Running a small business is challenging. It needs not only business acumen but also a congenial personality of the owner. SMB owners need to deal with groups with diverse business outlooks. They include, customers, vendors, service providers and the like. It is important that SMB owners have good personal disposition to meet these challenges.
The following are the ten best books which can help to the small and medium business owners to develop personally and to implement in the business to get better results.
How to Win Friends and Influence People – by Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
This is one of the first bestselling self-help book ever published. The core principles in the book tells about the basic techniques in handling people, ways to make people like you and win them to your way of thinking, change the people arousing resentment or giving offense as a leader, and miraculous results with letters. This book will help to improve your personality as a business owner. It is very important for a small business owner to get out of a mental rut, getting new ambitions, visions and thoughts to keep running your business. Making the stakeholders friends quickly and easily makes you to run the operations smoothly. The book contains guidelines for these.
As a Man Thinketh – James Allen
This is just a forty pages book and can prove you more value than a three hundred pages book. It is easy to read in a sing sitting. The main theme of the book is you can control your circumstances by controlling your thoughts. It looks like simple in the beginning, but is a hardest task to implement. This book does not give you any specific exercises. It inspires you to find your own way to control it. Proper thinking will helpful in taking the wise decisions as well it will reflect your way of leadership.
Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
The book explains the factors that create successful people. The author emphasizes hard work, knowledge, skills are required for success. Environment is another factor that influences the one’s success. Essentially we must look beyond the individual merit. These are cultural legacies, birthplace, community, one’s upbringing, parents occupation, friends and family. Understanding these can be helpful in recruiting new people into your organization.
Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
The title expresses what this book deals as how to get rich. This is the research on a large number of people those who are achieved great wealth during their lifetime. The explanations of philosophy taught can help you to succeed in all the lines of work. This philosophy was developed based on the characteristics of those achievers. The main topics of this book explains on desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision, persistence, power of the master mind, subconscious mind, brain and the sixth sense.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a business and self-help book. By changing your habits, you can change your life. To change your habits you must change the way of seeing the world. The seven habits in this book explained by the author are being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win, seeking first to understand then to be understood, synergizyging and sharpening the saw. These seven habits can be divided into independence, interdependence, and continuous improvement.
Personal Development for Smart People – Steve Pavlina
The author explains about seven universal growth principles. They are all applied independently and all are connected. These can apply in area of life, like spiritual development, health, relationships, finances, careers, habits and others. The book is broke down into fundamental principles and the practical applications. The fundamental principles are truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage and intelligence. The practical applications are habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality.
Strengths finder 2.0 – Tom Rath
Most learning programs are attempting to help people become what they are not. However, this book says that the key to development is improved on what the people are. According to a 2001 study, the Gallup organization developed a 34 strength themes, based on which the personality of of one can be judged. The book is a simple guide on developing these strengths.
Awaken the giant within – Anthony Robbins
This book guides you to take immediate control of your emotional, mental, financial and physical destiny. Each chapter in this book is on the power of decision, importance of goal setting, change, to be the master of your life, challenging your belief system, emotions and the body language.
Unlimited power – Tony Robbins
In this book, Tony Robbins teaches you many Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) patterns and techniques. The techniques include removing habit or any similar fact that is holding you back. The book details how to use sub-modalities and NLP, to change your beliefs and to get motivated.
Feel the fear and do it anyway – Susan J. Jeffers
Many people have fears. The fears might be because of ending a relationship, losing a loved one, driving, aging, being alone, making decisions, asserting you, public speaking. Regardless of anxieties, this book will give your insight and tools to immensely improve your abilities to handle any situation.
SMB owners should read these books. These books help them to get a broad perspective on the business world, which helps them do business optimally. (more…)
