(Part 3) Best business leadership books according to redditors

Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life
  
  I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
  
  edit: added links to amazon

A true classic business book might help your thinking here -- there are sections about meetings and one-on-ones -- it's called High Output Management by Andy Grove and it's exceptionally cleanly and simply written. And it won't take you too long either. It has quite a following and that following is well deserved. It's a classic for a reason. I think it could help you as it has many others.

Here what I've picked up
On War by Clausewitz

MCDP 1 Warfighting

FMFRP 12-18 Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare

FMFRP 12-13 Maneuver in War

On Grand Strategy

The Art of War by Baron De Jomini

Just and Unjust Wars (apparently it's on the Commandant's reading list too)

Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle

Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla

Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare

Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat

Deep Maneuver: Historical Case Studies of Maneuver in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Volume 5)

JP-1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States

DoD Law of War Manual

The Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns

The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Strategy: A History

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World

MCTP 3-01C Machine Guns and Machine Gun Gunnery

Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006

The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq

The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy

Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

This is all I can name off the top of my head right now

Double Double by Cameron Herald

This is exactly what you asked for - all about growing your business.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

This is a great framework for starting and growing a business using a scientific metrics-based approach. Love this book.

Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro

This is a great book about founding, growing and exiting from a startup or new business. It's got tons of great advice in here about cofounders, legal setup, taking investments, and running the business in a way that facilitates a successful exit.

Read like your life depends on it. All topics. Grow yourself.

Also, a couple that I found useful around the concept of building a business (rather than being self employed):

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887307280/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_BpNSDbXK4T0Q7
  
• Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less (Revised 3rd Edition, 2019) https://www.amazon.com/dp/160832253X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rqNSDbJ1JR2BT
  
  Reading like a fiend will also help you in your job. You’ll become more effective in leading teams, leading yourself, influencing change across organizations. Your worth will climb whether you stay with the same company or move around or work for yourself.

Fortunately management is a skill that can be learned, just like development. The fact that you're trying to learn is a good sign. Rather than share specific bits of advice, I'm going to share some of the resources that helped me get up to speed.

I found the Manager Tools podcast and related information incredibly helpful when I made the jump into team leadership and management. Doing their version of One on One meetings helped me grow relationships with my team members, and the meetings helped me and my directs stay in tune with the work of the organization. A great place to start:

http://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics

Mark Horstman is one of the main guys at Manager Tools, and if you start listening, you'll quickly learn that The Effective Executive is his favorite book. I resisted reading it for years because I'm not an executive. I read it a few months ago, and I was silly to wait: if you're a "knowledge worker" or a manager of knowledge workers, you are an executive by Drucker's definition.

Another strong resource (and the first book I read on the subject) is Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald Weinberg.

And probably the most helpful book I've read in the last year: Communication Gaps and How to Close Them. Most of your hard problems won't be technical in nature: they'll be problems that arise due to missed or misunderstood communications. For instance, with the move from SVN to TFS, setting up TFS and importing your SVN repos is the easy part. Getting the few guys that aren't excited about the move to understand and embrace it will be the tricky part. Back to the Manager Tools guys, they have a phrase: "communication is what the listener does," and everybody listens in different ways. That's why successful changes usually involve repeated and varied communication.

Best of luck!

There aren't any audio books, but there are podcasts. I recommend The Backline.

Edit: Oops, I lied, there are a few, like Improv Wisdom, Getting to Yes-And, Second City Yes-And, Improv for Actors. Most are related to applied improv-oriented.

I highly recommend Mindset. A fixed mindset is basically shooting yourself in the foot if you have any sort of goal whatsoever.

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering is from the mid-90s but basically everything is still true today.


Becoming a Technical Leader and Apprenticeship Patterns are kind of like two sides to the same coin. I read the former during my first internship and I definitely think it helped me succeed at my second internship and in my first job.

On Writing Well has an entire chapter on technical writing, but the rest of the book is fantastic as well.

Say no more, fam.

You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
  
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
  
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
  
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
  
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
  
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
  
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
  
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
  
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
  
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
  
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
  
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
  
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
  
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
  
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
  
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
  
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life

The Mindful Marijuana User: A New Perspective & Realistic Approach https://www.amazon.com/dp/1941768199/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ZghPyb60C7QYJ

Sure can! I work in advertising so I actually read a LOT of stuff related to the industry.

