5 Business Books by Family Successes

Adam Witty is an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member in Charleston, South Carolina, and founder and CEO of Advantage | ForbesBooks, the authority marketing specialists in working with business professionals to elevate brands and grow businesses through publishing. Adam has built the company into one of the largest business book publishers in America, serving over 1,000 members in 40 US states and 13 countries. We asked Adam to share some of his favorite family business titles:

Having my Dad by my side during the growth of my company, sharing his invaluable knowledge borne of building and nurturing his own successful company was not only a personal privilege but also a huge business asset.

I needed advice 24/7. He was there. I needed straight talk. He didn't mince words. I needed to be told when I was headed down the wrong path. He was not shy in sharing his opinions.

I'm not advocating starting a new business with family members. The pros and cons of this are well-documented, from the advantages of shared vision and company loyalty, to the disadvantages of festering familial conflict and lack of work-life balance.

What I do know is that taking the entrepreneurial plunge with a family member can lead to a special kind of success.

Here are five excellent business books co-written by family members who have taken that journey together.

1. Double Your Success: Principles to Build a Multimillion-Dollar Business  by Stephen Levi Carter and Dr. Sterling Carter

The Carters, twin entrepreneurs and co-founders of Sterling Staffing Solutions, share their journey from children of sharecroppers to owners of a hugely successful healthcare staffing business. The book is divided into four main sections: planning, implementation, a leader's mindset and potential pitfalls. The twins' humble background along with their military careers taught them about discipline and the need for a robust support system, traits that carry over into their business advice. Helpful tips and mnemonic devices (such as their CARES model: Compassion, Attitude, Respect, Excellence and Servant leadership) make it particularly user-friendly.

2. Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction and Lasting Change  by Louise Phipps Senft and William Senft

This husband-and-wife team are leaders in the field of mediation and conflict resolution. While it has the feel of self-improvement, the book is effective as a guide to improving business communication. It carries a message about the good that can come when, instead of focusing solely on winning a discussion or negotiation, we take the spotlight off the specific transaction and put it on the relationship, creating a win-win for all parties. Being relational involves focusing on seven attributes during any interaction: Being engaged, centered, grounded, clear, generous, humble and kind. The book contains elements of psychology, philosophy and spirituality, but is written in everyday language with a conversational style.

3.​ Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die  by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Brothers Heath have written a number of business books together. This is my favorite for students of marketing. The first step in any outreach, from an ad campaign to a sales presentation, is to create bold ideas that "stick"--ideas that "are understood and remembered and have a lasting impact--ones that change your audience's opinions or behavior." The authors identify the essential elements of a sticky idea: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. The premise: It's not the best idea that wins; it's the one that's best communicated. The Heaths use plenty of real-world examples of sticky ideas that have worked spectacularly or failed miserably. A little wordy, but that's a minor quibble. Best for anyone who needs to communicate their ideas more effectively and memorably.

4.​ From Problem Solving To Solution Design: Turning Ideas Into Actions  by J. Eduardo Campos and Erica W. Campos

This married couple are the founders of Embedded-Knowledge, Inc., a consulting firm helping business leaders design solutions to complex problems within their companies. They have worked in multicultural environments across four continents, dealing with intricate partnerships involving multinational stakeholders. In other words, they know how to problem-solve. It is this expertise they share here. The book is organized progressively in chapters that take the reader through the practical stages of identifying problems and designing solutions, employing real-life case studies and providing analytical tools that can be applied in virtually any context. Through their "IDEAS (Identify, Design, Engage, Act, Sustain) Framework" they have simplified what could be complicated, giving the reader a recipe for success.

5. Life is Good: The Book  by Bert Jacobs and John Jacobs

Life is indeed good for these brothers whose apparel company, Life is Good, is worth more than $100 million. Their book, like their business, is based on an attitude of optimism. Bert and John share the ride from their lower-middle-class upbringing to the runaway success of their business. They illuminate ten key "superpowers" as key to a sunny perspective and a terrific business plan: openness, courage, simplicity, humor, gratitude, fun, compassion, creativity, authenticity and love. Their story, illustrated with the company's iconic artwork, shows how to overcome obstacles, whether it's growing stronger from rejection, letting your imagination loose, or simplifying your life to focus on what matters most. It's a sweet, easy book full of good feelings.

The power of books

Finally, the first box had arrived. University of Miami English professor Frank Wills placed it on his desk and pried it opened, finding inside a collection of original black history and literature books that he knew every African-American student should have access to but didn’t.

