In business, it is extremely important to continue improving.
Whether it is learning to sell better, managing people better, or improving other more intangible features that are necessary for you to be at the top of your game when it comes to business, you need to continue to learn and grow in business, or you'll be left behind by those who are improving themselves.
Here are our recommendations for the Best Business Books for 2021:
Brief Description: In this instant New York Times bestseller, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed—be it parents, students, educators, athletes, or business people—that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.”
Why We Recommend It: Sometimes books are high on motivation and lacking on information. Other times, you'll find books with a lot of great info, but you can't even make your way through. Author Angela Duckworth brings her own passion and persistence in writing this book, bringing you the best of both worlds: great information and the motivation to draw you into wanting discover your own "grit".
Read more about "Grit" by Angela Duckworth
Brief Description: Drawing on more than a decade of new work, Kim and Mauborgne show you how to move beyond competing, inspire your people's confidence, and seize new growth, guiding you step by step through how to take your organization from a red ocean crowded with competition to a blue ocean of uncontested market space. By combining the insights of human psychology with practical market-creating tools and real-world guidance, Kim and Mauborgne deliver the definitive guide to shift yourself, your team, or your organization to new heights of confidence, market creation, and growth.
Why We Recommend It: Where the previous book was big on the idea, it lacked in action steps for readers to implement. This new book not only provides awesome new, updated anecdotes on how businesses, nonprofits, and more have implemented the Blue Ocean strategy, they also provide a clear detailed process for you to walk through to implement for your own organization. The updated examples and the action steps set this book apart from the first book, and are great for anyone who has or hasn't read the first book.
Read more about "Blue Ocean Shift" by W. Chan Kim
Brief Description: Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive.
Why We Recommend It: This isn't just an idea mic drop... it presents the idea and then gives you a set of principles and guidelines that you can use to implement this in your business. Knowledge is fine, but action is the key. If you don't put these into action, then you'll keep seeing the same results you have been seeing. This book helps you move forward the projects and tasks that will grow your business.
Read more about "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr
Brief Description: Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.
Why We Recommend It: This book looks at science, and what physical and chemical factors lead us to the way we feel. This exploration is important, because a quality leader can use this knowledge to create a team around them that is truly invested in what they’re working on. The things that can be accomplished with this kind of team, vs a team that doesn’t trust each other, is the key to success… and it can be cultivated by a leader who understands what their team needs.
Read more about "Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek
Brief Description: Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.
Why We Recommend It: Your business has structure, your operations has structure, but when it comes to your own productivity, structure goes by the wayside. Getting Things Done helps you to implement structure and systems to your tasks, allowing you to take the tasks that in themselves can be overwhelming, and break them down into smaller, actionable tasks so that stuff gets done.
Read more about "Getting Things Done" by David Allen
Brief Description: Whether it's selling your company's product in the boardroom or selling yourself on eating healthy, everything in life can and should be treated as a sale. And as sales expert Grant Cardone explains, knowing the principles of selling is a prerequisite for success of any kind.
Why We Recommend It: While this clearly has many applications within the business world, it's not JUST about business - it can be applied to anything. If you aren't even sold on the product or idea yourself, how can you expect others to be sold on it? The first step is making sure you're sold on the product, and this book shows you how to get to that point.
Read more about "Sell or Be Sold" by Grant Cardone
Brief Description: Drawing on his more than forty years of sales experience, master motivator Zig Ziglar provides a wealth of inspirational and practical information for making it in today's fast-paced selling world. Ziglar's primary aim is to help sales professionals persuade their customers more effectively, more ethically, and more often!
Why We Recommend It: Zig Ziglar is a master at selling and he has literally written many books on sales. This brings all his sales principles together to provide a strong platform for any salesperson to take their sales game to the next level.
Read more about "Ziglar on Selling" by Zig Ziglar
Brief Description: Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors.
Why We Recommend It: While this is about manufacturing, it can be applied to processes and operations across businesses. Due to the approachable novel format, compared to most nonfiction books, this book makes the content engaging as well as easy to digest and remember.
Read more about "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Brief Description: Through a 21-day, 3-step training program, this book lays out a simple yet comprehensive approach to help you rewire your brain and achieve healthier thought patterns for a better quality of life. It hinges on the repetitive steps of analyzing, imagining, and reprogramming to help break down barriers preventing you from reaching your highest potential.
Why We Recommend It: This book is just fun. While not specifically focused on business, the exercises and tricks that you can use to re-frame your thinking will help you in your personal life and in your business life.
Read more about "Mind Hacking" by Sir John Hargrave
Brief Description: Whether you’re thinking about starting a new business or growing an existing one, Ready, Fire, Aim has what you need to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors. In it, self-made multimillionaire and bestselling author Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth.
Why We Recommend It: No matter where you are at in your business, this book has clear action steps for you to focus on to get to the next level. Each stage of growth for a business has different challenges to overcome. Sometimes people focus on the wrong issues or the wrong solutions for each stage, but this book walks you through the correct things to focus on.
Read more about "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson
Brief Description: Your message has the ability to change someone’s life. The impact that the right message can have on someone at the right time in their life is immeasurable. It could help to save marriages, repair families, change someone’s health, grow a company or more…
But only if you know how to get it into the hands of the people whose lives you have been called to change. Expert Secrets will put your message into the hands of people who need it.
Why We Recommend It: Do you want to be just another _________ (fill in the blank)? Or do you want to be THE expert in your field? Expert Secrets walks you step-by-step through the process of identifying what makes you the expert then working through to the steps it takes to establish yourself as the expert in your industry.
Read more about "Expert Secrets" by Russell Brunson
Brief Description: If you are currently struggling with getting traffic to your website, or converting that traffic when it shows up, you may think you’ve got a traffic or conversion problem. In Russell Brunson's experience, after working with thousands of businesses, he has found that’s rarely the case. Low traffic and weak conversion numbers are just symptoms of a much greater problem, a problem that’s a little harder to see (that’s the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that’s the good news). DotComSecrets will give you the marketing funnels and the sales scripts you need to be able to turn on a flood of new leads into your business.
Why We Recommend It: What is your business? If you're not using an online funnel to drive more leads and customers to your business, then you're missing out on an excellent source of new customers. Not only does Brunson walk you through all of the different types of funnels, but he explicitly maps them out so you don't have the guesswork about how to create the funnel.
Read more about "DotCom Secrets" by Russell Brunson
Brief Description: "Launch" will build your business---fast. Whether you’ve already got a business or you’re itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction. Think about it---what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all -but- eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget?
Why We Recommend It: This book is full of real-life examples, as well as processes, to help you take your next idea from just an idea to being a fully-formed and launched product. If you're looking for a proven formula, this is it.
Read more about "Launch" by Jeff Walker
Many of these awesome books are available as audiobooks too!
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