I’m wondering if you can recommend good books/resources on running a business?
There is a backlog of questions in my Monday Mailbag folder, so I’m going to incorporate some of them into posts throughout the week. I love learning and studying about business issues, so here are a few suggestions:
One of my all-time favorite books is Proverbs in the Bible. It is full of practical advice that is very relevant to business and life in general.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins – read a full review on my post 2009 Year of Reading in Review.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath – this one is also included in my 2009 Year of Reading in Review. I loved this book! It is applicable to so many areas of life and is an incredible resource for anyone who wants to improve their ability to plan and implement creative ideas. I just discovered that the Heath brothers also have a blog! It’s been duly added to my feed reader, and I look forward to keeping up with it.
Business Opportunities Blog by Dane Carlson – This contains a wide variety of ideas, links, bits of information, and more. I subscribe to the feed for it and enjoy skimming each of the posts and exploring the ones that grab my attention.
The New Venture Lab website, blog, and newsletter is a great resource for those with an entrepreneurial bent. They have tons of great resources, case studies, inspirational stories, tips, and links to encourage and equip you in your business endeavors.
Another thing that has been very helpful to me over the years is to meet with others who have common interests in business, finances, and leadership development. For several years, I met weekly with a business study group, and we researched a wide variety of topics. This multiplies your learning because you have the benefit of learning from the research and experiences of others. I highly recommend this approach!
Does anyone have any other recommended books/resources on business that they’d like to share?
The more I read about “Music Teacher’s Helper” the more I want to get on board with all of the Studio management help that it has to offer…but right now, I have been using “Quickbooks” to keep up with finances. This is probably nothing new for most of you! If you are not familiar with Quickbooks, you can create invoices! and receive payments…or you can just create sales receipts as you receive $. You can use both methods at the same time! The invoices and receipts created by quickbooks look very professional, and are and easy way to keep up with who hasn’t paid! You can print reports of all your invoices not paid and clearly see who has paid and who hasn’t. It has saved me so much time over the past 2 1/2 years. The best thing is that Quickbooks is made by Intuit…the same manufacturer of Turbo Tax. When I am doing my taxes…Turbo Tax asks me if I would like to import financial information from my computer and gives me a few icons to choose from. I click Quickbooks and I open Quickbooks and voila…all of my financial information is placed into the appropriate boxes on tax forms! Too easy!
I hope this is helpful and I look forward to any other suggestions! Thanks Natalie, as always for your suggestions! I have especially found re-reading Proverbs, trying to pull new ideas/inspiration from it, very refreshing!
eliz +:-D