Best books on entrepreneurship?

[TopHatFox]

What are some of the best books you've seen on producing an income on your own? The job application process has me curious to look over to the "greener" entrepreneurship grass. I really only need 200k to be FI, so I don't need to strike it rich, just make ~3k a month consistently somehow for a few years.

[simplex]

I think there is no single best book, it just depends on to many (personal) factors.
Some Ideas:

Book yourself solid by M. Port
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by S. Adams
The personal MBA by J. Kaufman

These books are somewhat on a strategy level. Additionally you also need tactical information, and this is very dependent on your specific business.

[Chad]

Agreed with simplex. I don't think there is a single best book. The reason being that being an entrepreneur is more about doing than studying. I do think there are books that can help an entrepreneur, but they seem to fall into one of of two categories.

Inspirational books, such as Bold by Peter Diamandis. These may give you more energy and make you think more broadly.

How-to-books for specific questions/problems during the entrepreneurship, such as accounting, business, programming, real estate, etc.

You either want to start something or you don't. I doubt a book will be the deciding factor.

Being an entrepreneur always seemed to be aptly described by Yoda, "Do or do not. There is no try."

[Ego]

I really liked Sophia Amoruso's Girlboss because she is honest that she knew noting about business and did a good job of explaining how she figured it out.

http://www.amazon.com/GIRLBOSS-Sophia-A ... 039916927X

[jacob]

This one to figure out whether you have the required personality to succeed with a business or what the likely cause is of failure and how to hire the right people to avoid that.
http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited- ... 887307280/

You also need to figure out the nitty-gritty, etc. I wrote a chapter for this one (consider it my stamp of approval for the rest of the book) that recently came out. Just ignore the gimmicky title.
http://www.amazon.com/One-Million-Bank- ... 0996118608

Presuming you have all that down, you want to look into state-specific books with titles like "How to start a business in California" because you need to deal with a confusion of permits typically at the city, county, state, and federal level. This will look crazy the first time. Note, however, this is one of the cases where the government bureaucrats will actually be very helpful to you because you're choosing to pay them money and if they don't help you, you might just give up and go away.

[RealPerson]

I second the E myth revisited. Kind of a warm and fuzzy look at entrepreneurship but emphasizing the need for systems.

The best one and a must read in my mind is " How to get rich" by Felix Dennis. He walked the walk and wrote an honest account of entrepreneurship after becoming rich. Not sugarcoated and not an autobiography in the traditional sense. Just brutally honest.

[7Wannabe5]

Do you want to be a successful entrepreneur or do you just want to be self-employed? As a businessperson, you need to consider the value of your own labor as a component of your profitability. So, if you could at best find employment-by-other that pays you $20/hour, but you come up with a scheme that makes you $21/hr then the $1/hr difference is the value of your enterprise. A successful entrepreneur is somebody who is always focused on the margin, trying to increase enterprise value. Many self-employed people or business owners are not all that entrepreneurial.

[pukingRainbows]

To answer your question, I would also recommend the e-myth books.

However, if you are looking for a modest and consistent wage for a relatively short period of time, entrepreneurship may not be your best choice. Often, while the business is starting, you will be working very very hard and not making any money at all. And of course, there is no guarantee of ever becoming profitable.

However, if it really speaks to you as an opportunity, the experience might well be worth it regardless of the outcome. Good luck!

[JL13]

Do you want to be a successful entrepreneur or do you just want to be self-employed? As a businessperson, you need to consider the value of your own labor as a component of your profitability. So, if you could at best find employment-by-other that pays you $20/hour, but you come up with a scheme that makes you $21/hr then the $1/hr difference is the value of your enterprise. A successful entrepreneur is somebody who is always focused on the margin, trying to increase enterprise value. Many self-employed people or business owners are not all that entrepreneurial.

This is right on. All businesses, even sole proprietors, exists as two people 1.) the owner and 2.) the manager/labor. Break yourself into two people and ask yourself:

1.) If someone else were running this business, would I buy it for the price that it would cost me to start it up? Would I get a decent return?
2.) If I were running someone else's business, doing all these tasks, would I accept this salary that I'm about to pay myself?
3.) If I owned this business, would I hire myself to manage it, putting my investment at risk? Do I have the requisite experience and abilities?

