Rob Fitzpatrick has written the most essential book on validating your business ideas correctly and in a way that is practical and will save you time, money, and heartbreak. It's a short book that basically says that you shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea, because it's a bad question and everyone is bound to lie in varying degrees. It's not their responsibility to tell you the truth, but yours to extract it correctly. And this book can teach you how.
Learn the path Tony Hsieh took at Zappos, which he joined and became CEO after selling LinkExchange to Microsoft, to grow the company to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years. A great book on creating the a strong and customer-oriented company culture.
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, describes the challenges he had to overcome to keeping creativity alive as Pixar grew and integrated within Disney. Read this book to learn about the approach and processes to maintain and foster creativity in corporate cultures.
Another fantastic book by Ryan Holiday where he uncovers that there is a defined formula for success that is timeless, and you can follow it too. To quote Marcus Aurelius, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
Perhaps the best book on positioning to come out in recent times, learn from April Dunford on how you can understand your customers and use it to position your product to success. Learn her five components of positioning, how to instantly connect your offering's value proposition to an audience, choosing the best markets for your product, and more.
How many likes? How many purchases? How many email subscribers? It's easy to get lost in the numbers. As entrepreneurs, we have to remember that there are people behind all that data. People who are looking for someone they trust, someone who has their best interests in mind. Pat Flynn shows a path to becoming that trustworthy person and creating a tribe of superfans around the world.
