BUSINESS BOOKS?
Not many good business books exist. On the good ones, there is almost universal consensus among people who are practitioners. I’ve built a few good sized consultancies – all of which survive today. And consulting firms see it all.
Caveats:
1) Inspirational books are trash. Reading them confirms you’ll never succeed. You need skills. You shouldn’t need inspiration or you’re not capable of entrepreneurship,
2) Entrepreneurs are born not made. You can’t help it.
3) Ideas don’t matter, execution does, and the capital to do it matters even more.
4) Most people are too incompetent to both (a) execute rigorously and consistently (b) work as hard as necessary.
5) Everyone who fails tries to launch too early, or become internally focused, when all that matters is customer acquisition, service, and retention at the lowest cost possible, with the best people possible with the clearest achievable mission possible. It’s a hydraulic system. Most systems fail because one or more components can’t perform as promised.
6) Don’t build departments other than finance. Everything else should be program or project based with achievable growth goals iin th presence of execuitive support.
7) Only A’s can hire As, everyone else can hire only people who don’t matter enough to matter at scale.
8) The vast growth in the white collar clerical era of easy jobs between 1985 and 2020 made possible by computers will be eliminated by computers in the next two decades.
9) Boomer capital formation during the US’s internationally privileged period from 1950 to 2008 has already ended and with it will end both the east of raising money, tolerance for unprofitability, and tolerance for ‘fluffy’ employees with low return per employee per dollar.
That said these books are not trash, and the one’s in bold matter:
1. Economics in One Lesson, (and as much behavioral econ as you can handle),
2. Win Friends and Influence People,
3. Influence by Caldini,
4. Ogilvy on Advertising,
5. Lean Startup,
6. Zero to One,
7. Essential Drucker,
8. Financial Intelligence,
9. Deep Work,
10. Good To Great,
11. Innovator’s Dilemma.
Cheers.
Reply addressees: @Josh_Ebner @Imperius__13