The Most Valuable Entrepreneurship Learning Resources (What I Wish Had Existed When I Started)

Cam Woodsum
Posted by Cam Woodsum 8 Min Read

This is the guide that I wish had existed when I started my entrepreneurship journey back in ~2005 and it’s what I’ll share with my future kids.

These are all of the best resources, books, articles, and podcasts that have shaped me into the entrepreneur that I am today.

If you’re trying to figure out how to level up your entrepreneurship/business acumen, this will likely be extremely helpful! 🤙

This article is broken up into various sections so feel free to jump around!

  1. Psychology of Success
    1. Read my guide to the psychology of success
    2. Watch videos of successful people describing principles of success (lots of interesting women to choose from): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf3y-2dkOas&list=PLiZj-Ik9MmM0VWRGYCfuUCdyhKfU733WX&ab_channel=EvanCarmichael
      1. Steve Jobs’s 10 Rules of Success (40 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzAtxW3TzY
      2. Oprah Winfrey’s 10 Rules of Success (11 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a8ncSBU-Eg
      3. Arianna Huffington’s 10 Rules of Success (14 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vWmVoL8tTc
      4. Sara Blakely’s 10 Rules of Success (Spanx Founder)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vssrx7G-94w&ab_channel=Top10RulesForSuccess%2FEvanCarmichael
      5. Marie Forleo’s 10 Rules of Success (Bestselling Advice Author) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pljd0euzXiY
      6. Elon Musk’s 10 Rules of Success (7 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX7I_Rw8Q0I
      7. Jeff Bezos’s 10 Rules of Success (9 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAdjNuE6EZQ
      8. Bill Gates’s 10 Rules of Success (13 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq-gba5nMrc
      9. Warren Buffet’s 10 Rules of Success (9 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEgu6p_frmE
      10. Gary V’s 10 Rules of Success (25 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vqJrJ8cxEQ
      11. Beyonce’s 10 Rules of Success (9 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC79HWP6IXY
      12. Anna Wintour’s 10 Rules of Success (10 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MW-hPH1OLM
      13. Brene Brown’s 10 Rules of Success (38 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDS5bqvOlhc
      14. Mark Cuban’s 10 Rules of Success (10 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRMybKaNSus
      15. Rachel Hollis 10 Rules of Success (Bestselling self-help author) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGGOBCJrlfg
      16. Steve Jobs secrets of life (2 mins) https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw
      17. Gabby Bernstein’s 10 Rules of Success (Bestselling self-help/spirituality author) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6UHbCpk_EI
      18. Michelle Obama’s 10 Rules of Success https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdePbLi8-ao
      19. Rihanna’s 10 Rules of Success https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlLvtxHagg
      20. Jennifer Lopez 10 Rules of Success https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhm_WKOuVQ
    3. How To Get Rich by Naval Ravikant (3.5 hours)
    4. How to be successful by sam Altman (15 mins) https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful
  2. Startup Philosophy (from the founders of YC which is the most successful startup accelerator ever and helped launch DoorDash, Instacart, Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb, and lots of other successful companies)
    1. Startup Philosophy by Sam Altman (25 mins)
    2. How To Start A Startup by YC (20 hours of incredible videos from the best entrepreneurs in the world)
    3. 13 Sentences To Describe Startups by Paul Graham (5 Mins)
    4. Be Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham (5 Mins)
    5. Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham (10 Mins)
    6. 9 Scaling Lessons From Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn (6 Mins)
    7. Bonus: Watch videos from YC’s Female Founders Conferences (best female entrepreneurs in the world giving advice and talking about their stories)
      1. 2018 NYC
      2. 2018 SF
      3. 2017
      4. 2016
      5. 2015
      6. 2014
  3. Entrepreneurship Books To Read
    1. The Lean Startup (the philosophy behind how I build businesses and maybe the most famous startup book ever written)
      1. Watch the summary first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sobxOzRjAGg&ab_channel=BookVideoClub
    2. The Four Hour Workweek (popularized the nomadic and passive income way of life)
      1. Watch the summary first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3TeLsaKzAM&ab_channel=FightMediocrity
    3. Rework (quick, easy, and interesting read about how you shouldn’t follow traditional business rules and you should do things your way)
    4. The Personal MBA (overview to everything you need to know about business, haven’t read this yet but I’ll read it with you)
    5. Bonuses:
      1. How I Built This Podcast by Guy Raz (fantastic podcast where he interviews the most successful entrepreneurs in the world about their path to success. Definitely recommend listening to a few, maybe especially some of the female entrepreneur stories)
        1. How I Built This Book
      2. The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AB12U4W/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
      3. Steve Jobs Biography (one of my favorite books, all about how there aren’t any rules or biz or life and that you can achieve anything)
      4. You Are A Badass At Making Money (this is about a female entrepreneur’s journey to traveling the world and becoming very successful)
  4. Project Management / Productivity / Habits
    1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Book Summary (7 Mins)
    2. Getting Things Done (my favorite productivity and thought organization book)
    3. Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss

