background preloader

13 Business Books That Will Blow Your Mind

13 Business Books That Will Blow Your Mind
Having never taken a business class in college I find that I read and listen to a lot of business books to round out my education. The books usually aren't "How to Manage Your Cash Flow" but rather get me to rethink the way I run my business, which--despite no business classes or diploma--continues to be in business 13 plus years after I started it. In that time, here are 13 of the books that had the biggest impact on how I run my business (in no particular order): Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink: If you supervise anyone in your business, this book is a must read. It shows that what science knows about motivation, business isn't putting into practice. In fact, many of the incentives we create can actually de-motivate our employees. The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham: I wanted to have at least one book that was dedicated to small business and the entrepreneurial spirit.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1681972/13-business-books-that-will-blow-your-mind

Rise To The Top With Facebook EdgeRank Facebook can be a great place to market your small business; many of you have set up fan pages and are actively building a Facebook audience. One thing you may not realize, though, is that not all of the messages you share on Facebook are being seen by your fans. In fact, many of the posts you share on your Facebook page will only be seen by a handful of people, regardless of how many fans you have. If you want to know why this is and what you can do to optimize your posts for maximum reach, you’ve come to the right place. For the personal profiles of your fans, the default setting on their newsfeed is set to display what Facebook considers “Top News.” Users have to manually select “Most Recent” to see all posts from their friends and pages that they are a fan of.

Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations In the past I’ve given some tips for handling meetings effectively, covering topics like: - How not to let your meeting go down a rat hole; - Dealing with the elephant in the room; - Dealing with skeletons in your closet; - How to make meetings discussions, not “pitches” - A tale of two pitches (I eventually invested in the first company that pitched) Today’s post is a subtle one about positioning yourself in a presentation. This might be a VC meeting but also might just be a sales or biz dev meeting.

10 Blogs Entrepreneurs Need to Be Reading See the 2012 edition: 10 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs (2012 Edition) #1. The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur Site: What it is: What Makes a Leader? HBR It was Daniel Goleman who first brought the term “emotional intelligence” to a wide audience with his 1995 book of that name, and it was Goleman who first applied the concept to business with his 1998 HBR article, reprinted here. In his research at nearly 200 large, global companies, Goleman found that while the qualities traditionally associated with leadership—such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—are required for success, they are insufficient. Truly effective leaders are also distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence, which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. These qualities may sound “soft” and unbusinesslike, but Goleman found direct ties between emotional intelligence and measurable business results. Every businessperson knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. Evaluating Emotional Intelligence

How to pick a co-founder Naval · November 12th, 2009 Update: Also see our 40-minute interview on this topic. Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them. Five Skills You Need for Startup Success, According to Ethernet Inventor Bo... Ethernet inventor and generally accomplished tech super-guy Bob Metcalfe gave a great opening keynote talk at this morning's Capital Factory Demo Day in Austin, Texas. The event has been good so far and is live streaming online for free. Metcalfe offered a wide ranging talk to open the day but included some tasty tidbits in the form of two lists: five personal skills that entrepreneurs need to develop in order to succeed in building tech companies that scale and six types of people a startup ecosystem needs to include in order to foster success. Five Skills Entrepreneurs Need Be healthy.

6 Things to Know Before Starting a Business This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. An entrepreneur’s life can be a real roller coaster. Having started a few businesses in my career, I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the hard-won experience I’ve learned throughout the process — the kind of advice I wish I’d known when I started my first, or even second, business. 1. Don’t Underestimate a Business Plan If you’re not seeking outside funding at the start, it’s tempting to forgo writing out a formal business plan.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently HBR Learn more about the science of success with Heidi Grant Halvorson’s HBR Single, based on this blog post. Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle.

Business Ideas for the Self Employed Several years ago, I had a lovely long-term consulting assignment which kept me both busy and solvent. One morning I woke up and realized that it was coming to an end and I had nothing lined up. After a few moments of panic, I decided to get serious about creating my next income source. I didn’t have a great deal of time to devote to this, so I gave myself the challenge of finding a way to earn $100—an easily accomplished goal. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that I had just created a new habit that has kept my business—and cash flow—moving smoothly along. Over time, I’ve learned that there are other benefits to this simple technique.

Eight Questions To Ask Before You Start A Business Are you thinking of starting a web business? Starting a PPC Management agency? Setting up your own site and selling things, or building a web publishing empire? Before you start, ask yourself the following eight questions. The advantage of this Q&A is that you can quickly see if the idea you’re going to throw your money and soul into is likely to work. 1 .

Top 100 Free eBooks for Business Students and Entrepreneurs Whether you’re enrolled in a business school degree program or desperate for a review of b-school basics as you start your own company, it’s hard to pass up free study materials. These 100 ebooks on marketing, management, ecommerce, and finance are all free and worth checking out. Basic Business Transformational Entrepreneurship: Where Technology Meets Societal Impact - Startup Genome The concept of transformational entrepreneurship describes one of the guiding philosophies of the Startup Genome The last five years the global economy has been rife with turmoil. Discussion of bankruptcy, bailouts and unemployment have dominated the headlines. On the surface many of our problems stem from giving the financial sector de facto leadership over the global economy, and enabling them to exploit the system to the brink of societal collapse. On the backs of sacrificial taxpayers the economy appears to be regaining stability, but the rumblings aren’t likely to go away for we are at the crossroads of a momentous transition into the information age.

How Your Employees Can Be Your Best Salespeople Column by Janine Popick, Inc.com "Girl Power Female CEOs" June 21, 2011 How can you get your non-sales employees to help "sell" your business? If you have salespeople, you know what they're usually motivated by: cold hard cash.

Related:  Need to Know