The 16 Best Business Books of All Time.

If you’d like to be wealthy, continue reading…

Here are sixteen of the best business books ever written.

Read, Study, Apply.

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
-Oscar Wilde

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
-Mark Twain

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people over a broad subject matter area who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”
-Charlie Munger

16. Getting Things Done, David Allen

The title says it all. A book about productivity. David Allen’s technique is to simplify things into actionable steps that can be tagged with some form of “Next Step” designation. “Is it important?” Yes/No? “Is it urgent?” “Yes/No? “Will it take more than 15 minutes?” Yes/No? A flowchart of questions that takes your daydreaming and procrastination out of the equation and automates the steps you need to get things done.

1. Collect – things that command attention
2. Process – what they mean to decide what to do (“the next action”)
3. Organize – the results
4. Review – and choose from all the options
5. Do – the task.

15. Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Edited by Peter D. Kaufman

“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly.” So says Charlie Munger. The focus of Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Advertised as “the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger.” This coffee table sized book has all the makings of a common sense encyclopedia with hundreds of illustrated pages filled to the brim with investment wisdom and sage advice. If there was one book on this list I wish I had memorized this would certainly be it.

“Charlie is truly the broadest thinker I have ever encountered. From business principles to economic principles to the design of student dormitories to the design of a catamaran he has no equal. This book capturing his wisdom is long overdue.”
-Bill Gates

“You will never find a book with more useful ideas”
-Warren Buffett

Two glowing reviews from #1 and #2 on the list of the richest men in America. What more do you need?

14. Seeking Wisdom: From Munger to Darwin, Peter Bevelin

Peter Bevelin’s “Seeking Wisdom” is a unique book. It’s not that long, but it’s dense. The type of book you could come back to time and again and still learn something new. It’s heavy on the thoughts of educational advocate and billionaire Charlie Munger. A la Munger, Bevelin stresses learning different “mental models.” Abraham Maslow once said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” They take the metaphor further and say, “Work on getting a bigger tool box.” In this book they set out teaching the reader some new ways of looking at problems. Along with numerous pitfalls to avoid, there is some seriously good advice in these pages. A must read.

13. Influence, Robert B. Cialdini

Influence is a psychologist’s take on the psychological factors and effects of persuasion and marking. Cialdini spent 3 years going undercover in various sales jobs including car dealerships, fundraising, and telemarketing firms to observe real-life situations of persuasion.

Cialdini lists six main factors.

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment and Consistency
3. Social Proof
4. Authority
5. Liking
6. Scarcity

Simple, fun, interesting, and effective

12. Trust Agents, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Trust Agents comes at a time when the internet has not yet fully developed into the monopolistic commercial medium it’s destined to become in the near future. So many things have changed since the 20th century and Chris Brogen and Julien Smith take us to the front lines of this new commercial paradigm. The 21st century is a place where a strangers review about a product on amazon.com means more to a consumer than a 5 million dollar Super Bowl ad. A place where consumers are desensitized from the barrage of advertising. We are tired of the advertising noise we have to sift through before we can learn about the true quality of a product. In the future, business will be about leveraging a network towards a goal and developing rapport with the gate keepers of the buyer’s minds. The Trust Agents.

11. The E-myth Revisited, MIchael E. Gerber

Aside from demystifying small businesses and motivating you to start your own.
Michael E. Gerber’s main point in the E-myth revisited is that most small businesses fail because most small businesses are started by technicians. These technicians wrongly assumes that because they’re good at their particular technical skill set, they will understand business. Gerber counters that small business owners need to become skilled in management and business growth. Small business owners need to systemize their business’ workflows so that the personnel is interchangeable and the owner can be freed of daily operations and spend more time on strategic issues.

10. Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Based on 15 years of research, the authors used 150 successful strategic moves spanning 120 years of business history and across 30 industries to bring the Blue Ocean Strategy to life.
The book suggests companies discover blues oceans, or uncharted/unknown market space, untainted by competition. Discover or create new markets and you’ll find yourself the lucky recipient of a temporary monopoly. A wide, crisp, deep, blue ocean.

9. The Goal, Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt

The only novel in the group. On top of fictional plant manager Alex Rogo’s rocky marriage, he has three months to fix his company’s productivity or they close down the plant, and in turn bankrupt the town. This sets off Alex’s trip down systems efficiency theories together with the readers; and with the help of an old friend named Jonah, they solve the manufacturing plant’s problems and in the process we learn about Dr. Goldratt’s groundbreaking management system called the Theory of Constraints.

