How Do You Find the Best Entrepreneur Books?

So what makes something one of the best books for entrepreneurs?

The best entrepreneur books … know what it is like to be in the trenches of entrepreneurism.

Unless you have been there, it is hard to know what it really feels like to be an entrepreneur. If you haven’t faced a day of not paying yourself, running out of money, running up your credit cards, or longing for those cushy days of corporate America, it’s difficult to grasp how this affects an entrepreneur. On the other hand, if you know what it feels like to have your hair is messed up every minute of every day, you can understand what we all go through as entrepreneurs. The resources and books we turn to need to understand that. Solutions presented in a vacuum – without this understanding – often fall on deaf ears with us entrepreneurs.

The best entrepreneur books … understand that no one cares as much as you do.

It is unlikely anyone else is losing sleep, shunning their personal lives, or investing their heart and soul into helping your entrepreneur idea become a business. We entrepreneurs have this expectation that anyone associated with our venture wakes up with the same visceral desire to see it come to fruition as we do. That is just not the case.

One entrepreneur tip is to accept that there is no one out there that cares as much as we do, the better off we will be. It is not that the rest of the world “doesn’t get it.” It is easy to simply blame the rest of the world this way. What is not so easy (and one of the skills that entrepreneurs must develop) is how to marry our unwavering commitment with that of the rest of the humans.

If an advisor is willing to spend a few hours, make sure that you line up the tasks to the time commitment or expertise that he or she is putting forth. If an advisor is willing to give you five hours a month, don’t get frustrated that he or she didn’t read the 100-spreadsheet financial model. Remember the rest of the world have lives, families and think about things other than our entrepreneurial idea. We must recognize that we have a different level of commitment and passion than the rest of the world. This makes us a better entrepreneur, and more likely a successful entrepreneur.

The best entrepreneur books … acknowledge that being an entrepreneur is not a job. It is an identity.

Becoming an entrepreneur is not about a job, it is about making a choice to have an engaged life. What is an engaged life? It is a life in which “time flies” – that what you are doing is so compelling that you lose track of time. Have you ever said to yourself at the end of a day “where did the day go?” Most people crave the type of engagement that makes time fly and only rarely achieve it. Nearly 80 percent of people are unfulfilled in their current job. When you chose to be an entrepreneur, you are making a conscious choice not only to pursue a business venture, but to pursue the type of life in which “time flies.”

Sometimes you get so lost on good things and sometimes you get lost on challenging things, but never as an entrepreneur do you say to yourself, “I wish the clock would move quicker.” When someone asks the entrepreneur how their day went, the answer inevitably is “it flew by.” How many things in life are so compelling that time flies?

Any book that seek to provide entrepreneur advice or entrepreneur tips must understand how important this entrepreneur perspective is to why we do what we do.

The best entrepreneur books … accept the Brutal Truth.

The best entrepreneur books and resources that guide us often sugar coat the reality that if your company is struggling, or not progressing as quickly as you would like, do you know whose fault it is? Yours. How unfair is that? You work the hardest, put in the money, strain your personal life (if you have one), deplete your finances (if you still have any), strain your relationships (if you have any), cry, drink, don’t sleep, don’t date, and spend every waking moment on the business. No one said being an entrepreneur was fair.

It is your job to fix these issues. As the leader, if you choose not to fix these issues and the chaos persists, it’s your fault the company is flailing. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can apply your talents and the tools we provide to move the business forward.

The best entrepreneur books … are honest about the fact that passion and grit is not enough.

There are so many entrepreneur resources that promise entrepreneurs that if they have passion, grit and a good idea, this is all you need. This may have been true twenty years ago. But today, with so much competition, capital and budding entrepreneurs, resources must drive us beyond these basics. The entrepreneur solutions we turn to – whether they be books, tips, insights, courses or podcasts – must build upon passion, grit and a good idea to provide the entrepreneur skills that we all need to be successful.

The best entrepreneur books … offer a Different Perspective of Entrepreneurship.

With the right perspective, solutions are everywhere. With the wrong perspective, the simplest of tasks seemed impossible. As entrepreneurs, we lack capital and resources. We do not lack the ability to think differently. If we are starting a public relations firm, should be go to where all the other public relations firms find customers even though they have more capital, resources and relationships.

The best entrepreneur books must challenge us to take advantage of the one skill we all have – the ability to think differently.

The best entrepreneur books …offer solutions – but ones that make sense when you are in the shoes of the entrepreneur.

It’s one thing to offer solutions for someone in corporate America. It is quite another to offer the types of solutions that make sense to someone who is in the midst of being an entrepreneur. Books and other resources must present the types of ideas and insights that can be applied in the context of what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Obviously, we are biased.

We wrote The Lonely Entrepreneur for you – to turn your passion into success. Whether it is The Lonely Entrepreneur, or another entrepreneur book, podcast or other resources, we entrepreneurs need the tools that “get it” and provide us with the types of insights and solutions turn the struggle into success.