And Then We Set His Hair on Fire is by BBDO's Phil Dusenberry, and is about a life in advertising. It's pretty good, and has some good anecdotes and advertising-world stories and insights in it.

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy is interesting.

Basically also, any books written by Fallon, Della Femina, Dusenberry, and Ogilvy are very advertising-intensive with also a look at what it used to be like inside of an agency.

Also, for your PR side, I've also heard good things about Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR but have yet to get around to it.

I hope these help!

I took a course on leadership theory which was based on the book Leadership: Theory & Practice by Peter G. Northouse. It provides a good, detailed overview of 11 different leadership theories as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Despite the subtitle, it's much more academic than practical, which is seemingly what you want.

Mindset, On Combat, On Killing, by Grossman. Also Leadership and Training for the Fight: Using Special Operations Principles to Succeed in Law Enforcement, Business, and War by Paul Howe.

As far as tactics go, get yourself some hands on training, depending where you are, you may have "tactical" instructors close that can put together a class.

I read a book once which talked about what I think it is you're talking about. I found it!
https://www.amazon.com/Tribes-We-Need-You-Lead-ebook/dp/B001FA0LAI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Well, it just so happens that I have a list prepared to tweet out—figured I'd share here as well :)

How to Win Friends & influence People

Never Eat Alone

The E-Myth Revisited

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

Tribes

Linchpin

A Whole New Mind

The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing

The millionaire Next Door

Cashflow Quadrant

Why We Want you to be Rich

Drive

Rework

The 4 Hour Work Week

Entreleadership

Thou Shalt Prosper

Driven

How to Get Ideas

The Go-Giver

part 2/2

Relationships:

• You deserve to be in stable, happy, fulfilling relationships with your family, friends, partners, and coworkers. A large part of this is tied into self-esteem & what you think you deserve & what you're willing to accept, so a big part of it is figuring out where your line in the sand is. Everyone is free to do whatever they want, but there's a big difference between tolerating situations, getting by, and being content, versus actually being truly happy & having great, fulfilling relationships.
  
• It's important to realize that relationships aren't 50/50, they're 100%/100%. They are a tremendous amount of work, whether it's a romantic relationship with a partner or a familial relationship with a sibling or parent or a relationship with friends, and the road is often rocky, which is why you have to give a lot & deal with a lot during the course of all relationships. A lot of relationships die not because they're not good, but simply because of a lack of effort on both ends.
  
• A really good book is "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. The basic idea is that there are only a handful of ways people typically feel loved, and identifying your primary method of input can help you figure out what you want from a relationship, and also figure out how to make your partner feel loved. The five "languages" are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Do you remember the girl in high school who always needed flowers or chocolates or teddy bears to feel like she was in a loving relationship? That's not shallow, that's just her love language.
  
• If you don't know what does it for you & then if you're not getting what you like in your relationship, then you're not going to feel very fulfilled on a regular basis, and likewise, neither is your partner. So it's not just about drawing a line in the sand about what is & isn't acceptable in a relationship, but also about what you want to have in your life & what you need to give to others to help them feel loved.
  
• I really like the love-language concept because instead of just "I need to try harder in my relationships", it gives you a clear path forward, i.e. figure out what you want & figure out what those in your lives want & how best to give it to them on a regular basis. Like, my wife really likes the "time spent" one, so anytime I do something like plan a date, she loves it because that's simply how she feels loved, so my effort on that is a way to express my love for her in a way that actually makes her feel loved, rather than what I think will make her feel loved in my mind, but doesn't actually do it in reality, haha!
  
  Finances:
  
  
• The first thing to do is to pick a number, i.e. figure out how much you want to make every year, based on the cost-of-living in your area & the lifestyle you want to lead. You can literally pick this out thanks to sites like Indeed & Glassdoor, which provide realistic pricing tiers for intro, well-versed, and guru-level experience in different job categories. So the payscales aren't really a question mark anymore...you can literally figure out how much you want to make, research jobs that pay what you want & also match your interests, get training for them, and get to work!
  
