Raji RidwanBeing an entrepreneur is one of the most demanding jobs of the 21st century. One of the primary reasons why succeeding as an entrepreneur is difficult is that you can only gain experience through trial and error; nobody will let you run their business to gain relevant experience.
However, it’s insanely useful for every entrepreneur to gain the necessary skills required to run a business successfully to ensure they’re not wasting investment capital. One common way to gain those skills is by reading, and thankfully, there’s no shortage of quality books for entrepreneurs.
In this article, you’ll learn who an entrepreneur is and some of the crucial skills you should focus on developing as an entrepreneur. Also, I’ll list 10 of the greatest entrepreneur books for beginners to offer them useful education on running a business successfully.
Who is an Entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur, at least according to Investopedia, is an individual who creates a new business or businesses, manages them, and suffers losses or record gains. Entrepreneurs typically have the responsibility to come up with new ideas that will sell their company’s products or services.
Entrepreneurship is a highly risky career field, but the rewards margin is also disproportionately high. If you can scale your business past the initial stage and keep it profitable, you’ve already achieved more success than most people.
The question now is: how do you manage your business to be profitable? One way is possessing all the seven necessary skills of an entrepreneur, all of which I’ll list below. To get those skills, however, you’ll need to read a lot of good entrepreneur books for beginners.
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What are the 7 Skills of an Entrepreneur?
If you intend to move on from your day job to become an entrepreneur, here are seven skills you need to master for a smooth transition.
1. Communication
Communication is arguably the most crucial skill an entrepreneur needs to possess for the success of their startup. As an entrepreneur, you must come up with a way to communicate your goals and aspirations to your entire team, and that takes some excellent communication skills.
In some organizations, the entrepreneur may be saddled with the task of fielding questions from the most elite customers of the company. Before you go ahead to create your startup, you may want to read books about communication in a business environment.
2. Marketing
I get it; the CEO may have no direct involvement with the marketing team, but that doesn’t excuse them from needing excellent marketing skills. Marketing, in this context, is not selling a product to a customer, it is selling the idea of the company to investors who will fund the company.
Also, an entrepreneur with a sound marketing background can tell if efforts to improve marketing in an organization are yielding any fruit, which is a crucial part of management. Thankfully, there are tons of entrepreneurship books that will teach you all there is to know about marketing.
3. Creativity
An entrepreneur that lacks creativity will always create a boring startup and trust me, no investor wants to bet their money on an uninteresting company. To achieve success as an entrepreneur, you need to understand that you are in a creative field, and you must try many things to discover the best solutions to your customers’ problems.
You don’t have to start making art to up your creativity as an entrepreneur. Talk to people and get their ideas on what your organization does. Try their wild ideas on how you may do it better, and stick with the suggestions that work excellently. There are books that can teach that better than I do.
4. Listening Skills
It’s technically impossible to be a good entrepreneur without equally good listening skills. As a manager, you’ll have to do a lot of listening to keep your business above the water, and each time, you’ll be listening to a different person or set of people.
You need to listen to your customers to understand what they want. It’s equally important to listen to stakeholders and get their opinion on the day-to-day running of the company. Don’t forget that listening is the only way to hear ideas from employees on how to move the company forward.
In order words, you have to learn how to listen to be a good entrepreneur; that part is non-negotiable.
5. Perseverance
Every business will face some highs and lows sometime throughout its career, but the perseverance of the business owner is usually what determines if it stays around or closes down. Behind every successful company you see, there is an entrepreneur who has persevered through the hard times.
6. Risk Management
Excellent risk management is what makes it possible for entrepreneurs to keep recording losses without closing up shop. Before becoming an entrepreneur, it’s crucial to understand that there will be many highs and lows and work to mitigate the potential effects way ahead of time.
Entrepreneurs aren’t born with perseverance and risk management, they learn it from more experienced business owners willing to teach. If you’re also willing to learn, there are more than enough entrepreneur books for beginners out there that will teach you.
7. Curiosity
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but trust me, entrepreneurs are no cats. Rather, you’re the opposite; as being curious is one of the defining characteristics of the best entrepreneurs. Being curious will help you get the best from your employees while opening you up to new ideas for growing your business.
What are the Best Entrepreneur Books for Beginners?
