Growing in leadership is a life-long process, so learn from these authors who may have been at it longer than you.
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March 12, 2021 5 min read
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Being an entrepreneur is a lonely, scary life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enlist some help. Many people have been in your shoes before and come out on top. Why not let them teach you something?
There are plenty of books out there by entrepreneurs claiming to contain the keys to success, but not all books are created equal when it comes to what they can teach budding titans of industry. Here are some of the authors delivering the most valuable insight today.
1. Alexsys Thompson —The Power of a Graceful Leader
Being a leader is about utilising all of your strengths to better an organization, even if they don’t fit into antiquated definitions of leadership. Alexsys Thompson uses The Power of a Graceful Leader to show just how important it is to be honest with yourself in leadership roles. Gracefulness isn’t usually thought of as a key leadership quality, but it can make all the difference between a businessperson and a visionary.
Related: 9 Actions Successful Leaders Take Daily That Speak Louder Than Words
2. Laura Calandrella — Our Next Evolution: Transforming Collaborative Leadership to Shape Our Planet’s Future
If the world is currently facing unprecedented challenges, why are our leadership models largely unchanged from the way they have been for decades? Laura Calandrella blazes a fresh trail with her new book, showing how innovative, inclusive leadership methods can make all the difference in the coming years. Our Next Evolution is an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs looking to carve out a space for themselves in the 21st century.
Far too many entrepreneurs know only the ins and outs of their local ecosystems. Brian Requarth is here to rectify that with Viva the Entrepreneur, an informative and engaging look at what entrepreneurship looks like in Latin America. Full of lessons for those willing to learn, this book is a great primer for an oft-ignored market.
4. Timothy Yen — Choose Better: The Optimal Decision-Making Framework
Oftentimes, being an entrepreneur can feel like facing down an endless stream of questions, many of which have no clear right answer. Choose Better is Dr. Timothy Yen’s guide to wading through some of these difficult quandaries and making the best choice even when it’s not so clear what the best choice is. Every entrepreneur will make choices big and small, and a book like this can help ensure that they’re making the right ones.
5. Tanner Chidester — Infinite Income: The Eight-Figure Formula for Your Online Business
Infinite Income encapsulates that beautiful promise of doing business online: easy marketing opportunities, low overhead costs, and a seemingly endless stream of customers. Tanner Chidester thrived in this landscape, and in this book he gives you the tools you need to do so yourself.
Related: 4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Accelerate Online Business Growth This Quarter
6. Mandy Gilbert — Just Go With It: How to Navigate the Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship isn’t a straight path upwards; it’s full of twists, turns, dips and drops that can make you too queasy to reach your end goal. If you’re feeling lost, know that Mandy Gilbert has been there before. Just Go With It is her guide to making your way through whatever your career path has to throw at you and coming out even stronger than before.
7. Jared Graybeal — The Self Help Book: 6 Practical Ways to Never Stop Growing
Growth mindsets are second nature to most entrepreneurs, but leaning too hard into growth can cause some serious burnout down the line. The Self Help Book is a guide to taking growth-focused attitudes and ensuring that they always produce positive outcomes. Self-care may not sound like a crucial component of business management, but Jared Graybeal has found that it’s indispensable to success. This book will show you how.
8. Robert Althuis — Never Enoughitis: A Story of Success, Emptiness, and Overcoming Myself
The end goal for every entrepreneur should never be success; it should be satisfaction. Never Enoughitis is Robert Althuis’s story of how success on paper doesn’t always translate to happiness in reality; lean too hard into your career, and your career will start to push back at you.
9. Andrew Freedman & Paul Elliott — Thrive: The Leader’s Guide to Building a High-Performance Culture
Achieving a good company culture can sound like a mystical and intangible thing to do, but Andrew Freedman and Paul Elliott have proven otherwise. Thrive outlines its authors’ Exemplary Performance System, EPS for short, that provides a powerful framework for establishing a productive culture in businesses of all kinds. It’s easy to let considerations like profit margins take precedence over culture, but this book shows why the latter should always be at the forefront of your thinking.
Related: 5 Leadership Strategies to Improve Team Performance and Grow Your Small Business
10. Adii Pienaar — Life Profitability: The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success
For Adii Pienaar, having a profitable business isn’t enough, even though he managed to create a highly profitable one himself. You need to be satisfied with your life as well. Life Profitability is just what it sounds like: a guide to ensuring that your entrepreneurial journey allows you to maximize your personal happiness alongside success in the workplace.
Hitting the books at this point in your entrepreneurial journey can pay big dividends down the line. By learning from what some of these authors have to teach, you can create the entrepreneurial path for yourself you’ve always wanted.