36 Best-Selling Business Books in the World 2023
The Best Business Books can help entrepreneurs, freelancers, creatives, and professionals improve their lives at home and at work.
President Truman summed up the gap between most people and the top bosses in one sentence:
“Not all readers are leaders,
but all leaders are readers. “
- Warren Buffet spends 5–6 hours reading every day;
- Mark Zuckerberg’s goal is to read at least one book every two weeks;
- Mark Cuban (Mark Cuban) read 3 hours a day;
Whenever someone asks Elon Musk how to learn how to make rockets, he will answer: “I read.” Don’t laugh, it’s true, he almost learns rocket science by himself through reading. According to his brother, Musk has to read 2 books every day when he grows up (not so exaggerated now)!
Even if Bill Gates read 50 books every year, his reading notes have been written until 2023.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Why read: How to change from a good company to a great company.
If your business is not bad, or even good, then you will learn the next step. In the book, many companies of the same kind are studied, some have grown so fast and some have stagnated in the same period.
This book discusses the type of leadership needed to make the leap from good to great, the importance of discipline to succeed, and more.
Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen
Why read: What are the innate advantages that small companies can use to defeat large companies.
A must-read book for anyone considering starting a company. There are many useful suggestions on why small companies have inherent advantages over large competitors.
Through real-life examples, the strategy that may effectively enter the market is explained again.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Why read it: A basic book of classical economics, Musk suggests reading it together with Marx’s Capital.
Describes how to build national wealth, covering a wide range of topics such as the division of labor, productivity, and free markets.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
How to Use Every Bit of Brain Power Effectively
Why read: How to stay focused in a world of information explosion.
In a distracting world, provide various strategies to enhance your ability to work deeply and attentively. Most people have to fight dozens of interference forces every day.
It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of Weibo, work news, and work until the end of the day and find that nothing has been done. If you want to increase efficiency in the new year, this is one of the most suitable business books.
Emotional Intelligence (Why EQ is More Important than IQ) by Daniel Goleman
Why read: Building emotional intelligence is one of the best ways to increase business success.
If you want to promote personal development and business development, this book is a must-read! “Emotional Intelligence” explains the five core skills that make up emotional intelligence and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work (business), and even physical health.
This book explores the neuroscience and psychology behind emotional intelligence, including human growth potential at any age.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Why read: When 12-year-old Musk asked about the meaning of being alive, this book gave him a positive inspiration. Moreover, cyberpunk is so hot, that you should always know its source.
Musk: “I then read the “Galactic Traveler’s Guide”, which I think is very positive. It highlights an important point, which is that many times questions are harder than answers.
And if you can express them correctly, then The answer is simple. So to the extent, we can better understand the universe, we can better know what questions to ask.”
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Book Review: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This book became a household name more than ten years ago, and there were always recommendations in the mail-order book advertisements in the middle of the best-selling “Reader” magazine. I have just graduated from high school and have not yet entered society. The so-called social interaction is only in the single relationship of classmates.
The family also treats us as children. Any ignorant words and deeds are tolerated. People who like it will be relieved from each other. Those who do not like it. People stay away. “The Weakness of Human Nature” was read as a collection of short stories, and there was not much difference between my effectiveness and “Story Club” at that time.
After entering society after work, no one is on an island. Effective communication skills are so important. There are many people you should let go of your prejudices and cooperate with them, or you need to win the favor of the other party in the process of sales.
As a superior, you need to guide employees. As a subordinate, sometimes you need to motivate the leader. 80% of the effect of communication is the emotion in the communication process, and 20% is the content of the communication. This book guides that 80%.
To sum up, I feel that this book is still worth reading, and some chapters can be reviewed repeatedly. Although the author is based on the Western thinking environment, there may be some methods that are not suitable for Eastern culture, but I believe that the principles are the same.
Look for another way of dealing with others in our most accustomed and self-behavior styles, integrating the actual situation and specific occasions, and making others willing and willing to accept themselves sincerely and skillfully. After all, as a gregarious species, we often need external affirmation and cooperation.
The One Thing
Book Review: The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
This book is easy to read. The language is too simple and the logic is not rigorous enough. Such a book can cater to the taste of the general public. The author of the book is not a scholar, so the language organization is not as rigorous as an academic paper.
But there are three very interesting pictures, which I think are more thought-provoking. In fact, we all understand the truth, but expressing it more intuitively can deepen the impression and comprehend more deeply.
