The only 5 skills you need to build a $1B company

In today’s fast-paced world, many of us are overwhelmed by an endless stream of repetitive, time-consuming tasks that drain our energy and distract us from more meaningful work.

In Automate Your Busywork, entrepreneur and productivity expert Aytekin Tank argues that you don’t have to resign yourself to handling tedious chores that consume your time and mental resources. Instead, you can leverage automation tools to free up space for focusing on work that truly matters to you.

This guide discusses Tank’s advice for conquering monotonous labor and achieving greater productivity. We’ll explain how to:

• Identify routine tasks and how they fit into large processes
• Design efficient processes to streamline your work
• Implement digital tools to handle routine duties automatically
• Refine your automated systems for optimal performance

Additionally, we’ll expand upon Tank’s ideas with insights and actionable advice from productivity and automation technology experts.

In the 21st century, we can do extraordinary things: We can predict dangerous storms, explore distant planets, and save people from life-threatening conditions and injuries. Yet highly trained, experienced, and capable people regularly make avoidable mistakes.

In The Checklist Manifesto, Boston surgeon Atul Gawande contends the reason is that knowledge and complexity in many fields have exceeded the capacity of any individual to get everything right. Under pressure, we make simple mistakes and overlook the obvious. Drawing lessons from spectacular successes and failures in recent years, he argues that the solution is a checklist. The book builds the case for checklists and issues a plea for adopting this backstop to human fallibility.

Traction offers a helping hand for beginning entrepreneurs and others whose businesses are stuck at a point where hard work and determination are no longer enough for them to survive and grow. Business owner and consultant Gino Wickman explains how to structure your business using his Entrepreneurial Operating System to remove typical frustrations, so it regains momentum, it runs seamlessly, and you don’t get mired in details. The system is based on practical experience, not theory. Numerous tools and templates lead business owners step by step through processes to create a structure and core focus that strengthen and reenergize their organizations.

If you’re looking to break away from your current work arrangement and start doing something that you’re passionate about, consider starting your own microbusiness, a business run by one person. Where you once needed to have a fair amount of funding to get started, Chris Guillebeau suggests you can now do so for as little as $100.

In The $100 Startup, Guillebeau breaks down the process of starting your own business. He covers everything from finding your target audience to creating a development plan, explaining how you can find success without loaning a cent from the bank.

In 7 Powers, business strategist Hamilton Helmer argues that a company’s long-term success hinges on establishing a sustainable competitive advantage. Drawing from decades of experience advising top companies, he identifies seven strategies to help you outmaneuver competitors and achieve long-term success.

This guide explores each of Helmer's seven strategies, detailing how they create unique competitive advantages and when to implement them. Whether you're an entrepreneur launching a startup, a manager in a growing company, or an executive leading an established corporation, Helmer's insights will help you focus your resources on the most effective strategies at each stage of your company's development.

Additionally, we’ll complement Helmer’s ideas with research from management professionals and suggest actionable strategies to help you apply his concepts to your own business.

What are the secrets to being successful in your career? How do you build a world-changing product-based business? Entrepreneur Tony Fadell answers these questions and more in Build. The book is part career encyclopedia and part memoir, detailing Fadell’s extraordinary journey inventing the iPhone, and then starting Nest (a smart home device company) and selling it to Google for billions of dollars.

In this guide, we’ll first describe Fadell’s career trajectory—including how he failed to build a smartphone several times before finally hitting it big with the iPhone. Then, we’ll share Fadell’s advice for succeeding in every stage of your career, whether you’re just starting out or a CEO. We’ll also share his tips for creating a successful product-based business and building a great team. Along the way, we'll discuss how Fadell’s advice compares with other experts’ tips on building successful products, businesses, and teams.

Want to know the growth tactics that Uber, Facebook, and Airbnb used to reach massive valuations in record time? Written by LinkedIn founder and Reid Hoffman, Blitzscaling describes the counterintuitive business strategy of putting efficiency and confidence aside for pure speed.

Learn common attributes of today’s most successful tech business models, when it’s appropriate to blitzscale and when it will fail, and the counterintuitive violations of business common sense. While nominally a business strategy book, Blitzscaling is also relevant for investors who want to discover the next big company, employees who want to know how to work in one, and anyone who wants to understand how today’s companies grow at an unprecedented pace.

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

How do formidable companies lose their footing and fall into irrelevance—or even cease to exist? And how can other companies avoid the same fate? Jim Collins seeks to answer these questions in How the Mighty Fall. Backed by years of research into once-mighty companies, Collins contends there are five phases leading to a company’s downfall: overconfidence, overreaching, ignoring the signs, overcorrecting, and surrendering.

While the book is a warning to companies that have grown complacent, it also gives hope to those in the throes of decline. Collins says that by staying vigilant of the threat of failure, you can rechart your course, keep pushing forward, and ensure your company’s survival.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the five phases that lead to a company’s decline. We’ll then break down Collins’s advice for resuscitating a faltering company. As the book was published in 2009, we’ll also include updates on the companies he mentions, as well as connecting his ideas to concepts in his other books and examining the perspectives of other experts.

What if you could sit down with hundreds of the world's most successful people and ask them to teach you their greatest wisdom? One entrepreneur has done just that. In The Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett distills the business and life advice he’s gained from several years of podcast interviews, as well as his own extensive business experience. His tips are for anyone looking to make a difference in the world and live the most fulfilling, productive life possible.

In this guide, you’ll learn the five assets you need to maximize your impact on the world, how to turn stress into something exciting and energizing, and more. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Bartlett’s business advice with tips from books like Built to Last and The Lean Startup, and we’ll add to his life advice by consulting books like Outlive and Atomic Habits.