Who wants to be a billionaire? We may not all get there but we sure can dream. More importantly we can learn from some of the great minds who have achieved such great success. Below we have compiled 10 books written about, and a few by, some of the most notable business men and women of our time. You can’t go wrong picking a book from this list. Leave a comment with any we may have missed.
1. Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
“Oh, screw it, let’s do it.”
That’s the philosophy that has
allowed Richard Branson, in slightly more than twenty-five years, to
spawn so many successful ventures. From the airline business (Virgin
Atlantic Airways), to music (Virgin Records and V2), to cola (Virgin
Cola), to retail (Virgin Megastores), and nearly a hundred others,
ranging from financial services to bridal wear, Branson has a track
record second to none.
Losing My Virginity is the
unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of one of the great
business geniuses of our time. When Richard Branson started his first
business, he and his friends decided that “since we’re complete virgins
at business, let’s call it just that: Virgin.” Since then, Branson has
written his own “rules” for success, creating a group of companies with a
global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy,
and minimal bureaucracy.
Many of Richard Branson’s companies—airlines, retailing, and cola are
good examples—were started in the face of entrenched competition. The
experts said, “Don’t do it.” But Branson found golden opportunities in
markets in which customers have been ripped off or underserved, where
confusion reigns, and the competition is complacent.And in this stressed-out, overworked age, Richard Branson gives us a new model: a dynamic, hardworking, successful entrepreneur who lives life to the fullest. Family, friends, fun, and adventure are equally important as business in Branson’s life. Losing My Virginity is a portrait of a productive, sane, balanced life, filled with rich and colorful stories.
2. Steve Jobs
Based
on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as
well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends,
adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a
riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense
personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and
ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers,
animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital
publishing.
At a time when America is
seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around
the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the
ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the
best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect
creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the
imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
3. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
You
want to learn about the path that we took at Zappos to get to over $1
billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years.
You want to learn about the path I took that eventually led me to Zappos, and the lessons I learned along the way.
You want to learn from all the
mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business can
avoid making some of the same ones.
You want to figure out the right balance of profits, passion, and purpose in business and in life.
You want to build a long-term, enduring business and brand.
You want to create a stronger
company culture, which will make your employees and coworkers happier
and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity.
You want to deliver a better
customer experience, which will make your customers happier and create
more customer loyalty, leading to increased profits.
4. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
Eduardo
Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best
friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and
long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a
geeky awkwardness with women.
Eduardo figured their ticket to
social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of
the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that
had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked
on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an
interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a
computer genius of the first order.
Which he used to find a more
direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the
university’s computer system, creating a ratable database of all the
female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university’s
servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment,
in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.
What followed–a real-life
adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and
six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the
most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long,
Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their
relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare.
The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to
the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while
Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore
two best friends apart.
You want to build something special.
5. The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur
Mary
Kay Ash built a global independent sales 
