14 Inspiring Business Books That Will Change How You Work Forever

Reboot

Amy Tintera

Written by a former VC turned executive coach, Jerry Colonna’s manifesto on startup leadership and how to live a life has quickly become a classic among the early stage startup world. If you’re reading this for the first time and if you’re going through as an early stage CEO, then you’ll really understand the challenges that have been laid out within this book. So much of success in leadership is built on a foundation of self-awareness, and Jerry’s magnum opus does as good a job of teeing up a journey toward self-inquiry for readers.

The Second Mountain – The Quest for a Moral Life

David Brooks

So many CEOs start out their career trying to get somewhere (rich, famous, successful), only to realize upon getting there that it was an incomplete goal all along. The Second Mountain explores the evolution of meaning-making in the life of a leader, from the Self-Oriented-Success of the first mountain to the Community-Oriented-Purpose of the second. A critical read for accomplished leaders looking to dive deeper into purpose. The Second Mountain will mark a significant point of transformation in your business world.

The Meaning Revolution – Leading with the Power of Purpose

Fred Kofman

The last decade has revolutionized the art and discipline of building and getting the most out of teams. In that time we’ve moved from a wholesale expectation that a complex stew of carrots and sticks would drive behaviors to a realization that people yearn to dedicate their lives to something bigger than themselves, what author Fred Kofman calls ‘immortality projects,’ if only their work was worthy of that commitment.

In The Meaning Revolution, Kofman, the former head of culture at LinkedIn, provides a cutting edge analysis of the power of purpose in a modern organization, as well as tools to find the reader’s own purpose and integrate it throughout their organization, perfect for leaders of second-stage companies looking to bust through a ceiling.

The Artist’s Way

Julia Cameron

Most founders look back at the early stages of their company as a time of tremendous innovation, when they were free to take risks and innovate. But the constant demands of running a company have a way of beating the creativity out of founders if they’re not careful, which can turn even paradigm-shifting companies stagnant.

Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way to help stuck people rediscover their creative spark. For a leader, this can be the key to unlocking previously inaccessible levels of growth, as founders are simply artists working at scale. This book, designed to be read and workshopped over 12-weeks, is perfect for leaders looking to introduce or expand their creativity and innovation.

The Advantage – Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

Patrick Lencioni

The most useful “how to run a business” book you’ll ever read, Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage lays out a blueprint for company operations that leaders can use immediately to transform their organizations (and their relationship to those organizations). In The Advantage, Lencioni distills the highlights from his other groundbreaking works (Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, etc) into a single volume that was foundational to how we rebuilt our corporate culture at VNN, aligning a 100-person team with only a few key structures. For entrepreneurs leading companies more than 20 people, this book is gold.

Profit First – Transform Your Business from a Cash‑Eating Monster

Mike Michalowicz

Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula – Sales – Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren’t always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales – Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz’s Profit First system, readers will learn that:

• Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances.
• A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line.
• Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth.

With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Traction – Get a Grip on your Business

Gino Wickman

All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations-personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical. Discovered by more than 80,000 companies, the Entrepreneurial Operating System(R) is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned.

In Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses-and you can too.

For an illustrative, real-world lesson on how to apply Traction to your business, check out its companion book, Get A Grip.

Get A Grip – An Entrepreneurial Fable, Your Journey to Get Real, Get Simple, and Get Results

Gino Wickman and Mike Paton

Eileen Sharp and Vic Hightower were frustrated. After years of profitable, predictable growth, Swan Services was in a rut. Meetings were called and discussions held, but few decisions were made and even less got done. People were pointing fingers and assigning blame, but nothing happened to solve Swan’s mounting problems. It felt as though they were working harder than ever but with less impact. The company Eileen and Vic had founded and built for 10 years was a different place. It just wasn’t fun anymore.

Their story is not unusual. The challenges they were facing are common, predictable, and solvable. Get A Grip tells the story of how Swan Services resolves its issues by implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System®. With the help of EOS, Eileen, Vic, and their leadership team master a set of managerial tools that allow them to get traction on their business, grow the business, and deliver better results for clients.

The story of Swan Services is a fable, but the Entrepreneurial Operating System® is very real and has helped thousands of businesses worldwide. A complete entrepreneurial toolkit, EOS has helped thousands of businesses get to where they want to be.

Built to Sell – Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

John Warrillow

According to John Warrillow, the number one mistake entrepreneurs make is to build a business that relies too heavily on them. Thus, when the time comes to sell, buyers aren’t confident that the company – even if it’s profitable – can stand on its own. To illustrate this, Warrillow introduces us to a fictional small business owner named Alex who is struggling to sell his advertising agency. Alex turns to Ted, an entrepreneur and old family friend, who encourages Alex to pursue three criteria to make his business sellable:

• Teachable: focus on products and services that you can teach employees to deliver.
• Valuable: avoid price wars by specialising in doing one thing better than anyone else.
• Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by engineering products that customers have to repurchase often.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup-practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.

While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

Never Split the Difference – Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a kidnapping negotiator brought him face-to-face with bank robbers, gang leaders and terrorists. Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most – when people’s lives were at stake. Rooted in the real-life experiences of an intelligence professional at the top of his game, Never Split the Difference will give you the competitive edge in any discussion.

Expert Secrets – The Underground Playbook for Creating a Mass Movement of People Who Will Pay for Your Advice

Russell Brunson

Your message has the ability to change someone’s life. The impact that the right message can have on someone at the right time in their life is immeasurable. It could help to save marriages, repair families, change someone’s health, grow a company or more… But only if you know how to get it into the hands of the people whose lives you have been called to change. Expert Secrets will put your message into the hands of people who need it. Brunson is a fantastic author who takes complex concepts and breaks them down into easy to apply steps to dominate sales in the marketplace.

The Ultimate Sales Machine – Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies

Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes has been called “one of the top 20 change experts in the country.” He helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference. Too many managers jump at every new trend, but don’t stick with any of them. Instead, says Holmes, focus on twelve critical areas of improvement-one at a time-and practice them over and over with pigheaded discipline.

The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve. Like a tennis player who hits nothing but backhands for a few hours a week to perfect his game, you can systematically improve each key area.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his ground breaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.