Top Ten Books Every Entrepreneur Must Read

When I was 17, I told my mother that I was very sad because I did not get an education that would help me to be able to earn a living.

She got very serious and told me to get into the car with her for a drive. I got in and I had no idea where she was going to take me.

We pulled up outside the Brooklyn Public Library and she said, "Go in there and get some books. You can learn ANYTHING by reading books."

I went in and got books on how to fix computers and build websites and before you know it, I started earning a great living doing what I love.

Formal education might make you a living but SELF EDUCATION will make you a Fortune.

The best way to get educated is by READING everyday. Read and your mind will grow.

I heard a successful CEO say that LEADERS are READERS and if you are not reading daily, you are not growing daily.

You are either growing or dying, so choose the path you want to create in your life and READ.

What I love about reading a book is that an author spends their whole life figuring something out, they then take that life experience and put it into a 5 hour read. In 5 hours you can have a YEAR'S worth of research in your hands.. WHY WOULD YOU NOT DEVOUR books that help you get to your goal?

The problem is that 90% of people that buy a book never get past the first chapter. You start a book and you DO NOT FINISH IT. That's OK if the book is boring or a waste of time. But if it's a book that is PARAMOUNT for you achieving your goal and you are not finishing the BOOK several times and taking NOTES that you can reference regularly, you are really missing out on the opportunity to improve your life significantly.

Here are my TOP TEN books that I highly recommend every entrepreneur reads if they want to have a better life and a better business..

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - Personal Development

• Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
• All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!
• Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.
• Your subconscious mind recognizes and acts only upon thoughts which have been well-mixed with emotion or feeling.
• When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
• Set your mind on a definite goal and observe how quickly the world stands aside to let you pass.
• Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie - Sales

• Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.
• Criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home.
• Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.
• The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.
• A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do.
• There is only one way to get the best of an argument -- and that is to avoid it.

Awaken The Giant Within - Tony Robbins - Personal Growth

• Action is the most important key to any success.
• Begin to live as though your prayers are already answered.
• The path to success is to take massive determined action.
• If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
• Identify your problems but give your power and energy to solutions.
• People who succeed at the highest level are not lucky; they’re doing something differently than everyone else.
• Repetition is the mother of skill.

Getting Things Done - David Allen - Productivity

• Chaos is in the world. Not in your head.
• Einstein had 24 hours. So did Mother Teresa. So did Bach.
• If you had just two more hours what would you fill it with? Probably more stickiness like email.
• You can do anything but not everything.
• How much does it take to have a good idea? Zero. You don’t need time. You need room in your head.
• Martial arts people fight four people at a time by fighting one at a time.
• Water doesn’t get mad at you because you destroyed its calm. It has appropriate engagement.

The Miracle Morning - Hal Elrod - Personal Development

• Is there a difference between average and mediocre?
• I am doing the best that I can in this moment, and at the same time, I can and will do better.
• Love the life you have while you create the life of your dreams. Don’t think you have to choose one over the other.
• One of the saddest things in life is to get to the end and look back in regret, knowing that you could have been, done, and had so much more.
• Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.
• Start every morning off with a personal success ritual.
• The only exercise most people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, sidestepping responsibility, and pushing their luck.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Steven Covey - Personal Growth

• The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
• The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
• Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
• I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
• Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her.
• The enemy of the “best” is often the “good."

Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! - Greg Crabtree - Finance

• It hurts your ego at first to think of gross margin, but if you focus on gross margin as the true top line of the business, you start to have this clarity of the true economic point of your business.
• In the start up phase of a business, everybody is familiar with the term "sweat equity". We actually go to the effort to calculate it.
• The number one indicator of wealth creation is the size of the check that you write to the IRS.
• A man who aims at nothing, hits it with amazing accuracy.
• We believe that you should always be looking ahead at least once a month.
• One of the things that just drives me nuts is when someone has $100,000 in profits at the end of the year and their accountant tells them to buy some equipment. Stop that.
• If you're a business owner, step number one is to work on your cost of goods sold structure and make sure that you're accounting for your labor correctly. Number two, figure out what your market rate wage should be. What should you as a business owner make?

