Guide · Best books · 4 min read
The best books for starting a small business
Six books cover what a person with a skill and no capital needs: Rework for starting with what you have, The $100 Startup for finding the customer and the price, The Lean Startup for testing before building, The E-Myth Revisited for not becoming the prisoner of your own business, Profit First for the money, and Company of One for deciding what size to be. Start with Rework if you have not started, and with The E-Myth Revisited if you have and it has become a job.
1.Rework — Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
The manifesto: you need less than you think. Planning is guessing, outside money puts you on someone else's clock, a co-founder is a relationship not a requirement, and the way to find out whether anyone wants the thing is to make a small version and offer it this week. Scratch your own itch and embrace constraints.
Read it first if you have not started; it removes the reasons you have been giving yourself.
2.The $100 Startup — Chris Guillebeau
The field guide, from 1,500 people who started with almost nothing: the convergence of what you can do, enjoy and people will pay for; the one-page plan; pricing on the value of the outcome rather than your hours; and the launch as an event with a date. It is the book about the first customer.
Read it for the five lines of the plan and the price; the road's milestone, the first paying customer, comes from here.
3.The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
Written for technology companies and usable by a bakery: everything in the plan is a guess until a customer acts, so talk to ten people before building, make the smallest thing they can pay for, and run build-measure-learn on four honest numbers rather than on likes.
Read the chapters on the minimum viable product and on vanity metrics; the rest belongs to the founder road.
4.The E-Myth Revisited — Michael Gerber
The most-read small-business book in print, and the one that explains why the business becomes a job: it was started by a technician who assumed the craft was the business. Work on the business, not in it; build the franchise prototype; write the operations manual so that someone else could run it for a week.
Read it first if you have already started and cannot take a holiday.
5.Profit First — Mike Michalowicz
The money, as a behavioural system rather than accounting: sales minus profit equals expenses. Split every deposit into profit, owner's pay, tax and operating, and let the business learn to run on what remains. It asks nothing of your character, only of your bank.
Read it the week your first deposits arrive, before they all sit in one account.
6.Company of One — Paul Jarvis
The counterweight to every growth book: growth is a question, and a business should decline the growth that only makes it bigger. Improve before you expand, make service the marketing, build the systems that make your size a choice, and write down your enough.
Read it when the first customers have arrived and you are thinking about a hire; it is the book about what to do next.
The honest ending
If you have not started, begin with Rework and offer the smallest version of your idea to one person this week; then The $100 Startup for the customer and the price. If you have started and it has become a job, begin with The E-Myth Revisited and give the business one hour a week on it. Ries supplies the testing, Michalowicz the money, Jarvis the decision about size. The Start Your Business road takes the six in that order, one Station a day, and ends with a paying customer, four accounts, a page of manual and a one-page first-year plan.
Questions people ask
- Which book should I read first to start a business?
- Rework if you have not started; The E-Myth Revisited if you have and it has become a job you cannot leave.
- Are these books for startups or small businesses?
- Small businesses: a bakery, a clinic, a translation service. Founders raising capital for a product that needs scale should read the Think Like a Founder road instead.
- Do I need to read all six?
- No. Rework and The $100 Startup will get you to the first customer. Add Gerber when the business runs on you, Michalowicz when the money is in one account, and Jarvis when you are about to hire.