The Best Entrepreneurship Books

The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List

2008 Edition: Revised and Updated

Top MBA programs don't have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List features only the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. So skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.

About This Category:

The Entrepreneurship category will help you start your own successful business. The books in this category will teach you:

How to identify promising business ideas.
How to create a viable business plan.
How to maximize your return on invested time and capital.

The New Business Road Test by John Mullins

So you have a business idea. How do you ensure it's a good one before you commit your savings and the next few years of your life to making it happen?

Never fear: Professor John Mullins of the London Business School is here to help. The New Business Road Test is a systematic method of determining the viability of any business before you invest time, effort, and resources in a new venture.

Fundamental flaws in your business model virtually guarantee that your venture will fail. In The New Business Road Test, Mullins teaches you how to evaluate the strength of your prospective market, analyze your competition, identify your advantages, and forecast your results.

Make no mistake: building a successful business requires dedication and effort, and many ultimately fail. However, if you take the time to evaluate the opportunity before you act, you'll dramatically increase the odds that your venture will be sustainable and profitable.

Bankable Business Plans (2nd ed) by Edward Rogoff

Business plans serve two primary purposes: (A) clarifying your value proposition and revenue model; (B) convincing others that your business is sound enough to justify an investment or a loan.

Bankable Business Plans is a step-by-step guide that will teach you everything you need to know to create a clear, comprehensive, and compelling business plan.

Dr. Edward Rogoff has helped hundreds of prospective entrepreneurs create business plans as a professor at the City University of New York, and his advice in this book is straightforward and clear. Each chapter will guide you through a specific section of your business plan: (1) value definition, (2) needs assessment, (3) differentiation and competitive assessment, (4) market analysis, (5) marketing planning, (6) sales and promotion strategy, (7) organization design, (8) financing needs, (9) financial projections, and (10) risk analysis.

Bankable Business Plans also features a rare bonus: it explains how to use data from the Risk Management Association (RMA) to increase the accuracy of your financial projections, and thereby increasing the likelihood of obtaining funding for your entrepreneurial venture. Using Dr. Rogoff's approach, you'll be able to think through every aspect of your business and use RMA data to ensure your assumptions are accurate. Several complete business plans are included as examples to help you get started.

If you're planning to start a business, you can't afford to skip Bankable Business Plans.

(Note: special thanks to Dr. Rogoff, who came across the PMBA through a colleague and generously sent me a copy of this book. It's a gem I wouldn't have otherwise found among the thousands of sub-par business planning books currently in the market.)

Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson

Michael Masterson is a serial entrepreneur who has created over 20 business ventures in his lifetime, and he has a unique perspective about what it takes to build a successful company. Ready, Fire, Aim is an practical examination of how the priorities of a successful business change as it grows.

If you're creating a brand new businesses, your most important priorities are (1) identifying your target market; (2) quickly developing a product to sell to that market; (3) discovering your optimum selling strategy; (4) actually selling product. According to Masterson:

"Nothing matters more than selling. Many first-time entrepreneurs have the impression that they are doing things in a logical order when they look for the perfect office space, have logos designed, and order a lot of inventory. The reality is they are wasting valuable resources on secondary and tertiary endeavors. If no one is going to buy what you want to sell, you've just wasted a bunch of money on a business that will never be."

As your business matures, your role as a founding entrepreneur changes from salesman to innovator, then manager, and finally investor. As you progress through these four stages, your primary focus should change as well to ensure your business successfully navigates the transition. If you're starting a new company or planning to take your current business to the next level, Ready, Fire, Aim is a must-read.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

I honestly wasn’t sure where to put this book: in Entrepreneurship or Productivity & Effectiveness. It’s a bit of both. Regardless, this book is a must-read for all entrepreneurs who want personal freedom more than a corner office.

The 4-Hour Workweek is a practical guide to creating a business that supports the life you want instead of constantly adapting your life to your job.

A few years ago, Tim Ferriss was going crazy. His business was profitable, but he was working 12 hours a day / 7 days a week under intense pressure, compulsively checking his e-mail and dealing with disrespectful customers. Instead of running his business, his business was running him, and he decided that he'd had enough.

Tim is a master of doing things differently. By ruthlessly applying both the Pareto Principle ("20% of efforts produce 80% of results") and a variation of Parkinson’s Law ("work expands to fill the time allotted") to his business, he was able to systematize and outsource his work to the point that his business operations require no more than 2-4 hours of attention each week.

After systematizing his businesses and hiring other trustworthy people to complete routine non-value-added tasks, Tim discovered that he was better off both personally and financially. Instead of spending 80 hours a week chasing dollars, his new business structure gives him the freedom to pursue his non-work interests and travel around the world.

If you're looking for a book that contains equal measures of hard-won wisdom, new ideas, and inspirational stories, you'll get a lot out of The 4-Hour Workweek.

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

Every day, entrepreneurs are pitching VCs for funding in the hopes of building the next Facebook or Google. If you have an idea for a venture, this book can help you craft your pitch.

Focusing primarily on the venture capital approach to entrepreneurship, The Art of the Start is full of sound advice and useful tips for everyone considering starting a start-up.

Guy Kawasaki’s “time-tested, battle-hardened guide for anyone starting anything” covers topics like positioning your new company in the market, pitching to potential investors, creating a no-BS business plan and presentation, bootstrapping, recruiting employees, raising capital, partnering with other firms, branding, and selling your concept to the VS market.

Kawasaki is a strong advocate of the straightforward approach to creating and running a business: keep things simple, honest, and short. Focusing on The Art of the Start will help you save valuable time and energy for things that will actually move you towards your entrepreneurial goals.

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy

In business, you don't necessarily get points for innovation: if profit is the goal, reapplying a successful model is often the smartest move. How to Make Millions with Your Ideas is the best book I've found to help you create a new business or improve the profitability of your current firm.

Most profitable business ideas are simple: they focus on creating systems that can be multiplied and duplicated without massive costs. A few of the many critical concepts presented in this book are: premium pricing, exclusivity, niche marketing, up-selling, cross-selling, and franchising. You'll also learn how to become a recognized expert in your field, market products directly to the public, profit from selling information, and build salable assets.

If you read How to Make Millions with Your Ideas and don't come away with a few promising ideas to dramatically improve your profitability or create a new business, you're simply not paying attention.

Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss

Entrepreneurship isn't just about creating physical products: it's about helping and serving other people as well. Chances are good that you're probably in the top 25% of people in some particular area, and this book can help you turn that knowledge and experience into money.

Getting Started in Consulting will teach you how to start a consulting business with low overhead and high revenue potential.

In this book, you'll learn how to finance your start-up and operational costs, market your services to corporate clients, write proposals that close the sale, set your fees, keep accurate records, and structure your business for maximum flexibility.

I've found Getting Started in Consulting very helpful in thinking through many aspects of Personal MBA Coaching, and I'm convinced that this book is the single best resource on starting a consulting practice currently available.