10 Essential Business Books for the Female Entrepreneur
If you’re an avid reader or just a determined female entrepreneur wanting to learn all that you can, you know the value of good business books. They’re a are a great way to not only learn the journeys, successes, and struggles of other entrepreneurs – but they’re also a great source of motivation and inspiration.
In our hunt for the best books in this vertical, we came across these ten essential business books for women. Each of these is a must-read!
The Essential Business Books for the Female Entrepreneur
Boss Up by Lindsey Teague Moreno
Struggling to find the confidence you need to put yourself and your business out there? Lindsey Teague Moreno discusses ways to overcome your fears, find your passion, and create a business from it.
Boss Up doesn’t just console you in starting your business, the book gives you all the necessary tools to create your business and have flexibility, fulfillment, and security. Giving stories about her path to success (including failures), Moreno discusses ten philosophies that you’ll likely encounter through entrepreneurship.
She Means Business by Carrie Green
Need help turning your ideas into reality? Carrie Green’s She Means Business is a great resource. She dives into the struggles and challenges she faced starting her business at 20 and offers guidance and exercises that can help you with each step of the business creation process.
Through her own experiences of success and failure, Carrie Green shares how you can get clear on your business vision, get past your own fears, understand your target audience and connect with them, create and build your brand, manage your time, and so much more.
She Means Business is perfect for the creative businesswoman or someone looking to start entrepreneurship.
Get Over Your Damn Self by Romi Neustadt
Romi Neustadt started working in the corporate world as a lawyer and PR executive, but she knew she wanted more. Her goal? To bring flexibility, fun, and purpose to females looking to become entrepreneurs.
Through Get Over Your Damn Self, Romi offers advice, tips, and coaching to help you build the skills you need to start a business. You’ll learn how to connect with anyone on your business and product, all the possibilities and rewards for a turn-key business, and how to find the power that’s already within you to build the business and life you’ve been wanting.
Girl Code by Cara Alwill Leyba
“Girl Code is a roadmap for female entrepreneurs, professional women, “side hustlers” (those with a day job plus a part-time small business), and anyone in between.”
This book is a little different than the others. It doesn’t teach you exactly how to start or run a business, but rather how to become a better woman overall.
Girl Code gives women the confidence they need, helps you to “reconnect with your why”, and learn the power of connection. Companies like Kate Spade and Macy’s have even brought Cara in their offices to teach the “girl code” to their staff – if that gives you any indication of how great this book is!
Little Black Book: A Toolkit for Working Women by Otegha Uwagba
Little Black Book is the ultimate, modern career guide for the creative female entrepreneur. This book is beneficial for every female who is on the entrepreneurial journey. Whether you are just starting out on starting your business or you have a successful business already.
Otegha Uwagba gives you all the necessary tools and walks you through what you need to build a successful career. Through her toolkit, you’ll learn everything from how to ask for a pay raise to how to network, to how to overcome creative blocks. Chapters are dedicated to various things like how to thrive as a freelancer or how to overcome your fear of public speaking.
How to Style Your Brand by Fiona Humberstone
Branding is essential in attracting the right audience and engaging with them. Establishing your branding in the beginning – the look and feel of your business, its personality, even your brand’s name – is something a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with.
How to Style Your Brand is a workbook that will help you to find your focus and create your vision for the perfect branding. Author Fiona Humberstone goes through all of the tips and tools you’ll need, including the psychology of colors, how to use patterns and illustrations, and how to pull it all together to create something cohesive.
How Women Rise by Sally Helgeson and Marshall Goldsmith
Sally Helgeson is a leadership expert and Marshall Goldsmith is a best-selling leadership coach. Together, they have trained thousands of people to “reach greater heights.” They have seen the countless roadblocks that women face in the business world as men continue to rise higher and higher, and women continue to struggle for equality in the workplace.
How Women Rise looks at the 12 habits that are holding females back from their next raise. Together, Helgeson and Goldsmith combine their skills and knowledge of the business world to comb through these different habits and how you can overcome them. If you’re a woman ready to advance to the next level in your career, this is a great read!
Work It: Secrets for Success from the Boldest Women in Business by Carrie Kerpen
Work It is a career guide from Carrie Kerpen, and it includes advice from fifty different successful women on how to succeed in work, leadership, and life.
Carrie shares her personal stories and the lessons she learned from her own career on how to make your dreams a reality. Throughout the book, you’ll find tips and stories from names such as Sheryl Sandberg and Aliza Licht as they help dig up the secrets to success and offer inspiration to female entrepreneurs and women trying to climb the career ladder. Learn how to say no, when to say yes, how to make your career work for you and your family, the importance of talking about money, and so much more with Work It.
The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You by Lydia Fenet
The Most Powerful Woman in the Room shares the secrets of success and sales, as well as how to embrace your power in any room.
Lydia Fenet takes you through her journey from starting as an intern to becoming the managing director and global head of Christie’s Auction House. She is a leader in her field and takes you through the steps of how to stand out as a saleswoman and how to do so authentically.
In The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You, Lydia shares her sales approach that helped to shape her career and raise more than half a billion dollars for nonprofits all over the world. The book has plenty of case studies, insights, advice, and guides to strengthen all aspects of your life!
Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny
Barbara Stanny is a journalist, motivational speaker, and financial educator who explores the seven key strategies of females who are making six-figures in Secrets of Six-Figure Women.
Through extensive research and interviews, Stanny gives you all the necessities to make six-figures. She digs into the seven key strategies that high-earning females follow: profit motive, audacity, resilience, encouragement, self-awareness, non-attachment, and financial know-how. Through this book, you’ll also learn the challenges that women face in the business world and how to overcome these to get to the top.
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Have you read any of these books yet? If so, which did you find the most helpful? Are their other essential business books would you recommend for the female entrepreneur? Let us know in the comments below.
Alyson Pittman is a contributing writer for WBD and a JR marketing associate for Excite Creative Studios, an Atlanta-based creative agency.
Alyson graduated from Kennesaw State University with a Bachelors of Business Administration and a concentration in Marketing. She was in multiple organizations at KSU where she held leadership positions. As a part of the Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority, Alyson held the Social Coordinator position and planned/promoted large events.
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