In Think Better, Michael Sonnenfeldt offers 40 winning strategies that have achieved extraordinary success for dozens of entrepreneurs that he has studied for more than twenty years.

I agree with him: “The primary source of new, sustainable jobs will be small companies founded by entrepreneurs, some of which will grow into behemoths in the years to come. As Neil Patel suggests in an article for Forbes.com, “90% of Startups Fail. Here’s What You Need to Know About the 10%.” Here’s a direct link to that article.

Sonnenfeldt carefully organizes and presents his information, insights, and counsel within a six-stage process:

1. Self-Assessment: Look deep into your character “and gauge whether you can really juggle an endless number of competing demands and are armed with the traits that mark the successful entrepreneur, a whole other species of businessperson.”

2. Team Building: Most entrepreneurs “reaped the benefit of the talents and strengths of others — trusted advisors, partners, managers, and employees — every step of the way.”

3. Risk Management: The best entrepreneurs “are not crazy risk-takers. They develop strategies — psychological as well as financial — to manage the kinds of risks that other people don’t even consider.”

4. Growing Your Business the Smart Way: “It’s like building a bicycle while riding it.”

5. Protecting Your Wealth: “For very successful entrepreneurs, the biggest challenge is often not making money but rather protecting the money they’ve made. Doing so requires them to adopt a new mindset and not think like an entrepreneur.”

6. Making It Meaningful: “I’ve often observed that when an entrepreneur does commit to donating money and time to an issue, cause, or institution they care about, they wish they had done it sooner.”

Here’s how he concludes his book: “In the end, it’s those dreamers among us that will keep the American dream alive — for all of us.”

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Michael Sonnenfeldt is the Founder of TIGER 21. He also is Chairman of Carmanah Technologies Corp., a public Canadian company that designs, manufactures and distributes solar powered products and systems for industrial applications globally. To learn more about him and his work, please click here.

Think Bigger: And 39 Other Winning Strategies from Successful Entrepreneurs was published by Bloomberg Press (September 2017).

I also highly recommend two others:

American Entrepreneur: The Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States
Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti

Swimming Across: A Memoir
Andrew S. Grove