Top 50 Best Business Books For Men – All-Time Entrepreneur Reads

The best way to start the next multi-billion dollar company is with someone else’s money. To do that you must be able to craft a business plan that makes wealthy venture capitalists want to dig deep into their pockets and throw handfuls of large denomination bills at you. Or maybe write a huge check. If you plan to solicit funds, this book shows you how.

If you believe the same kind of thinking that built the industrial revolution will get your business idea to the next level, go to the back of the line. Technology, and the internet, in particular, has changed everything. Today’s visionaries know that yesterday’s business models won’t work. Learn what works today from the ones who have already climbed the mountain.

Richard Branson has started so many successful companies he’s forgotten half of them. However, a dude could do worse than learn from the maverick entrepreneur behind the Virgin brand (airlines, music, mobile phones, etc). The bottom line is he’s the only guy to build eight separate billion dollar companies from scratch. Think you could learn something picking his brain?

It’s no secret that advertisers have been controlling our brains for a long time now. Ever seen a Taco Bell commercial and get an unstoppable urge to run for the border? That’s not mind control, it’s psychology, friends. If you want people to buy your product or service and not even know why, dig into these 100 ad agency secrets that persuade consumers every day.

The truth is that the permutations of implementing a business strategy can make the Rubik’s Cube look like child’s play. It’s not a simple task, and is made worse when it seems like the industry breeds them like rabbits. It’s time to let Bruce Greenwald, an exalted business professor, help clear the mystery associated with creating a business strategy. Unless you’re an idiot, you really can do it.

What’s better than making a living indulging in your favorite hobby or passion? The answer is nothing. If you thought your devotion to underwater basket weaving could never bring in the big bucks – you might be right, but you’ll never know until you investigate this guide about how to use the internet to turn a passion into a real business.

Some people just get it. This tome from Tony Heish, ultra-hip dude who created the online customer service-centric shoe company, Zappos, is a rip-back-the-curtains look at how to build the sort of corporate culture that makes employees stay for a long time. Zappos is unique. If you want to grab some of that and sprinkle it over your business, here’s how.

Making money online is soooo easy. All you have to do is put up a website. It’s like hacking into an ATM, right? Actually, no. It would be a great idea to read this instant classic before your head fills with dreams of avarice. Small businesses fail online at least as often as they do in the real world. Read how and why internet entrepreneurs go awry so maybe you won’t.

“Mommy, I want to grow up and work in a cubicle,” said no kid ever. If you’ve been having secret fantasies of bashing your cubicle-mate over the head with a TPS report, it might be time to read this book. Author Pamela Slim ditched the corporate world 12 years ago and never looked back. Here’s how she did it.

This collection of interviews from the people that started companies like Apple, Flickr, Hotmail, and PayPal reads like a who’s who of the technology billionaire sector. If ever you wanted to be a fly on the wall, this is it. Understand why these startups went on to to change the world when a million others failed.

In this sequel to his landmark book, Jim Collins teaches budding 501(C)(3)ers how to apply the principles of profit to the social sector. In other words, how to make your nonprofit a lean, mean, revenue-producing machine using tried and true capitalist techniques. Just because you run a nonprofit doesn’t mean you should do so poorly.

It was almost 35 years ago that Jay Levinson dropped this little business bomb on the world. Finally! Strategies showing small business owners how to compete for market share with the big boys of the corporate world. This fourth edition updates those strategies for today’s world of social media, blogs, and mobile computing. It’s the entrepreneur’s bible. Why isn’t it on YOUR shelf?

Are people a company’s most important asset? That’s this book’s conceit and it’s likely right on the mark. To anyone who’s ever been in charge of hiring, you know it can be a gut-curdling experience. Are the recruits crazy? Lazy? Just putting on a good show for the interview? This guide to successfully hiring quality people comes from one of the world’s leading human resource experts.

This was the first book to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship as a purposeful activity. In other words, one that can be planned and achieved through a step-by-step process. While the steps may vary in order and content, the overall strategy has not. Peter Drucker’s writings were manna from heaven to a generation of people desperate to escape the corporate world.

Mark Twain was a smart guy. He said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on.” What does that have to do with anything? Authors’ Chip and Dan Heath have written a little book about how to come up with better ideas. Stickier ideas.

These two accomplished educators have made careers of analysing why some ideas fly and others crash like an anvil falling off a table.

For millions of wannabe entrepreneurs ‘round the world, the chasm between idea and reality is a disheartening gap. According to Scott Belsky, the ability to push an idea through to creation is not inborn to humans. Luckily, it’s a learnable skill that’s critical to escaping corporate drudgery and making your own positive mark in the world.