Deep in the heart of the 36th chapter of this book the main characters draw up the process.

To save you time and let you in on a great manufacturing secret here it is.

The process

1. Identify the system’s bottlenecks
2. Decide how to exploit the bottlenecks
3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision.
4. Elevate the system’s bottlenecks
5. If in a previous step, a bottleneck has broken, go back to step one.

8. Models of My Life, Herbert A. Simon

A renaissance man. A social scientist. An economist. A polymath. A Nobel Prize winner. A pioneer of the decision making process. One of the founders of Artificial Intelligence and one of the first social scientists ever admitted to the National Academy of Sciences. Herbert A. Simon was a rare kind of Genius and this is his autobiography.

7. Only the Paranoid Survive, Andrew S. Grove

“This book is about one super-important concept. You must learn about Strategic Inflection Points, because sooner or later you’re going to live through one”
-Steve Jobs

6. The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason

Although George Samuel Clason’s The Richest Man in Babylon is short, the basic money management wisdom is colossal. Told thorough a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon. With advice such as live off of 90 percent of your paycheck and save the other 10 percent. Control your spending, make your money multiply, guard your savings from loss, and increase your ability to earn. If you follow the advice in this book, you will be rich.

5. Administrative Behavior, Herbert Simon

In the early 1940′s, a young inexperienced University of Chicago student named Herbert Simon wrote his graduate dissertation. Culled from the available books at the University of Chicago’s Political Science department on economics, management, and decision making. Simon filter out the chaff and synthesized the good stuff so effectively that his college dissertation turned into a best selling book that pioneered new theories on human choice and administrative decision making. Administrative Behavior is considered one of the most influential books on social science thinking, and was referred to by the Nobel committee as “epoch-making.” It became the launching pad for the monumental career of the Nobel Prize winning renaissance man Herbert Simon.

4. The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson

British Historian and Harvard Professor Niall (pronounced “Neil”) Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money is a book about the history of finance. More importantly for the reader, he takes us through the 5 basic instruments of finance, Currency, Real Estate, Bonds, Stocks, and Insurance. Through elegant simplicity and prose, Mr. Ferguson teaches us more about the basics then we ever knew existed. A monumental work and an interesting read.

3. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Warren Buffett

A collection of Warren Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders of his company Berkshire Hathaway. Although Buffett is a savvy investor, he is also a first class businessman with a brain for the ins and outs of a business. Simply written with an emphasis on morals and teaching, Buffett’s essays can give the reader an unbelievable education about actual business concepts. This is not an empty self-help book about motivation. This is practical advice from a business prodigy. Beware of books about Buffett when this one’s floating around. Practical business advice from the man himself.

2. How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie’s self help classic. First published in 1937 and based off of a 14-week Carnegie course a Simon & Schuster publisher named Leon Shimkin took and had transcribed into a book.

Some great common sense advice including don’t criticize or complain, become genuinely interested in other people, smile, talk in terms of the other person’s interest and remember that a person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound in the english language.

My Grandfather took the Dale Carnegie course in the 1950′s as did many other great businessmen and all have the utmost respect for the wisdom of Mr. Carnegie.

“I actually have the diploma in the office, I don’t have my diploma from college, I don’t have my diploma from graduate school, but I’ve got my Dale Carnegie diploma there, ’cause it changed my life.”
-Warren Buffett

1. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Long, hard to read, and occasionally boring, Adam’s Smith’s masterpiece is the bases for all modern economic theory. Funny, the words “Economics” “Capitalism” and “Corporations” didn’t exist when it was written in 1776.

Reading this book is insightful and fulfilling for one major reason. The Wealth of Nations was considered the Rolls Royce of business books at the dawn of the industrial revolution. A secret text that unlocked the alchemy of trade and labor.

“One worker could probably make only twenty pins per day. However, if ten people divided up the eighteen steps required to make a pin, they could make a combined amount of 48,000 pins in one day.”

Among many other things, Smith advocated a free market economy as more productive and more beneficial to society.

The eyes of the the world’s great industrialists have grazed over this text. For a nominal fee and a little patience, you can peer inside the mind of the man that laid the basic groundwork for modern economic theory.

Having read this far, you’re half-way done. Now go buy these books and read them.