100 books like How to Have a Happy Hustle

By Bec Evans,

Here are 100 books that How to Have a Happy Hustle fans have personally recommended if you like How to Have a Happy Hustle. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Doug Motel Author Of What’s Working Now

From my list on getting out of your head and into your life.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my journey, I've sought to blend my interest in ancient wisdoms into a coherent, accessible philosophy I call "Nowism." My aim has been to simplify and share complex teachings in a way that resonates and helps. Through my writing, performing, and speaking, I try to bring these concepts to life, hoping to ignite a spark of understanding and self-discovery in others. More than anything, before I leave this world, I want to contribute something (no matter how small) to the legacy of personal empowerment. I aspire to help people see the world more clearly, to understand themselves more deeply, and to find joy in the present moment.

Doug's book list on getting out of your head and into your life

Doug Motel Why did Doug love this book?

Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is more than a book; it's a life-altering philosophy.

As someone brimming with creative energy and ideas, I found myself often lost in a sea of projects, losing sight of my true goals. This book was a revelation. It adeptly distinguishes between essentialist and non-essentialist mindsets, compelling you to evaluate your intentions and commitments.

Through its teachings, I've learned to eliminate non-essential projects, focusing only on what truly aligns with my core objectives. It's a must-read for anyone looking to declutter their life and mind, ensuring that every action taken is a step towards what genuinely matters.

The journey of trimming the unnecessary from my life is ongoing, but it's liberating to have fewer, more meaningful irons in the fire.

By Greg McKeown,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Essentialism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The life-changing international bestseller that started a global movement - now updated with the new 21-Day Essentialism Challenge and an exclusive excerpt from EFFORTLESS

Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload?

Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised?

Do you ever feel busy but not productive?

If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an Essentialist.

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a Leadership and Strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of…


Book cover of The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond

Tom Cheesewright Author Of Future-Proof Your Business

From my list on helping you take control of your future.

Why am I passionate about this?

The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.

Tom's book list on helping you take control of your future

Tom Cheesewright Why did Tom love this book?

This is the book that made me a futurist! And I know many other people it has inspired as well.

The Book of the Future offered a vision of life in the year 2000 and beyond, covering cities, space, robots, medicine, farming, energy, and more, with incredible illustrations and rich information. It was my favourite book from the age of three and it has stayed with me ever since. 

When I became a professional futurist I wrote to Usborne to tell them how important this book was to me, and ten years later, they agreed to reissue it.

Read it for an optimistic view of the future from the 1970s.

By Kenneth W. Gatland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Usborne Book of the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

First published in 1979, the Usborne Book of the Future is a fondly-remembered book from a time when people dreamed of the future as a place filled with wonder and amazing new technology. After more than 40 years of science fiction focussing on dystopias and doom, it's time to remind readers young and old that, in fact, the Future is STILL a place that holds hope and excitement.

The book is built in three sections. The first explores all kinds of robots, the jobs they will do on land, sea and in space, and where they will get power from.…


Book cover of A New History of the Future in 100 Objects

Tom Cheesewright Author Of Future-Proof Your Business

From my list on helping you take control of your future.

Why am I passionate about this?

The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.

Tom's book list on helping you take control of your future

Tom Cheesewright Why did Tom love this book?

Sometimes as a futurist, my challenge is to make people imagine a world that is very different from today. To help them look beyond the horizon. Science Fiction is great for that but novels take us into a whole other world: we replace one set of blinkers for another, descending - however pleasurably - into a fictional universe. It’s unlikely I can get my clients to read many novels to imagine many different futures. Which is where short and micro stories come in. Sometimes my clients commission me to write them, but sometimes it’s a pleasure to read them from other people. I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories and opens my mind in the same ways.

I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories…

By Adrian Hon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A New History of the Future in 100 Objects as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Imagining the history of the twenty-first century through its artifacts, from silent messaging systems to artificial worlds on asteroids.

In the year 2082, a curator looks back at the twenty-first century, offering a history of the era through a series of objects and artifacts. He reminisces about the power of connectivity, which was reinforced by such technologies as silent messaging—wearable computers that relay subvocal communication; recalls the Fourth Great Awakening, when a regimen of pills could make someone virtuous; and notes disapprovingly the use of locked interrogation, which delivers “enhanced interrogation” simulations via virtual reality. The unnamed curator quotes from…


Book cover of Exploratory Writing: Everyday magic for life and work

Tom Cheesewright Author Of Future-Proof Your Business

From my list on helping you take control of your future.

Why am I passionate about this?

The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.

Tom's book list on helping you take control of your future

Tom Cheesewright Why did Tom love this book?

When examining the future, you’re always dealing with lots of different sources of information.

Trying to understand how they align, interact, and compete is complex. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working as a futurist, trying to plot out a new business plan, or just thinking about your personal life.

