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"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

- Will Durant

Essential Reads for Entrepreneurial Growth

Tired of not knowing enough about what you're trying to do or even what you need to do to launch your business?

 

At L2, we believe the key to unlocking your full potential lies in a life full of intentional learning. In the Psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy states that reading for simply 30 minutes a day will give you the ability to double your income in just 1 year. Luck would have it that being an Entrepreneur means you are a salesperson and Sales is just one of the many hats you have to wear during your daily grind.

We've compiled the following list to help you grow in whichever direction you need help with. We all have natural strengths and weaknesses and the truth is we need to continually develop to stay ahead of the curve.

Curated Books for Your Success

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Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

Robert T. Kiyosaki

Milestones 

In the quarter century that has passed since Rich Dad Poor Dad was first published — 25 years since April 8, 1997 — so many things in our world have changed. But the one thing that has not changed is the pressing need for and the power of financial education. Money is still a mainstay of our lives, like it or not, and technology has brought both speed and innovations to the world of money. In an ever-changing world, we can all still get smarter when it comes to money… and learn as much as we can to secure our future.


Still the One… #1 

In many ways, the messages of Rich Dad Poor Dad, messages that were challenged and criticized 25 ago, are more meaningful, relevant, and important today than ever. Rich Dad Poor Dad... 

  • Explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to become rich

  • Challenges the belief that your house is an asset

  • Shows parents why they can't rely on the school system to teach their kids about money

  • Defines once and for all an asset and a liability

  • Teaches you what to teach your kids about money for their future financial success


April of 2022 marks a 25-year milestone for the personal finance classic Rich Dad Poor Dad that still ranks as the #1 Personal Finance book of all time. And although 25 years have passed since Rich Dad Poor Dad was first published, readers will find that very little in the book itself has changed — and for good reason. While so much in our world is changing a high speed, the lessons about money and the principles of Rich Dad Poor Dad haven’t changed. Today, as money continues to play a key role in our daily lives, the messages in Robert Kiyosaki’s international bestseller are more timely and more important than ever.


While there is a milestone  to commemorate — and a new section in the book on Why Milestones Are Important — preserving the integrity of the original content is testimony to the fact that this book has truly stood the test of time. The sidebars throughout the book (that were updated for the 20-year anniversary edition) have been updated again, but the core principles that parents and grandparents — those who embraced Robert’s story and messages 25 years ago — are sharing them with new generations who have found that its timeless wisdom and no-nonsense lessons can be applied to anyone’s life and their vision for a future that includes taking control of their finances.


People of all cultures and countries celebrate milestones. We use them to measure time, mark progress, reflect on the lessons we’ve learned, and celebrate accomplishments… and they give meaning to our life’s journey. They are a way that we integrate past, present, and future… looking back at where we started, where we are today… and the promise of all that the future can hold.


Today Rich Dad Poor Dad consistently ranks among bestsellers around the world in the categories of Personal Finance, Parenting, and Investing, has been translated into 38 languages, and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.


Rich Dad Poor Dad is Robert's story of growing up with two dads — his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad — and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.

Publication Date: 

Apr 1, 1997

Edition: 

25th Anniversary

ISBN: 

978-1612681139

Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing Your Organization and Creating Accountability for Results

Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing Your Organization and Creating Accountability for Results

Roger Connors, Tom Smith

A fully revised and updated installment from the bestselling author of The Oz Principle Series.


Change the Culture, Change the Game joins their classic book, The Oz Principle, and their recent bestseller, How Did That Happen?, to complete the most comprehensive series ever written on workplace accountability. Based on an earlier book, Journey to the Emerald City, this fully revised installment captures what the authors have learned while working with the hundreds of thousands of people on using organizational culture as a strategic advantage.

Publication Date: 

Jan 4, 2011

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1591845393

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

Combat, the most intense and dynamic environment imaginable, teaches the toughest leadership lessons, with absolutely everything at stake. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin learned this reality first-hand on the most violent and dangerous battlefield in Iraq. As leaders of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, their mission was one many thought impossible: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a violent, insurgent-held city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping, firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories, they learned that leadership―at every level―is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. 


Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training to pass on their harsh lessons of self-discipline, mental toughness and self-defense learned in combat to help forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After leaving the SEAL Teams, they launched a company, Echelon Front, to teach those same leadership principles to leaders in businesses, companies, and organizations across the civilian sector. Since that time, they have trained countless leaders and worked with hundreds of companies in virtually every industry across the U.S. and internationally, teaching them how to develop their own high-performance teams and most effectively lead those teams to dominate their battlefields. 


Since it’s release in October 2015, Extreme Ownership has revolutionized leadership development and set a new standard for literature on the subject. Required reading for many of the most successful organizations, it has become an integral part of the official leadership training programs for scores of business teams, military units, and first responders. Detailing the resilient mindset and total focus principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult combat missions, Extreme Ownership demonstrates how to apply them to any team or organization, in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.

Publication Date: 

Oct 20, 2015

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1250183866

Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smart

Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smart

Liz Wiseman

A revised and updated edition of the acclaimed Wall Street Journal bestseller that explores why some leaders drain capability and intelligence from their teams while others amplify it to produce better results.


We’ve all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always needs to be the smartest person in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go off over people’s heads; ideas flow and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now when leaders are expected to do more with less.


In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explores these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.


In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman has identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use—even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. This revered classic has been updated with new examples of Multipliers, as well as two new chapters one on accidental Diminishers, and one on how to deal with Diminishers.


Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. Multipliers will show you how.

Publication Date: 

Jun 15, 2010

Edition: 

2nd

ISBN: 

978-0062699176

Managing the Unmanageable: How to Motivate Even the Most Unruly Employee

Managing the Unmanageable: How to Motivate Even the Most Unruly Employee

Anne Loehr, Jezra Kaye

Who changed the rules of business?


It's a different game now. In an increasingly globally diverse workforce, it's vitally important that leaders understand their team inside and out. This takes a new toolbox of skills for the 21st century. Today you need winning strategies to avoid the costly pitfalls of high turnover, low morale and poor collaboration, not to mention the cost of missed deadlines and incomplete projects. 


Managing the Unmanageable will give you practical tips and proven techniques to show you how to:

  • Understand what's driving your unmanageable employee.

  • Evaluate the costs and benefits of turning him around.

  • Enroll her in that effort, and help her become a valued member of your team.

  • Guide all your employees to greater innovation, cooperation, and effectiveness.

  • Communicate effectively with each of the three generations in today's workplace

Publication Date: 

Jul 15, 2011

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1601631619

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, David Maxfield

Behind the problems that routinely plague our organizations and families, you'll find individuals who are either unwilling or unable to deal with broken promises. Colleagues break a rule, coworkers miss a deadline, friends fail to live up to commitments (or just plain behave badly), and nobody says a word. Nobody holds anyone accountable. With repeated infractions, individuals become increasingly upset until they finally do speak their minds, but they do so poorly--often creating whole new sets of problems. Research proves that mishandled disappointments aren't just morale killers, they're institution killers--diminishing organizational performance by 20 to 50 percent and accounting for up to 90 percent of all divorces. Everyone knows how to run for cover, or, if sufficiently provoked, step up to problems in a way that causes a real ruckus. 


Crucial Accountability teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand without harming the relationship--and, in fact, even strengthens it. Broken promises, missed deadlines, poor behavior--they don't just make others' lives miserable; they can sap up to 50 percent of organizational performance and account for the vast majority of divorces. Crucial Accountability offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life and for resolving all these problems--permanently.

Publication Date: 

Aug 26, 2004

Edition: 

2nd

ISBN: 

978-0071829311

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Emily Gregory

This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever.


The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person.


This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to:

  • Respond when someone initiates aCrucial Conversationwith you

  • Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it

  • Communicate more effectively across digital mediums


When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results.


Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.

Publication Date: 

Jun 18, 2002

Edition: 

3rd

ISBN: 

978-1260474183

The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

In THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIP, Jocko and Leif dive even deeper into the unchartered and complex waters of a concept first introduced in Extreme Ownership: finding balance between the opposing forces that pull every leader in different directions. 