• The second thing to do is to work out a personal financial system that manages your money for you. You will only accomplish what you set out to achieve & then work on persistently. You already have a solid principle saved up, but managing finances on a day to day basis successful always benefits from having a well-defined set of personal rules for handling things, which includes figuring out how much you want to make at your job & then getting educated in that field & pursuing jobs persistently until you get what you want, as well as having a solid financial system in place for how you deal with each aspect of your financial life - fixed expenses, variable expenses, debt management, retirement savings, living below your means, and so on.
  
• The first book I'd recommend is "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" by T. Harv Eker, which is a little cheesy, but contains the critical component of changing your mindset about how you think, interface, and deal with money, which is the first place that people get goofed up - having a system comes later; learning how to mentally approach finances is a really huge first step that a lot of financial books miss, because they don't address the psychology behind why we do what we do & how we think.
  
• The second book I'd recommend is "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy Paperback" by Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko. This is a data-driven book, so it's not the most exciting read, but it illustrates a lot of actual, factual information & statistics about wealth management. I'd also recommend reading up on FIRE. Again, you only accomplish the things that you work on, so the more good stuff you can invite into your life through research, selection, and effort, the better your long-term results can be!
  
  Habits:
  
  
• "Atomic Habits" by James Clear is a really fantastic book about how habits operate. I'd highly recommend picking up the audiobook & listening to his story about how he got injured & used tiny habit changes to make huge impacts on his life. Lots of really fantastic concepts in this book!
  
• Just to throw an idea out, consider adopting a "personal productivity system" or "PPS", which is simply a set of methods for how to force yourself to do stuff you want to & have to do. Everyone has a PPS, and sometimes they're not so useful because you're stuck with no clear path forward in your life. Having a strong PPS enables you to solve problems & work on things effectively & efficiently. One of the tools I use in my own PPS is the "3P Approach" mentioned earlier, where I break things down into the premise, parts, and procedures required to accomplish what I have to or want to do, rather than just walking around confused with no idea how to really proceed & no idea what I really want, exactly.
  
  Anyway, don't get overwhelmed by all of this - this isn't all stuff you have to do overnight, instantly, in one big shot. It's like high school - you went there for years, chipped away on things, and eventually grew up & moved on. Improving your life isn't just reading a motivational poster or feeling happy for a day, it's a lifestyle change, and it's going to take some time.
  
  Just don't be afraid of the big amount of work that it looks like on the surface, because remember, we can only ever really do one thing at a time, so all of the stuff listed above was, for me, the result of decades worth of working on self-improvement to get better results & be happier in my life, because those were really big struggles for me for a long time! The good news is that it gets better, and your results are directly correlated to your decisions & your efforts, so simply by deciding that you want better & then chipping away on it, you'll start to do better & feel better over time!

I'd go into design research and/or design planning&strategy. Design research uses many ethnographic methods, all influenced by anthropological practices (some do them better than others, but understanding the background is a huge advantage).

One place to look is the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology – they offer a dual Masters program where you can get an MBA and a Masters in Design (MDes). Further, if you're interested, they have a 1 year foundation program for people without an undergrad background in design. It's a top program and its roots trace back to the Bauhaus.

Now that I'm done pitching my favorite program, there are also good options at other programs and some business schools are adopting design-based innovation ideas.

Check out Roger Martin's book "The Design of Business" for one (excellent) take on design thinking and business.

Currently reading a book on combining both...Mindful Marijuana User. It's not bad besides the occasional typo/grammatical error and the author continuously referring to cannabis with antiquated street names like 'grass' and 'pot' in what is supposed to be a clinical book on the subject. Besides those distractions the book is pretty good and I used some of the ideas last night with some success.

Hey fella,

Can't help you with practise exams. BCS are extremely anal about keeping courses focused on their books and material.

I took this course a couple of years ago now and to the best of my memory it was entirely focused on the following book:
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Analysis-Malcolm-Eva/dp/178017277X

It focused heavily on going through the book end to end and ensuring you grasped the fundamental of each stage and the terminology across it.
I think it was multiple choice as well.

In addition to this I can send you an image that our tutor drew over the three day course on the white board which were diagrammatical representations of the major points that we reached during the course. There are a lot of acronyms to help remember the main parts. These were the main areas we were told to focus on and should revise as they would most likely come up in the exam.

If you do choose to use a company, QA were the company I did it with in Leeds and they were pretty good. You actually got a hard copy of the above book AND a slimmer QA/BCS specific exam focused printed notebook which summarised the larger book down.

