Why You Should NOT Read Business Books

I read a lot of books about business, but it just recently came to me that I was reading them for the wrong reasons.  I’ve always read books with the expectation that I would get the right information on how to build my own thing.  Take these characteristics from this guy and those characteristics from that guy, blend them, add salt and voila!

However, it’s become clear to me now that all the great companies, the ones that everyone talks about in all these books, did something that no one had done before.  There was no blueprint, no how-to, no secret sauce.  They had an inspiration, set themselves to work on the vision they had in their heads, and made something from nothing.

Let’s go through the list of companies everyone talks about in every business book: Zappos, Craigs List, Tom’s Shoes, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc.  What makes these companies worth talking about is that they did something so different, so far afield from common thought and wisdom, that they set themselves apart from the noise.

I can’t create the same passion for customer service that Zappos has because that’s not my idea.  That’s Tony Hsieh’s idea and he got the payoff.  The same holds true for the characteristics we admire for any company.  I don’t want to create “Groupon for Black Labs” or some other “this for that.”  It has to be something I believe in or it will suck.  Furthermore, if in my mind I think it has to conform to some mold or it won’t be successful, I have already lost.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but for some reason it has crystalized for me over the last month or so.  I still think some business books have value because they inspire (or at least some do ), but I am not sure that someone else’s magic potion should be my magic potion.