This page is broken up into 2 parts: books that I have written to help entrepreneurs based on where they are along their personal journey and books written by other authors that address specific topics that I have in my own personal library and often I recommend to many of my clients. Use the links below to locate the section you want to explore.
As a mentor and counselor for thousands of clients, it became clear to me that many entrepreneurs get stuck at some point during their entrepreneurial journey. To help clients get unstuck, I have written a series of 10 books to take the reader on a complete journey of entrepreneurship. The journey of discovery starts with self-reflection and alternatives to starting a full-blown business, to ultimately selling your business for profit. I have created a targeted book that meets every entrepreneur’s need, regardless of where they are on their own personal journey.
All books are offered through Amazon.com (that can be accessed directly through this page) and other booksellers in both paperback and eBook formats.
How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Work, Power, and Trust Before We’re Ready
The Quiet Disruption is not a book about science-fiction futures or runaway superintelligence. It’s about how AI is already reshaping the foundations of work, trust, power, and institutions, long before we have the frameworks to manage the consequences.
Drawing on real-world examples from business, labor markets, governance, energy infrastructure, and information systems, this book examines how automation alters society through second- and third-order effects. Entry-level cognitive work disappears before training systems can adjust. Diagnostics become data-rich and always-on, redefining professional roles across industries. Synthetic media blurs the line between evidence and fabrication, weakening shared reality and trust. Power concentrates not only in digital platforms and data ownership, but in the physical energy infrastructure required to run AI at scale.
Rather than arguing for uncritical optimism or fear-driven regulation, The Quiet Disruption explores the space between extremes. It looks at how well-intentioned systems drift when incentives misalign, why governance lags behind technological change, and how guardrails applied too late or too forcefully can create their own forms of harm.
Written for business leaders, policymakers, technologists, and thoughtful readers trying to understand what’s changing beneath the surface, this book offers a systems-level perspective on AI’s unintended consequences. It does not promise easy answers. Instead, it provides a framework for recognizing early warning signs before drift hardens into outcome.
AI will advance regardless. The only open question is whether we drift alongside it or engage with intention. Stewardship begins not with grand plans, but with noticing where systems are quietly reshaping work, trust, and power, and choosing not to look away.
Uncommon Things You Should Know Before You Become An Entrepreneur
Before You Leap is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the nascent entrepreneur. It uses stories and personal examples from the author to reveal uncommon things that can make or break your venture before it starts. The book not only gives the entrepreneur the tools for self-reflection but also exposes readers to options to building a full-blown business around their idea.
As a serial entrepreneur and mentor to thousands of small businesses, the author has distilled a lifetime of business wisdom that every new entrepreneur should consider before they start their first business.
Readers will learn:
How to test their market before committing resources to a solution
How to reduce their startup risk
How to discover their niche
How to predict future demand
That a good idea is not enough
How retirement plans and even your employer can fund your startup costs
Before You Leap is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice that will help you determine if you have what it takes to be a business owner and if you launch will help you avoid costly mistakes.
How to define the right business model and economic model for your business
How sales taxes and income taxes work
How your credit score is computed and what you can do to improve it
About business risk and how to minimize it How to benchmark your financial projections against other existing businesses
How to fund your business even when the banks say no
How different customers think so you can better market to them
About basic business management structures
The seven most common business formations errors
How to get the most out of employees
As a serial entrepreneur and mentor to thousands of small businesses, the author has distilled a lifetime of business wisdom that every new entrepreneur should consider before they sit down to write their first business plan.
Applying the Business Model Canvas, A Practical Guide For Small Business is a book that was written for the entrepreneur trying to come up with a workable new business model. By using the Socratic method of asking and answering questions for each of the 13 building blocks of the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Model the reader will be able to turn abstract ideas into a practical business model in no time.
What You Need To Know To Run An Effective Campaign
The Practical Crowdfunding How-To-Guide is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the entrepreneur considering raising money via a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding is not a simple matter of just putting your campaign on one of the crowdfunding platforms and waiting for the money to roll in. It is much more personal and relies heavily on social media and making network connections before you launch your campaign. In fact crowdfunding shares very little with other forms of raising money.
