As spring rolls into summer, you may begin to dream of those long, lazy, hazy days of pure rest and relaxation. Sure, you'll take some well-deserved vacation time, in fact, I highly recommend it! But, as much as we'd like to take the entire summer off, planning and building our business empires is an engine that needs to be fed to stay on track. Thanks to modern technology, we can conveniently bring all of our summer reading to the beach or pool. Here is my list of 10 sizzling summer reading picks to grow your small business.
How to Write Anything by Laura Brown
There's no getting around writing when you're an entrepreneur. Even if you're not writing blog posts (but you should), you have to write emails, letters, proposals...you name it. This book provides you with the principles you need to write professionally and clearly, no matter what you're writing.
Any salesperson worth her salt knows that selling isn't about a canned pitch, but about those conversations you have with your contacts. If you're new to sales, the collaborative conversation skills this book teaches will be invaluable in helping you close more deals.
If you are a small business owner who is ready to start hiring sales people, you need to read this book first, It will give you everything you need ramp up your learning curve to train your team to confidently pitch sales to new customers and create value for your long term customers.
If you've ever woken up and felt something less than enthusiasm at the thought of running your business, Moltz understands. Every business owner gets stuck, and Moltz specializes in helping them (and you) back on track and excited about your business. This book looks at 25 most common causes of getting stuck and provides suggestions on how to fix them.
For small businesses who have tiptoed around the idea of using content marketing to increase sales, this book is perfect. It's written at an introductory level that takes away all the fear you might have about starting with content marketing, and provides hands-on tips to get started.
Mike Michalowicz, author of The Pumpkin Plan & The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, turns the traditional accounting system on its ear in this engaging read. He presents an alternative to old standards and provides tips to help your business grow.
This is a book that all business owners should read if they want to be able to compete in today's world-wide business climate. This guide conclusively outlines the exporting process using technology and specifically on how to use social media to grow your global presence.
Not all the books on my list are sunny tales of business success. This one, for example, looks at why companies (especially tech) fail, and provides a blueprint to help entrepreneurs avoid the same mistakes. The clincher? It's written as fiction but has some powerful lessons within.
Think disruption is a bad thing? Think again. Just look at technology: the players that have been the most successful are those that completely turned the market upside down. Jensen uses the concept of disruption to identify 25 habits businesses need in order to thrive in disruptive times.
As any creative type will tell you, it's one thing to have fun doing what you love, but it's another thing entirely to figure out how to get paid for it. This book is geared toward performers, designers, artists -- anyone who makes a living creating art -- and teaches them how to find paid work doing what they love, as well as how to balance the business side of things.