Here, Willink and Babin get granular into the nuances that every successful leader must navigate. Mastering the Dichotomy of Leadership requires understanding when to lead and when to follow; when to aggressively maneuver and when to pause and let things develop; when to detach and let the team run and when to dive into the details and micromanage. In addition, every leader must: 

  • Take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts their mission, yet utilize Decentralize Command by giving ownership to their team.

  • Care deeply about their people and their individual success and livelihoods, yet look out for the good of the overall team and above all accomplish the strategic mission.

  • Exhibit the most important quality in a leader―humility, but also be willing to speak up and push back against questionable decisions that could hurt the team and the mission. 


With examples from the authors’ combat and training experiences in the SEAL teams, and then a demonstration of how each lesson applies to the business world, Willink and Babin clearly explain THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIPskills that are mission-critical for any leader and any team to achieve their ultimate goal: VICTORY.

Publication Date: 

Sep 25, 2018

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1250195777

The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization

The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization

Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith

The definitive classic on high-performance teams


The Wisdom of Teams is the definitive work on how to create high-performance teams in any organization. Having sold nearly a half million copies and been translated into more than fifteen languages, the authors’ clarion call that teams should be the basic unit of organization for most businesses has permanently shaped the way companies reach the highest levels of performance. Using engaging case studies and testimonials from both successful and failed teams ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the U.S. Army to high school sports the authors explain the dynamics of teams both in great detail and with a broad view. 


Their conclusions and prescriptions span the familiar to the counterintuitive: 

  • Commitment to performance goals and common purpose is more important to team success than team building. 

  • Opportunities for teams exist in all parts of the organization.

  •  Real teams are the most successful spearheads of change at all levels.

  • Working in teams naturally integrates performance and learning. 

  • "Team endings” can be as important to manage as "team beginnings.” 


Wisdom lies in recognizing a team’s unique potential to deliver results and in understanding its many benefits development of individual members, team accomplishments, and stronger companywide performance. Katzenbach and Smith’s comprehensive classic is the essential guide to unlocking the potential of teams in your organization.

Publication Date: 

Jan 1, 1992

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1633691063

The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround

The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround

Freddy Balle, Michael Balle

The Gold Mine: a Novel of Lean Turnaround deftly weaves together the technical and human pieces of implementing lean manufacturing in an engaging story that readers will find both compelling and instructive. Authors Freddy and Michael Ballé have produced the first integrated and systematic approach to a set of ideas that have maximized value and minimized waste throughout the world. At the heart of the Gold Mine is Bob Woods, a curmudgeonly sensei coaxed out of retirement by his son Mike to help boyhood friend Phil Jenkinson save his struggling company. Despite terrific products and a backlog of orders, Phil's company cannot generate enough cash from its operations to pay its bills. And so Mike enlists Bob to help his pal fix this crisis.


"You're trying to deal with your mess as if it was a technical problem," Bob tells Phil. "Move this machine here, change this design there, which it is to some extent, but it's all about people. You have a leadership problem not just a production or business problem." As Phil begins to tackle the key challenges necessary to improve his company's operations, he comes to understand the deeper points of lean. Readers will also draw powerful insights from his journey.


The Gold Mine presents all the key lean principles, ranging from well-known ideas such as pull and flow, to lesser-known yet equally important principles such as jidoka and heijunka. The book also reveals lean as a system using a realistic story to show how the principles are interrelated and how they lead to useful tools such as kanban or 5S.

Publication Date: 

Jan 1, 2005

Edition: 

2nd

ISBN: 

978-0974322568

Hardcover
Audiobook
What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

America’s most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder.

The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They’re intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith’s straightforward, jargon-free advice, it’s amazingly easy behavior to change.


Executives who hire Goldsmith for one-on-one coaching pay $250,000 for the privilege. With this book, his help is available for 1/10,000th of the price.

Publication Date: 

Jan 9, 2007

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1401301309

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Simon Sinek

Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. 


START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: 

  • why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? 

  • Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? 

  • Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? 

People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.  START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Publication Date: 

Jan 1, 2009

Edition: 

1st

ISBN: 

978-1591846444

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