Recommendations on good books for starting a small business?

[tcmJOE]

Hi there,

I'm sure there's already some forum posts on this already, but searching appears to be broken :(

My wife would really like to start her own business--she's a social worker and has had plans for creating an integrative speech/arts/therapy center for kids with disabilities. We've made plans to save for a few years to build capital (along with the ongoing Mustachian pay-off-your-loans-and-build-savings) and my wife will probably start more aggressively making contacts in her community for this, but as a part of us getting started we'd really like to find some good books on starting a business.

Does anyone have any recommendations for some good books to read? Particularly for ones focused on the social-work/medical/therapy field?

Thanks!

[Christof]

Simple Numbers by Greg Crabtree.

It's amazing how many small business owners have no clue running a business, because they usually are professionals in their field. Being excellent at your profession does not equal being excellent as a business owner. I speak from experience.

[ToTheMoon]

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.

Simple read, really good points, and speaks to what @Christof said about being excellent at your profession does not make one a great entrepreneur.

[swick]

That is a very ambitious goal and goes well beyond a small business. My first question is if this would be best run as a business or non-profit? Knowing only what you described a nonprofit might be the way to go, which would change your funding structure, how much personal seed money you would need, insurances, how you structure and report your business - everything.

Or maybe you are looking at it where you provide the business space and contract with professionals to provide the services, and you take a cut?

Or are you going to be hiring specialized therapists and having them on payroll?

All of these would look very different, while books are a great resource, I would encourage you to look for small business incubators/mentorships/development centers in your area. Most offer free basic business classes. At the very start, she should be looking at writing a business plan so she can answer some of these questions. It's the first step to everything :)

As far as specific books, it's not so much a business book, but as far as the medical/social work/art therapy field and different possibilities and opportunities for partnerships: Creative Healing : How to Heal Yourself by Tapping Your Hidden Creativity
by Michael Samuels was a pretty good read.

[tcmJOE]

Thanks all!

Definitely agreed on how being good at a profession != being good at managing a business. My mother ran a bakery for many years and always told me that the cooking part was the least of her worries. I might take a look at Simple Numbers.

@swick: We're definitely looking at whether or not this would be best as a business versus a non-profit, and how to bootstrap up from a small couple-of-person affair to our intended system (with specialized folk on payroll). This will require a lot of thought on our part, which is why we're trying to start planning now - a couple of years before we'll really have our seed fund together. Good suggestion on getting in touch with a local small-business-development agency.

[Papa bear]

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.

Simple read, really good points, and speaks to what @Christof said about being excellent at your profession does not make one a great entrepreneur.

+1


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[Bicycle_B]

OP, for future searches, Google is the easy way if you use the "site:" command.

For example, typing "site: mrmoneymustache.com small business book" in Google currently yields this very thread as the top result.  The general format is site: followed by the web address and the search terms.