts by Norm Brodsky
- Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
- The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ Demarco
Making a Profit
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- The Profit Zone by Adrian Slywotzky
- Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson
- The 10 Pillars of Wealth by Alex Becker
Startups, Technology, and the Future
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
- The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- One Simple Idea by Stephen Key
Business Techniques
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- Release Your Brakes by James Newman
- The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Final Thoughts
No matter how great we are at our jobs, it’s never too late to learn a bit more about everything having or running a business entails. That’s why each one of these books can and will help us reach our goals without having to pressure ourselves into making bad deals or doing what we don’t like for the sake of profit.