So to correct that academic injustice, Wills immediately got to work, reproducing the books through his Miami-based publishing company and selling them at break-even cost to academic libraries across the nation.

That was in 1969. Over the next 20 years, other boxes would arrive, and Wills would end up publishing hundreds of existing titles by such famous black scholars and poets as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, and Phillis Wheatley. Originally published in the 1800s and early 1900s, the books are in the public domain and not subject to copyright restrictions. Wills published them as facsimile reprints with the original illustrations and typesetting.

But it was that first delivery of books 50 years ago that started it all. Back then, most of the nation’s universities and colleges didn’t have black studies departments. UM had been pondering the idea of starting such a program. One of the roadblocks was a lack of books on black history, culture, and literature.

Wills wanted to help, and one of the keys, he knew, was acquiring the books. But where could he find them? His big break came in 1969 on, of all places, a flight to Nashville, Tennessee.

Aboard the plane, he sat next to a philanthropist who was on his way to present a check to the library at the private and historically black Fisk University. So enthralled was Wills with the philanthropist’s mission that he decided to accompany him to Fisk after they landed, and it was at the Nashville-based university that Wills met librarian Jessie Carney Smith.

Together, they sifted through the Fisk library’s extensive collection of African-American books, selecting hundreds of titles that Wills decided he wanted to republish.

When he returned to Miami, he took out a bank loan to start his Mnemosyne Publishing company. And soon after, Smith, who is now dean of the library at Fisk, sent Wills the first shipment of books for republishing.

Wills would then sell the books to university libraries, giving academics and students access to the texts in their original form and language and helping to pave the way for schools of higher education to launch black studies programs in the years that followed.

He never profited on the sale of any of the books he published. “He wasn’t interested in making money,” said his wife, Susan Wills, a School of Law graduate and retired attorney. “He saw a need and just wanted the books to be there to better the lives of students. He wanted young students, through literature, to accomplish and succeed for their families, themselves, and society. And it was important for him to get the books into their hands.”

The titles ran the gamut—from William Wells Brown’s “The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius and His Achievements,” to Charles Chesnutt’s “The Colonel’s Dream,” to Du Bois’ “Quest of the Silver Fleece,” to Dunbar’s “The Love of Landry,” to Washington’s “A New Negro for a New Century.”

Today, Wills, 94, is retired and suffers from Alzheimer’s. Many of the works he published can still be found on the shelves of college and university libraries across the nation, including UM’s Richter Library.

“Every once in a while, I go to the Richter to look at some of the books. It’s such an incredible experience,” said Wills’ daughter, Susan Amat, who served as the founding executive director of UM’s Launch Pad and now heads her own entrepreneurship education company, Venture Hive.

Amat noted that Wills was sympathetic to Cubans who fled their homeland after Castro took power. So after he finished his African-American book series, he collaborated with Juan Manuel Salvat, the former owner of Ediciones Universal, a Miami publishing company that preserves Cuban history and culture, to publish works of major Cuban writers.

Wills’ life story would make an intriguing novel in its own right, said Susan Wills, noting her husband’s military service.

He grew up poor in a mixed Columbus, Ohio, neighborhood of Italian immigrants and blacks. After Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered World War II in 1941, a then-17-year-old Wills dropped out of high school to join the Navy, persuading his mother to sign the papers that allowed him to enlist.

He spent the next four years in the Pacific, serving in the forward engine rooms on three submarines that undertook death-defying missions such as deploying mines, rescuing downed American pilots, and attacking enemy supply ships.

He was a whiz at math, and his proficiency in the discipline helped him get promoted, even over other sailors who had college engineering degrees.

But Wills has never really talked much about his military service. “He’s never wanted to boast about it,” said his wife. “It’s always been difficult getting information out of him. He did what he was asked to do and more. He never whined or complained about how tough it was. He just went about doing it. Service to others, always thinking about the greater good—his whole life is built around that.”

On one of the rare occasions that Wills did share an experience from his days in the Pacific, he recalled being trapped at the bottom of Tokyo Bay aboard a submarine with his shipmates for days, as their commander tried to avoid being detected by enemy ships.

After the war, he enrolled at Ohio State on the G.I. Bill but later transferred to UM, earning a bachelor’s degree in education and then attending the University of Maryland for his master’s.

