Here are 100 books that Skip the Line fans have personally recommended if you like
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I studied economics and environmental policy but landed in entrepreneurship. I wrote The Parallel Entrepreneur after I sold my first company and continued to work on Rbucks, my blog, after I joined the next company. Outside of work I volunteer frequently in my community. I’m an Associate Professor in the Business Department at Diablo Valley College, where I teach marketing and sit on the advisory boards for both the Business and Computer Science departments. I also lead the Diablo Valley Tech Initiative (DVTI), an economic development organization incubated at DVC. Related to DVTI, I run Lamorinda Entrepreneurs, a community group that promotes and supports local entrepreneurship. I have a Master’s in Public Policy from theHarvard Kennedy School and a MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Max is one of the thought leaders in modern sales development and acceleration. His book is full of actionable advice for the modern sales rep – and entrepreneur – to blast through the building and closing of a sales pipeline. Since entrepreneurship requires selling, I highly recommend this book.
Stay ahead of the sales evolution with a more efficient approach to everything
Hacking Sales helps you transform your sales process using the next generation of tools, tactics and strategies. Author Max Altschuler has dedicated his business to helping companies build modern, efficient, high tech sales processes that generate more revenue while using fewer resources. In this book, he shows you the most effective changes you can make, starting today, to evolve your sales and continually raise the bar. You'll walk through the entire sales process from start to finish, learning critical hacks every step of the way. Find and…
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.
Most memoirs written by entrepreneurs are highly filtered stories about why they are so great. Sam Walton’s memoir is the most realistic, honest, and useful description of what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, a family man, and somebody who cares about their employees and community. You cannot go wrong using Sam Walton as your role model.
Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements. Sam shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.
In a story rich with anecdotes and the "rules of the road" of both Main Street and Wall Street, Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism…
I studied economics and environmental policy but landed in entrepreneurship. I wrote The Parallel Entrepreneur after I sold my first company and continued to work on Rbucks, my blog, after I joined the next company. Outside of work I volunteer frequently in my community. I’m an Associate Professor in the Business Department at Diablo Valley College, where I teach marketing and sit on the advisory boards for both the Business and Computer Science departments. I also lead the Diablo Valley Tech Initiative (DVTI), an economic development organization incubated at DVC. Related to DVTI, I run Lamorinda Entrepreneurs, a community group that promotes and supports local entrepreneurship. I have a Master’s in Public Policy from theHarvard Kennedy School and a MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
This book came by recommendation from Jonathan Siegel, the brains and brawn behind Xenon Partners, a private equity firm that I joined in 2018. This book summarizes several profit models presented by a fictional mentor coaching a business executive. It’s clever, poignant, and was helpful to me in thinking about other profitable business models. For example, in my side-hustle life, I use the Profit-Multiplier Model: running multiple small SaaS businesses in parallel using the same tech stack (make money off the same good or skill in different markets).
Presented in 23 compact lessons, THE ART OF PROFITABILITY features an ongoing tutorial between two fictitious individuals: the old and wise teacher, David Shao, the business master, and his pupil, Steve Gardner, a young and ambitious manager. Along the way, Zhao goes through a number of business models and pushes his student to examine how a variety of businesses go about making money. Through Zhao's teachings, Steve begins to see how profits can be improved simply by taking a step back and gaining a new perspective.
I studied economics and environmental policy but landed in entrepreneurship. I wrote The Parallel Entrepreneur after I sold my first company and continued to work on Rbucks, my blog, after I joined the next company. Outside of work I volunteer frequently in my community. I’m an Associate Professor in the Business Department at Diablo Valley College, where I teach marketing and sit on the advisory boards for both the Business and Computer Science departments. I also lead the Diablo Valley Tech Initiative (DVTI), an economic development organization incubated at DVC. Related to DVTI, I run Lamorinda Entrepreneurs, a community group that promotes and supports local entrepreneurship. I have a Master’s in Public Policy from theHarvard Kennedy School and a MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
A great book about leadership and business. I pick it because it’s on the reading list suggested inThe Art of Profitability. I learned that focus is important. Bill Russell was one of the greatest basketball players of all time because he worked harder and played smarter than everyone else. However, he also recognized that he doesn’t play every position. He needs to have a great team, one that adapts to the competition. He needs them all to play at his level and he was able to do that, winning the NBA Finals a record-breaking 11 seasons. One way to build a successful side hustle (or portfolio of side hustles) is to recruit a great team to help you.
