Since I had no background in anything business related, when I started CWS I had a lot of catching up to do.  In the last 2 years I have read a handful of business, marketing, and entrepreneurial books.  I am sure that some of you have heard of these before but I was able to take something important from each of them.

The 4 Hour Work Week
Thanks to Tim Ferriss and this wonderful book I am proud to say that CWS will be working from Costa Rica for a month in 2009.  This book is all about automating your business or finding ways to be able to work from home even if you have a typical office job.  The tips recommended in the book are absolutely brilliant and have helped in a myriad of ways for CWS.  Taking “mini-retirements”, finding virtual assistants, tech solutions, and tons more.  This is my most recommended book.  I was fortunate enough to meet and speak briefly with the author and it only reaffirmed how smart this guy is.  You can check out his blog too that has even more useful information at www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Made to Stick
For me this wasn’t so much about learning about business or entrepreneurship but more about why things become successful.  The case studies presented in this book are great stories.  The fictional examples they set up for you with effective and not so effective strategies and their outcomes are great learning tools as well.

Duct Tape Marketing
With no marketing experience I wanted learn as much as I could about marketing and how to do it on a budget.  This book was perfect for that.  All the methods are explained and have cited resources that were invaluable.  From setting up automated phone systems or finding a good CRM package to track your leads this book has it all.  Use this book to set up your marketing plan for any kind of business.

The Knack
I have only just started this one and this is gaining ground on The 4 Hour Work Week.  Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham have put together what so far seems like a walk through of some entrepreneurs starting out and the problems they run into.  They go on to show the remedies that were used to solve the problems and why those solutions worked.  It is very thorough and the explanations are amazing.  Like I said I am only a few chapters in but I was able to learn quite a lot in the pages read so far.  I am excited to finish this one.

I know there are a ton of other great books out there but I only have so much time to read them.  I would love to hear some other good business or entrepreneur books you guys have been able to take things from!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.