Why entrepreneurs should read books

Many people live their lives on autopilot doing much the same thing every day and never learning anything. And the same people often wonder how it is that some people can be so successful in life and they may even think that it is because someone else has been luckier than they have. However when we look at the habits of successful people it is often the case that among other things they are voracious readers. For example: Bill Gates reads one book per week, Mark Zuckerberg reads one book every two weeks, Elon musk is an avid reader, Warren Buffett spends about 80 per cent of his day reading, Mark Cuban reads for more than three hours every day, Oprah Winfrey reads one book every month.

If you are a wantrapreneur or an entrepreneur or a business owner there is still much to learn. Of course there is more than one way to learn what we need to know. We can learn it on our own through making mistakes in our business; sometimes this route can have fatal consequences on our businesses. Or we can learn from other entrepreneurs through a coach or a mentor or an advisory board or even a mastermind. This type of source of learning has its place for an entrepreneur however these people are not always going to be available when we have to make vital decisions at every stage of the journey.

Reading is the best way of vicariously learning. We don’t always have to make the mistakes ourselves and we don’t always have to do everything by trial and error. It is so much better to learn from other people who have done what we have done or we have not done. Reading allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn from people who have triumphed against the odds and overcome huge challenges and become successful.

Obviously we have to be selective about what we read. We can’t read trashy novels and expect to get any real benefit from them for our businesses; other than transitory entertainment. So we should make sure that we read relevant books that are educational – books that other entrepreneurs and business owners read. Books help us in so many ways to succeed as an entrepreneur. They can be a source of inspiration, develop skills, and provide tips and business strategies. They can help us to become successful by providing the right knowledge, new ways of thinking, new insights and help us to develop necessary skills. Reading can also influence the way that we do business through personal development and leadership skills. We can get a lot of new ideas and tips allowing us to have multiple perspectives to join the dots and do things in a way that had never been done before.

By reading books we also develop cognitive skills which can benefit us in a multitude of ways by helping to improve our memory, develop literacy and verbal intelligence as well as increasing our strategic decision-making, boosting our brain power and reducing stress

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