He returned to UM to teach full-time, instructing students not only in English literature but also math. He also advised students, helped Vietnam War veterans get enrolled on the G.I. Bill, and recruited talented Latin American artists for the art department, according to his wife. An Iron Arrow inductee, he served as the honor society’s faculty advisor. But his true calling was mentoring students, she said.

“He was not an academic, not a scholarly kind of person,” said Susan Wills. “At heart, he was a mentor.”

Wills retired from UM in 1984 but continued to publish books. During Hurricane Andrew, a small tornado blew the doors off of his book warehouse in South Dade, destroying most of their inventory.

“He taught me how to be a much better person,” said Susan Wills. “He’s a part of the Greatest Generation.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Wit Dunces

Measured by its impact, the BDS campaign to isolate Israel has been about as successful as the Charge of the Light Brigade, say, or the theatrical run of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, or any other cataclysmic failure that still inspires us, decades later, to ponder the bottomless depths of human ineptitude. And now, not content with their floundering boycotts, the champions of the anti-Israeli left have found a new villain: J.K. Rowling.

Why? Because Rowling is an outspoken critic of the anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn and his anti-Semitic Labour Party, a thought crime among those moral and intellectual degenerates who refuse to condemn hatred of Jews when it comes, as it so frequently does these days, from their side of the aisle.

Steven Salaita—the disgraced academic whose muddle-minded attempts at thinking got him jettisoned from a host of universities worldwide and who now spends his days theorizing on why Israeli hummus leads to genocide—entered the anti-Rowling fray, asking if it was possible to hide Harry Potter from his children, because, truly, there's no better mark of an open and curious mind than attempting to censure your children's reading list based on your political beliefs.

Not to be outdone, Rafael Shimunov, of the radical group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, accused Rowling of depicting “viciously antisemetic [sic] scenes in Harry Potter that destroyed Jewish kids who loved you and now they're grown up and you think you can make it up by using right wing Netanyahu talking points about Corbyn. But that's also antisemetic [sic].”

Just what sort of wicked deeds did the beloved author commit to warrant the accusation of destroying Jewish children, a charge previously limited to, say, the Einsatzgruppen? In a flurry of tweets, the studious Shimunov goes on to explain: In the Harry Potter universe, the banks are controlled by Goblins, and the chief Goblin is called Griphook. Get it? Grip, because he has a tight grip on money, and hook because he has a hooked nose! Which means he's a Jew! Which makes J.K. Rowling some sort of slightly more feminine Goebbels!

The hatred is revealing. In their well-scrubbed moments, the boycotters insist that singling out the world's only Jewish state for opprobrium even though—or even because—it's a pluralistic democracy has nothing to do with Jews. You can, they insist, be an anti-Zionist and not an anti-Semite. L'affaire Rowling proves yet again that you can't: The author had nothing to say about Israel. Her concern was the hatred of Jews in Britain, a hatred the community itself had unanimously and unequivocally characterized as a clear and present threat. And for that the BDS lowlifes pounced, arguing that anyone who bravely stands with Jews and speaks out against anti-Semitism must be some sort of bigoted emissary of the dark King Bibi himself.

Previously, this sort of reasoning was reserved to those who dwelled in padded cells and spent their days lining up for meds. But now we have Twitter, where such mad drivel can pass for sophistication. But hey, it's the holidays, time to be kind and compassionate to each other. So in the spirit of brotherly love, if you believe that singling out the world's only Jewish state for harsh criticism is totally not anti-Semitic but criticizing a man who declared Hamas and Hezbollah his friends truly is, I hope you get all the help you need.

Plucky, Charming New Books for Toddlers

It's possible there has never been a better time to be a toddler. True, you have to put up with grown-ups crashing playtime — today's parents can often be spotted in sandboxes, solemnly instructing their offspring to scoop and dump sand — but on the plus side, the books currently being made for the preschool (and pre-preschool) crowd are setting a new standard for delightfulness, cleverness and flat-out fun.

Board books, those dependable little thick-paged bricks designed to withstand chewing or banging around, are increasingly not just durable, but well written and ingeniously designed. Many other books for toddlers, like those oversize compendiums that have always been perfect for unhurried, lap-sitting reading sessions, are now sensitively updated, keeping the traditional stories and charming old-school art, but losing the racist and sexist stereotypes of yore. Humor, great illustration, lively storytelling, interesting facts about their everyday world, a cheerful surprise at every turn of the page — all of that, and more, awaits toddlers in these thoughtfully made books.

