Reinforcements: 8 Books Every Entrepreneur / CXO / WannaBe Should Read!
Reading is considered to be the finest education for the soul. From Bill Gates to Oprah Winfrey, every successful leader makes time to crack open a book for an hour or two. A good book can inspire, challenge and amuse you. Sometimes, it can even change your whole perspective on life. There are books that can mold your mindset to attract success, books that can motivate you to keep pushing forward, and books that inspire you to start your own business. Presenting Reinforcements; some super awesome business books you should add to your tablet or nightstand right away:
1. Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart
Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down — and why some break through.
The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together.
You’ll learn:
* How ragtag teams — from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates — beat the odds throughout history.
* Why Daimler Chrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships.
* What the Wright Brothers’ daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving.
* Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together.
* The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded.
Provocative and entertaining, Dream Teams is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.
Buy: Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart
2. A Tribe Called Bliss: Break Through Superficial Friendships, Create Real Connections, Reach Your Highest Potential
Lori Harder is a self-love expert with over one million listeners on her Earn Your Happy podcast. In A Tribe Called Bliss she shares the exact structure she used to build her own tribe and grow from the anxiety ridden, unhealthy, introverted underachiever she was to the confident woman who takes risks and leaps out of her comfort zone, with a foreword from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gabrielle Bernstein.
The benefits of a having a tribe are undeniable. Women who have strong social circles are living longer, happier, healthier lives in comparison to those who lack connections and are mentally and physically exhausting themselves trying to quench external desires in isolation.
Today, we live in an uber-connected era, where anyone is able to make thousands of friends and participate in their lives with the swipe of a finger. Why then, in such a connected time in history, do so many women feel disconnected, confined, misunderstood, defeated, or think that success is a solo project?
In A Tribe Called Bliss Lori Harder bridges the gap between inspiration and action, providing a lasting resource for positive change and a guidebook for establishing a support tribe. This practical book is for the growing audience of woman seeking the sisterhood and connection they crave so much. It encourages readers to examine life on a micro level, and Lori provides lessons and contextual self-work exercises on how to develop the kind of awareness of the present moment that is the key to a lifetime of blissful happiness.
Buy: A Tribe Called Bliss: Break Through Superficial Friendships, Create Real Connections, Reach Your Highest Potential
3. The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
The Energy Bus, an international best seller by Jon Gordon, takes readers on an enlightening and inspiring ride that reveals 10 secrets for approaching life and work with the kind of positive, forward thinking that leads to true accomplishment — at work and at home. Jon infuses this engaging story with keen insights as he provides a powerful road-map to overcome adversity and bring out the best in yourself and your team. When you get on The Energy Bus you’ll enjoy the ride of your life!
Buy: The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
4. New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — And How to Make It Work for You
The definitive guide to spreading ideas, building movements, and leaping ahead in our chaotic, connected age. Get the book New York Times columnist David Brooks calls “the best window I’ve seen into this new world.”
Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in our chaotic, connected age? In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our time — the rise of mega-platforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere victories of Obama and Trump; the unexpected emergence of movements like #MeToo — and reveal what’s really behind them: the rise of “new power.”
For most of human history, the rules of power were clear: power was something to be seized and then jealously guarded. This “old power” was out of reach for the vast majority of people. But our ubiquitous connectivity makes possible a different kind of power. “New power” is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It works like a current, not a currency — and it is most forceful when it surges. The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel.
New Power shines fresh light on the cultural phenomena of our day, from #BlackLivesMatter to the Ice Bucket Challenge to Airbnb, uncovering the new power forces that made them huge. Drawing on examples from business, activism, and pop culture, as well as the study of organizations like Lego, NASA, Reddit, and TED, Heimans and Timms explain how to build new power and channel it successfully. They also explore the dark side of these forces: the way ISIS has co-opted new power to monstrous ends, and the rise of the alt-right’s “intensity machine.”
In an era increasingly shaped by new power, this groundbreaking book offers us a new way to understand the world — and our role in it.
Buy: New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — And How to Make It Work for You
5. The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders
Based on an in-depth analysis of over 2,600 leaders drawn from a database of more than 17,000 CEOs and C-suite executives, as well 13,000 hours of interviews, and two decades of experience advising CEOs and executive boards, Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell overturn the myths about what it takes to get to the top and succeed.
Their groundbreaking research was the featured cover story in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. It reveals the common attributes and counterintuitive choices that set apart successful CEOs — lessons that we can apply to our own careers.
