Book Recommendations

Some of you may know I've been stumbling around a bit lately in business. No no... business in itself is pretty good, but what with the everything coming about in this 2nd year of business i.e, taxes, budgets, some successes and failures this past year, it's been easy to just feel a little like I'm drowning my own work.

In search of some inspiration I stumbled across this great book that, thus far, has been a good pick-me-up each morning to get me motivated again. Now I read a good few sections every morning to start my day and it's helping me get back in the groove.

Secrets of Self-Employment
This book wasn't necessarily written to act as a guide to tell you exactly what to do. But it resonates good for those of us who may have already been working for yourself a little while. I'd almost recommend waiting to get this book anywhere from 6 months - 1 year AFTER you start your business because you're going to see sections there that sound just exactly like what you're going through now. So it's almost like the authors are kind of stepping in to give you words of encouragement and advice.

Heck, now that I've started, I'll list some of the other books that have been good reads for me these past couple years.

E-Myth Revisited
This book was once passed on to me from a friend who had his own business...perhaps maybe a month or two before I had just stepped out on my own. He said he had been given this book by yet another friend in self-employment and so he was paying it forward. Now I'm paying it forward to you. This book explains how we fall into the trap of creating our own businesses, only to fall trap into just creating another "job" for ourselves. So it teaches you to look at your own business in a different way.

Graphic Designer's Guide to Pricing...
This one is more straightforward. I've had this book for for the good part of the last 5 years now and it's a good reference to help you get started in graphic design if this is your interest.

How to be a Graphic Designer without Losing your Soul
This is another good book I had wished I had read much sooner in this career, but it still offered good inspiration to me similar to the first book...it's like you're hearing the direct feedback from other designers about the challenges they faced and how they addressed it. So, it's this book isn't so much good for any reference material, but it's a good book to correct your bearings a bit by reading how others have stumbled or have become successful.

The Richest Man in Babylon
This one isn't so much business or design related, but it's a good book to give you the principles of success. It's just a brief little paperback, I think I just read the whole thing in like 2 or 3 days, but it's written kind of like a parable or storybook, so it isn't heavy reading. It offers good common sense advice on how to build wealth. It doesn't say we need to go win the lottery, rob a bank, or become a rapper...just good tips that we all can do to get where we want to go. I wish I had been given this book back when I was a teenager. I wonder if I would have read it then though?

Holy shit! I've read more then I thought I would this past year or two. Damn...