Even though I entered college as an undecided major, I quickly found out that I was business-obsessed, so a business major it was. Because I love to research, I found lots of business books on entrepreneurship and leadership, but most recently as a college graduate, I believe I have found the best business book for young professionals.
EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey combines both entrepreneurship and leadership to give you all tools you need to run a successful business from the ground up.
If you’re reading this right now then there’s a good chance that you have read John Maxell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership or The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau and think you have it all covered. Well, let me add EntreLeadership to the mix.
Dave Ramsey writes the book “20 years of Practical Business Wisdom From the Trenches,” as the book’s tagline reads. He’s the real deal and someone I have always admired. You see, this book doesn’t just cover what young professionals are taught in college business classes, it gives real-world advice with practical examples.
I thought I learned a lot about business in college, but you see I was wrong. I couldn’t learn a lot until I was actually out in the world doing these things. I can learn all I want about hiring someone, but until I actually do it, I don’t really know.
That’s why Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership is the best business book for young professionals. Let’s explore this more.
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Overview of the Best Business Book for Young Professionals
In his book, EntreLeadership, Dave Ramsey covers business basics like hiring and firing, marketing, sales, finances, contracts, and meetings. However, he also covers leadership qualities like being a visionary, delegating, caring for your employees, making wise decisions, communicating, and handling hard situations.
The book begins by defining EntreLeadership for us. An EntreLeader is someone that displays both the qualities of an entrepreneur, like risk-taker, determined, driven, hard worker, etc. with the qualities of a leader, such as a servant, humble, charismatic, loyal, decisive, passionate, and more.
Often in our 20’s we think it an either-or situation. You can either believe in leadership as a young professional and work on creating strong leadership traits in yourself as you work your way up, or you can be a focused and determined entrepreneur. However, Dave encourages us to mesh these traits together.
He especially highlights that an EntreLeader is powerful and that that power should be used towards serving others. Serving others, doing something good for them, and living by the Golden Rule are how you will make a difference in your business and positively impact the world.
Selfishness, greed, and pride will crush your business.
An EntreLeader is also filled with passion. Passion is going to be a driving factor to grow your business and lead it well. Passion is make-or-break. Sure, you can grow a business you don’t love just to make money but at some point, it will plateau. When you are passionate it reflects on everyone on your team and everyone you sell to. Passion drives success.
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I also want to discuss that this book is not just a money book. I thought it was going to be at first until I again was recommended to read it. Dave Ramsey is known for his money advice, and rightly so as he leads the industry in helping families come to peace with their finances.
And while Dave is an expert on the money subject he is also an incredible business leader. In this book, he highlights some of the biggest challenges he has faced in business and also how he leads his business.
His experience and expertise make him an expert and a reason EntreLeadership is the best business book for young professionals today.
If you want more Dave Ramsey books I encourage you to check out Financial Peace, More Than Enough, and The Total Money Makeover next! He also created Financial Peace University to help people walk out of debt and into a life of freedom and hosts the talk show the Dave Ramsey Show.
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Business Basics In EntreLeadership
While you can read tons of different business books and get lots of different steps to take, EntreLeadership is the best business book for young professionals because it is a toolbox with the basics you need but packed with wisdom.
Before reading this book I had heard of visionary dreams, mission statements, and setting goals for your company. I almost wanted to skip the second chapter because, duh Dave, I know all this.
However, I’m so glad I read it because Dave Ramsey adds purpose to all these. He says, “Have a dream that moves to a vision, then to a mission statement, and then is broken down into goals is essential to winning personally but is certainly crucial for the EntreLeader.” (p. 43)
You see, you can skip the basics but then you’re building your business on the sand, not concrete. The basics are essential and reading his book helped me make an even stronger foundation for my business.
Another basic business chapter that made a huge impact on me, being a young professional, was the information he provided on marketing.
So often, young professionals with entrepreneurial dreams and aspirations go to market without creating a marketing plan and having a system in place. You have to have all the ingredients to make a marketing stew, as Dave puts it.
The ingredients to a clear marketing strategy are passion, activity, scarcity, urgency, and the momentum formula: focused intensity over time times God.
Skipping any part of this formula can lead to disaster or a lack of sales in your company so it is so important to align these parts of the strategy and make them work for your business. I would pick up this book for this chapter alone.
