2008 Business Builder Book club Choices

Learning techniques to aid us in thinking creatively are of huge benefit to business owners. Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko is a collection of tools and methods we can use to help us solve problems. 90% of all stock is owned by 10% of the people. Moving into that top 10% takes knowledge and planning. If you're not in that upper 10% you'll benefit from Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki.

Every business owner has to acquire some level of investment knowledge, if for no other reason, to understand how to manage retirement funds. The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing by Jason Kelly gives us a great starting point.

Left to it's own devices, life is pure chaos! Success demands that it be ordered. Goals must be set and reached. Getting Things Done by David Allen outlines a system that everyone everywhere should be using to connect their present with their desired future.

Marketing is a bane of existence to most small business owners. Few people like to "sell" and nobody likes to be "sold". However people need and businesses need to supply. Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch provides us the blueprint for building the road between the two.

Originally published over 20 years ago, Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson has long been a valuable basic book on low budget marketing for small businesses. It was updated in 2007 to include online marketing so it is still relevant.

The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber has got to rank very close to the top of all books every written for the owner of a small business. It's the basic "How To" create a successful business manual that touches on every single aspect of business ownership. A MUST READ!

The Purple Cow by Seth Godin clearly explains a basic tenet of business success. Consumers today are bombarded by messages. There are a million of every kind of businesses there is. If you're going to survive you have to stand out.

The Great Gitomer, Jeffrey Gitomer contains the energy of a tightly coiled spring being released from containment. The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude gives us a glimpse into the toolkit that maintains that energy. Just looking at this book will snap you out of a funk. Imagine what you'll gain by reading it.

Another Gitomer Great is The Little Red Book of Selling. Gitomer books are fun to read, fast to read, and if you can't do it all at once, they come with their own bookmark. The book itself is an example of many of the things that Gitomer teaches. This book goes right to the heart of the sales matter as nobody but Jeffrey Gitomer can do.

In some cases the books are available in CD or DVD as well. Feel free to use this search tool to see if there's an "easy listening" version of your book - or to find similar books, or other books by these authors. You should be able to highlight and copy the author's name then paste it into the search box below.

Business Brains Talking . . .

Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment — they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.

So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized.

The fact that used cars is our largest category is a good example. We would not have sat in a conference room and said, "Hey, how about used cars?" So what can be learned that is extensible to other companies is [to ask] what are your customers doing with your products that maybe you didn't anticipate that they would do? How do you think of your customers as your research and development lab, as opposed to having an R&D lab at headquarters?

Meg Whitman in Let the Customers Run the Company