For most, crowdfunding success can run the gambit, but it does not have to be a game of chance. The author breaks down the process of crowdfunding into 12 distinct steps to locate and attract potential pledges and build momentum and buzz for the campaign. By following the 12-step process the reader will have the best chance of success in reaching your funding goal.
The book Practical Crowdfunding How-To-Guide is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice and examples that will help the entrepreneur achieve the best possible crowdfunding success.
Price Your Product or Service for Strategic Objectives
Pricing is one of the most unsung elements of marketing. Practical Guide to Understanding Your Pricing Options teaches the reader how to price their products or services strategically. By implementing the suggestion in this book you will be able to price your products and services so as to encourage your customers to buy while maximizing your profit margins.
The book is broken into 3 parts.
In the first part, Pricing Strategies, the author describes 14 pricing strategies to drive specific customer behaviors, such as building customer loyalty, ensuring more consistent business cash flows, or encouraging the customer to buy in larger quantities
Part two, Pricing Concepts looks at such concepts as price elasticity and pricing at the margins so a business has the tools to maximize its profit margins.
The final part, Behavioral Economics introduces the reader to customer psychology such as their irrational yet predictable reaction to free, decoy prices, and fear of loss.
Practical Guide to Understanding Your Pricing Options is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice that will help the reader implement the appropriate pricing strategies to achieve specific business objectives.
An Anthology Series of Buyer Psychology, Getting Noticed and Making Your Business Stick
Practical Marketing Concepts For Your Small Business is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the budget-conscious entrepreneur looking to better market their products or services. The book is divided into 9 chapters that look at:
How to identify and target viable customers
Tactics to get noticed in an ocean of interruption marketing
The attitude and behaviors of various target demographics
The buyer psychology including behavioral economics and emotional appeals
Dozens of free and low-cost ways to achieve greater brand awareness
Tactics to make your message more memorable and sticky
Common pricing mistakes that can kill a sale
Ways to leverage economic gyrations and current events to improve sales
General marketing and sales advice to help make better marketing decisions
As a serial entrepreneur and mentor to thousands of small businesses, the author has distilled a lifetime of business marketing content that every entrepreneur should consider applying to their business.
Practical Marketing Concepts For Your Small Business is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice delivered in small bites that the reader can use to make incremental improvements to their marketing efforts.
Proven Techniques To Close More Deals and Delight Your Customers
Practical Sales Ideas For Your Small Business is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the entrepreneur looking for ideas and tactics to improve sales. Whether selling face-to-face or online the reader will discover tips and tricks to close more deals. Sales are built on relationships and the author has created bite-size nuggets of sales knowledge the reader can easily apply.
As a serial entrepreneur and mentor to thousands of small businesses, the author has distilled critical business sales lessons designed to make the customers fall in love with you and your product or service.
Buying Or Selling A Small Business is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the entrepreneur who is either considering buying someone else’s business or selling their existing business. Throughout the text are links to exclusive streaming videos from experts in the Merger and Acquisition (M&A) space as they comment on key aspects and provide valuable insight based on their professional experiences with buyers and sellers.
In the book, the author describes six different ways to value an existing business. Learn the real reasons sellers sell and buyers buy businesses. As a seller discover techniques to maximize value while as a buyer learn about all the different forms of payment and financing options to make your purchase. Discover how the terms of the deal can be more important than the actual sale price when it comes to taxes both for the buyers and the seller.
As a serial entrepreneur, Steve has built, bought, and sold several companies for huge profits using the techniques described in this book. Buying Or Selling A Small Business is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice that will help you avoid costly mistakes either buying or selling a business.
How The Entrepreneur’s Brain Is Wired Differently From the Masses
The entrepreneur looks at the same information as the masses but sees something quite different and therefore approaches life from a completely different perspective. The Entrepreneurial Brain compares how entrepreneurs and the masses look at things like work, money, friends, education, and even risk quite differently.
By recognizing and adopting more entrepreneurial ways of thinking the reader will come away with a more complete awareness of the views and attitudes that make for successful entrepreneurs. The book The Entrepreneurial Brain is a concise and easy-to-read guide packed with solid advice and examples that will help the entrepreneur achieve greater business success.