Brazil’s Ricardo Semler took an aging family business and turned it into a juggernaut of innovation. How did he do it? By turning antiquated ideas of layered management on its head and introducing the idea of democracy to the workplace. Did it work? Better than gangbusters, whatever that is. This out-of-the-box thinking can inspire entrepreneurs at any stage of the process.

Claude Hopkins. The name is synonymous with copywriting genius. Though the man died in 1932, his works are still the foundation of the advertising game. Hopkins believed that advertising existed only to sell something and should be judged solely on the results it produced. Get your marketing up to speed by going back in time with this two-volume set.

Except for the dullards, we’ve all got at least one. A singularly brilliant idea that would spawn a global phenomenon – if only we knew what to do with it. Stephen Key has a long track record of turning ideas into a deluge of money, and this book reveals a step-by-step process to get your product to market without spending a dime.

Is it too lofty of praise to call Seth Godin today’s Claude Hopkins? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. This “ultimate entrepreneur for the information age” turns the age-old idea of disruptive advertising on its weary little head, and introduces what he calls permission marketing. Consumers should rejoice. Online marketers should buy.

According to Seth Godin, you’re either remarkable or you’re not. In his second entry on our list, the man tells us to throw out the 4 P’s of standard promotion – they don’t work any more – and embrace whatever it takes to distinguish yourself from the crowd. As he discusses in case studies, it worked for Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, JetBlue, Apple, and more.

Michael Masterson turns traditional entrepreneurial thinking all wonky with his sneaky little idea that there is such a thing as too much planning when it comes to launching a business. The reality is you can’t know what needs adjusting until you start. Is over-planning killing your progress? If so, just do it already. You can fix stuff later.

Do you spin your wheels and cover the same ground over and over, never really making forward progress with your ideas? You’re not alone. Millions of successful endeavors die a slow death while we try to figure out what holds us back. This book is about finding what’s stopping you and getting rid of it.

This little book from ace copywriter, Claude Hopkins, moved advertising into the scientific age. His idea is brilliant. If you can’t measure the return on a piece of advertising, you have no business running it because it’s just a shot in the dark. Advertising must be measured and compared to other pieces in the eternal search for improved profitability.

You may not think you’re a salesman but you are, according to Zig Ziglar. We’re all out there trying to close deals every day, whether it be with a vendor, potential client, or the homeless guy down the street. If you suspect a personal lack in the personality and charm department, you’re in luck. Ziglar can teach even the stiffest guy how to loosen up and turn on the charm.

If Zig Ziglar can’t get you motivated, you must be dead. As one of the world’s greatest motivators, Ziglar has helped generations transform themselves from underachieving losers to inspired doers. He does it with lessons on honesty, loyalty, faith, integrity, and personal character. If you think those are old-fashioned values, it could account for the rut you’ve been walking in.

Not every entrepreneur wants to grow into a huge corporation with a private jet on the runway and mistress on the side. Some aren’t interested in soliciting millions in startup cash. They simply want to bring their idea to the world without mountains of debt or fanfare. The idea is simple. Start small and stay small. It doesn’t mean you can’t make a comfortable living.

Do you need an MBA to make a business work? Absolutely not. There’s a little thing called street smarts which has been working just fine for entrepreneurs, and it doesn’t involve a bunch of step-by-step strategies absorbed from a textbook. This brilliant gem of a book teaches anyone with an IQ above 50 how to spot opportunities and solve problems to make them a reality.

Too many get hung up with the idea of trading time for money. These are usually the people who are dissatisfied with life. Shake off the lethargy and dig into the mindsets that propelled the most successful people of all time to the heights of money and fame. There is a repeatable strategy that consists of ten pillars. What have you got to lose?

What does war have to do with business? Quite a bit actually. If you don’t believe so, take a gander at Robert Green’s exploration of how military strategy through the ages can help your social and business game. This book could be just the thing you need to break out of a failure pattern and take the upper hand in life for a change.

How are your plans for world domination going? If you need a boost towards that lofty goal, Robert Green’s book on the ruthless application of power has a lot more to do with business than one might think. If you swear that Wal-Mart, Amazon, IBM, or eBay got where they are by being relentlessly nice, think again. Learn from history how to gain and defend ultimate control over others.

What’s the hardest part about becoming an entrepreneurial titan? If you said getting started, you’re not alone. As one of the original Apple team members that marketed the Macintosh computer back in 1984, Guy Kawasaki knows a little bit on the topic. These lessons in best practices for your startup could make all the difference.

Gary Halbert, copywriter extraordinaire, wrote a series of letters to his son Bond. The result, now public, is pure marketing gold. If you’re tired of “theoretical” advice, this might be the best source of specific, actionable advertising training to be found. “Who is Gary Halbert?” you might ask. If you do, we want you to stop reading right now and leave. He’s that important.