One thing that has always helped me is writing. Getting it down on paper is a powerful way to structure your thoughts, to share them, and kick off collaboration.

If you want help using writing to explore your mind and your world, then this is the book. It’s in many ways quite simple, but it’s no less powerful than that.

By Alison Jones,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Exploratory Writing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** Business Book Awards 2023 Finalist **

'A really powerful book.' - Bruce Daisley

Simple tools, extraordinary results.

Everything we're learning about how we function best as humans in the digital age is pointing towards one of our oldest technologies: the pen and the page.

Exploratory writing - writing for ourselves, not for others, writing when we don't know exactly what it is we want to say - is one of the most powerful and lightweight thinking tools we have at our disposal. It's also been, until now, one of the most overlooked.

But the world's most influential leaders are…


Book cover of The Soul of an Entrepreneur: Work and Life Beyond the Startup Myth

Derek Lidow Author Of The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value

From my list on most truthful about how entrepreneurship works.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have had the unique experience of having been a successful CEO of a global publicly traded semiconductor company, a founder and CEO of an innovative and valuable startup, and now as a teacher and scholar of entrepreneurship and innovation. I’m a Professor of the Practice at Princeton University where I teach and write about being a successful entrepreneur. My three books on the subject are: Startup Leadership: How Savvy Entrepreneurs Turn Their Ideas Into Successful Enterprises; Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies; and THE ENTREPRENEURS: The Relentless Quest for Value

Derek's book list on most truthful about how entrepreneurship works

Derek Lidow Why did Derek love this book?

David Sax spent more than a year on the road, living with a handful of real live entrepreneurs. We get to know these people, what their days are like, what their families are like, their stresses and their joys—ultimately what it feels like to be an entrepreneur. You’ll feel like a voyeur, but you’ll ultimately empathize with what these entrepreneurs do what they do as well as the challenges they constantly face. The book is a page-turner.

By David Sax,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Soul of an Entrepreneur as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We all know the story of the latest version of the American Dream: a young innovator drops out of college and creates the next big thing, remaking both business and culture in one fell swoop. We are told these stories constantly, always with the idea that we'll be next.But this story masks a lot about what really goes on in our economy. Most new businesses aren't tech startups; they are what we think of as ordinary: restaurants or dry cleaners or freelance writing or accounting or consulting services. And those who are starting new businesses aren't all millennials. In fact,…


Book cover of The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

Simon Court Author Of Founder's Legacy: 50 Game-Changing Leadership Lessons for Building a Great Business

From my list on books for founders trying to be in the 10% of businesses that succeed.

Why am I passionate about this?

For the last 25 years, I have been a coach to business founders, leaders, and leadership teams. My work has taken me to every continent from my base in London. A lot of my work is done behind closed doors, but I have been instrumental in building two unicorns in the last decade. I’m a founder myself and have always been fascinated by what it takes to succeed as a founder. I have a powerful conviction that learning to lead is the heart of it. The books I love are either based on real-world research or deeply practical and based on hands-on experience. Practice trumps theory every time in my world!

Simon's book list on books for founders trying to be in the 10% of businesses that succeed

Simon Court Why did Simon love this book?

I like this book because it’s based on mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders, not only anecdotal experience.

There is a lot of debate about the importance of co-founders and not trying to ‘go it alone.’ According to Noam, 65 percent of startups fail because of co-founder conflict. I find that super interesting, and it emphasizes why, if you want success, you’ve got to pick your co-founder(s) wisely. The same is true of the management team as well of course. 

By Noam Wasserman,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Founder's Dilemmas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman…


Book cover of Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

Simon Court Author Of Founder's Legacy: 50 Game-Changing Leadership Lessons for Building a Great Business

From my list on books for founders trying to be in the 10% of businesses that succeed.

Why am I passionate about this?

For the last 25 years, I have been a coach to business founders, leaders, and leadership teams. My work has taken me to every continent from my base in London. A lot of my work is done behind closed doors, but I have been instrumental in building two unicorns in the last decade. I’m a founder myself and have always been fascinated by what it takes to succeed as a founder. I have a powerful conviction that learning to lead is the heart of it. The books I love are either based on real-world research or deeply practical and based on hands-on experience. Practice trumps theory every time in my world!

Simon's book list on books for founders trying to be in the 10% of businesses that succeed

Simon Court Why did Simon love this book?

I love the fact that Ali has provided evidence that ANYONE can succeed as a founder. He has done a lot of number-crunching on ‘unicorns’ (I admire his tenacity for that!) and examined what makes a successful startup founder and some surprises emerge.

Age, education, and number of cofounders were not predictors of a startup’s success, as many of us might have expected. The big thing that does matter is experience. Sixty percent of unicorn founders had previously launched startups. It seems that in pretty much every walk of life, including this one, practice is the key.