Drop me your email addy and I'll send the diagram over. I've actually added a little more info to expand it for my benefit. It's a pretty useful tool to have on your desk regardless.

If you know the book and terminology well you should do OK in the exam.

Good luck.
Andy.

Here are some general management/leadership books that I've enjoyed:

• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
  
• The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
  
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
  
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
  
• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know—and What to Do About Them
  
  None of these are specific to our field, but knowing about this stuff can really help you get ahead in your career.

The Alliance (by the founder/chairman of LinkedIn) offers some interesting ideas on how to remedy this.

Absolutely true. Rory Miller's "Reflections on Violence" and "Facing Violence" do a solid job of covering what the body goes through during those situations. Paul Howe's "Leadership and Training for the Fight" is also good in explaining how to train for these situations.

But, you won't know how you'll respond until you're there.

I have been in a few life threatening situations where the adrenaline kicked in and I stayed surprisingly calm. When I was a Resident Assistant in college, we had a fire. Without really, "thinking", I went to my bathroom, got a rag, got it wet, and covered my mouth. I walked to each door, banging until I got my residents out. Then I went down each floor and did the same. I found three other RA's just frozen in panic. I had rounded up two other residents who were pretty calm about the situation, and sent them down each wing of each floor banging on doors to get people out.

I've dealt with broken bones and car accidents with a level head. but I'm not going to lie to myself or you and say that, "oh yeah, if bullets are flying my way, I'm Mr. Cool-as-a-cucumber"

I've not trained for those situations. I'm a better-than-average shot, but I have no idea what'll happen when the adrenaline is pumping.

My biggest beef with many conceal-carry folks is that they think they know that it would be "totally different" if they were there. The most honest carriers I know will say, "I'd probably be dead, but maybe a few others would have lived because I shot back"

A good reference book for just about all things leadership would be Leadership: Theory and Practice by Peter G. Northouse. Reading it in class for my engineering management degree. Very comprehensive text on leadership from a variety of viewpoints.

Toasted Corn, Taco and Nacho Cheese at one point in time were all marketed with equal weight. That was until a market researcher named Roger Enrico came along. He found that Toasted Corn and Taco had a trial rate of 40%, meaning that 4 in 10 consumers had tried Toasted Corn and Taco. However Nacho Cheese was only at 10%. This was mindblowing news when he found that the sales of Nacho Cheese was equal to that of Toasted Corn and Taco. It was selling 400% faster than the other two flavors, but less people knew about it. He insisted that Nacho Cheese be the only ads run, as to boost trial of this flourishing flavor. Sales doubled in one year, and Frito-Lay became the giant you know today. Source

I strongly recommend High output management by Andy Grove. Theres a reason it's called the Silicon Valley bible and so many tech leaders swear by it. I've read a lot of leadership books on managing people and this is the one I still keep coming back to.

Theres a lot of good stuff from Peter Drucker (pretty much the first guy to write on management as a discipline) that is timeless. Ironically he was good friends with Andy Grove and you can see some concepts borrowed from Drucker in High output management. The effective executive is probably his best work but Essential Drucker is a good compilation of a lot his stuff.

Eliyahu Goldratts Theory of constraints is really good as well as some of hi ls other stuff. He was accused of just copying old concepts from management science that was 40 years old. Thats probably true, but his books are still fantastic

> Edit: Oops, I lied, there are a few, like Improv Wisdom, Getting to Yes-And, Second City Yes-And, Improv for Actors. Most are related to applied improv-oriented.

I feel like Improv Wisdom is not really a how-to, but more of a spiritual book.

Do you know if any of those really teaches about the art of improv?

​

>Sam Walker makes the case that Jordan wouldn't have won without Cartwright. His team needed a selfless watercarrier to inspire the others to hustle rather than let the self-centered star do it all.

MJ was already implied to be "God-like" since the 80s when Bird said so, in 87'. Before Cartwright was even on the Bulls.

MJ was doing stupid shit right off the bat, out of the draft.

There is 0 chance he only won because of Cartwright. Or even MOSTLY because of Cartwright.

Put him on the Lakers, Celtics, or Pistons in the 80s, and he is winning a ring every year that decade.

