We’ve Compiled This List of Business Books That’ll Give You More Insights Into Why People Do The Things They Do, & How To Leverage Behaviors To Grow Your Business
Here is a small library of my favorite books and other resources I’ve read in the past that had a major impact on how I both view the world, and learned what it takes to actually move the world around me. I hope you find these as helpful as I did, and if so please share your thoughts with us in the comments below…
First, we’ll cover some incredible business books that have stood the test of time, and should really be top on your reading/listening lists. Why? Because the topics they discuss work. Period.
Then we’ll touch on some psychology books that are fun to read, and give you a better understanding about the people and world around and inside us all.
Business Strategy Books
Magnetic Marketing – Dan Kennedy
Learn how small and medium size businesses are competing and even beating their larger competitors by employing the tactics of “Direct Response Marketing”. Gain and retain more customers than ever before with these easy-to-implement tactics today!
MAGNETIC MARKETING® is a radical, dramatically different sea-change in the way new customers, clients, patients or prospects are attracted and in the way products, services, businesses and practices are advertised. It is a “change movement” that has established itself in over 136 different niches, business categories, industries and professions, but is still also a “best kept secret”―its practitioners are in a “secret society.”
It―and only it―offers real protection from commoditization, Amazon-ization, price and profit destruction. It is soundly based on well-proven strategies dating from the turn of the century to the present. No academic theories, no vague “ideas”, no fads. No BS! The makings of a system for your business’s sustainability and growth you can rely on. It is introduced to you in this important and timely book. You have made a wise decision obtaining it. Bolt the door, put away the device and dig in!
DotCom Secrets – Russell Brunson
Understanding the basics of how online businesses are built and prosper is key to anything you do over the next year. Find out how entrepreneurs and owners like you are using funnels, webinars, and other tools to launch and scale their business online quickly.
DotCom Secrets is not just another “how-to” book on internet marketing.
This book is not about getting more traffic to your website–yet the secrets you’ll learn will help you to get exponentially more traffic than ever before.
This book is not about increasing your conversions–yet these secrets will increase your conversions more than any headline tweak or split test you could ever hope to make.
Low traffic or low conversion rates are symptoms of a much greater problem that’s a little harder to see (that’s the bad news), but a lot easier to & (that’s the good news).
What most businesses really have is a “funnel” problem. Your funnel is the online process that you take your potential customers through to turn them into actual customers. Everyone has a funnel (even if they don’t realize it), and yours is either bringing more customers to you, or repelling them.
Expert Secrets – Russell Brunson
Your business is a calling. You’ve been called to serve a group of people with the products, services, and offers that you’ve created. The impact that the right message can have on someone at the right time in their life is immeasurable. Your message could help to save marriages, repair families, change someone’s health, grow a company, or more. . .
By positioning yourself as an expert and telling your story in a way that gets people to move, you will be able to guide people through your value ladder, offer solutions to their problems, and give them the results they are looking for. This is how you change the lives of your customers, and this is how you grow your company.
Traffic Secrets – Russell Brunson
The biggest problem that most entrepreneurs have isn’t creating an amazing product or service; it’s getting their future customers to discover that they even exist. Every year, tens of thousands of businesses start and fail because the entrepreneurs don’t understand this one essential skill: the art and science of getting traffic (or people) to find you.
Traffic Secrets was written to help you get your message out to the world about your products and services. I strongly believe that entrepreneurs are the only people on earth who can actually change the world. It won’t happen in government, and I don’t think it will happen in schools.
It’ll happen because of entrepreneurs like you, who are crazy enough to build products and services that will actually change the world. It’ll happen because we are crazy enough to risk everything to try and make that dream become a reality.
Waiting for people to come to you is not a strategy.
Understanding exactly WHO your dream customer is, discovering where they’re congregating, and throwing out the hooks that will grab their attention to pull them into your funnels (where you can tell them a story and make them an offer) is the strategy. That’s the big secret. Traffic is just people. This book will help you find YOUR people, so you can focus on changing their world with the products and services that you sell.
Launch – Jeff Walker
The revised and updated edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller Launch will build your business – fast. Whether you’ve already got an online business or you’re itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction and a fast start.
Think about it: What if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? And you could do it no matter how humble your business or budget?
Since 1996, Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed a process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success. And once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that brought in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars. Whether you have an existing business or you’re starting from scratch, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.
Now the question is this: Do you want to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?
The Thank You Economy – Gary Vaynerchuck
Gary Vaynerchuk has seen the future of marketing. The Thank You Economy shows how it’s built on both the time-honored techniques of listening to and appreciating customers and newer services like Twitter that allow you to engage directly with customers at unprecedented scale and speed. The book, like Gary, is also a lot of fun and full of passion.” —Dick Costolo, chief executive officer, Twitter
Gary Vaynerchuk, the New York Times bestselling author and creator of Wine Library TV, is back with a bold and expansive look at the evolution of today’s marketplace, revealing the essential factors defining and driving successful relationships between businesses and consumers. In this groundbreaking follow-up to the bestselling Crush It!, Vaynerchuk—one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “20 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow”—looks beyond a numbers-based analysis to explore the value of social interactions in building our economy.
Restaurant Marketing In The New Economy – Rory Fatt
Author Rory Fatt is the most successful marketing consultant to independent restaurant owners in the world. He has taught over 6,103 restaurant owners his no-nonsense, proven, step-by-step approach to get customers flocking to their restaurants and keep them coming back. His marketing methods have helped his clients double, triple, even quadruple their profits.
