6 Must-Reads for New Age Businessmen

When starting a company, there are many resources available to you with folks telling you how, why, when and where to start your business in order to become a successful entrepreneur, at an early age.  Unfortunately, many, if not most, of these resources are mediocre, misleading, or just not useful.  Having access to the right resources to assist you is critical for your long term success.  Since your ‘time’ when you start your company is at a premium, you want to ensure that every moment you spend reading relevant books is time well spent. So, without further delay, here is a list of 6 books that I have found invaluable for new age businessmen, in starting a venture, afresh.  

Good Luck:  Creating the Conditions for Success in Life and Business.  I like this book as a motivational book.  Without becoming too trite or platitudinous, it is another short read that will put you in the proper perspective for starting your company and putting your efforts into the context of your overall life plan.  This is a great book to read, discuss with someone you trust, then give to someone else you think will benefit from it. 

The Little Red Book of Selling.  Every entrepreneur will need to know how to sell.  Whether you’re selling prospective employees on your vision, investors on your company, or customers on your product, you need to be able to sell.  Even if you have a partner who is responsible for sales or you hire a sales person, you need to understand the methodical sales process.  This book takes you through an industry-generic process for the sales cycle.  It’s a fast read, and a book to keep for reference.

3-D Negotiation. Another critical skill for any entrepreneur is to be able to negotiate.  Much as fighting in a skilled way isn’t about wading in and swinging wildly and aggressively without direction, negotiation isn’t about shouting loudly and playing hardball on every point.  This book emphasizes the setting of the negotiation game board before the negotiation even starts, so that the actual tactics employed during negotiations, become secondary in importance. 

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s basically what I would call a personal finance perspective told in the form of a parable, a complete rethink of how money works. For example, rather than seeing an asset as something with value, this book defines an asset as being something that generates cash flow. This means that according to this book, your home is not an asset. “The rich don't work for money, they invent money” is one of the many quotes you would find whilst browsing through the book.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. "Work on your business, not in it" may be the most oft-quoted piece of wisdom in the entrepreneurial vernacular. The author urges readers to develop systems that allow their companies to operate even without them. This book doses starry-eyed entrepreneurs with much-needed perspective.