I often find myself looking for good reads to keep me going. I'm a freelance producer and sometimes it gets tough when you have no work coming in. You start losing motivation and start thinking about how you should have listened to your parents when they offered you to join the family business. Well in times like that, I look for a good read to fuel me back up and keep knocking down those showbiz doors!

How Starbucks fought for its life without losing its soul
This is an emotional book to read. It’s written with a very genuine tone of voice and at times Howard Schultz admit the mistakes Starbucks made as a corporation and as an individual. The book is a great read for many reasons, but the authenticity that runs through the book is what has captured my undivided attention. "Onward" is divided into five parts titled "love," "confidence," "pain," "hope" and "courage." This goes to tell you how Howard feels deeply about Starbucks and how deeply rooted his love for this company runs. One of my favorite quotes:

“If not checked, success has a way of covering up small failures, and when many of us at Starbucks became swept up in the company’s success, it had unintended effects.  We ignored, or maybe we just failed to notice, shortcomings."

A must read for entrepreneurs with a growing business. This books does not teach you how to run a business, but how to keep passion alive in a competing business environment.

Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
I have to say, I have mixed feelings towards this book - at times I find myself mad at Timothy Ferris.  He makes complicated situations sound simple when you know in all reality, if you were to apply his methods, you would hit a brick wall, perhaps my interpretation of his methods or discipline is wrong...however for the most part, I find myself taking down notes and feeling inspired. Even if his methods don't work in real life, at the very least it will trigger some sort of revelation, thought, idea, inspiration and/or motivation. Here is one of my favorite quotes by Timothy:

“It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre.”

An excellent book for freelancers and those who mainly work from a lab top computer and a mobile phone.

What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do?
Before I started my first TV project, I had my doubts about producing. I wondered if I'm a good producer, and felt the need to find out what makes a good producer. I picked up this book and I have to tell you, it is one of the best books I have picked up. Mr. Turman, whom I had the honor of meeting after I finished reading this book, was a great inspiration to me and helped me make it through the early stages of developing my project, Lake Shore.

It's an easy ready, about 250 pages, and its humorous! Mr. Turman doesn't get into the technicality of producing, he talks about the character traits one must posses to be a good producer. I highly recommend reading this book, even if your not producing for film or TV, perhaps you want to produce a great dinner gathering, Mr. Turman will have some great advices for you ;) Here is one of my favorite quotes:

“A producer raises the money. Well, yes, a producer does that, but also a heck of a lot more. A good producer does many different things, and must have both creative and business skills. Mainly, producers want to tell stories. But so do writers. So do directors. So do some studio executives. The difference is that it’s the story a producer wants to tell that usually reach the screen”

If you want to be a producer - this is the book for you. Buy, read it, live by it.

The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook
My least favorite book to read, and for the life of me, I could not read this book line by line, however, I consider it a handbook every producer should have in their collection. It's the kind of book you use when you want to learn in more depth about a certain area of producing. It taps into some technical elements, but mainly it's driven by laws and regulations - and mostly targeted towards the US market.

A must read for all beginner and intermediate producers.

Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service
This book is full of quick reads and is divided up well, making it an easy read. I felt it mainly reinforced ideas I already held and it reminds me that my thoughts aren't all out of this world. The tone of Fried and Hansson’s narrative is sometimes confrontational, in-your-face, but I think that is necessary because their separate but related purposes are to challenge their reader to “rework” or, in some instances, “blow up” assumptions and premises about business success that are no longer true and, to encourage their reader adopt a new mindset, then formulate and execute new strategies and tactics that will achieve sustainable business success. One of my favorite quotes:

"You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it.."

If you need some fresh perspectives on how to get more done with less, and do so with less stress and more joy, look no further.

The high-energy tale of two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating FACEBOOK.
The author of this book mentions that this read is as a result of interviews, direct and indirect sources, found documents and court transcripts discovered while researching to write this. By no means is this exactly how FACEBOOK came to be, it's merely a direction which FACEBOOK 'sorta' took when it all started. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, one; because it's inspiring, two; patience is a vertue when dealing with business and three; if your out of sight, your out of mine.

'Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime."

Plain ol' good read for when you traveling.