I don't remember the books I've read, but most small business totally confound returns on capital and salary. If they would just sell their business, invest the capital, and run someone else's business, they'd typically end up with some combination of higher returns, higher salary and fewer hours worked.

[7Wannabe5]

J_L13 said: I don't remember the books I've read, but most small business totally confound returns on capital and salary. If they would just sell their business, invest the capital, and run someone else's business, they'd typically end up with some combination of higher returns, higher salary and fewer hours worked.

Right. Even worse, I often see small business ideas touted on the basis of gross sales. For instance, I think it might be a very good idea to quit your IT job which pays $80,000 year and spend your time engaged in urban bio-intensive farm market gardening instead. But, you definitely shouldn't consider the $100,000 in sales that another farmer was able to generate by year 3 of his endeavor, as being anything that can directly related to your current salary. When you choose to engage in a "lifestyle" business, you should first take a hard look at the hard numbers, and then calculate the value of the less tangibles. For instance, maybe you want to have a baby and carry it around in a papoose pack with you all day long, and be outside more often than inside, and make a positive difference in your community food health. Do you value these three factors more or less than the $62,500/yr hit you will take in core salary?

OTOH, let's say that you place a very high personal value on just the factor "Be my own boss."( mini-rant: I don't know where the notion that being self-employed is no different than being other-employed because "the customer" just takes on the same role as "your employer" comes from. IME, it's not even remotely the same. Waaaaay more f*ck you latitude being self-employed. I think any young person could benefit from making an attempt at starting their own business, even if it was a total failure financially, simply because it would inform the perspective of being your own boss. ) Obviously, the first easiest-entry self-employment opportunity readily available to all is frugality- the reduction of expenses necessary to operate your lifestyle. I think the second easiest entry self-employment opportunity is simple trade. Buy something on one market. Add a bit of value. Sell it on another market. Therefore, I am of the strong opinion, that if somebody was mostly interested in acquiring the f*ck-you latitude of being self-employed, rather than leisure time, freedom of movement or strict financial independence, then they could fairly easily and very quickly choose to do the 1-2 Step of something like reduce expenses to $8000/yr through frugality and earn $8000/yr through simple trade. I think the next simplest business model to attempt would be buy and lease. Obviously, managing your own stock market portfolio or your own rental properties would be examples of this model, whereas day trading or real-estate flipping would be examples of the first. However, if you didn't have much cash to start with, you could choose something more like -buy bicycles on the garage sale market, add value by taking them apart into component parts and cleaning, re-sell the small parts on the internet market. I have no clue how much hourly wage this activity would pay, but if you are willing to work 40 hours/week and live on $8000, so long as you have the freedom to "be your own boss", then I would say that it would be pretty much a no-brainer for anybody on this forum to be able to earn $4/hr. through simple trade in a few markets.

[GandK]

@7w5 and @J_L13 are on point.

To be an entrepreneur, you need a idea you're passionate about. Once you have that vision, there are probably several hundred books that can walk you through the nuts and bolts of materializing your vision.

[simplex]

I've read M.F. Slavin's book, referenced by Jacob. It's nice and written with common sense, but it does not really appeal to me.

In some ways similar is The $100 Startup, as it focuses on starting. On the other hand it uses a different mindset and aims at different people.
So, probably the best book is the book which makes you starting.

You can also have a look at Jake Desyllas book (he is/was on the forum) "Becoming and Entrepeneur". It is similar in scope to M. Slavin's book, but more aimed at people who have done college/university. (Jake is now FI thanks to selling his company)

[poleo]

Hi - Rework is a great book. It's about not doing anything that's not worth it, which is most things when it comes to "starting up". It's also a super quick read, since they've taken their own thesis very seriously. I read it in about half a day.

It also applies to many other areas of life, and in a lot of ways compliments the ERE-book, or rather it's a bit of a taster version of it. I often find myself thinking about this book in other matters than strictly business.

The real short form of it would be: Cut the crap.