Lastly, this book is the best business book for young professionals because it introduces you to the best-selling technique. Dave is an expert salesman and provides lots of experience on the subject. The stories of his sales in the book are also humorous, which I enjoyed a great deal.
Everyone is selling something, especially the EntreLeader. Whether you’re selling the latest movie you watched to your family because it was so good or you’re selling your skills in a job interview, or life is full of sales techniques.
As an EntreLeader, you love your product and want to share it with others. However, an EntreLeader serves, they don’t sell. It is about focusing on the relational end of things and not just the transactional. It’s about approaching the process with the other person’s needs in mind.
Servant-sellers get customers for life.
As a young professional, this is still something I am learning myself. It’s not easy, especially when you have lots of bad advice floating all around you, discrediting this and giving you selfish motives.
I won’t go into detail about the selling process because Dave explains it so well, you’ll have to pick up the book to read that, but I will highlight that selling comes easy when you realize people don’t buy the product or service, they buy the outcome.
Focus on what your product or service does, and how it will transform their lives, and you’ll have friends, not just customers.
What EntreLeadership Taught Me About Character Quality Traits
Throughout his book EntreLeadership, Dave highlights integrity as a quality trait every EntreLeader has. Integrity does not come easy, and as a leader, you will be faced with a lot of hard decisions; however, handling your business with integrity is probably the most important thing.
This is integrity with how you handle employees that are breaking the rules or underperforming. It is also handling conflict with vendors breaking a contract or how your company handles its finances.
Generosity and putting others first can be a great ways to practice integrity.
The book also talks in great detail about being part of a team and how your integrity relates to how your team performs. When there is conflict, you must remember that your team is your secret weapon and you can’t get by in business without them.
Having integrity with your team is approaching conflict correctly, handling team meetings with dignity, and making decisions with everyone’s best interests in mind.
Dave says, “Chaos that is unhealthy and breed failure happens in companies that don’t make communication a big deal. Your team, by definition, can’t be called a team unless they have a shared dream, vision, mission, and goals. The only way these things become shared is with intentional, quality, constant communication.” (p. 225)
If you’ve read Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, which Dave mentions a few times in EntreLeadership, then you know the importance of getting the right people off the bus and getting those who bring down the team out of the bus.
Your integrity as a young professional drives your whole business.
A whole chapter is devoted to creating quality communication within the team. This chapter can be extremely beneficial to young professionals because you don’t yet have the experience to know how to handle these situations. By learning from Dave you can begin applying what you learn to the corporate world or as you grow your own company and team.
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The Best Part About the Best Business Book for Young Professionals
The best part of EntreLeadership is that Dave focuses on his faith while combining leadership and entrepreneurship. Being a person of faith as well, I love that Dave regularly quotes Scripture, encourages prayer in business decisions, and lives by the Golden Rule.
So many people today in the business world will tell you to pursue your dreams for your own hopes and goals. However, this book teaches that when you put these techniques into practice it is not just about increasing your revenue, but it is serving others.
Being an EntreLeader is giving to others, working hard to change the world, and staying humble.
I gained so much wisdom from this book as a recent college graduate. While I am not yet running my own company, it has prepared me for the challenges that lay ahead and set the groundwork for a thriving business.
Whatever you need to know about running your own business or being part of another business can be found in this book. While some advice is simple and other tips are more precise, each chapter contains wisdom for everyone looking to make some money in this world.
As a young professional, you can especially gain knowledge in this book by looking taking his words of wisdom and directly applying them to whatever line of work you are doing right now. Apart from the word of God, the Bible, this book is the ultimate toolkit for you to enter into the business world.
You can read books on marketing, sales, communicating, decision-making, and more within the business realm from thousands of other books, but I love that Dave puts a light on how we can do all these things with a servant’s heart and outlook greater than ourselves.
It is not about us in the business world. It is about what we can do for others.
As a Christian, I believe we all have a higher calling. God created us to fulfill His goals. I am not on this earth to just mosey around and do something I love. No, I have a purpose and God has a plan. Allow this book to speak to you in ways that you never knew because I believe God can use it to show you the plan He has for your purpose-filled life.
This book will leave you encouraged and inspired to chase after your calling, even if you don’t know exactly what it is just yet.
I highly recommend that you read EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey before you turn 30 because it is the best business book for young professionals.
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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