Bill Russell epitomizes innovation, teamwork, and leadership. Now the winner of 11 championships as a player and coach of the Boston Celtics and five-time NBA Most Valuable Player reveals the 11 essential steps to attaining success in your professional and personal life.
In this invaluable book, Bill Russell shares the insights, memories, and most important, the essential “rules of success” that influenced him in every aspect of his life, from raising a daughter as a single father to becoming a successful coach and mentor to others. Filled with personal and professional stories of his days playing with Celtic greats Bob…
I was born in Iraq, and grew up mostly in the Southern United States—with a brief stint in Saudi Arabia. My father taught me the importance of books and reading. And I found it was the best way to escape from the constant fish-out-of-water feeling that followed me through my nomadic childhood. I grew up, and grew out of those feelings… most of the time. But I never outgrew reading and I still love when a book sucks me in and makes me lose myself completely. These are a few of those books.
My father instilled in me a love for books and before he passed away at 92, this was his favorite one. We would read it separately during the day and discuss on our nightly Facetime calls. Being a pharmacologist, Dad loved the breakdowns of how the brain works. And I, who have long been interested in why we do the things we do, was completely drawn to the idea that we could retrain our brain. Consider this book a science-based version of “The Secret” and so much more. And had I known about manifesting when I first came to this country and experienced those first feelings of being an outsider then maybe I could have manifested away that angst. I mean, a girl can dream.
You are not doomed by your genes and hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of your life. A new science is emerging that empowers all human beings to create the reality they choose. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, renowned author, speaker, researcher, and chiropractor Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible. Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change any aspect of yourself, but you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in…
Throughout my journey, I’ve had to endure many challenges coming from humble beginnings so I wrote my book based on my experiences of being the 1st generational college graduate to overcoming many obstacles that affected my self-esteem while running a multimillion-dollar branch in the banking industry. Writing My Broken Stiletto allowed me to showcase that being resilient is a mindset that can be challenging but worth the reward when you get out of your own way.
I was introduced to this book by a business mastermind which we all read together and discussed chapters on video.
Imagine twenty women from different countries trying to not only understand each other and implement at the same time. I’m not sure what was more entertaining our language barrier or our interpretations. Nevertheless, I was blown away by the amount of structure and stretches that this book presents.
We all agreed to do the stretches as they relate to our lives. One of the many to-do’s was making a list of things that are unfinished and getting to it no matter how big or small. Now I must warn you this is a pretty thick book and I use it as a reference whenever I need a pick-me-up when life seems chaotic.
Mostly I reference the chapters that I feel are in alignment with where I am struggling in day-to-day…
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, a revised and updated edition of Jack Canfield’s classic bestseller with a brand new foreword and an afterword for succeeding in the digital age.
Since its publication a decade ago, Jack Canfield’s practical and inspiring guide has helped thousands of people transform themselves for success. Now, he has revised and updated his essential guidebook to reflect our changing times.
In The Success Principles, the cocreator of the phenomenal bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, helps you get from where you are to where you want to be, teaching you how to increase your…
I’m the founder of Intentionality Inc., a speaker and high-performance coach, and a master breathwork facilitator. I help world-changing leaders implement the Intentionality® methodology to find new levels of fulfillment and growth in their creative endeavors, relationships, and overall well-being. I have been dubbed "the Business Mystic'' because of my unique ability to awaken consciousness in business and inspire CEOs and leadership teams to have a more expansive human experience. I love books that emphasize ancient wisdom but also have practical applications for modern-day living and weave the universal aspects of spirituality into personal development. I hope these books are as thought-provoking to you as they were to me!
This book was special to me because it redefined what intention meant compared to how we usually describe it. Expressing intention as energy and creation rather than success and work shows how beautiful and all-encompassing it can be.
I could tune into my inner belief systems and see how I could manifest and affirm more positive goals for myself and invest more authentically into my relationships with others. Intention is such a powerful word, and Dyer gives practical ways of conceptualizing and applying it daily.
'Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.' Wayne Dyer
For years Wayne Dyer has been researching the power of intention, the energy that surrounds all of us. He tells us how we can train ourselves to tune into this energy and step beyond our minds and egos. When we do this we become what Dyer calls 'Connectors' and make ourselves available to the energy of success.
Connectors are the people whom everyone sees as lucky, the people who get all the breaks. They don't say, 'With my luck, everything will go wrong,'…
I'm a Greek mom and entrepreneur at heart. Growing up, we cherished spirited conversations, ideas, and researching topics we loved. The whole goal was to really push each other to higher states of intellectual rigor that would improve the quality of life. Ideas and communication rival great food and Greek dancing fun. I share my passion for Philotimo (Greek imperative of love of honor and working for the greater good) through my books, brands, and marketing agency. I'm a fierce advocate for women and small businesses and have been featured in USA Today, Small Business Journal, Amazon Entrepreneurs, and enjoy being a weekly guest on national radio shows.
This book takes on the question that every successful woman is asked, “How do you balance it all?” Randi lives the concept that you can have it all, just not at the same time. Life is full of choices and this book breaks down a daily strategy to prioritize the most important areas of your life. She makes it so real, I could almost hear her voice, cadence, and smile. There is an honesty and vigor in the pages that really hit me hard to look in the mirror!
In this motivational handbook-both a business how-to and self-help guide-the New York Times bestselling author of Dot Complicated takes on the fallacy of the "well-balanced" life, arguing that the key to success is learning to be well-lopsided.
In an increasingly demanding world, we've been told that we can do everything-maintain friendships, devote ourselves to work, spend time with family, stay fit, and get enough sleep. We just need to learn to balance it all. Randi Zuckerberg doesn't believe in being well-balanced. We can't do it all every day,…
Since completing my PhD in political economy (dissertation: ‘International Integration and Foreign Policy Decision-making’) I have gone deeper into economic origins of change (eg. Modern Inflation, coauthored with well-known economist Wilhelm Hankel in Bologna, Italy at Johns Hopkins SAIS) and find the interactions between economic, politics, and psychology fascinating—presenting an infinite number of ‘Sherlock Holmes-like puzzles’. We are all now confronted with political, economic, and psychological uncertainties, put on high speed due to the war in Ukraine and great power tensions. So it is time to learn about the origins of our problems and their trends in order to better cope and find a basis for individual, if not collective, peace.
I invited Edmund Phelps to speak at Pace University in New York the week before he received the Nobel Prize in Economics.
His thesis, captured in detail in this book, is that state welfare economies in Europe have become too disconnected from the prerequisites for the entrepreneurial economic growth and innovation necessary to create jobs and to pay for the social benefits. Given the huge debt overhang in most of these countries, not to mention developing countries, his controversial thesis then could not be more timely now!
All people need to be motivated to become entrepreneurial in order to provide human health, comfort, and self-actualization for themselves, their families, and fellow citizens. Have you been taught this at school?!!!
In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread,…
I’m passionate about productivity that enhances life, not erodes it. After years of chasing more—more certifications, more races, more promotions—I faced a health crisis that forced me to redefine success. Now, I’m on a mission to help people and companies find real productivity without sacrificing relationships or health. My background as a speaker, trainer, and coach drives me to show others how sustainable habits can declutter not just our workspaces but also our minds and bodies. True productivity isn’t about doing more; it’s about creating space for what truly matters.
I love this book because it reshaped my life in ways I hadn’t thought possible. It was the catalyst for me to downsize my home—twice—become debt-free and launch my own business. It helped me see clutter, whether physical, mental, or digital, in a whole new light and rethink how I care for my body.
This book laid the foundation for my journey toward minimalism and productivity, grounding me in a more intentional approach to work and life. A classic, it remains one of the best primers for creating meaningful, lasting change.
'Babauta has become a powerhouse of online activity for a good reason: his mantra works.' Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week
The Power of Less demonstrates how you can streamline your life by eliminating the unnecessary - freeing up space from everyday clutter to achieve your goals and find happiness in a more minimalist existence.You'll learn how to: - choose what is essential and clear out the rest - make better use of the resources you already have - break down goals into manageable tasks - create new and productive habits
