How-to-Succeed-in-Business Books: Which Ones Can You Trust? 

“I’m a sophomore in college, majoring in business, and I want to start my own business after I graduate. I’m taking all the usual courses on accounting, management, and finance, but I want to supplement what I’m learning by reading books. A friend recommended Ready, Fire, Aim, which I really liked. I’ve already got copies of Seven Years to Seven Figures, The Architecture of Persuasion, and Automatic Wealth for Grads. What other books of yours should read? And can you give me some tips on how to choose books by other people on entrepreneurship and business building? (I did a quick search online and found hundreds of them. Literally, hundreds!)” – JP

My Response: 

I’ve never been a big consumer of business books. When I was your age, JP, the only books I read that were not required reading were novels, short story collections, and poetry. These days, my range is much wider. More than half of my reading consists of nonfiction books and essays. It is still only very occasionally that I’ll read the sort of how-to business book that Ready, Fire, Aim is.

Why? I’m not sure. It must be a form of pride or arrogance. It is surely connected to the fact that however lost I find myself in an unfamiliar city or even a large, unfamiliar retail store, I cannot bring myself to ask for directions.

Something must have happened in my early childhood that left me nearly disabled when it comes to asking for help. Doing so feels like a form of weakness or capitulation. I feel the same way about reading self-help business books. It feels like cheating.

In fact, in 2000, when I began writing Early to Rise (ETR), my daily blog about achieving “health, wealth, and wisdom,” you could count on one hand the total number of self-help books I had read.

I didn’t start ETR because I felt I had so many great ideas to write about. I did it because I could see that the world of internet publishing was exploding, and I wanted to get on board.

Having spent, by then, nearly 25 years as an editor and publisher, I knew enough about the publishing game to understand that if I wanted to succeed in this new world of digital newsletters, I had to (a) write about something that could generate income for my readers, and (b) restrict my writing to topics I could write about with authority.

But since I had read so little on “health, wealth, and wisdom” – the subjects I claimed to be an expert about – I had to anchor my theories almost entirely to my personal experience. That turned out to be a good thing, because my ideas and advice were, for the most part, different from the conventional ideas and advice one could find then in popular books and magazines. That gave me a USP (unique selling proposition) that drove ETR’s circulation up beyond 900,000 at its peak.

When I wrote Ready, Fire, Aim in 2007, it was similar in the sense that it was based almost entirely on my experience in starting and developing small businesses. When I referenced other books or magazine articles in its chapters, it was almost always to disagree with them.

Likewise in 2010, when my partners and I launched Creating Wealth, an internet periodical on entrepreneurship and wealth building. The content was 90% based on my personal experience.

You may be wondering, JP, why I’m telling you this. I’m sure you anticipated – and perhaps would prefer – a shorter answer to your questions. But I can’t really answer them without also giving you answers to other questions which, whether you meant to ask or not, still apply.

Point One: One idea that I hope you will take away from this is that my ignorance about such things as personal productivity and career-building gave me an advantage. My ideas and theories and stories that supported them were unique. They came from a different perspective, and gave my readers a way to achieve success that they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Your Takeaway on This Point: While absorbing ideas and insights about how to succeed in business from others, it is always smart to construct a filter between what they are saying and what you decide to do. Every business and wealth-building opportunity is unique. Never treat the ideas and advice you get from them as commandments. Treat them as pencil sketches for the masterpiece that will be yours and yours alone.

Point Two: In telling you about the difficulty I have in taking advice from others, it sounds like I’m suggesting that this is an advantage in business. Not so.

Your Takeaway on This Point: It was, for me, an advantage in developing a unique perspective. But if I could go back in time, I would have asked questions whenever I had them but filtered the answers through what I knew from experience. And that’s what I’m suggesting you do when you read how-to books on achieving success in business.

As I see it, there are basically two kinds of how-to books on business success:

* Outside-In Books – written by academics or professional writers, and

* Inside-Out Books – written by people who have achieved success on their own.

On the one hand, the books written by writer-researchers are often more objective and factual since they are derived from multiple sources over time.

On the other hand, books written by people who have done what they are writing about are often more believable because they are coming from the successful horse’s mouth.

Each kind of book has its advantages and disadvantages.

Outside-In Books: One thing I like about these books is that, if the writer is smart and articulate, the ideas are usually compelling and the reading is fun. But that is also their downside. Because the ideas are both fun and compelling, the reader is tempted to accept them without further investigation and without comparing those ideas with their personal experience.

Inside-Out Books: These books have the advantage of authority. They are coming from someone that has done what he is telling the reader to do. Why would you not follow such advice? I’ll give you one good reason. Because these books are often written by ghostwriters who have little to no prior knowledge of the industry or business they are writing about. They are getting their stories and their theories from the man that did it. And they have no way of knowing whether what they have been told by him is accurate or was invented to gild his lily.

The Bottom Line 

You should read as many how-to books on business and entrepreneurship and building wealth that you feel you have time for. But read them with an understanding of whether the ideas, strategies, and advice they present are outside-in or inside-out.

If it’s an outside-in book, remember that the author is in search of a clever idea that could become a bestselling idea. He may believe in the ideas he presents, but he hasn’t formulated them from experience. And that is a limitation you must keep in mind.

If it is an inside-out book, enjoy the stories. But remember that the person whose career you are reading about already has all the money and fame he could want. What he may not have is admiration and respect for his accomplishments. And if he thought he might generate such admiration and respect by altering his story or his insights, you might be reading bullshit.

66 Books Any Aspiring Entrepreneur or Wealth Builder Should Read
(Aside from My Own Books, of Course) 

These are not all the books one might want to read, nor are they necessarily the best – but they are the best books I’ve read and feel comfortable recommending.

Entrepreneurship

* The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
* Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc
* Zero to One by Peter Thiel
* Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
* The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
* Start with Why by Simon Sinek
* Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Business & Business Management 

* How to Be Rich by J. Paul Getty
* A Passion for Excellence by Tom Peters
* Good to Great by Jim Collins
* Made In America by Sam Walton
* The Nordstrom Way by Robert Spector
* The World on Time by James C. Wetherbe
* The Disney Touch by Rod Grover
* You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen
* The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

Biographies & Autobiographies

* The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
* Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
* Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace
* Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace
* Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump
* Rupert Murdoch by Jerome Tuccille
* Iacocca: An Autobiography
* Be My Guest by Conrad Hilton
* Goals, Guts, and Greatness by Mark O. Haroldsen
* McDonald’s: Behind the Arches by John Love

Sales & Marketing 

* Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
* Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
* My First 65 Years in Advertising by Maxwell Sackheim
* The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
* Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
* How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O Schwab
* The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
* Direct Marketing by Edward Nash
* Your Marketing Genius at Work by Jay Abraham
* The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
* How to Win and Keep Customers by Michael LeBeouf
* Ziglar on Selling by Zig Ziglar
* The Guide to Greatness in Sales by Tom Hopkins
* How to Close Every Sale by Joe Girard
* The Art of the Hard Sell by Robert L. Shook

Investing & Wealth Building

* The Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham
* The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom
* Gold: The Once and Future Money by Nathan Lewis
* Market Wizards by Jack Schwager
* The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
* The Bond King by Mary Childs
* The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias
* Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher

Economics

* The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
* Economics in One Lesson by William Hazlitt
* Das Kapital by Karl Marx
* The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
* Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises
* Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
* The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
* The Empire of Debt by William Bonner and Addison Wiggins
* Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter
* Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt

Personal Development 

* 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen R. Covey
* The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
* Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
* The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
* How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
* The Essence of Success by Earl Nightingale
* Atomic Habits by James Clear