Are you considering relying on a book to grow your business ?

You've finally started your business. Now the main issue you face is growth. How do you make sure you grow consistently, and more importantly, how do you ensure you survive and avoid issues that can get your business to go bankrupt immediately?
There are many books that promise to teach you how to grow a successful business. Well, there are quite a few troubles with books, namely :

a) Most of them have little or none evidence to confirm the value of the content The claims they make are merely opinions of the book authors.

Let's say you're interested in learning more on free people search. The evidence whether a specific people search engine works is easy to measure, compared to something like whether a specific psychological method works

b) The evidence boosting authors claims are often questionable. The authors are human beings as well and subjects to so-called 'cognitive biases'. A cognitive bias is a systematic mistake people are going to continue to be making till they get aware of it. Even after they get aware of it, they might need some systematic approach in order to consistently avoid making that mistake.

A good illustration is "confirmation bias'. It is a temptation to be very hooked on to ones own ideas and beliefs. A person with 'confirmation bias' will see the world in his or her own angle, acknowledging only those things, facts and ideas that prove him or her to be right, ignoring all things that simply don't fit their vision of the world. We all like it easy, and we don't like to hear too many alternative ideas. It's not so easy to get a sensible view in the short run, as we are constantly pushed to go further, but if we want to triumph, clear perception of truth is a must.

For instance let's take 'Good to Great', a publication by Jim Collins. Jim creates a model in which he compares all companies to 'hedgehogs'. He takes time to expound this view in a entire segment. But are 'hedgehog' organizations really a good example of a real business style? Hardly.

This is also an example of a selective bias, when you take a 'sample' that only confirms your views. This is a mistake that is often being done in the scientific community. You must take a diverse sample if you want your study to be meaningful.

c) Books shift your aim to fancy things, when in fact you should work on getting solid basis.

I am a big believer that the third Newton's law is a fundamental principle of success in business. Think I'm going overboard with this ? I'll explain.

The third Newton's law states, that every action is followed and accompanied by response. Action and reaction are interdependent. You take action, you get a specific reaction. Just like that. In the business world, you don't quite know the exact reaction to each action you take, so the best thing you can do is to take as many action as possible and see the reactions. Then, when you finally see, what actions bring success - repeat those frequently!

Let's look at AdSense for example. If you want to be prosperous with AdSense, try out as many keywords as you can and try to figure out, which mixture gives the highest CTR/profits. Then target those and focus on those (thanks gomu003 for that tip). You can, of course, learn from other people experience on the web. But learning from seasoned businessman and businesswoman on the web is often free - books are not.

Be aware of business books who promise a magic pill for making money and examine the evidence for those claims.