By Ali Tamaseb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Super Founders as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Every VC wants to find the next billion dollar company to invest in, and every startup wants to become one. Ali Tamaseb set out to find patterns in the backgrounds, methods, and trajectories of these companies, gathering and analyzing 40,000 data points about the 200+ billion dollar companies and the people who founded them. And you'll be surprised by what he discovered:

* Half of unicorn founders are over 35;
* Most founders don't have any directly relevant work experience in the industry they're disrupting;
* There's no disadvantage to being a solo founder;
* Sixty percent of billion dollar…


Book cover of It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage

Mahlena-Rae Johnson Author Of Speak Anyway: A Public Speaking Guide for Introverted CEOs with Stage Fright

From my list on books for introverted leaders who need to get out of their own way.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer. That is the simplest way to condense the comedic, entrepreneurial, megalomaniacal human who appears in this form. And yes, I am an introvert, but one of the few who lacks stage fright. Additionally, I have met four of the five authors on this list. I am hoping the fifth one invites me to speak on her new journey to Unlock Your Big Energy. In conclusion, I 💜choco chip cookies, Murder, She Wrote, and BTS, in that order. Thank you for reading. 🙂

Mahlena-Rae's book list on books for introverted leaders who need to get out of their own way

Mahlena-Rae Johnson Why did Mahlena-Rae love this book?

In 2015, she “was sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport” and living off of food stamps. Less than ten years later, Arlan Hamilton is hosting her own conference, Your First Million 2024, teaching other entrepreneurs how to come “for the cake, not the crumbs!” 

This book, and Arlan, inspire me as an entrepreneur to keep going. She formed her own company, Backstage Capital, for women, people of color, and LGBT founders in response to the fact that 90 percent of venture capital deals go to white men. Like me, Arlan did not see a problem and just complain about it; she did something about it.

This book showed me that I, too, can help make the world a more equitable place.

By Arlan Hamilton, Rachel L. Nelson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked It's About Damn Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A hero’s tale of what’s possible when we unlock our potential, continue the search for knowledge, and draw on our lived experiences to guide us through the darkest moments.”—Stacey Abrams

From a Black, gay woman who broke into the boys’ club of Silicon Valley comes an empowering guide to finding your voice, working your way into any room you want to be in, and achieving your own dreams.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FORTUNE

In 2015, Arlan Hamilton was on food stamps and sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, with nothing but…


Book cover of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Uri Adoni Author Of The Unstoppable Startup: Mastering Israel's Secret Rules of Chutzpah

From my list on startup entrepreneurs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love innovation! In today’s world, a lot on the innovation is coming from startups who are challenging the status quo and the existing solutions, and trying to offer a new product or service. Being a venture capitalist for many years, I’ve seen thousands of motivated entrepreneurs as well as highly innovative startups, but unfortunately most of them fail. The books I recommend, all share advice from highly experienced and successful entrepreneurs, enabling new entrepreneurs to learn from their experience. These books are not theoretical ones but rather very practical, so any entrepreneur can adopt operational advice as well as an entrepreneurial mindset that has proven to lead to success. 

Uri's book list on startup entrepreneurs

Uri Adoni Why did Uri love this book?

Ben Horowitz is the cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most successful venture capitals in the world.

However, he chose to write a book from his experience and perspective as an entrepreneur. Ben’s descriptions and storytelling enables the reader to really feel what he felt, and completely identify with the challenges he went through.

I loved his references to rap music throughout the book– very creative. 

By Ben Horowitz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hard Thing About Hard Things as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup-practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn't cover, based on his popular ben's blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he's gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with…


Book cover of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Scott Greenberg Author Of Stop the Shift Show: How to Turn Your Struggling Hourly Workers Into a Top-Performing Team

From my list on managing employees and building teams.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m fascinated with the relationship between personal growth and professional performance. Why is it in the same environment, doing the same work, some people can excel while others struggle? Most chalk it up to external circumstances that can’t be controlled. Others focus on tactics. But I’ve learned top-performers are masters at the human side of their work–the way they think, lead and serve–and that’s what gives them their edge. All of my work centers around infusing hard skills with improved soft skills, and getting better results in the process. That’s the stuff I find delicious, and it’s what I speak and write about.

Scott's book list on managing employees and building teams

Scott Greenberg Why did Scott love this book?

What I loved about this book was its very systemized approach to evaluating and improving an organization.

I’m interested in the human elements of business, and this book places great emphasis on aligning the right people with the right roles, totally gelling with my philosophy. It simplifies the process of strategic planning. EOS has become quite common in the business world, and this book spells out exactly how to move through it.

Really good stuff here. 

By Gino Wickman,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Traction as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you? All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations--personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It's not complicated or theoretical.The Entrepreneurial Operating System(R) is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. More than 2,000 companies have discovered what EOS can do. In Traction, you'll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You'll discover simple yet…


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