There’s almost an infinite number of good entrepreneur books for beginners, but you certainly don’t have to read them all; that would take more time than is required to run a business. Instead, here are the best entrepreneur books for beginners that you should consider reading this year.
1. The Lean Startup
Eric Ries, in his book, The Lean Startup, declares that updating your business plan every other day is not the optimal way to run a business in today’s world. Instead of focusing on the “vanity metrics,” The Lean Startup shows you how to discover what’s wrong with your business and tackle it head-on.
While Eric Ries is not the most popular entrepreneur author out there, the sheer quality of the content within this book is enough to earn it a recommendation in any list of the best entrepreneur books for beginners.
2. The $100 Startup
Have you ever imagined starting a business with $100 or less and growing it into a big business over the years? Apparently, Chris Guillebeau has, and the attempt to teach you how to go about it is the motivation behind The $100 Startup.
If you have a great idea without enough funding, you’ll be doing yourself a favor by picking up this book.
3. The Psychology of Selling
The job of an entrepreneur is all about selling, and it does take a skilled entrepreneur to understand that properly. In The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy, we get an insider look into the psychology of selling, which trains you as an entrepreneur that’s capable of marketing properly.
The Psychology of Selling will show you how to sell, but with a focus on the person instead of the product. With the skills you’ll gain from reading this book, you should be ready to sell not only your product but also your business idea to investors.
4. The Startup of You
Who’s a better person to offer business and entrepreneurial advice than the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn himself: Reid Hoffman? In his book, The Startup of You, he shows you how to keep being an entrepreneur while still being employed by a boss by focusing on yourself.
If you need some advice to keep your business running while still working under a boss momentarily, all you need to do is read The Startup of You. It is no doubt of the best entrepreneur books for beginners.
5. The E-Myth Revisited
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber is a book you want to read as an aspiring entrepreneur because it shows you some of the benefits of creating a working system for your business. While most entrepreneurs generally make themselves indispensable to their business, Michael shows you how dangerous that could be in this book.
In addition to that, the book debunks many myths about running a business in this era and shows you the real meaning of achieving success. If you’re only planning to read a few entrepreneur books for beginners this year, this has to be one of them.
6. The Entrepreneur Mind
Instead of giving you endless tips and tricks on how to make your business work, Kevin Johnson shows you how to become a better entrepreneur by simply changing your mindset. It teaches perseverance and how to recover after failures, as failure is unavoidable for any entrepreneur.
7. Rework
If you’d rather confront the challenges of your business head-on instead of updating your business plan endlessly, Rework is certainly the book for you. Jason Fried and David Hansson work together in this book to teach you the basics of running a business and increasing productivity; just expect to see some very unconventional advice.
8. The Art of the Start
The name of the book aptly summarizes what you should expect to learn from it after reading. Instead of showing you how to increase profits or manage your employees, it takes you on a quick guide on starting a company, from recruiting the best hands to building your brand.
In the book, you’ll learn the benefits of creating a killer business plan, as well as a step-by-step process of writing one. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki is definitely an excellent first book for an entrepreneur with big ideas but no businesses yet.
9. Built to Sell
In this book, John Warrillow takes a different approach from most authors of entrepreneurship books for beginners. Instead of showing you how to build the most profitable company on the face of the earth, it shows you how to build a business you can sell, and the primary advice is to make yourself replaceable.
It sounds weird, but reading this book has so many benefits that you’ll eventually come to realise after reading. Being indispensable makes it nearly impossible for you to retire since you know too well that the entire business will fall apart when you do. John shows you how you can prevent that.
10. EntreLeadership
EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey is easily one of the best books that show entrepreneurs how to become great leaders to get more out of their teams. It teaches that the best entrepreneurs combine the skills of an entrepreneur with that of a leader to run a business effectively.
Apart from teaching you to be an entrepreneur, the book covers a load of other topics, including how to improve your marketing to shoot up the profitability of your business. Here’s a book you’ll have to read sometime during your entrepreneurship career, so you might as well do it now.
Conclusion
Most entrepreneurs are avid readers, and if you’re aspiring to be one, you better start populating your bookshelf. If you’re unsure what to read, this article has outlined 10 of the best entrepreneur books for beginners to get you started.
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Techibytes Editor
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