Never listen to experts.

That's not quite right. Listen to experts -- if you know without a doubt they really are an expert in your field. Otherwise, stay away.

Or more to the point, if you can find that "Expert" early in your career, and can take his/her advice to heart, and can adapt that advice to your own situation and quirks, then yeah, listen to the expert.

Good luck with that.

You won't know it's good advice until you've already made the mistakes or had the success that tells you whether it's good advice. Ideally, you find that person and they are willing to help you and guide you. But it's hard to do.

But the biggest problem -- you probably won't listen. Simple as that. You will reject the good advice and do your thing, and maybe discover later on that it was something you should have followed, but oh, well, water under the bridge.

There are a whole lot of phony experts out there. Promotional minded people, who will have you going in the wrong direction, they'll make you feel good, rah, rah, rah. They won't tell you the things you don't want to hear.

There are few if any useful books for Mom and Pops; I don't think the money is there-- the Mom and Pops probably wouldn't buy them, most of them, they are seat of the pants, cards close to the vest, sort of personalities.

The books I have found are usually about accounting, or tax issues (how to set up an S-corp, for instance), or about other -- to me -- peripheral issues.

Or they are useless pep-talks ("You can do it!") or magical thinking. ("If you want it enough, it will happen!")

I was lucky enough to stumble across "Growing a Business" by Paul Hawken, early in my career. But not too early -- I'd made about half the mistakes he talks about, which made me wise enough to take his advice about the other half of mistakes I hadn't made yet.

Interestingly, Smith and Hawken's (gardening supplies) are out of business, and I'm still rolling.

(I'm pretty sure that Hawken made a bundle selling to a corporation, which drove it into the ground.)