Tim Ferriss’ most successful book, The 4-Hour Work Week, has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. As several Goodreads reviewers have previously noticed, Ferriss comes across as a bit abrasive in the opening few chapters of the book. So, before you buy a copy of this book, I recommend watching some of his YouTube videos or subscribing to his podcast to become acquainted with his work.
Goodreads Rating: 3.86/5 (123,000+ ratings)
David Ogilvy, known as the “Father of Advertising,” was an advertising expert who created the marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather. In 1983, he published a book in which he shared his thoughts on all areas of advertising, building on his years of experience managing ad campaigns for major companies such as Rolls Royce, Dove, and Shell. His advertising concepts remain valid and should be mandatory reading for anybody interested in learning the fundamentals of advertising.
Goodreads Rating: 4.18/5 (7,000+ ratings)
Side Hustle by Chris Guillebeau provides explicit instructions to help you create and launch a lucrative side hustle without quitting your day job. This book should be mandatory reading for everyone who wants to learn the fundamentals of beginning a side business and experience entrepreneurship without giving up the security that a day job provides.
Goodreads Rating: 3.77/5 (1,700+ ratings)
Adam Grant is a New York Times bestselling author and Wharton’s highest-rated lecturer for the past seven years. Grant discusses the concept of uniqueness in his book Originals and debunks the myth that leaders are born, not produced. The book delves into the roots of brilliant ideas and how anybody may spot one.
Goodreads Rating: 3.97/5 (23,000+ ratings)
I’ve been a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk since I launched my own company in 2015. I assumed that after being motivated by his podcast, videos, and social media posts, the next natural step would be to read his business books. While I would recommend all of them because each one offers a distinct viewpoint, #AskGaryVee is the one to start with.
Goodreads Rating: 4.1/5 (3,000+ ratings)
Andrew Grove was an Intel co-founder who helped build the business into the world’s largest semiconductor maker. He develops the notion of strategic inflection points (SIPs), which are the times in every firm at which substantial change happens. Only a Paranoid Survives is a must-read for every entrepreneur looking to improve their leadership abilities.
Goodreads Rating: 3.97/5 (5,500+ ratings)
Crushing It is the sequel to Gary Vaynerchuk’s international bestseller Crush It (see #86). The book provides both theoretical and practical guidance on how to develop your personal brand on every major social media network now in use. It includes numerous examples of entrepreneurs who have used social media to build their personal brand and are now living life on their own terms.
Goodreads Rating: 4.15/5 (3,500+ ratings)
Cal Newport’s Deep Work is a tremendously influential book that will transform the way you approach work. Newport proposes in the book that we build the talent of deep work, or the capacity to focus on an essential activity without interruptions. The book is broken into two sections, the first of which Newport makes the case for intense work in any career.
Goodreads Rating: 4.20/5 (40,000+ ratings)
Pre-suasion is a skill that must be mastered in order to win an argument, gain support for an idea or cause, or promote a campaign. This is what it takes to be a successful communicator, according to Robert Cialdini, the renowned social scientist and author of the global blockbuster Influence (see #9).
Goodreads Rating: 4.03/5 (3,900+ ratings)
27. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
Bestselling author Walter Isaacson’s book provides an in-depth insight at Steve Jobs’ career and personal life. It’s an unbiased book that delves into Jobs’ incredible abilities and foresight while also exposing many of his flaws. To create the book, Isaacson undertook three years of confidential interviews with Jobs, his family members, coworkers, and even his adversaries.
Goodreads Rating: 4.12/5 (788,000+ ratings)
The Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy is straightforward: our productivity is proportionate to our capacity to unwind. We can only produce extraordinary outcomes and reach our creative potential when our minds are clear and our ideas are structured. This book is a great mine of ideas regarding productivity and mental well-being practices. Want to overcome procrastination and create significant achievements for your business? Get your copy of David Allen’s GTD right now.
Goodreads Rating: 3.99/5 (104,000+ ratings)
Tim Ferriss’s The Tribe of Mentors is a massive 580-page book that contains advice and lessons from over 100 successful people from various areas of life. I loved reading practically all of the book’s 100+ interviews since the responses revealed so much about the mentors.
Goodreads Rating: 4.19/5 (5,600+ ratings)
Peter Thiel is a well-known venture capitalist and entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who co-founded PayPal and was Facebook’s first outside investor. Thiel discusses in Zero to One how he learnt how to develop companies that produce new things, building on all he learned as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir. Thiel has also invested in hundreds of companies, including Facebook and Musk’s Space X.
Goodreads Rating: 4.16/5 (106,000+ ratings)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian-American psychologist who developed the notion of flow, a mental state in which a person is completely engrossed in the work at hand. His landmark work Flow describes his notion that when individuals are in a state of flow, they are happiest. This principle is extensively developed in Daniel H. Pink’s best-selling book Drive (see #35), which provides ways for focusing on intrinsic rewards and achieving a state of pure flow.
Goodreads Rating: 4.11/5 (42,000+ ratings)
Huffington Post co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington presents a convincing argument for reframing success as happiness, wisdom, and compassion. She recounts her own journey of finding a healthy balance between work and personal life.
Goodreads Rating: 3.70/5 (12,700+ ratings)
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of our generation’s most influential marketers, and he has authored a book about social media marketing. Jab, Right Hook is a helpful book for entrepreneurs and marketers who want to use social media to raise their public presence.
Goodreads Rating: 4.07/5 (6,000+ ratings)
Guy Kawasaki is a notable Silicon Valley venture capitalist and one of the finest marketing thought leaders of our day. In 1984, he was in charge of marketing Apple’s Macintosh computer line, and he has founded three companies and advised organizations as small as two people and Google. His book The Art of the Start is a guide on launching and making your new product, service or idea a success.
Goodreads Rating: 3.85/5 (22,000+ ratings)
Random Citizen 