Read These Books Before You Launch Your BUSINESS

The vast majority of you guys have entrepreneurial spirits and have either started or are thinking of starting a business. Whether it's a small side hustle or you want this to be your new career, you're all starting from the same point: Ground Zero. You've got no idea, or only some idea, of how this works, so it's really important to start with financial and business literacy.

To help you out, we've put together a list of 15 books we believe everyone should read before starting a business. It's going to take you around three months to go through these books in detail, but these are three months that can make the difference between a five percent chance of success or twenty percent. That's a huge increase when you really think about it, so going through these books is a no-brainer.

So, here are 15 books you need to go through before starting your side hustle. But before we start, just an important note: the order in which we talk about these books is important because every book builds upon previous knowledge, so try to stick with it.

Okay, welcome to A Lux.

Number one: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. We start off nice and easy with a book that does a great job of not bullshitting you. This book is all about testing and validating your business idea before you invest a lot of time and money into it, which is exactly what you should be doing in the very beginning. It's like a road map for starting a business, and it's perfect for anyone who's not sure if their idea is a good one or not.

The most valuable takeaway of this book is the idea of the minimum viable product, which in other words means creating the most bare-bones version of your product that can still be called a product and testing that out first. When you're a beginner entrepreneur, you don't really know what works; you need to go through that old "throwing things at the wall and see what sticks" trick, and you're only capped by how many things you can throw at said wall. This is where the minimum viable product comes into play.

When you make the bare-bones version first, you can afford to make a few more. If you go all in on just one idea and that idea doesn't work out, you're pretty much done. At the end of the day, being a successful entrepreneur means how long you can afford to play the game until something lands. With a minimum viable product, you can prolong that time. Now we're not going to spoil the rest of the book; all right, go read it yourself.

Number two: The One Hundred Dollar Startup by Chris Guillebeau. We picked this one as your second book because it builds up on the previous point. This book is all about minimal startup costs. You'll find real-life examples of individuals who've launched successful businesses with minimal startup costs, which will give you an idea of how the minimum viable product looks for different people, which in turn will help you design yours.

The most valuable takeaway from this book is the idea of the micro-business, which is a way of starting a business with very little money and scaling it up as you make more money. You see, starting small doesn't mean not ending big, and this is the book that will show you how it's done.

Number three: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. For our third book, we've gone to one of our favorite authors, podcasters, and self-proclaimed guinea pigs. While The Four Hour Work Week was published quite a while ago and some ideas are outdated, the book still does one really good thing. It's the only book that talks about this, at least to our knowledge.

If the first two books gave you an idea of how to start, this one teaches you in what direction to go. Tim calls it lifestyle design, and at the end of the day, you want a business that fits you as an individual. It doesn't matter what businesses are hot right now or which ones have the best markets; you need to see how that position can fit into your life. It's much easier to work on something you're already kind of doing, rather than to completely reinvent yourself as a person just to make a business work.

And a bonus point here: Tim has a podcast called The Tim Ferriss Show, which we highly recommend listening to.

Number four: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Now, after you go through the first three books, you kind of know how and what to start. This is a point where most people make their first critical mistake, and that mistake is thinking of starting a business where you believe you'll be a great employee.

Let's look at an example: let's say you were a great chef—everyone loves your cooking, and your friends cannot wait to come over to your place for dinner. So naturally, you think of starting a restaurant; it only makes sense, right? But here's the thing: being a chef and being a restaurant owner are two completely different jobs. As a matter of fact, sometimes a restaurant owner rarely actually cooks. As a chef, you have to make the menu; as a restaurant owner, you have to make connections with suppliers, and these are very different skills.

How many people do you know that started a business only to say, "Oh man, this is not what I imagined it to be"? That's why we suggest this is the fourth book you read. It'll teach you the difference between working in your business and working on your business.

Number five: Good to Great by Jim Collins. Now, after you go through the first series of books, your mind will be flooded with ideas. You'll start taking notes and wonder what's the one thing that's going to make you succeed. Maybe it's a great market, or a great idea, or a great business model.

This is where most people make the second critical mistake: they believe in the existence of that one thing. This is where this book comes in. In it, you'll find a bunch of case studies of companies, both big and small, and what differentiates the really successful ones from those who fail. You'll learn that there is no one thing. Instead, there are hundreds of small things—from who you hire, to what kind of leader you are, to the reason you're actually doing this—and the compounded effect of these things will dictate your success.

