We either acquire knowledge from trial-and-error or by learning from others.
Here are books I have read, enjoyed and learnt some great business and investment lessons from.
Mark Fregnan’s reading book list
Business
- Business Millionaire – How To Turn Your Ideas Into A Million Dollar Business by Michael R. Dean and Fiona Jones
- The Third Wave by Steve Case, 2016
- The Upstarts : How Uber, Airbnb, And The Killer Companies Of The Silicon Valley Are Changing The World by Brad Stone
- The Airbnb Story, Leigh Gallagher
- The E-myth by Michael E. Gerber
- Moments Of Truth by Jan Carlzon
- The Loyalty Effect by Frederick F. Reichheld
- Higher Profits Through Customer Lock-In by Joachim Buschken
- 101 Ways To Market Your Business by Andrew Griffiths
- Take the Fear Out of Franchising by Dr. John P. Hayes
- From Muffins To Mail Order Millions by Peter Sun
- 133 Australian Business And Legal Letters by Phillip Marks Ll.B
- Instant Leads by Bradley J. Sugars
- The Business Coach by Bradley J. Sugars
- Surprised By Success by Jim Penman
- How Any Tradesman Can Build A Million Dollar Business In 24 Months by Ian Marsh
- Turning Passions To Profits by Christopher Howard
- Clicks, Bricks & Brands by Martin Lindstrom
- Mcdonald’s Behind The Arches by John F. Love
- Instant Promotions by Bradley J. Sugars
- Actions Speak Louder Than Words by Bradley J. Sugars
- Instant Systems by Bradley J. Sugars
- Instant Repeat Business by Bradley J. Sugars
- Instant Cash Flow by Bradley J. Sugars
- Cash, Customers, And Ads That Sell by Bradley J. Sugars
- Instant Sales by Bradley J. Sugars
- Billionaire In Training by Bradley J. Sugars
- Benchmark Your Own Business by Greg Hart
- Just About Everything A Retail Manager Needs To Know by John Stanley
- Your Right To Be Rich by Mal Emery
- Successful Franchising by Bradley J. Sugars
- Street Smart Franchising by Joe Mathews, Don Debolt & Deb Percival
- Profitable Partnerships by Greg Nathan
- No B.S Time Management For Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy
- No B.S Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy
- No B.S Wealth Attraction For Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy
- The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan S. Kennedy
- The Ultimate Marketing Plan by Dan S. Kennedy
- A Basic Guide For Valuing A Company by Wilbur M. Yegge
- If I’m So Successful – How Come I Never Get To Be On Top? by Sharon Tieman
- 100 Great Businesses And The Minds Behind Them by Emily Ross And Angus Holland
- Managing People by Rod Jones
- Gravitational Marketing by Jimmy Vee, Travis Miller & Joel Bauer
- Secrets Of Top Sales Exposed! by Dale Beaumont
- How To Be Smart With Your Time by Duncan Bannatyne
- Cold Calling Techniques by Stephan Schiffman
- Closing Techniques by Stephan Schiffman
- My Life In Advertising & Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins
- How To Motivate Every Employee by Anne Bruce
- What Every Business Owner Should Know About Valuing Their Business by Dr. Stanley Feldman, Dr Timothy Sullivan, Roger Winsby
- Selling Your Business by Russel Robb
- Your Right To Be Rich by Mal Emery
- Buzz Marketing by Mark Hughes
- Zero To A Millionaire In Three Years Or Less In Your Own Business by Mal Emery
- 47 Way To Put A Smile On Your Face, Brighten Up Your Day, And Help You Prosper In Your Life And Business by Peter Sun
- The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
- Small Business, Big Opportunity by Rob Hartnett
- How To Write A Marketing Plan by John Westwood
- Fired Up! by Michael Gill And Sheila Paterson
- Success Leaves Clues by Glen Smyth
- The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business The Bill Gate Way by Des Dearlove
- Accounting For Non-accountants by Boy Deutsch and Chikarovski
- Move Your Bus: An Extraordinary New Approach to Accelerating Success by Ron Clark
- Why The Future Is Workless by Tim Dunlop
- Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
- Find Build Sell by Stephen J. Hunt
Investment
- Generation Debt – Anya Kamenetz
- Deficit – Why Should I Care, Marie Bussing-Burks
- Rich Dad’s Conspiracy Of The Rich, Robert T.Kiyosaki
- Credit Code Red, Peter Brain & Ian Manning
- Crash Proof, Peter D. Schiff with John Downes
- Aftershock – Protect Yourself and profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown 3rd edition, David Wiedmer
- The Sale of a Lifetime, Harry S. Dent, Jr.
