A former student asked me to suggest some books she could read about starting a business. I read a lot and can recommend quite a few books, but then realized being an entrepreneur is a very broad topic and felt I needed some specifics before recommending something to her.

Starting the business is just the first part. Running it is the major issue. In fact, most new businesses do not make it past their second year. I posted a previous blog with qualities of an entrepreneur, listing 68 traits. I also have many other blogs about running a business.

To get her started, I asked what specific interests she had and mentioned entrepreneurship, leadership, managing, investing, accounting, financing, marketing and real estate. I can recommend books on each of these topics and many more. I can also recommend general subject books about identifying what the business would do and how to choose the business, and also autobiographies and biographies of people that built successful businesses – some current and some deep in the past.

It is not unusual for someone to ask me a question about something when they mean something completely different. People tend to ask questions in a manner that they think they should, or the listener expects it rather than what is truly on their mind. What I usually do before responding is to probe and ask questions to find out what they really want to know. And then I can usually help them.

There are many books I could recommend, and I occasionally have posted lists of books and even have presented a speech numerous times where I cover 42 books that I think should be read by people in business or who want to get started. Also, two of the last six blogs I posted are about leadership attributes and perennial business phrases. You can easily read these by searching backward on my blog site. I also posted blogs about over two dozen books I read and recommend, some of which do not seem to be “business” books, such as my blogs on Vasari, Gutenberg and the Wright Brothers.

What I will be doing in the next week is collecting all of the entrepreneurial blogs I posted into a single file and will send you if you email me at [email protected] and put Entrepreneurial Blogs as the subject. No messages necessary.

All the best,

Ed

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