The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List: The 99 Best Business Books

You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting

I absolutely enjoy recommendations/lists for a lot of activities and I absolutely love the Personal MBA list which is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts.

The Personal MBA features the very best business books available, based on over ten years and thousands of hours of research. So skip business school and the $150,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education own your own at very low cost by reading the best business books.

The Personal MBA List is curated by Bestselling Author Josh Kauffman and he also authored a book with the same title, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business.

I have been following the Personal MBA List for quite a while and I have read some of the books on the list. I would be reading more books from the list this year and am looking forward to sharing the insights gained from the books as I read them.

“If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I’ve gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.”Tom Peters, bestselling business author

Here are the 99 business books The Personal MBA officially recommends;

Business Creation

• Go It Alone – Bruce Judson
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses– Eric Ries
• Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs by Norm Brodsky & Bo Burlingham
• Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson
• Escape From Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pamela Slim
• Bankable Business Plans  by Edward Rogoff

“Whatever be the qualifications of your tutors, your improvement must chiefly depend on yourselves. They cannot think or labor for you, they can only put you in the best way of thinking and laboring for yourselves. If therefore you get knowledge, you must acquire it by your own industry.”Joseph Priestly, Dedication of New College, London, 1794

Value-Creation & Testing

• Rework  by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
• The New Business Road Test: What entrepreneurs and investors should do before launching a lean start-up by John Mullins
• How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur’s Guide by Dan Kennedy

“A knowledge of the path cannot be substituted for putting one foot in front of the other.”M. C. Richards

Marketing

• All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works–and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All by Seth Godin
• Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries & Jack Trout
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

“The difference between where you are today and where you’ll be five years from now will be found in the quality of books you’ve read.”Jim Rohn, business teacher

Sales

• The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian Tracy
• Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff
• The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies by Chet Holmes
• Value-Based Fees: How to Charge – and Get – What You’re Worth by Alan Weiss
• SPIN Selling  by Neil Rackham

Value-Delivery

• Indispensable: How To Become The Company That Your Customers Can’t Live Without by Joe Calloway
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, by James Womack & Daniel Jones

Finance & Accounting

• Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers by Karen Berman & Joe Knight
• Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential by Greg Crabtree
• The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow by Rafi Mohammed
• Accounting Made Simple: Accounting Explained in 100 Pages or Less by Mike Piper
• How to Read a Financial Report: Wringing Vital Signs Out of the Numbers by John A. Tracy
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson

The Human Mind

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Brain Rules 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School  by John Medina
• Making Sense of Behavior: The Meaning of Control by William T. Powers
• Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria
• Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

Productivity & Effectiveness

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr &Tony Schwartz
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
• Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload  by Mark Hurst
• 10 Days to Faster Reading  by Abby Marks-Beale

Problem Solving

• The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch
• Accidental Genius: Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing by Mark Levy
• Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios  by Liam Fahey & Robert Randall

Behavioral Change

• The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta
• Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz
• Re-Create Your Life: Transforming Your Life And Your World With The Lefkoe Method by Morty Lefkoe
• Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment by David Watson & Roland Tharp

Decision-Making

• Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein
• Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions by John S. Hammond et al
• Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code to Guide Decisions in Work and Life by Ronald Howard & Clinton Korver

Communication

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser
• Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
• The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells by Robert Bly
• Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten by Stephen Few

Influence

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
• How to Win Friends and Influence People  by Dale Carnegie
• Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Kerry Patterson et al
• The 48 Laws of Power  by Robert Greene

Negotiation

• Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People by G. Richard Shell
• 3-d Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals by David Lax & James Sebenius
• The Partnership Charter: How To Start Out Right With Your New Business Partnership (or Fix The One You’re In) by David Gage

Management

• First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
• 12: The Elements of Great Managing  by Rodd Wagner & James Harter
• Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers by Erika Andersen
• The Essential Drucker  by Peter Drucker
• The Halo Effect: . . . and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers by Phil Rosenzweig

Leadership

• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
• Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life by Stewart Friedman
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
• The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build or Merge Your Team, and Get Immediate Results by George Bradt et al

Project Management

• Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun
• Results Without Authority: Controlling a Project When the Team Doesn’t Report to You by Tom Kendrick

Systems

• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
• Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter

Analysis

• Thinking Statistically  by Uri Bram
• Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving by Jonathan Koomey
• How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
• Marketing Metrics: The Manager’s Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance by Paul Farris et al
• The Economist Numbers:The Essentials of Business Numeracy by Richard Stuteley

Corporate Skills

• The Unwritten Laws of Business  by W.J. King
• TThe Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker
• The Simplicity Survival Handbook: 32 Ways To Do Less And Accomplish More by Bill Jensen
• Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams by Lou Adler

Corporate Strategy

• Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter
• Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
• Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change by Clayton M. Christensen et al

Creativity & Innovation

• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
• Myths of Innovation  by Scott Berkun
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship  by Peter Drucker

Design

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
• Universal Principles of Design  by William Lidwell et al

Consulting

• Getting Started in Consulting  by Alan Weiss
• The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg

Personal Finance

• Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: by Joel Dominguez & Vicki Robin
• The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas Stanley & William Danko
• II Will Teach You to Be Rich:,No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works by Ramit Sethi
• Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes by Harry Browne

Personal Growth

• Lead the Field  by Earl Nightingale
• The Art of Exceptional Living  by Jim Rohn
• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Braxton Irvine

Remember: Knowing is not enough, You must Act. All the Best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

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