Lessons From Highly Successful Founders, CEOs, and Senior Executives That Changed Their Industries Forever
Messages From Successful Entrepreneurs is a wisdom-packed book that was written for the entrepreneur looking for inspirational ideas used by highly successful entrepreneurs to re-energize their business. The book uses stories from 32 of the world’s most successful leaders to dramatize pivotal business lessons every entrepreneur should consider implementing in their own business.
Discover how overcoming personal hardship or being told “no” created some of the great entrepreneurs. Learn how a waffle sparked the running craze and how a Pez dispenser launched the creation of one of the biggest multi-sided website platforms.
As a serial entrepreneur and mentor to thousands of small businesses, the author is fascinated with the icons of business and has used their stories to help and inspire his clients to discover ways to think about their businesses in new and creative ways.
Many of the biggest companies used lessons from one industry and simply applied it to their own. The book Messages From Successful Entrepreneurs is a concise and easy to read guide packed with solid advice and examples that will help the entrepreneur leverage the lessons of some of the greatest leaders business has known.
Recommended Books
I read a lot of business books each year. Most books I read have a few key points that have some value and then there are some books that are just chocked full of great advice for the business owner.
The following list contains the business books that I have in my personal library that I frequently recommend to my clients. Most of the books listed below I have read over and over again because they are so rich in actionable wisdom for the entrepreneur.
The list is presented in no particular order so read through the entire list and discover why each book is on my recommended reading list for entrepreneurs.
Coach Builder: How to Turn Your Expertise Into a Profitable Coaching Career
If you’ve ever thought about turning your expertise into a coaching or advisory business, this one’s a step-by-step guide to building something sustainable—without burning out or feeling like you’re reinventing the wheel.
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
Shifts your mindset from self-reliance to strategic delegation: instead of asking “How do I do this?” you ask “Who can help me do it?”—key for scaling beyond solo-operator constraints.
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
This one is a must-read for anyone stuck working in the business instead of on it. Gerber breaks down why most small businesses fail—and how to escape the technician trap by building systems that scale.
Exactly What to Say
If you struggle with sales conversations or want to improve your close rate, this book gives you simple, powerful phrases that open doors, overcome objections, and move people to act—without being pushy.
Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success
Say what you want about the guy, but Belfort’s straight-line selling method is razor-sharp. If you want a crash course in persuasive communication and closing high-stakes deals, this delivers.
How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off
No fluff here—this is a practical, actionable roadmap for business owners who want to grow with clarity. Think of it as a field manual for small business strategy, hiring, marketing, and operations.
Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea is Their Idea
Most sales tactics are built around chasing. Klaff flips the dynamic—showing you how to get prospects to convince themselves they want what you’re offering. Game-changing if you’re in a consultative sales role.
Brain Rules for Aging Well: 10 Principles for Staying Vital, Happy, and Sharp
If you want to lead, teach, sell, or communicate more effectively, you need to understand how the human brain actually works. Medina breaks down complex neuroscience into practical “rules” that can dramatically improve focus, memory, and engagement. Entrepreneurs will especially benefit from insights on how to structure presentations, optimize environments, and capture attention in a world full of distractions.
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
This book is a wake-up call for anyone who assumes customers (or employees) behave logically. Ariely dives deep into the quirks of human behavior—like why we overvalue our own ideas, make inconsistent decisions, or feel better giving away time than money. For entrepreneurs, it’s a goldmine of counterintuitive insights that can be applied to pricing, motivation, product design, and customer experience.
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
Why do people make irrational money decisions—and how can we use that to our advantage in business? A must-read for pricing strategy, marketing, and understanding buyer psychology.
Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth
This one’s all about engineered word-of-mouth. If you’re looking for low-cost ways to make your brand stand out and get people talking, this is packed with ideas you can implement immediately.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
These branding principles are timeless. If you want to create a memorable business that owns a position in the customer’s mind, this is your cheat sheet.
Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong
This one’s a bit more cerebral, but it helped me see how small changes in incentives and systems can create huge ripple effects. A great read for anyone thinking long-term about business models or economic policy.
Coach Builder: How to Turn Your Expertise Into a Profitable Coaching Career
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Exactly What to Say
Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success
How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off
Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea is Their Idea
Brain Rules for Aging Well: 10 Principles for Staying Vital, Happy, and Sharp
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong