The most competent people in business are always learning. Books can help us understand the skills needed to overcome challenges.
And the best way to learn from the best is by reading from entrepreneurs. We’ve compiled ten of our favourite books on entrepreneurship written by influential people to help you prepare for your eventual takeover of the business world.
When you’re up to your eyeballs answering emails, returning phone calls, attending meetings, and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book, Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that pushes you forward, stretches your creativity, and truly satisfies you.
The exercises are “maps”—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start, and sustain Great Work.
Jordan Peterson's book Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life has become, for some, almost a religious text, with the ‘rules’ serving as the 10 Commandments of modern life.
Are these the guiding principles by which we now structure our existence? It certainly is for some, and that’s worth thinking about.
And don’t forget It starts with lobsters. So you have to understand about the lobsters.
12 Rules for Life frames a set of life principles to live by. Learn why you should stop telling lies to others, why you should stop doing things you know are bad for you, and how to pursue what is truly meaningful for you.
Cal Newport doesn’t like the distractions of technology. In fact, Newport thinks that our focus on technology and how it dominates modern business is holding us back. His book, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, takes a sledgehammer to how technology runs the modern enterprise and, ultimately, our lives.
The idea is not to jettison email but to make it smarter. Instead of the back and forth, you get collaborative tools. You don’t even need to be a business owner or work in tech to have some of the messaging resonate with you, and stay with you long after you have finished. A World Without Email invites you to scrutinize how useful these tools are in your lives and reflect on the best practices.
Deep Work by Cal Newport is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy.
Yet most of us have lost the ability to go deep—spending our days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.
Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite.
Hello members and subscribers! The twelfth Moonshots Master episode is here and we are diving into Critical Thinking and Opportunity Cost!
Getting us started on the journey is Brit Lewis from Mr Hancock, who talks about Trade-Offs and how an understanding of scarcity can help us grasp the number of possibilities around us. We then have a breakdown from Study.com which explains choice, Opportunity Cost definition and real-world examples demonstrating how every choice has a value.
Our recommended reading list and downloadable frameworks are available to help you go even deeper into the topic, so you can start adopting the practice of prototyping today:
Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory, James M. Buchanan
Opportunity Cost in Finance and Accounting, Robert Bloom and Hans Heymann
What key lesson are you taking from this Master Series show? Get in touch and let us know!
For decades, Ken Blanchard's; The One Minute Manager® has helped millions achieve more successful professional and personal lives. While the principles it lays out are timeless, our world has changed drastically since the book’s publication. The exponential rise of technology, global flattening of markets, instant communication, and pressures on corporate workforces to do more with less—including resources, funding, and staff—have all revolutionized the world in which we live and work.
Now, Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson have updated The One Minute Manager to introduce the book’s powerful, important lessons to a new generation. In their concise, easy-to-read story, they teach readers three very practical secrets about leading others—and explain why these techniques continue to work so well.
As compelling today as it was thirty years ago, this classic parable of a young man looking for an effective manager is more relevant and useful than ever.
Atul Gawande is a renowned American surgeon, writer, and public health leader. He was a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and has written four New York Times best-selling books: The Checklist Manifesto, was Gawande's third book, released in 2009. It discusses the importance of organization and preplanning (such as thorough checklists) in both medicine and the larger world. The Checklist Manifesto reached the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list in 2010.
He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship, and two National Magazine Awards.
The idea of a ‘Moonshot’ was based on the JFK speech in 1962 that launched an ambitious space program. A moonshot today is a bold and ambitious plan: almost an impossible mission. Going hand in hand is the idea of Moonshot thinking.
In 1962, when John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University on the nation’s space effort, he famously said, “We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard… because the goal organizes and measures the best of American energy and skill.”
Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey is a practical guide to managing your attention – the most powerful resource you have to become more creative, get stuff done, and live a more meaningful life.
In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey provides profound insights into how we can best manage our attention. He reveals how the brain switches between two mental modes – hyperfocus, our deep concentration mode, and scatter focus, our creative, reflective mode – and how the surest path to being our most creative and efficient selves at work is to combine them both.
Discover David Allen's powerful methods for stress-free performance at work and in life. Allen's premise is simple - our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective results and unleash our creative potential. From core principles to proven tricks.
Getting Things Done will teach you to - Apply the 'do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it' rule to get your in-box empty Reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations Plan and unstick projects Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed Feel fine about what you're not doing.
Hello members and subscribers! The eleventh Moonshots Master episode is here and we are diving into Entrepreneurship and Rapid Prototyping!!
Rapidly getting us into the mindset of trying and testing, we start with Walt Disney as he discusses how to use prototyping to find success. We then hear from the genius of Dyson, Sir James Dyson, who reflects on how the journey to innovation takes time. We are fully inspired after hearing Tom Wujec’s breakdown on how digital and physical methods of building products are uniting into the Future of Making.
Now we’re ready to prototype, let’s learn from Whittlesea Tech School as they help inform what makes a prototype different to a product, and a description of what exactly a prototype is. We revisit Sir James Dyson again, as he speaks on the importance of prototypes to prove your technology works, as well as how to embrace and track failures.
In our final chapter, we dig into the Sprint process with Jake Knapp, who breaks down how to begin prototyping with your team today. We also hear from Angus Deveson from Maker's Muse as he discusses how to create and build physical prototypes that you should test to failure. We end our deep dive into rapid prototyping with the superstar himself, Tom Chi, who relives a story on iterating and stress testing any business model, and how it is the true essence of entrepreneurship.
Part Two: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, we look at how we must value and celebrate the differences in another’s perspective and commit to creating Win-Win situations that are mutually beneficial and satisfying to each party. How do we make these habits and ideas real? Teach, share and learn with others.
"To go for Win-Win, you not only have to be nice, you have to be courageous." -Stephen Covey
The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels. With a wry sense of humor, Ken Robinson looks at the conditions that enable us to find ourselves in the Element and those that stifle that possibility.
Drawing on the stories of a wide range of people, including Paul McCartney, Matt Groening, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Bart Conner, he shows that age and occupation are no barrier and that this is the essential strategy for transforming education, business, and communities in the twenty-first century.
"The Element offers life-altering insights about the discovery of your true best self." --Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
We've just launched our 'How-to' video in rapid prototyping. Rapid Prototyping is a powerful tool to test and validate an idea. It's the best way to learn if your product solves a user problem.
Jim Carrey, Film Star, Survivor, Inspiration. From humble beginnings to superstardom, he joins an elite group of comedians who have spanned the acting chasm to achieve phenomenal success. His book; Memoirs and Misinformation is a fearless semi-autobiographical novel, a deconstruction of persona. In it, Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon have fashioned a story about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, our "one big soul," Canada, and a cataclysmic ending of the world-apocalypses within and without.
"None of this is real and all of it is true." - Jim Carrey
Elon Musk is unstoppable! He's the most prolific and productive CEO of our times - he's even a bit cheeky. That's why we love him at the Moonshots Podcast. With his recent purchase of Twitter, he is now involved in over five revolutionary companies. So, we ask, 'how does Elon do it?'.
A Growth Mindset is one of the most common attributes of successful people. That’s why we’ve made a new ‘How To’ video for you.
Walt Disney is famous for his ability to transform incredibly creative ideas into profitable realities. The process he used to brainstorm and develop theme parks and movies, has turned into a replicable process called “Disney’s Creative Strategy” by NLP expert Robert Dilts in 1994.
Disney’s Creative Strategy can be used to create new products or to solve problems. Its simple to use as an individual, as a team, or even as an organization. The strategy includes three roles or mindsets that each have a specific goal.
Hello members and subscribers! The tenth Moonshots Master episode is here and we are diving into Leadership and Managing People!
To get us inspired towards the topic of Managing People we start with the Moonshots Master himself, Simon Sinek, who tells us about his first job after college, and the importance of empathy. We then hear from the motivational powerhouse, Tony Robbins, who suggests that in order to lead - rather than manage - you need to be able to read your team first. The Apple leader, Steve Jobs, then discusses what made Apple so good at managing people, and how you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy.
We learn from Seth Godin that leaders must take responsibility, and inspire teams without using fear. Author and personal development trainer Brendon Burchard encourages us to be patient, and keep humanity the focus of collaboration and management, even when dealing with frustrating people. Simon Sinek closes this section by breaking down the meaning behind ‘Leaders Eat Last'.
Closing the Master Series show we hear from Simon Sinek once more, as he explains how to build relationships that inspire change, and how mentorship is like friendship.