Traction - Gino Wickman - Business Strategy

• Vision without traction is merely hallucination.
• Clarify your vision and you will make better decisions about people, processes, finances, strategies, and customers.
• Problems are like mushrooms: When it’s dark and rainy, they multiply. Under bright light, they diminish.
• If you cannot risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else matters?
• What gets measured gets done.
• It is less important what you decide than it is that you decide. More is lost by indecision than by wrong decisions.
• Successful businesses operate with a crystal clear vision that is shared by everyone. They have the right people in the right seats. They have a pulse on their operations by watching and managing a handful of numbers on a weekly basis. They identify and solve issues promptly in an open and honest environment. They document their processes and ensure that they are followed by everyone. They establish priorities for each employee and ensure that a high level of trust, communication, and accountability exists on each team.

Who - Geoff Smart - Recruiting

• Do not hire anybody who has been pushed out of 20 percent or more of their jobs.
• We define an A Player this way: a candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.
• These who make mistakes are pricey. According to studies we’ve done with our clients, the average hiring mistake costs fifteen times an employee’s base salary in hard costs and productivity loss.
• The most important decisions that businesspeople make are not what decisions, but who decisions.
• It’s kind of like dating. If you are introduced to someone randomly in a bar, there is a chance it might work out, but you are more likely to have a higher success rate if you have a friend or family member introduce you.
• Scorecards describe the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role. You wouldn’t think of having someone build you a house without an architect’s blueprint in hand. Don’t think of hiring people for your team without this blueprint by your side.
• The scorecard is composed of three parts: the job’s mission, outcomes, and competencies. Together, these three pieces describe A performance in the role—what a person must accomplish, and how. They provide a clear linkage between the people you hire and your strategy.

Man’s Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl - Personal Development

• He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.
• Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
• At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
• The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.
• Man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
• Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
• Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!

How many of these books have you actually finished cover to cover?

If you only finished these books and studied them well, your life would be dramatically different and improved.

Here are a few more books that are mind blowing and powerful.

1. Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets - Russell Brunson - Marketing
2. Steal The Show - Michael Port - Public Speaking
3. 6 Pillars of Self Esteem - Nathaniel Branden - Personal Growth
4. Getting the Love you Want - Harville Hendrix - Marriage
5. Influence - Robert Cialdini - Leadership
6. On Writing - Stephen King - Writing
7. How to be a Power Connector - Judy Robbinett - Business Networking
8. Knock Out Networking - Michael Goldberg - Business Networking
9. The Go Giver - Bob Burg - Business Networking
10. The Mindbody Prescription - John Sarno - Health

The list goes on and on, I can literally write 100 book recommendations here that are game changers. Start with those and see how many you can actually READ and STUDY.

Depending on what you want in your life, you should consider getting ONE book at a time and mastering it. DO NOT just go on a shopping spree and get all these books.. GET ONE based on your current challenge. STUDY IT, MASTER IT, IMPLEMENT IT and then move to the next book.

What books have left an impact in your life? Let me know in the comments below.

Joe Apfelbaum

Ajax Union

PS: I wrote a few books and will write 10 books by the time I am 50 years old. Here are the two books that I published. High Energy Secrets - About how I lost 95 pounds and kept it off. After speaking to Teens I realized they have lots of questions that most people cannot answer. So I wrote High Energy Answers and I am giving out 1000 books to underprivileged teens this year. Want to support me, donate a few books at cost price here.

MORE BOOKS!

I was also featured in Brandon Webb’s book Total Focus -

My friend Ramon came out with a book called Celebrity CEO

My Friend David came out with a book called The Fast Forward Mindset

My friend Mark came out with a great book called Activators - Check out those quick reads too!