Whether you are a simple programmer, a video blogger, a web developer, that you are an employee in the company or that you have your own personal activity, we want to recommend 3 books to read absolutely to impregnate you with new ideas and concepts that will surely be useful in a near future.
If you want to be contaminated with new ideas, different ways of thinking and knowledge, then reading is essential. Reading and learning new things will help you in life and business: understand the successes or failures of other people, understand the mistakes and winning strategies used, prepare a wealth of knowledge that will come in handy when you throw yourself into the fray or in the moment in which you will have to face new challenges.
Here are 3 essential books to learn new techniques, new ideas, new stimuli.
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the popular blog Startup Lessons Learned. He co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup, and has had plenty of startup failures along the way. He is a frequent speaker at business events, has advised a number of startups, large companies, and venture capital firms on business and product strategy, and is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School. His Lean Startup methodology has been written about in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, and many blogs. He lives in San Francisco.
If you want to know the process of starting a business and the fundamental importance of saving money in the initial stages of setting up the company. Eric Ries really focuses on the importance of how initial investments should be kept to a minimum. The start-up phase is one of the most difficult phases to separate because it presents many challenges and because it is a new experience to face where everything is new, difficult, and uphill.
The Power of Broke
Daymond John has been practicing the power of broke ever since he started selling his home-sewn t-shirts on the streets of Queens. With a $40 budget, Daymond had to strategize out-of-the-box ways to promote his products. Luckily, desperation breeds innovation, and so he hatched an idea for a creative campaign that eventually launched the FUBU brand into a $6 billion dollar global phenomenon. But it might not have happened if he hadn’t started out broke – with nothing but hope and a ferocious drive to succeed by any means possible.
Most people don’t have much money when they start their own business (moreover, as the text above teaches, better keep the initial expenses to a minimum) and therefore need to find methods and systems to be able to emerge anyway, regardless of the money owed. This book focuses on avoiding excuses and getting to work immediately while having little or no funding. The author also considers positive the idea of being broke when starting a business because it makes you think differently and force you to be innovative with your minimum resources and with your own strength.
ReWork. Change the Way You Work Forever
Here is a different type of business book, ReWork, a text that explores a new reality. Today anyone can be in business. Tools that were out of range are now easily accessible. The technology that costs thousands of dollars/euros is now cheap or even free. The impossible things only a few years ago are now simple and affordable for everyone.
This means that anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working in meager 80-hour weeks or running out of life savings. You can start it from the side while your daily work provides all the cash flow you need. Forget business plans, meetings, office spaces: you don’t need them. Forget the company as you have known it until today.
This book by David Hansson and Jason Fried helps you change your perspective on the idea of work, company, and product. The authors stress the importance of lowering your head and focusing only on your business. Eliminate all unnecessary disturbances and get to work, concentrate, focus on the goal and, like an angry bull, aim straight at it with your head down.