Bonus Resources About Specific Skills

  1. Customer Service
    1. Read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
  2. Online Business
    1. Read: https://www.freedomiseverything.com/the-best-guides-to-starting-a-digital-business-fba-affiliate-consulting-dropshipping-ecommerce-etc/
    2. Read https://www.freedomiseverything.com/retire/
  3. Content Marketing
    1. Growth Machines’ Free Content Course on growing a blog from 0 to 100k visitors in 8 months (this has been wildly impactful and important for me)
    2. The Wiki Strategy: How to Grow Your Blog to 100k+ Monthly Visitors by Nat Eliason (also an amazing read)
    3. The Gary V Content Strategy
      1. https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-garyvee-content-strategy-how-to-grow-and-distribute-your-brands-social-media-content/
      2. https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-create-64-pieces-of-content-in-a-day/
    4. Other Content Site Case Studies
      1. The Story of NerdWallet’s $520M Content Empire (15 Mins) https://thehustle.co/nerdwallet-maggie-leung
      2. 7 SEO Ideas From NerdWallet’s Success (10 Mins) https://www.thehoth.com/blog/nerdwallet-seo/?utm_campaign=Submission&utm_medium=Community&utm_source=GrowthHackers.com
      3. 6 NerdWallet Strategies (5 Mins) https://www.linkdex.com/en-gb/inked/nerdwallet-organic-search-strategy/
      4. Buffer Blog to 1.5 Million Readers (25 Mins) https://blog.bufferapp.com/buffer-blog-one-million?utm_campaign=Submission&utm_medium=Community&utm_source=GrowthHackers.com
      5. Skim: UpWorthy, A Case Study (20 Mins) https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/upworthy/
      6. Key Takeaway: People love sharing maps. How We Scaled From 0 to 100,000 Blog Visits (20 Mins) http://yesoptimist.com/content-marketing-seo-case-study-the-trifecta-strategy/
      7. How Kissmetrics Scaled Content (1 Hour) https://www.dropbox.com/s/7red9bsyfi9dvkp/The Content Marketing Playbook.pdf?dl=0
  4. Growth Marketing
    1. Growth Marketing Handbook by Julian Shapiro (one of the best growth marketers in Silicon Valley) – this is a killer overview of a lot of all things digital marketing. I’ve especially found it helpful in regards to writing effective, concise copy.
    2. Backlinko.com (for search engine 0ptimization aka SEO content)
    3. Brian Balfour’s Guide To Customer Acquisition
  5. Copywriting
    1. The Definitive Guide to Copywriting by Backlinko (this guide is fucking awesome and it’s from the best SEO blog on the internet)
    2. Our 8 Best Ad Copywriting Tips EVER! (from Wordstream)
    3. The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever) by CopyHackers
    4. The Ultimate Guide to Copywriting by Neil Patel
  6. Sales
    1. The Video That Taught Me To Sell (15 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbS-y0L3gRI
    2. My Second Favorite Sales Video (17 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK64vdljZ0
    3. Jordan Belfort: Sell Me This Pen (2 mins) https://youtu.be/72_tkbnY3Sg?t=101
    4. Top 10 Sales Techniques For Entrepreneurs (25 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwgGOBw1oE
    5. 10 Tips on Business Development (4 Mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Xwy-XBVgk
    6. Bonus Book: How I Raised Myself From Success To Failure http://www.amazon.com/How-Raised-Myself-From-Failure-ebook/dp/B002XQAAWW
  7. Outsourcing & Hiring Contractors (read this when you start scaling/hiring)
    1. https://www.freedomiseverything.com/outsourcing-guide/
    2. https://www.freedomiseverything.com/5-lessons-from-hiring-and-managing-contactors-in-30-countries/
  8. How To Hire & Manage Remote Teams (read this when you start scaling/hiring)
    1. https://www.freedomiseverything.com/remote-guide/

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