In this book Rory doesn’t hold back. Get ready to discover:
– Rory’s Simple 3 Step Business Building Formula that will help you get more customers, get them back over and over, and spending more when they do!
– Discover what some of the most successful restaurant owners have in common which allows them to grow and profit rapidly even in this down economy. (This one take-away could be that “ah-ha” revelation that allows you to do the same!)
– Learn the Top 8 Restaurant Marketing Myths, Mistakes & Blunders that will have the biggest impact on the future profitability and stability of a restaurant. (these could be the very things that will determine if you make it through these challenging times).
– How to SYSTEMIZE Marketing for Measurable Results (no more guessing if your marketing is working the way you think it is!)
– Discover the ONE THING you are NOT doing right now that is closing the door shut on repeat business and costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
– Cut the fat and waste out of marketing your business forever!
ePayment Secrets – Thomas Buttino (Yup, I wrote a book too!)
The payments industry is designed to confuse business owners so they don’t know, or care to know what they’re actually paying for the “privilege” of accepting electronic payments, like credit cards and electronic checks. In this book, you’ll get an insider’s prospective on how to cut through all the haze of accepting electronic payments, and use those insights to grow your bottom line literally overnight by as much as 30%.
As a payment industry professional with over 17 years experience, Thomas is pulling back the curtain and sharing his insights in hopes you’ll avoid the many pitfalls he and his colleagues have experienced over the years. Plus, he’s giving you the exact steps and needed to put these tools into action to begin scaling your business faster. Join Thomas as he unlocks these nuggets of hard truths, and how to use them to transform your business, your bottom line, and your life moving forward.
Gain Financial Insights
Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
While this is not a direct business book, it does teach many principals that translate into building wealth for you and your family. Learn the secrets the rich use, like shielding their wealth within corporations to change the way you pay taxes legally, and more.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is Robert’s story of growing up with two dads — his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad — and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.
Miilionaire Success Habits – Dean Graziosi
Millionaire Success Habits is a book designed with one purpose in mind: to take you from where you are in life to where you want to be in life by incorporating easy-to-implement “Success Habits” into your daily routine.
Legendary business coach Dean Graziosi has broken down the walls of complexity around success and created simple success recipes that you can quickly put to use in your life to reach the level of wealth and abundance you desire.
This book is not about adding more time to your day. It is about replacing those things that are not serving your future with success habits designed specifically to assist you on your journey to a better you. In these pages, you’ll:
· Drill down deep to identify your “why”—the true purpose that drives you and the real reason you want to prosper
· Expose and overcome the “villain within” that’s holding you back
· Unlock the single biggest secret to being productive (it’s probably not what you think)
· Believe in your own massive potential—so you can make it a reality
· Use Dean’s 30-day Better Life Challenge to catapult you into your new life
Now updated with brand-new chapters on productivity and mastering the art of achievement, Millionaire Success Habits gives you the tools you need to radically reshape your daily routine and open new doors to prosperity.
The E Myth (Revisited) – Michael Gerber
Walks through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.
The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes
het Holmes helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference.
The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve—sales, marketing, management, and more.
Creativity Inc. – Ed Catmull
het Holmes helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference.
The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve—sales, marketing, management, and more.
Start With ‘Why’ – Simon Sinek
In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn inspire their colleagues and customers. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY — the third most popular TED video of all time.
Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek
Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.
In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why?
The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. “Officers eat last,” he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What’s symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort–even their own survival–for the good of those in their care.
Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a “Circle of Safety” that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.
Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking.
[Business] Psychology Books
Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant–in the blink of an eye–that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work–in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?
The Tipping Point– Malcolm Gladwell
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt; Steven J. Dubner
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head. Study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher, and so much more.
SuperFreakonomics – Steven D. Levitt; Steven J. Dubner
The “Steven’s” return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics—the follow-up to their New York Times bestseller. SuperFreakonomics once again challenges our views of the way the world really works.
Discover how the world of economics impacts even the most trivial areas of our lives, and how to relay those into growing a business.
Think Like A Freak – Steven D. Levitt; Steven J. Dubner
The “Steven’s” return again with a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.
When To Rob A Bank – Steven D. Levitt; Steven J. Dubner
The “Steven’s” return again with a flurry of warped questions that will have you questioning your own existence.
In When to Rob a Bank, they ask a host of typically off-center questions: Why don’t flight attendants get tipped? If you were a terrorist, how would you attack? And why does KFC always run out of fried chicken?
Over the past decade, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have published more than 8,000 blog posts on the Freakonomics website. Many of them, they freely admit, were rubbish. But now they’ve gone through and picked the best of the best. You’ll discover what people lie about, and why; the best way to cut gun deaths; why it might be time for a sex tax; and, yes, when to rob a bank. (Short answer: never; the ROI is terrible.) You’ll also learn a great deal about Levitt and Dubner’s own quirks and passions, from gambling and golf to backgammon and the abolition of the penny.
More On The Spiritual Side
ACK! – Cory Sanchez
Desire a life with less worry, fear, and overwhelm? Dream of finally having an end to pesky, “grumpy day” feelings and emotions? There’s a “little known” secret to finding happiness in today’s “on the go” existence. In ACK!, the author guides us through an “easy to follow” journey to living a more fun, engaging, and joy-filled life. If you’re looking for the ultimate shortcut on how to turn bad days into good days, then this is the perfect roadmap to unlocking untapped energy, connection, and love.
The Power Of Now – Eckhart Tolle
To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle’s extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question and answer format to guide us.
A word of mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.
What Are Your Favorites?
Leave a comment below about what you thought of these resources, or what you others that should be shared with the group!