Much of what we hear about who gets to the top, and how, is wrong.Those who become chief executives set their sights on the C-suite at an early age. In fact, over 70 percent of the CEOs didn’t have designs on the corner office until later in their careers. You must graduate from an elite college. In fact, only 7 percent of CEOs in the dataset are Ivy League graduates — and 8 percent didn’t graduate from college at all. To become a CEO you need a flawless résumé. The reality: 45 percent of CEO candidates had at least one major career blowup.
What those who reach the top do share are four key behaviors that anyone can master: they are decisive; they are reliable, delivering what they promised when the promise it, without exception; they adapt boldly, and they engage with stakeholders without shying away from conflict.
Based on this breakthrough study of the most successful people in business, Botelho and Powell offer career advice for everyone who aspires to get ahead. Based on research insights illustrated by real life stories from CEOs and boardrooms, they tell us how to:
- Fast-track our career by deploying the career catapults used by those who get to the top quickly
- Overcome the hidden handicaps to getting the job we want.
- Avoid the 5 hazards that most commonly derail those promoted into a new role.
For everyone who aspires to rise up through the organization and achieve their full potential, The CEO Next Door is an essential guide.
Buy: The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders
6. Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success
We rely on willpower to create change in our lives…but what if we’re thinking about it all wrong? In Willpower Doesn’t Work, Benjamin Hardy explains that willpower is nothing more than a dangerous fad-one that is bound to lead to failure. Instead of “white-knuckling” your way to change, you need to instead alter your surroundings to support your goals. This book shows you how.
The world around us is fast-paced, confusing, and full of distractions. It’s easy to lose focus on what you want to achieve, and your willpower won’t last long if your environment is in conflict with your goals — eventually, the environment will win out. Willpower Doesn’t Work is the needed guided for today’s over-stimulating and addicting environment. Willpower Doesn’t Work will specifically teach you:
- How to make the biggest decisions of your life — and why those decisions must be made in specific settings
- How to create a daily “sacred” environment to live your life with intention, and not get sucked into the cultural addictions
- How to invest big in yourself to upgrade your environment and mindset
- How to put “forcing functions” in your life — so your default behaviors are precisely what you want them to be
- How to quickly put yourself in proximity to the most successful people in the world — and how to adapt their knowledge and skills to yourself even quicker
- How to create an environment where endless creativity and boundless productivity is the norm
Benjamin Hardy will show you that nurture is far more powerful than your nature, and teach you how to create and control your environment so your environment will not create and control you.
Buy: Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success
7. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Daniel H. Pink, the #1 bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, unlocks the scientific secrets to good timing to help you flourish at work, at school, and at home.
Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of “when” decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.
Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?
In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
Buy: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
8. Airbnb: A 21st-Century Goldmine
You may only be able to experience something so big, so revolutionary that it creates a rush of excitement a handful of times in your life — Airbnb is one of these times, and its fullest potential has not even been tapped.
The Airbnb platform has done more than create a different way for people to travel. It has created an entirely new breed of entrepreneur. A person can live anywhere in the world and still participate in the Airbnb platform…if he or she follows certain strategies.
Entrepreneur and real estate expert Andrew Keene will teach you these strategies. You don’t have to start out wealthy to make them work. You don’t have to already be a real estate mogul. All it takes is strategy and initiative — and less time than you think.
Airbnb is a unique resource of all the information you need to know about Airbnb, whether you want to be a host, are trying to establish Superhost status, are a real estate investor who wants to learn the smart maneuvers that lead to successful short-term lease investment properties, or even if you’re a guest. You’ll find useful conversations that apply to real scenarios that you’re likely to encounter in the Airbnb culture. Here’s what you’ll find:
- What the largest economic waves have meant to the U.S. economy, both in real estate and in third party services.
- What makes Airbnb so exciting and appealing, both to travelers and investors.
- Insights into how to evaluate properties that are good candidates for the Airbnb market.
- Approaches and steps to take in order to become a host with the potential to reach Superhost status faster.
- Inspiring statistics that are driving the Airbnb market, which inspire new entrepreneurs and travelers worldwide.
The layman’s approach to big decisions that Andrew Keene offers in Airbnb will appeal to anyone considering Airbnb, whether or not they have previous experience with the platform or even real estate investing.
Your perspectives on real estate will never be the same once you’ve read Airbnb.
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