One image expresses a thousand words.
Picture 1: Mediocre We are often prone to fall into a “normal day”, that is, spend a lot of time on other unimportant things, so it is easy to feel empty and full at the end of the day. But if we can consciously exercise ourselves to achieve an “efficient day”, that is, we consciously spend time on the most important things. The result of expressing our day in such a pie chart is worthy of reflection, reflecting on how much of the pie your most important things account for.
Picture 2: Be a responsible person. In the era of popular self-discipline, everyone said that self-discipline is the key to success in life. But I don’t think it’s accurate enough. I think self-discipline is just a basis. If you can’t restrain yourself to resist other temptations when you are doing anything, then this matter is not worth mentioning in the first place.
I think the more important factor is to be responsible. Responsible for your own choices, responsible for your own plans, if you encounter anything, you can ask yourself: “This is the end, what can I do?”
Figure 3: Many people believe in talent and innate IQ and EQ. I think it is an excuse that people give themselves not to work hard or they think that they can’t do it and others can’t do it. Setting limits on yourself is probably the difference between an ordinary life and a creative life. A purposeful life, and a pursuit to challenge, this life will not be in vain.
The subject of this book is a reminder for me, a typical modern busy person. The typical modern busy person is to put himself in a state of multitasking forever, wishing to conjure up several things like Monkey King. This is why the dream is too big to cause trouble.
It’s a good thing to have a big dream, but if several things are done at the same time, the result is often that the quality is not good, either at the same time or everything is not done ideally. I will never trust the bullshit of multitasking anymore.
Just focus on one thing right now, even if you admit that you are incapable of taking care of other things. To complete one thing with quality.
The E-Myth Revisited
Book Review: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
I just finished reading “Those Things You Must Go Through in Entrepreneurship”. I think this is a good book that every technician with entrepreneurial dreams must read.
Starting from the entrepreneurial impulse that professionals are particularly prone to, it brings out the three identities that people who want to start a business must shoulder: entrepreneur, manager, and professional. These three identities complement each other, but they are separate.
The non-acceptance of each other leads to the dilemma of professionals being unable to successfully transform from professionals to managers and ultimately ends up in entrepreneurial failure. The second half of this book is to tell professionals how to build their own businesses to build an efficient small business.
If you don’t know anything about entrepreneurship, but you have entrepreneurial ideas, this book may be your best choice. Although it is not too advanced knowledge, it is basic common sense. There are cases, opinions, and arguments that are very clear.
The author said that entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals all interact at the same time, and no one can do without each other. Give a simple example, ignoring other complex objective conditions. Just like the relationship between the emperor (entrepreneur) and marshal (manager) and soldiers (professionals).
The emperor decides the country’s development strategy, and the need for development requires the expansion of the territory. When the emperor decided to develop the north, this dream could only be realized by the marshal. At this time, the marshal needs to lead the army all the way north but to attack the city, you need soldiers to die.
Company of One
Book Review: Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarvis
Core content: In fact, a company does not need to be bigger and stronger. It is also very good to be a small one-person company. For example, the author’s own company, and some other companies that the author knows about. How to do it.
The core is to find areas where big companies are not good at doing well and do personal-to-personal services. Let customers feel the warmth of humanity and pay happily. For example, be more caring, use education instead of promotion, build more trusting relationships with customers and use more technological tools to improve work efficiency.
Finally, there are some practical suggestions, such as finding a lawyer, registering a company, finding an accountant, etc.
Evaluation: The author is obviously not good at writing books (after all, he dropped out of school at 19 to work). The content is messy. There are some interesting things worth referring to.
But the core is actually those: first clarify what services you can provide, build trust with people, teach others for free, build your own professional image, build social capital, and then find a way to acquire a customer…
A few more, and then more through personal trust relationships to expand customers, and to maintain their existing customers, it is the general knowledge of these small business operations, which is still useful for people who don’t know.
What is lacking are three points:
- How to do the specific work (the author assumes that this is the professional skills of the reader),
- How to convert customers/negotiations/pricing (potential customers will not take the initiative to pay for themselves),
- Encounter How to deal with the problem (small personal companies are most likely to encounter all kinds of bad things and bad customers).
Without saying these core and most practical things, readers will find it difficult to build a one-man company on their own. But maybe it’s because the author is a Canadian with a larger heart, and the surrounding customers are also more kind.
