Business books offer wide range of advice
By Joyce M. Rosenberg
Associated Press
NEW YORK — If you browse the business books on library or store shelves, the sheer number of volumes can be daunting. It's hard to tell which ones are good and which ones will help you build your business or solve its problems.
Business books fall into several types. There are books that give an overview of topics that will interest a small business owner, among them the Dummies and Idiot's series and tomes like "Start Your Own Business" by Entrepreneur magazine.
There are also specialized books on narrower topics, such as sales and marketing, how to deal with employees, building customer service and more. Nolo Press has a library of books on legal issues that crop up in the course of running a business.
Thumbing the pages of several books can give you some idea of which ones will work for you. But it might be better to talk to other small business owners about the books they found helpful when they were in the kind of situation you're dealing with.
An unscientific survey of small company owners by The Associated Press found that they turned to a rather varied selection of titles. Owners relied on some of the books for nuts-and-bolts advice on marketing, and turned to others for solace and comfort as they struggled with being an entrepreneur.
Some business owners found biographies or autobiographies of well-known company owners — including "Personal History," the autobiography of Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post.
"Was that ever inspiring!" Judi Henderson-Townsend said of "Personal History."
She found that Graham faced many of the same issues in building The Washington Post Co. as Henderson-Townsend faced with her own company, San Francisco-based Mannequin Madness, which recycles, rents and sells mannequins.
"Because I'm a small business owner I think some of the problems and issues I have are because I'm a small business owner," she said. "But The Washington Post wasn't always The Washington Post as we know it today."
"The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko had a big impact on Damian Bazadona, owner of New York-based Situation Marketing. The book looks at how the average millionaire lives, and the lesson Bazadona took away from the book was "live below your means," something he feels many small business owners don't do.
Marketing books were cited by many of the owners, particularly those who had no prior experience in selling themselves or a product when they went into business.
Some business owners might wonder, how do these entrepreneurs find the time to read? Often, they have no choice — they can't learn how to run their business without making the time to read.
