I'm a huge fan of reading nonfiction books. Whenever I am thinking about a new project, or want to learn a little background about something I hear about in passing, I can easily fire up my nook and find thousands of enlightening books to expand my knowledge and refine my interests. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of business how-to books. If an issue or topic is giving you and your startup trouble, it can easily be mastered by heading to your local big box store (while they still exist) and flipping through a couple books on the subject. This is probably one of my favorite tips for solving issues as they come up, but what if you need a more broad introduction to a topic? Let's say you wanted to completely learn how to start and run a business, with absolutely no prior knowledge whatsoever. I find that books like Starting a Business for Dummies don't provide quite enough information to get the whole picture, and you may end up buying and reading several different introductory books before you get an idea where to start. So, rather than try to pick up a new topic piece by piece, I have started using a new system to get the information I need--buying used textbooks on the subject.
For example, when I began down the road of entrepreneurship, I starting reading books like the aforementioned Dummies book or Art Of The Start. But I found that neither really laid out the concepts and ideas in an easy to learn way. Then a friend lent me Small Business Management, his textbook from a recent college course on entrepreneurship. I devoured the text in two days. Not only was it much easier to read than the non-textbooks that I had read, it went into much greater detail of every step of the entrepreneurial process, and had a much more developed index and glossary. Since it was a 15th edition of the text, it was also incredibly fine-tuned. When I returned the book to my colleague, I decided to order a copy of my own. I was stunned to find a used (condition: good) copy available for only $12 including shipping. That was less than half of what I paid for the Dummies book alone!
Since my first experience with the SBM textbook, I have done ordered textbooks for other subjects that piqued my interests (most recently investing, español, and film production). I have found that, because I am passionate about the topics and pursuing them of my own volition, these textbooks are very easy to read and I can power through in a matter of days. This is compared to my general hatred of slogging through a required class text. So, if you have ever had trouble trying to figure out where to start in a whole new field or endeavor, maybe try searching for a good textbook on the subject.
A good way to find a textbook for a course is to go to the website of your local community college bookstore. They usually have the ability to search for class specific texts. Once you have the ISBN number for a textbook, look it up and see if there are any older editions that you can find for cheap on the web. Once I've narrowed down a particular edition, I use a site called BIGWORDS to find the cheapest one available.
Good luck and happy learning!
No comments:
Post a Comment