I’ve compiled this list of the Top 10 Best Business Success Books of all time, because they don’t teach business success in schools, or even colleges properly.  If you read all of the books on this list (and make sure you check out how to get the bonus list PDF of the total Top 33 at the end), it will just like getting a Business MBA – but from people who have actually DONE IT!

I’ve always wanted to be a success and to own my own successful online business so I went looking in books for knowledge on how to become a successful business person. The shocking thing is that nobody knows how to run your business successfully.  A mentor who has successfully built a business themselves can help accelerate your success and steer you clear of the bigger holes in the road, but you HAVE to educate yourself too so that you can make good decisions on your own.

In the same way that I used to tell my Money Gym clients “Nobody will ever care about your money like you do!” well, now I tell my business mentoring clients “Nobody will ever care about your business like you do!”.

I realised for the first time I was pretty much on my own, as soon as I bought my half-million pound hotel “no money down” and I asked both my bank manager and accountant “What don’t I know that I need to know about running a business” and they both looked at me and said “Every business is different and there’s no success manual”)

Well, there should be!

I’ve read hundreds of business, personal development and wealth creation books – and I mean hundreds.  I read perhaps a book a week and have been doing that since 1998/1999 and that’s a LOT of books.  Sometimes when you read one, you know immediately it’s going to become a personal classic, due to the impact it has on you and the way it makes you look at your business differently.

If you read JUST these 10 recommended books, and implement the concepts contained therein, you will have the closest thing to a “Business Success Manual” I can think of.  If you enter your details below to get the bonus PDF list of my “Top 33 Business Books” it will be like taking a Business MBA.

The full list of 33 books is divided into Mindset & Success Thinking, Marketing & Sales and Finance & Money Management.

In no particular order, here is….

My Top 10 Business Success Books – Mindset & Success Thinking

1. 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
   Let’s start with some classics, eh?  This was pretty much the first personal development / personal effectiveness book I ever read and it had a profound impact on me.  For the first time in my life, I began taking responsibility for the things that had happened to me and I still remember – and try and live by – some of the concepts I remember from that book – one being “do what is right, not what is easy”.  And that’s not always easy actually!
2. E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
   Obviously a classic for entrepreneurs and still just as effective today.  The first book to put forward the idea of the “franchise prototype” and how to simply and easily develop systems for your business (and more importantly to get everyone else to buy into following them!)
3. Synchronicity : The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski
   This is not only a rattling good read and the story of Jaworski’s mid-life crisis as a successful lawyer in Washington and his subsequent travels around the world looking for his purpose and passion, but it covers The Butterfly Effect (forerunner of the Law Of Attraction) and The Entrepreneurial Traps which I recognised instantly!  I won’t say any more but you must read this book!
4. E-Myth Manager by Michael Gerber
   One of the best books I’ve ever come across on how to recruit effectively, the right kind of people for your business, how to set your expectations and discover theirs, how to foster an entrepreneurial spirit in your employees, how to find out what motivates them and how to ensure that they follow the business systems you set up after reading the E-Myth book.  And what to do when they don’t! As, sometimes, they won’t!
5. Creating A Bug Free Mind / Using A Bug Free Mind –  Andy Shaw  Not available on Amazon but via Andy’s site (and yes, that is an affiliate link!) and I have to declare a further interest here – Andy is one of my close friends and a very inspiring man indeed.  I met him back in 2003 or so, just after I bought the hotel, and he and his partners, Greg & Pete, blew my mind with their achievements in the property world. From a standing start of one “buy to let” on a credit card, they build up a property buying machine that amassed 270 odd properties within a few short years.  Andy wrote about their system in his best selling “Money For Nothing And Your Property For Free”, which ended with the prophetic words “The only thing that could go wrong with this is that the banks could stop lending…” and we all know what happened next! Wondering how it could all have come crashing down around his ears, Andy went on a journey of internal discovery and realised that, in all the self help/ success books, including the mighty “Think & Grow Rich”, they were all getting one crucial word wrong and it was a killer mistake!  He wrote these two new books in a record time – they seemed to just flow out of him – and they are, for my money, already up among the greats in the personal development world. You can find out more about Andy and watch an exclusive video interview I filmed with him recently.
6. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard
   Loved this book on managing effectively – yourself and your staff.  Still aspire to have an empty diary and an empty desk, so that I can respond to situations and opportunities as they arise.  A good companion book to “The E-Myth Manager” and you should also check out “Who Moved My Cheese” by the same author.
7. Take Yourself to the Top by Laura Berman Fortgang
   This book was one of the first career coaching books I ever read and in her inimitable down to earth, no-nonsense style, LBF as she became known in coaching circles, covers some of the best strategies for business networking I have ever come across.  How to network effectively, who to choose to network with….it’s all great stuff. Read this alongside “Love Is The Killer App” by Tim Sanders which is also very cool.
8. The Portable Coach: 28 Sure-fire Strategies for Business and Personal Success by Thomas J. Leonard
   Thomas J Leonard was the “grandfather of coaching” and still sorely missed.  The man was a bona fide genius and this, his first book, put coaching and it’s benefits firmly on the map.  I still love his distinctions and one of the best was “selfish versus self-ish” (think about it!). He also inspired me to write my eprogramme and thus my own book “The Money Gym” with his “Passive Income For Coaches” eprogramme and it was TJL who introduced me to 1ShoppingCart which was very ground breaking in 1999/2000 and which enabled me to grow my mailing list and thus my greatest business asset.
9. Ready Fire Aim: Zero To $100 Million In No Time Flat by Michael Masterson
   This book shot straight to pole position when I read it on the advice of one of my mentors Rich Schefren and it was written by one of his mentors.  Michael outlines the concept of your “lead product” and how, without your business being able to profitably sell your lead product, you haven’t got a business.  You would be shocked how many small businesses don’t know what their “lead product” is. The power and simplicity of that concept struck me immediately and I now ask Michael’s core questions of every mentoring client I work with.
10. Driven (How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices) by Paul R Lawrence & Nitin Nohria – my full review was picked up and used by the International Business Times but briefly this book explores (drawing on scientific proof from eminent scientists, philosophers and scholars through the ages) just what drives us as human beings and how that plays out in how we live, work, and interact together.  Lawrence and Nohria propose that there are four main independent drives — to acquire, bond, learn, and defend. The way our brains have physically developed has contributed to the development of these drives and even more interestingly, that the drives, as they emerged, have actually shaped the way our brains further developed. All of which adds up to the totally unique way that humans think and act.

I hope you enjoyed this Top 10 Best Business Success Books list and that my personal reflections on each book has inspired you to go and order a copy of each,

Guess What?  This is just the tip of the iceberg!  I actually have a list of my Top 33 Business Books that I’m constantly updating.  Just click here to enter your details and I’ll send the PDF to you immediately, my gift to you.  I’ll also email you updates, free of charge, as I make them.

I have always loved libraries (but not school) and I think we have such a wealth of knowledge in books and online, we are really doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t take every opportunity to learn how to do or be better.

I also hope you take the opportunity to check out my own books “Attract 3.0” and also “The Money Gym”, inspired by all of the above and more, which I just completely re-wrote and re-recorded all the audio for.  It’s bang up to date and I’m still very proud of it.  Check it out on Amazon or the Kindle here >>>>

Share your thoughts about the books above and any other business success books you have loved too by clicking the “share your thoughts” link there!