Warren Buffett is a genuine, folksy American folk hero who just happens to worth about $15 billion. When it comes to turning a little money into a lot over time, there’s been no one better in history. In this book, Buffett holds forth on investing, business, and other life lessons. With principles grounded in the teachings of his mentor, Ben Graham, the Bard of Omaha has become something of a mentor himself.

If not for this book, the Lean Startup Revolution might never have happened. In it, Steve Blank touts the benefit of a new business embarking on a four-step process. If uncovering flaws in your product and strategy before it costs a small fortune to correct sounds good, this is the book for you.

It’s not easy to make a name for yourself in Silicon Valley as a big time venture capitalist, but Ben Horowitz has managed to do this that. Entrepreneurs in search of money from people like this would be good to take a look at it from the other side of the table – where the one writing the checks sits. This is the kind of practical, real-world advice that too many business schools lack.

What do you do if you’re the CEO of a company that was built of brick and mortar and has been having a tough time transferring to the Internet Age? A good start would be to read this book. With a focus on disruptive technology, the author begs old-style CEO types to ditch their dusty ways and get with the program. Unless, of course, they like the idea of living on unemployment checks.

This is the one that launched Warren Buffett on his trajectory to the title of “Best. Investor. Ever.” Penned by Ben Graham in 1949, the timeless strategies for protecting yourself from disaster and developing long-term strategies remain as cogent today as ever. If it’s good enough for Warren Buffett, it’s good enough for you.

Most startups fail, but they don’t have to. The idea of creating a lean business has taken the world by storm and changed forever the way new products and companies are launched. This approach is all about using capital efficiently and leveraging the power of human creativity to the maximum. In today’s radically shifting business climate, you have to be able to change direction faster than Stephen Curry on a pull-up three..

This book preaches the concept of getting out of the slow lane and into the fast one. You know the slow one, right? Where you go to school, get a job you hate, scrimp to save 10 percent of what you earn and retire exhausted at 65. Yeah, this book thinks that’s a dumb idea. Need an alternative? We thought you’d never ask.

The time and hassle spent searching for, interviewing, and hiring employees seems to never stop. What if there was a way you could get the same amount of productivity and never hire another full-time worker? There is, and it’s called outsourcing. Many business owners are saving money by ditching the overhead of an office and making the switch to independent contractors. Here’s how to do it and why it’s so smart.

Did you know you can get an MBA for less than thirty bucks? Sure, you won’t have the piece of paper to hang on the wall, but this book by Josh Kaufman lets you skip the business school assembly line and get your degree in real world results. Learn marketing, sales, negotiations, and other essentials of entrepreneurship for the low cost of a single book.

What you’re doing right now as a business is all well and good, but will it transfer to a profit in tomorrow’s economy? This is the question that keeps business owners up at night asking, “What the heck will be different in the future?” Since we left our crystal ball at home, you’ll have to make do with this analysis of why some companies seem to stay in the high profit zone all the time. Here’s how you can get there too.

It takes a lot of guts to name your book the “Bible” of anything. That’s what Jeffrey Gitomer did with this book and then went out and got the Dale Carnegie Course to endorse it. That ain’t small potatoes. If you need sales methods and strategies that work in real world situations, here it is.

Here’s the deal with Toyota. They make the highest quality cars, with the fewest defects, using fewer man-hours, less inventory, and half the floor space. Think you could learn something from this juggernaut of a manufacturer? This business titan’s management principles and philosophy are finally broken down for a general audience.

Asian cultures have a business philosophy all their own, and it has more in common with Bruce Lee than one might think. Read all about how to apply the warrior way of thinking from ancient times to modern day business competition. Written by the world’s foremost expert on Asian business psyche.

This classic business book was written by Napoleon Hill, who loved to say, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” These techniques of learning to apply simple, basic techniques to supercharge your life and business have won rave reviews from practitioners of these concepts over the years.

How powerful can your personal beliefs become and what real world results can they yield? Try it and find out.

Shades of Claude Hopkins!

This inquisition into the reasons why consumers choose one product or service over another is brought to you by one of the coolest names ever – Paco Underhill. But don’t let that fool you. This is important stuff. To understand the science behind shopping decisions is to have the power to make the heavens open and vomit money down on you.

The first million was the hardest. After that, it was all downhill. If you really want to pick the brain of super-high performance business coach, Dan Pena, a leather bound volume of this book is available for the low, low price of you “probably can’t afford it”.

Copies are rare to come across and reserved for seminar attendees. If you want to aquire your own Guthrie Castle, the $50 Billion dollar man will force you to just f-cking do it!

To find real success, you must create something unique – something outside of competition. Think about Bill Gates with his Windows operating system or the Google founders and their modest little search engine.