The CO is always ultimately responsible for his ship. He selected and approved the officers on watch, he (tacitly) approved training and certification of the other watchstanders. He approved of his bridge and CIC crew enough to leave the bridge and go to sleep.

This is accountability. It's the epitome of leadership, and absolutely necessary to make an organization run effectively.

I highly recommend this book if you can find it. (I'm biased - Professor Montor was my leadership instructor). Otherwise It's Your Ship is an exceptional book on leadership.

Maxwell's Leadership book is also an excellent read & resource

If you want to dig up books on your own, be careful to differentiate "leadership" from "management."

By request of /u/axiomshift

http://www.leadernetworks.com/2010/03/moderators-reading-list-for-online.html

https://www.amazon.com/Tribes-We-Need-You-Lead/dp/1491514736

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Online-Forums-Everything-Successful/dp/081440197X

https://www.amazon.com/Buzzing-Communities-Bigger-Better-Active/dp/0988359901/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0988359901&pd_rd_r=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF&pd_rd_w=A0ACN&pd_rd_wg=gMg4i&psc=1&refRID=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF

https://www.amazon.com/Online-Community-Management-Dummies-Deborah/dp/1118099176/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118099176&pd_rd_r=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF&pd_rd_w=A0ACN&pd_rd_wg=gMg4i&psc=1&refRID=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Thrive-Creating-Networks-Communities/dp/0123749212/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0123749212&pd_rd_r=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF&pd_rd_w=A0ACN&pd_rd_wg=gMg4i&psc=1&refRID=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-Evidence-Based/dp/0262016575/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0262016575&pd_rd_r=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF&pd_rd_w=A0ACN&pd_rd_wg=gMg4i&psc=1&refRID=254G3MFBSGXHHHGNAVCF

Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen

Have you read Design of Business by Roger Martin? It's a design thinking book, but of a different school than the IDEO folks. Honestly, I've been underwhelmed by the so-called transformative power of that approach, and this is more design systems thinking than anything; it's reframed the way I think about almost everything.

You beat me to it, and I'm sure someone will mention
The Millionaire Next Door so here is a link.

Some great points here but from the sounds of your post that you are now "in charge of Salesforce" there aren't people telling you what to do in it. It sounds to me your job role has changed from "The Admin" to "The Consultant/BA". Yes go for some certifications but mostly I think it's about moving more into the Consultant/BA role. Find how Salesforce can be used more effectively in your company to add value and measure it!. Actually, sit with some of your users who are advocates of Salesforce and understand how they do their job. I always look for people who use Excel/paper forms or are chasing different people for the same information again and again. Excel and paper forms can be turned into Salesforce objects, the chasing emails can be turned into workflows/process builder/automation. Work out how many times they have to copy/paste/send emails etc based on what you have automated. Then go to your boss and say hey I just saved the company $$ by automating this process. Maybe go look at common processes that the company does as a whole where you can make a bigger saving.

IMO That sounds a million times more compelling to your boss than hey look I passed the Salesforce Admin exam and completed 100 badges on Trailhead. I'm not saying not to do training but once you have identified the need for Salesforce its time to fill in your knowledge gaps with Trailhead/Certs etc and what better way to learn than on a real life scenario.

This sounds like a great opportunity and if it doesn't work out you can always put on your CV I saved the company $xxx,xxx in automating their processes using Salesforce.

Some books which I've had for YEARS but are (IMO) the bibles on Business Analysis:
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Analysis-Techniques-Essential-Success/dp/1780172737
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Analysis-James-Cadle/dp/178017277X

Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter.

This book helped us a lot. The idea is to make your organization a well-oiled machine. It could basically function without you for 6 months. :)

This book impacted my business more than any other. It's the only book in it's category that I cannot sum up in 3-5 sentences.

This is a standard shopify template. No problems there, except the second image is not sized correctly. Just disable the second image. it's better to not have a scroll anyway.

But there are a couple bigger problems here. You have no unique products that I can not get on Amazon. This is a huge issue. But bigger than that...

>I'm going for a kind of apparel/accessories website for young women.

Super vague. This idea will never fly. ever.
Do some homework first.
https://www.amazon.com/Tribes-We-Need-You-Lead/dp/1491514736

Sam Walker makes the case that Jordan wouldn't have won without Cartwright. His team needed a selfless watercarrier to inspire the others to hustle rather than let the self-centered star do it all.