Tools of Titans
Tools of Titans is considered a full pack of changing your life. This is a wonderful book by Tim Ferriss about learning successful people’s tips, techniques and lifestyles. The book is a collection of 100 plus interviews taken from the most successful people from all walks of life. They all offered advice about their profession and other insights about their career and success. The book has basically three sections: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. All the sections contain the personal habits and experiences within the interviews of other successful people.
The author suggests leaving the interviews if they are not interested in them. The author wants the readers to enjoy it; therefore, he suggests sticking with those interviews that capture your interest. The author tells the readers a lot about successful people, like what do they do in the first sixty minutes of every morning? Do they follow any workout routine? If yes, then how do they manage? What books do they read? What is the wastage of time for novices in their field? What do they do as an integral part of their daily routine? Such questions help the readers find motivation and encouragement to work hard in their life and start a new business without any fears.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is a book by Dr Carol Dweck, who studied the human mind for decades. According to the author, humans are the result of their mindset. Whatever occurs in our life is somehow related to our mindset. Moreover, our mindset dictates us and our behaviour, which in turn becomes a yardstick for people to see us. The author talks about two types of mindset: fixed and growth mindset. A fixed mindset is something fixed and the intelligence that we are born with, and we cannot do anything to change it, whereas the growth mindset can grow. Humans have the ability to become better and better as much as they put effort into it.
Dr Dweck says that our mindset plays an enormous role in every outcome we experience. For starting any business or running it, one needs to have the right set of mind and belief in our capabilities to succeed. Moreover, one needs to have a growth mindset, and we should accept that we are not all-knowing and are prone to mistakes. One should never stop learning new things in life. We should strive to improve our knowledge and build experience to be successful in life.
The Art of War
Sun Tzu wrote this book in around 500 B.C that is apparently about military strategy, but it is still applicable in his century and is entirely related to the business world.
The book is particularly divided into thirteen short chapters. Each chapter explores a different warfare facet. However, every chapter is full of wisdom, and the author advises the people and warns them of a few important things in life. For instance, the author suggests keeping your plans secret. If your competitor comes to know about your plans, it will become easy for him to defeat you. (You need not highlight any product in business before introducing it in the market). Moreover, the author also suggests building a very strong team of talented and hard-working people. Such a team should be appreciated and treated well to gain their most.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Great leaders are great because they inspire the people, and inspiration comes from conveying a sense of purpose to the general people. People always follow those who talk with a particular perspective and tell them what they want to achieve. Inspiration leaders always set out WHY in their work and inspire the people.
The author Simon Sinek tells about the successful companies that got where they are now. The author argues that these articles were written for specific purposes rather than just producing a single product like Apple was inspired by creating an opportunity to improve the lives of many customers worldwide. As per Sinek, every business owner needs to think about why his business exists. What made a business owner start a particular business? What is the real purpose behind it? If you want to establish any business or grow your small business into a larger one, listening to Sinek’s advice can benefit you greatly.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This book has been a hot cake for many years because of its priceless and ageless tenets of honesty, fairness, integrity and human dignity. It has hugely affected the lives of billions of people belonging to different professions and ages over the last 25 years.
The seven habits of highly successful persons discussed at length in the book are as follows:
1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw
After the publication of the book, many people started doubting their life and living habits and thought that their lives were moving in the wrong direction. People realised they could do many simple things to navigate their lives correctly. The book teaches people to simply change their habits and be successful in life and business.
How to Build a Goddamn Empire
How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman is entirely filled with good humour and real-life examples. This book covers the story of one female entrepreneur who transformed an idea into a gigantic business. She had been through a lot of issues and miseries, and she thought of sharing it with other new founders of small businesses worldwide. Kriegsman learnt that starting from scratch without any help and previous experience is quite tough.
The author shares her real-life experiences of managing the company through the pandemic Covid-19 and staying motivated and steadfast to keep her team encouraged and motivated. The book also covers the wisdom of some of her close friends who have built successful companies of different sizes. This is an ideal book for those who want to start from scratch and have no prior knowledge of the work they will do.
Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage
The author of this book, Laura Huang, is an award-winning Havard business school professor. She argues that success is about gaining an edge in life. Some humans tend to have this quality inborn, whereas others have to work for it. Laura gives a bundle of advice to those who ever felt underestimated and out of the box. There are people in life who aren’t bold and confident enough to come up and tell others about them. They prefer to sit back and wait for their success and progress to reach others.
In the book Edge, Huang basically offers a very different approach. She says that success is not just about the quality of anyone’s ideas, credentials, skills, or efforts in general. Basically, achieving success depends on how we shape others’ perceptions of growth, success and strengths. The game is about creating our own edge by turning our shortcomings into assets. The author is well-read on the topic of inner motivation, so she tells ways to turn weaknesses into strengths.
A World Without Email
A World Without Email by Cal Newport comprises two main parts. The first part illustrates the reduction of productivity, inhumane workloads and unscheduled nature of email. Whereas part two pictures a world without email. The book is not against email. In fact, the author praises email as it has been helping thousands of people and is an amazing technological application. The author is basically against the way people use email for talking. A world without email focuses on DOING the work instead of TALKING about it.
Newport believes that emails and other related platforms are creating anxiety among people. Without a proper structure, when a person moves back and forth, searching emails and responding to them, he is telling his mind to switch from one task to another, resulting in a loss of cognitive ability. This proves to be a great read for small business owners as they can manage their tasks and train their team to stick to one thing at once and practice doing the tasks instead of talking about them.
Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs
Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman is a masterpiece and a gem for business starters. As per the author, the success of any business doesn’t lie in the talent of businessmen, networking or sharp strategies. The actual key to a successful business is an entrepreneurial mindset. If you don’t have such a mindset, then you need not worry about anything. This mindset can also be cultivated.
If you get bored reading dull and boring books, then you must get your hands on this one. This is not a boring piece of information. The author wrote it in the form of a story. The author opens the window to the most successful entrepreneurs of all times to tell the readers about their lifestyle, mindset and priorities. Several stories also include his own experience to reveal the secrets behind the most successful business stories of all time.
Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole
Tiffany Aliche- the writer of this book, was a successful and brilliant preschool teacher, and suddenly she gave up on her job, which put her into a big financial hole. She started thinking of financial independence and outlined a ten-step magic formula to attain financial security and, above all, peace of mind. Now, these ten principles are helping millions of people worldwide save, pay off their debts, and plan a more prosperous life.
Get Good with Money introduces the powerful concept of building wealth through financial wholeness and teaches the readers the money system and how you should plan your finances to stay at ease and at peace. Tiffany believes in short-term plans that help you achieve long-term goals. This book is beautifully written, and it carves good financial habits and makes your own money work to benefit you in a good way. With money, anyone can build a strong foundation in life in a very luxurious way.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman asks you: Do you have a tight grip on your own business, or does your business have a tight grip over you? Businesspeople, business leaders and entrepreneurs face similar issues, frustrations, conflicts and fears. Decisions are hard to make, and even if made, it is hard to implement them too. The author gives a solution to this with an entrepreneurial operating system. It is merely a practical way of achieving business success that you have always dreamt of.
In the book Traction, a reader learns the ultimate secrets of strengthening and fastening the six major components of a business. This book helps people new to the business to know the basics of business and eliminate any work frustrations and fears. By reading this book, you can learn simple and effective ways to run your company and keep your team motivated and focused.
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston is a beautiful collection of interviews taken with the founders of famous companies. The interviews start from the day when no one knew them and how they began their work? The author asks the founders about their idea, how they got a particular idea, and how they convinced the investors to provide them with a financially sound base. The entire journey from a layman to a celebrity is covered in each interview. The book contains humour, too, because the interviewees share their stories and whatever happened in their life from the start.
People who are just planning to start or own a small business can get a lot of motivation from this book by knowing the stories of famous people in the world now. The founders of different companies can help you reach where they are standing today. The secrets that made them successful can help any reader achieve their dreams and goals.
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