It's basically the same principle we use with the A Lux app; we offer up curated knowledge on such a wide spectrum of valuable topics, skills, and attributes that will compound over time. It might feel kind of insignificant in the beginning, but absorbing those insights every single day adds up to something rather incredible that you get to carry with you for the rest of your life: wisdom. If you haven't already, go to alux.com/app and download it today.

All right, all right, on to the next book.

Number six: Start with Why by Simon Sinek. By the time you finish Good to Great, you'll start to panic. You'll find out that things are not exactly as simple as you thought. There is a huge amount of work involved, and on top of that, it's work you didn't even consider. You'll start to question why you're doing this. Do you really want a business, or are you more satisfied with being an employee?

Now it's time to read Start with Why. This book will help you find that answer a lot more easily.

Number seven: The Power of Broke by Damon John. We continue on with a little bit of a breather. This book is more of a personal journey of someone who started from absolute zero and managed to create a massive success for themselves. It hones the idea that being broke or having limited resources makes you hungrier, and you need to use that as leverage to give you a nice constant boost of motivation to pull through.

Number eight: The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. After you're done with The Power of Broke, we recommend adding this one to your list. This is a book about perspective. Most people think they can't do it because they just can't see themselves in a position of an entrepreneur or a leader. They limit their horizon, which in turn limits their opportunities, or more simply put, you have old thinking—it doesn't work in the current world and you need to change it, and this book will help you do just that.

Number nine: The Power of International Leadership by John C. Maxwell. Once you realize that your mindset needs to shift, and you can actually become a great leader that can create a team and inspire others, you need to take action. But leadership courses are few and far between. How does one become a leader overnight, or do you even start? Well, you start by reading this book.

Number ten: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Okay, so the first nine books got you started. Now it's time to decide if you want to take this thing seriously, and the first thing you need to change is the way you act. Now we're sure you've heard about The Power of Habit before, so we don't really need to sell it for you. It is by far one of the best books out there on how to change who you are by changing what you do every day.

It's not a motivation book; it's a science book. Add it to your list.

Number eleven: The One Thousand Dollar Project by Chris Guillebeau. We're going to circle back to the second book, but with a slightly bigger budget. This is an advanced version of that second book on our list. By now you know far more than you did when you read the first one. You're more prepared, you've got a better idea of what's going on, and you need something more concrete to follow. Well, The One Thousand Dollar Project is a natural progression for you.

Number twelve: The Power of Networking by Dr. Ivan Misner. By this point, almost all people will be faced with the same problem: they know what they have to do, but they don't know what others need to do, or who those others are for that matter. Simply put, they have no network; they don't know how or where to meet new people that could be beneficial to their business. This book takes care of all of that.

Number thirteen: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Another hugely popular book, but the reason we added it here is because it can act as a good follow-up to The Power of Network. The book highlights the importance of being around the right people, which means surrounding yourself with supportive and positive people who can help you to achieve your goals. Hill argues that by being around the right people, we can create a positive and supportive environment that will help us to achieve all our goals, which really connects the dots from the previous book.

Number fourteen: The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. You know how we said there is no one thing? Well, there is, but it's a book. In essence, this book is all about focus. It teaches you how to remove distractions and really set your mind on taking care of what's really important. The reason we decided to add it is because in your entrepreneurial journey, you will often find yourself with a huge plate of things to do, and all of them will seem highly important, but you can't do them all at once.

So what do you do? You need to find a way to prioritize and really focus on the actions that will have the most impact.

Number fifteen: Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. We're going to wrap up this book curriculum with Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. Now the reason we chose this book is because you're building a business in 2023, not 1989. You see, most of the books on this list are pretty old. Many things have changed since then, and while the concepts remain the same, the actual way of doing things is completely different now.

When it comes to Gary Vaynerchuk, many people love to hate him because he's everywhere and always talks about the same thing, which is his job to do. You see, he really believed that marketing as we know it is gone and content took its place. And to prove his point and to act as a business card to his clients, he became a content machine. Everyone knows about him, so it worked.

You need to do the same. Regardless of what kind of business you decide to pursue, you only have two ways to market yourself: paid ads or content. And since you don't have million-dollar budgets for marketing campaigns, content is king, my friend. You need to learn how to do it, and Gary Vaynerchuk is a great person to learn from.

And there you have it, 15 books in order to boost your success rate in business. And of course, since you stuck with us until the end, we've got a bonus for you. But it's not a book; it's a piece of advice.

This is the absolute most basic form of a business you can imagine: sell one thing, whether that's a product or a service, to one person who doesn't know you—just one person. If you manage to do that, you can scale to ten, a hundred, a thousand, and soon enough, one million. But you need to start with one person first.

We'll see you back here again tomorrow!