Top Five Personality Development Books for SMB Owners

Running a small business is challenging. It not only needs business acumen but also a congenial personality.

Running a small business is challenging. It not only needs business acumen but also a congenial personality of the owner. Small and medium business (SMB) owners need to deal with groups with diverse business outlooks. They include customers, vendors, service providers and the like. It is important that SMB owners have a good personal disposition to meet these challenges.

Following are the five best books that can help SMB owners develop their personality and to run a business to get better results.

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People - by Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
This is one of the first best-selling self-help books ever published. The core principles in the book tells about the basic techniques in handling people, ways to make people like you and win them to your way of thinking, change the people arousing resentment as a leader, and getting miraculous results with letters.

This book helps improve your personality as a business owner. It is very important for a small business owner to get out of a mental rut, getting new ambitions, visions and thoughts to keep running the business. Making the stakeholders friendly quickly and easily makes you to run the operations smoothly. The book contains guidelines on these.

2. As a Man Thinketh - James Allen
This is just a 40-page book and can prove you more valuable than a 300-page book. It is easy to read in a single sitting. The main theme of the book is you can control your circumstances by controlling your thoughts. It looks simple, but it is the hardest task to implement. This book does not give you any specific exercises. It inspires you to find your own way to control it. Proper thinking is helpful in taking the wise decisions. It reflects your way of leadership as well.

3. Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell
The book explains the factors that create successful people. The author emphasizes hard work, knowledge, skills as required elements for success. Environment is another factor that influences one's success. Essentially, this mean, you need to look beyond the individual merit. These are cultural legacies, birthplace, community, one's upbringing, parental occupation, friends and family. Understanding these can be helpful in recruiting new people into your organization.

4. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
The title expresses what this book deals as how to get rich. This book is result of a research on a large number of people who achieved great wealth during their lifetime. The explanations of philosophy dealt in the book can help you succeed in all the lines of work. The main topics of this book explains desire, faith, auto suggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision, persistence, power of the master mind, subconscious mind, brain and the sixth sense.

5. Personal Development for Smart People - Steve Pavlina
The author explains seven universal growth principles. They all apply independently and are all connected. These can apply in areas of life such as spiritual development, health, relationships, finances, careers, habits and others. The book is divided into fundamental principles and the practical applications. The fundamental principles are truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage and intelligence. The practical applications are habits, career, money, health, relationships and spirituality.

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