POOR LITTLE RABBIT! (Gecko, 20 pp., $9.99; ages 0 to 4), written and illustrated by Jörg Mühle, is an "interactive" book with no bells and whistles, just an invitation to participate by "helping" Little Rabbit, who's fallen down and scraped his arm. There's a red mark on his arm and we're invited to "try blowing on it." Unfortunately, Little Rabbit wails on the next page, "There's blood!" A Band-Aid (with bunnies on it, of course) appears. "Can you put it on?" comes next, but tears still stream down the distressed bunny's face. Saying a magic rhyme, stroking his ears, wiping away his tears, helping him blow his nose with a tissue and brushing off the dirt all follow.

Besides being fun, this gem is also a way to show toddlers how to put empathy into action. "You've made him all better," they're told at the end, and you can picture a toddler's sigh of altruistic satisfaction. The layout is simple and clean, with single-color pages in a palette of bright tones like turquoise and tangerine, allowing the focus to stay on Mühle's adorable drawings of Little Rabbit as he cycles through sadness and healing.

It might sound strange to call a board book "long awaited," but for those who have puzzled and perhaps even argued over the message of the great Sandra Boynton's 1982 "But Not the Hippopotamus," the arrival of a follow-up called BUT NOT THE ARMADILLO (Simon & Schuster, 14 pp., $5.99; ages 0 to 4) is exciting news. In the previous book, a solitary hippo politely refused to join other animals in various activities — dancing, shopping, drinking juice. Was she rejected and isolated, or just, you know, a bit of a loner? And when, on the last page, she finally agreed to hang out with everyone else, what to make of the armadillo who then appeared, with the line "But not the armadillo"? Some found it off-putting — a testament to the persistence of loneliness and alienation, a "Bartleby" for toddlers. Others applauded the self-determination exhibited by both the hippo and the armadillo.

I am here to tell you that Boynton has settled the question: The armadillo, "with his armadillo nose," really likes to wander around by himself, following that sausage-shaped schnoz "where it goes." He sniffs flowers, picks cranberries, stretches out languidly for a nap. He hears music from far away. A hippo (ahem) rushes busily by — "she wants to run and play." But, you guessed it, "not the armadillo." And that's O.K., we're helped to see: "He doesn't like to hurry." There's one more beat, a moment of parting grace that shows why Boynton is the absolute master of board books. "Please scratch his armadillo nose and tell him not to worry." To each creature his or her own.

The French graphic artist Jean Jullien has been giving Boynton a run for her money with the funny, graphically sophisticated board books "This Is Not a Book" and "Before & After." Now comes WHY THE FACE? (Phaidon, 32 pp., $14.95; ages 0 to 4), another conceptual book that shows off his ability to delight all ages with a few strokes of his thick black paintbrush.

The pages on the left — each rendered in an electric shade like citron or coral — all ask the question of the title, with a drawing in the center of the right page showing a child's face making an outsize expression. You have to guess what's causing it, and the answer comes when you lift a foldout to see the culprit. An unpleasantly scrunched-up face covers an array of smelly stuff like cheese, a trash can and an elephant's rear end ("Whoa, that stinks!"); a face with crossed eyes and a sticking-out tongue conceals a crying baby ("Cheer up!"); a girl with spirals for eyes reveals a montage of computers and other screens ("Five more minutes!"). As with all the best board books, its brilliance lies in its deceptive simplicity.

FRANKIE'S MAGICAL DAY: A FIRST BOOK OF WHIMSICAL WORDS (Abrams Appleseed, 20 pp., $16.99; ages 0 to 4), written and illustrated by Michelle Romo, is much more than just a catalog of words and corresponding images. It's really an heir to Richard Scarry's Busytown books, updated with groovy, neon-bright digital art — somewhere between Hello Kitty and the Jetsons — and a biracial girl named Frankie at the center. Its generous pages are laid out to show toddlers the teeming life and staggering variety of objects inside a house or a store or a garden, with small stories told through the details. There are aerial views of Frankie's town and a look inside her closet, and — in a final bit of whimsy — a last page that offers a peek inside Frankie's phantasmagorical dream. This is a book certain little ones will spend hours poring over and "playing" with.

Sylvia Long is the illustrator of a popular Mother Goose collection and other books for the smallest children, and her new one, SYLVIA LONG'S BIG BOOK FOR SMALL CHILDREN (Chronicle, 104 pp., $22.99; ages 0 to 4), offers a savvy variety of short bits, just the thing for a toddler who tends to want the same book every night. So much classic toddler fodder is packed in here: nursery rhymes, opposites, vehicles, an "I can" page showing achievements like saying goodbye and getting dressed, lullabies.

The art is old-fashioned and painterly, with cozy, saturated watercolor images of animals wearing clothes. They somehow give the suggestion of tolerance and diversity, with the "families" page showing animals holding babies of other species, and what looks like two married grandmas, a goat and a bear.

Like so many books that pitch their material perfectly to toddlers, this one exudes comfort and love without being syrupy.

For Riverby Books, a Time to Close

The closing of Riverby Books' Capitol Hill location brings with it all the hallmarks of the great literature that animated its business: a sense of place, change, ambiguity and loss.

"I love the way it looks. I love the way it feels. I have a lot of memories here. It's a neighborly place," owner Paul Cymrot said of what he will miss most about the store he opened at 417 East Capitol St. SE in 2001 with his father, Steve.

The decision to shut down at the end of the year was not an easy one, he said. The family launched its first bookshop two decades ago in the colonial- and Civil War-steeped city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. That branch will stay open.

Riverby has always been a cozy spot to gather on Capitol Hill, a place to drink tea in the afternoon, plop down in the orange chair (procured from the D.C. living room where Cymrot grew up) near the window with the nice natural light, and enjoy what Riverby mainstay Marcel Proust would call lost time.

"It's a place for people to be invisible," Cymrot said, pointing to the nooks and crannies shaped by the bookshelves he built himself.

So why close? According to Cymrot, he still doesn't have one or two easy sentences at the ready to explain it.

It's not the first time he has faced existential questions about this place. In November 2014, his father died after being struck by a vehicle while crossing the street near the store. Afterward, the family left a sign up on the door, reading in part: "Riverby Books is closed for the holidays and perhaps a bit longer while we figure out which way is up."

The next October, the Capitol Hill location reopened, with a new manager, Lori Grisham, who knew the family and had worked at the Fredericksburg store. "The other day I read an old New Yorker article from 2012 that said independent bookstores are reflections of the people who own and work in them. I think that's very true of Riverby," Grisham said at the time.

Leah Daniels, the owner of nearby Hill's Kitchen, voiced a similar sentiment. "The point of Riverby, and honestly, the point of Hill's Kitchen, through Steve, is community," she said. A Capitol Hill native who worked at Riverby from 2002 to 2008, when she left to open her kitchen store, Daniels said she owed her business philosophy to Steve Cymrot, who hired her all those years ago.

The difference between a neighborhood business and others, Daniels said, is a relationship between customers and proprietors that is rooted in shared experience, location and community. "It's not just transactional," she said.

Closing up shop is not a financial decision, Cymrot said, because the business is still doing well. Nor is it a solely personal one, although the loss of his father is still palpable.

"The business was an activity to do with my dad," he said. "But without him here, it's more work, less fun."

His own life increasingly centers around his home in Fredericksburg, with his family, friends and the original Riverby all there. "There's more call on my time there."

The connection to Capitol Hill, though, is not likely to fade anytime soon. This is where he grew up (with the orange chairs), where his mother, Nicky, still lives and oversees the family real estate business. The Capitol Hill Community Foundation, which the Cymrots co-founded, is headquartered next door to Riverby.

But the store's connection to Congress and Washington's political class will end. Among the Capitol Hill location's features was a refuge for congressional ephemera and antiquarian books, be they the personal library of the late New York Rep. Edna Kelly, signed copies of local authors' works, political campaign buttons and stickers, or original photos and planning documents for the capital city.

"I have a funny little belief that these historical things will find a place," he said, gesturing to the Kelly items at the top of a bookcase, though he did allow such items can command a narrow audience. "There was a reason I built them 12 feet high," he said of the shelves. "There was always going to be stuff people didn't need to touch as much."

What's next for the storefront, which Nicky Cymrot owns, is yet to be determined. Another used bookshop, filled with memories and tomes of another time, is unlikely.

Any business — particularly a bookstore in an increasingly digital age — that lasts more than 15 years is not a tragedy, even if its demise leaves a hole in the neighborhood.

"It's hard for people to accept change, but not everything's meant to last forever," Daniels said, adding that she is sad about the closing but understands.

For Paul Cymrot, reflecting on the many factors that went into his decision to close, there may not have been a singular reason, but it all came down to a singular decision. It was just time.

As for the future? "I don't know when the next off-ramp comes," he said, an ending befitting Proust.