5 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read
We all know it, growing a startup is beyond difficult.
Often you’ll face challenges that’ll make you question the entrepreneurial route. Maybe I’m not cut out to run a startup? Maybe this isn’t a good idea. But it’s important to realize, these thoughts are common amongst all entrepreneurs. Startup owners experience stress more than any other type of employment or profession, but there is a wealth of information from successful business people, psychologists, and speakers on how to deal with these issues.
In this EA blog, we’ll be listing some of the best books for handling the challenges of entrepreneurship. Don’t let doubt hold you back when every business owner has traversed this path before. Like Shia LaBeouf once famously said:
Summary
- No Excuses by Brian Tracy
- Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
- 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd
- The Law of the Garbage Truck by David J. Pollay
- The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal
The Procrasti-Nation
Even after successfully starting your own businesses, it can often be a struggle to start subsequent projects.
Dealing with procrastination has been written about at length, but there are two particular works that should help stave off the Netflix urge.
No Excuses by Brian Tracy: As the title aptly implies, this book is simply about getting started. A key insight of this work is the idea of Someday Isle, an allegorical island that most people are living on. Here, each person imagines the life they want for themselves as being someday achievable, but neglects to put in the work to make the future a reality. This book seeks to help you escape the island by breaking down the arguments of unpreparedness that one’s brain may generate.
Do the Work by Steven Pressfield: Made specifically for entrepreneurs and artists, this title is under a hundred pages and seeks to guide the reader from the start to the end of a project. A key idea in this book is the concept of Resistance, a culmination of self-doubt and personal obstacles. To win against doubt is to know your enemy, and this book provides knowledge and tips to beat Resistance.
Step 1: Make a Plan
Once you’ve made the effort to start, you’ll need a plan. Fortunately, the book 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd can help in that regard. Voogd details the planning and networking steps he personally took to grow his sales business. The core concept of the book is setting a date for yourself six months from now, where you’ll drop whatever you’re doing and enact your plan. The whole novel is centered around preparing for this time crunch, and provides planning exercises that incorporate limited time. The novel also covers ideas from several other business books, and as such is a good overview of these concepts as well.
Inner Peace
Dealing with aggressive clients or suppliers isn’t fun. Often negativity compounds on us, and we become reservoirs of anger. The Law of Garbage Trucks by David J. Pollay focuses on the single idea of not letting the negativity of others become yours. He writes that those holding onto anger act as garbage trucks trying to dump refuse onto others. It’s a short read, but ultimately necessary to understand so you can stay cool in the face of adversity.
Finally, coming back to our first idea, we have the Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. As a Stanford researcher, McGonigal spent many years espousing the adverse health effects of stress, but changed her view with recent developments in psychology and neurobiology. It turns out that simply changing your perspective of stress, can turn it into a superpower. Thinking that stress is bad for you actually has more health issues, than stress itself! By reevaluating our perspective of stress, McGongial explains how thinking of stress as the body preparing itself for success can improve our lives and health. You can get a quick preview of her book, by watching her TEDTalk below where she explains some of the principles.