- How To Legally Reduce Your Tax, Tony Melvin & Ed Chan
- How To Have A Millionaire Mindset, Allan Pease
- The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
- 101 Ways To Massively Increase The Value Of Your Real Estate, Dolf De Roos
- Wealth Magic, Peter Spann
- Making Money Made Simply 1989, Noel Whittaker
- Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Book notes
Find Build Sell by Stephen J. Hunt
Good to see a business book with a great story of an Aussie bloke who built a $100 million dollar pub empire. The journey story is quite fascinating from his early days working in a pub, to buying his first one with help of investors, and to the present day with ownership in a number of pubs around Australia.
Lots of good, easy explained business lessons for the lay person to understand.
The Third Wave, Steve Case
Steve Case was one of the founders of America Online (AOL) in the 1990s. The book has some great learning lessons regarding internet startups and business culture. The third wave is described by Steve as disruption to health, food, education, insurance, finance and further disruption to transport. The third wave requiring closer involvement from governments (and with regulation issues). i.e. Backlash from Uber services.
“Third wave” companies can be located closer to their customers, and not near traditional tech centres like Silicon valley, NYC, etc.
Example. Jewel Burks, founder of Partpic. Customers didn’t always know the detailed name or part number. Partpic solved this by having customers take and send a photo of the part, and Partpic would then deliver the correct part to them.
Page 85, talks about “embracing self-disruption” so that competitors don’t eventually take away your business. For example, Kodak. Steve Jobs quote: “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.” e.g. iPhone sales hurt iPod sales. Jeff Bezos said “Amazon will be disrupted one day. I don’t worry because it is inevitable.”
Steve explains the history of the AOL merger with Time Warner (culture issues).
The Airbnb Story, Leigh Gallagher
The first two chapters were particularly interesting – The Hustle and Building A Company. Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk began with an idea to rent a “couch” for cities that had overbooked accommodation for big conferences. Airbnb – “Like Craigslist and Couchsurfing.com but classier”.
Deficit – Why Should I Care, Marie Bussing-Burks
The US government has the unique advantage of being able to borrow trillions of dollars because the USD is one of the world’s reserve currencies. Other countries buy oil and trade with the USA, all in USD. The trillions of US debt is owed by other US government agencies like social security, by private individuals, businesses, banks and investment firms, and other foreign creditors. This money is not free. These investors in the federal government bonds (the US debt) expect a ROI – being interest. A massive interest bill in the hundreds of billions is paid every year by the US government. The multi-trillion dollar deficit is growing rapidly.
Generation Debt, Anya Kamenetz
Young people all over the world find that a high school education is not longer enough for most jobs and they are enticed into expensive college and university education courses. This put them into massive debt.
Employers are eliminating good, well-paying jobs in favour of “low-paying” ones, being casual, semi-skilled employment (the ‘gigs’ and ‘temp’ jobs, ‘fill-the-shelves’ jobs, non-paying internships). These jobs make it much harder for university graduates to pay their education debt (student loans).
Why The Future Is Workless, Tim Dunlop
The era of full-time work is coming to an end.
Will an app take my job? Uber owns no vehicle, Facebook/Meta creates no content, Alibaba has no inventory and Airbnb owns no real estate. Though apps can also monetizable assets; spare parking space can be rented out using Parking Panda, A spare room for pets using DogVacay, Rentoid for obtaining rental income from household items, and SnapGoods for tools lying around not being used.
Technological progress is going to leave some people, perhaps even a lot of people behind.
Advances won’t necessarily destroy jobs, it will force many people into low paying menial work that cannot be done with robots, automation and AI.
The currently limiting bottlenecks for technology is the deep understanding of what humans want (creatively and intuitively), and the physical ability to work in unstructured and cluttered environments.
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
A great visual book with lots of diagrams and graphics. Plenty of famous real-world brands listed and what business model they adopted.