8 business and marketing books to future-proof your business (+ searchable report with helpful reading tips!)

Are you also among the 6 out of 10 Italians who have not read a single book in the past year?

An entrepreneur, every day, wakes up and knows that he must run faster than his competitors and optimize his strategies more and more to achieve effective results.

But what are the ingredients for coming first in this competition? Determination, Time and Continuing Education.

On determination you can’t do much–there are those who have it and those who don’t.

As for time, an invaluable but very rare resource, something can, however, be done. For example, you can monitor the duration of each individual task, you can prioritize your tasks, delegate those with less added value, and thus get a couple of extra hours a day that you can take advantage of.

Finally, training-yes, you can work on this one! In fact, I’ll tell you more: it’s the component you have the most control over!

That’s right, because in the end it’s just up to you whether you keep up to date, try to learn as much knowledge as possible and then put it into practice in your particular case.

You’re probably thinking now, though, “You’re right, it’s time to enroll in a course-I need to find one of those reputable ones that will give me a certificate so I can update my resume!”

ALT! Don’t make the mistake many people make, too!

You won’t believe it, but to acquire comprehensive skills you don’t necessarily have to spend thousands or even spend hours online.

Don’t misunderstand, we are not saying that trainings are not useful! Indeed!

We are convinced, however, that in addition to the courses for entrepreneurs taught by experienced professionals in the field, something more is needed for training.

But then what do you need? We are talking about the good old business and marketing books!

8 business and marketing books that changed our lives

Every day one is overwhelmed by an enormous amount of information on the Web and social media. Just think that, according to the We Are Social 2022 Report, Italians, every day, spend more than 6 hours on the Internet and almost 2 hours on social media such as Facebook, Instagram etc.

The consequence? We often forget about a very valuable tool, which allows us to keep up-to-date and educate ourselves in an almost free way.

We are talking about the books!

Every day, in fact, we are used to consuming hundreds of online content such as social posts, videos, podcasts… while books, whether paper or on Kindle, remain in the background.

Yet, they have an extra power: they start at the beginning and come to the conclusion, telling in between everything we need to know about the topic, thus allowing us to create our own comprehensive thinking on the subject.

Good! Now turn off your smartphone, continue reading this article, and finally resume this “almost free” education that we often forget about!

We will introduce you to the 8 business and marketing books that have changed our lives and that you, too, must have in your library to future-proof your business!

Read also: Business intelligence & training: these are the best paths in the world

First business and marketing book, “Starting out light” by Eric Ries

The first of the 8 business and marketing books, which we discuss today, is “Lean Startup” or, in English, “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. .

If you are about to launch a new business idea or any new project, even within an existing company, you cannot miss this reading.

Starting from the world of software development, Ries explains the fundamental concept of MVP, minimum valuable product, which is used to validate a project before investing too much time, resources and money on it!

Second business and marketing book, “Creating Business Models – practical and effective handbook to inspire those who need to create or innovate a business model” by Alexander Osterwalder

If we were to rank, “Creating Business Models – practical and effective handbook to inspire those who need to create or innovate a business model” is the one we most often recommend to our CMI Academy students!

More than a book, it is a real approach to business, a method that every start-up or established company should know and use to secure all the key pieces of their business and take, thus, control of it.

If you haven’t read it yet take our advice: fix it now and, most importantly, do all the exercises, applying the teachings in your specific case!

Read also: 5 tools to increase turnover that you can use as early as tomorrow

Third book on business and marketing: “Mindset” by Carol Dwick

Once read “Mindset” by Carol Dweck , you will see that it will become a mainstay of your way of thinking and interacting with others, whether they are co-workers, students and even family members.

(At least, that’s how it was for us!)

In fact, the author investigates with many practical examples the two possible mindsets: the “fixed” mindset and the “growth” mindset.

Following the first mindset, there is not much chance, either you are good and successful or you are not. Instead, according to the so-called “growth mindset,” what one fails to do today represents a challenge to be achieved tomorrow by evolving and improving oneself.

As you might imagine, the latter is the right mindset–and yet how often do we behave in the former way?

This book is for you if you think you are, right now, on a dead-end street, if you are feeling challenged, or even just, if you are trying to learn how to give feedback more effectively!

Fourth business and marketing book, “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff

A key skill for any entrepreneur, marketer or salesperson is being able to interest and positively affect every interlocutor.

But how many times after giving any kind of presentation do you feel that most likely your listener didn’t understand anything or, even, was bored to death?

The book “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff is the solution.

After reading it, whenever you find yourself talking to someone, you can’t help but wonder, “Am I really talking to their ‘reptilian brain’?”

Remember: to maximize the effectiveness of your communication, you must be able to activate the listener’s curiosity!

So, read this book now if you want to succeed in selling anything!

Fifth business and marketing book: ” The Truth Machine” by Stephens Dawidowski

This book confirms what we at CMI have been saying for years.

The original title is. “Everybody Lies.” . And let us tell you, it is, for sure, much more apt. In fact, as we in the CMI team often say, everyone lies. We even do this toward our partner or our doctor.

However, we do not do this when we Google! When we type a question on the web, in fact, we are extremely sincere, unfiltered.

Why is this premise important and what does it have to do with the world of Big Data? With this in mind, it is easy to see how analyzing “spontaneous” online data, i.e., Big Data, is much more effective than focusing on results from, say, surveys!

Precisely because people in interviews, questionnaires etc lie!

In this book, therefore, the author collects scientific evidence that proves what we have just explained to you.

Read it if you want to understand even better the potential of data in understanding society and your business.

Sixth business and marketing book, “The 80/20 Principle for Marketing and Sales” by Perry Marshall

Are you familiar with the 80/20 Pareto principle? Basically, the rule is. 80% of the results depend on 20% of the factors. But what does it mean for your business?

When you can identify that 20 percent of activities, which can generate 80 percent of the results, that you can leverage, you can ignore everything else!

Let’s take a practical example.

You have 10 vendors billing €10 million and you have identified that in 2 they bill €8 million. Bravo! You have identified that famous 20% that can generate 80% of the results!

But if so, it means that the other 8, or 80 percent of your vendors, only bill 2M€.

So what did you find out? Basically your top seller gets to bill 16 times more than the last one!

The fascinating thing about this principle, however, is that it applies to any context.

Indeed, the risk of those who are only superficially familiar with the Pareto rule is to observe only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, however, 80/20 can be applied to even 20% of the things that work or, in other words, you can keep applying it as long as there is something to count!

We recommend, therefore, Perry Marshall’s “The 80/20 Principle for Marketing and Sales.” because if you apply these concepts you will immediately see that you have vast exponential growth areas to use to your advantage.

Last two reading recommendations : “Weapons Steel and Disease” and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond

Here are two books that will change the way you look at things!

We are talking about two essays that explain why societies today are structured as we know them.

With “Weapons, Steel and Disease” one understands how we have come to the present day in the evolution of society and why the West, the East, and Africa are so different culturally and socially.

“Collapse” , on the other hand, gives insight into the mechanisms that led entire societies to collapse, such as that of the Romans, the Vikings for example, and shows how the same dynamics are being repeated in the present day!

Why read them? Thanks to these books, reality will seem much clearer to you.

In conclusion

The list could go on and on. Then again, our physical and digital libraries are filled with extraordinary books that have made us the entrepreneurs we are. In the meantime, however, start with the first ones we recommended: buy the ones you think will help you most right now and immerse yourself in reading!

Finally, if you wanted more titles, in addition to these 8 business and marketing books we just discussed, here is a list with 12 other useful tips! 👇🏻