As the new year begins, many are jotting down their personal and business New Year’s resolutions. I’ve curated excellent books for your 2024 reading list, geared toward aiding in organization, planning, and setting achievable goals for your business. These books offer inspirational insights, challenging conventional business advice. After all, who wants to conform to every fleeting trend on social media and YouTube?
Here’s to embracing the new year and embarking on a journey toward achieving your goals in 2024, evolving into a new version of yourself.
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Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Synopsis:
Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business.
Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you’re looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.
Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don’t need to be a workaholic. You don’t need to staff up. You don’t need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don’t even need an office. Those are all just excuses.
What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You’ll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.
With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of “downsizing,” and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.
Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin
Synopsis:
Talk Triggers is the definitive, practical guide on how to use bold operational differentiators to create customer conversations, written by best-selling authors and marketing experts Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin.
Word of mouth is directly responsible for 19% of all purchases, and influences as much as 90%. Every human on earth relies on word of mouth to make buying decisions. Yet even today, fewer than 1% of companies have an actual strategy for generating these crucial customer conversations. Talk Triggers provides that strategy in a compelling, relevant, timely book that can be put into practice immediately, by any business.
The key to activating customer chatter is the realization that the same is lame. Nobody says ” Let me tell you about this perfectly adequate experience I had last night.” The strategic, operational differentiator is what gives customers something to tell a story about. Companies (including the 30+ profiled in Talk Triggers) must dare to be different and exceed expectations in one or more palpable ways. That’s when word of mouth becomes involuntary: the customers of these businesses simply MUST tell someone else.
Talk Triggers contains:
· Proprietary research into why and how customers talk
· More than 30 detailed case studies of extraordinary results from Doubletree Hotels by Hilton and their warm cookie upon arrival, The Cheesecake Factory and their giant menu, Five Guys Burgers and their extra fries in the bag, Penn & Teller and their nightly meet and greet sessions, and a host of delightful small businesses
· The 4-5-6 learning system (the 4 requirements for a differentiator to be a talk trigger; the 5 types of talk triggers; and the 6-step process for creating talk triggers)
· Surprises in the text that are (of course) word-of-mouth propellants
Consumers are wired to discuss what is different and ignore what is average. Talk Triggers not only dares the reader to differentiate, but it includes the precise formula for doing it.
The Toyota Way, Second Edition: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker
Synopsis:
How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry
In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota’s worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.
Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota’s principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:
- Eliminating wasted time and resources
- Building quality into workplace systems
- Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology
- Producing in small quantities
- Turning every employee into a quality control inspector
About the Author:
Dr. Jeffrey K. Likeris a professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and cofounder and director of the Japan Technology Management Program at the University of Michigan.
Self-Made Boss: Advice, Hacks, and Lessons from Small Business Owners by Jackie Reses and Lauren Weinberg
Synopsis:
Part starter-kit, part encyclopedia, and part inspiration, Self-Made Boss is an essential survival guide for small businesses When it comes to getting practical advice, small business owners too often don’t know where to look. Sure, you can find all sorts of high-level strategic tips from Fortune 500 CEOs. But what if you own a restaurant, and you’re trying to figure out how to source good fish, or if you’re looking to increase revenue from your plumbing supply store? You’ll be running a lot of Google searches before you hear from someone who’s actually stood in your shoes. Longtime Square executives Jackie Reses and Lauren Weinberg want to change this.
So they reached out across the country, talking to dozens of entrepreneurs with valuable businesses–and invaluable advice. This book is the product of that research. Part starter-kit, part encyclopedia, part inspiration, Self-Made Boss is filled with information not just about who these small business owners are, but how they built their companies, step by step. How did they get their start? When did they decide to hire more staff? How did they set a course for growth? And when problems arose, how did they fight through them? You’ll hear from a second-generation ice cream shop owner on how to manage price increases; an oyster farmer finding new ways to stay afloat in the middle of a global pandemic; a roofer who refused to be denied or defined by her race and gender–and dozens of other small business owners making a big difference in their communities.
No matter the size of your business today–or where you’re thinking about taking the jump tomorrow–you’ll find answers you can apply right away. Because there’s a common purpose that all small business owners share: the drive to build something from the ground up; the relentless pursuit of turning obstacles into opportunities and roadblocks into stepping stones. It’s tough and messy, hard-fought and hard-won. And above all, it’s something you can’t have when you work anywhere else–or for anyone else. That’s what it means to be a Self-Made Boss.
Social Media Is Bullshit by B.J. Mendelson
Synopsis:
A provocative look at social media that dispels the hype and tells you all you need to know about using the Web to expand your business
If you listen to the pundits, Internet gurus, marketing consultants, and even the mainstream media, you could think social media was the second coming. When it comes to business, they declare that it’s revolutionizing advertising, PR, customer relations―everything. And they all agree: it is here to stay.
In this lively, insightful guide, journalist and social critic B.J. Mendelson skillfully debunks the myths of social media. He illustrates how the notion of “social media” first came to prominence, why it has become such a powerful presence in the marketing field, and who stands to benefit each time it’s touted in the press. He shows you why all the Facebook friends and Twitter followers in the world mean nothing to you and your business without old-fashioned, real-world connections. He examines popular tales of social media “success,” and reveals some unsettling truths behind the surface. And he tells you how to best harness the potential of the Internet―without spending a fortune in the process.
Social media is bullshit. This book gives the knowledge and tools you really need to connect with customers and grow your brand.
Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
Synopsis:
The global phenomenon that has sold 3.6 million copies, is published in a record-breaking 46 languages and is a bestseller across five continents―now updated and expanded with new content
In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, Blue Ocean Strategy, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”―untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. This expanded edition includes:
- A new preface by the authors: Help! My Ocean Is Turning Red
- Updates on all cases and examples in the book, bringing their stories up to the present time
- Two new chapters and an expanded third one ― Alignment, Renewal, and Red Ocean Traps ― that address the most pressing questions readers have asked over the past 10 years
A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling book charts a bold new path to winning the future. Consider this your guide to creating uncontested market space―and making the competition irrelevant.
To learn more about the power of blue ocean strategy, visit blueoceanstrategy.com. There you’ll find all the resources you need―from ideas in practice and cases from government and private industry, to teaching materials, mobile apps, real-time updates, and tips and tools to help you make your blue ocean journey a success.
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