11 books that transformed my business and bank account

Summary

11 books, sequenced. read them at the wrong stage and they don’t help. read them at the right stage and they unlock the next level.

1. mindset and productivity phase. The Big Leap (Gay Hendricks) and Deep Work (Cal Newport). zone of genius and the focus muscle.

2. customer acquisition phase, zero to six figures. Pre-Suasion (Cialdini) and Building a StoryBrand (Donald Miller). how persuasion actually works and how to talk about what you do.

3. systems-for-scale phase, six to seven figures. Traction (Gino Wickman) and Profit First (Mike Michalowicz). EOS for operations and a money system that actually keeps you profitable.

4. customer success phase, seven figures and up. The Effortless Experience (Matthew Dixon) and Never Lose a Customer Again (Joey Coleman). retention compounds harder than acquisition.

5. leadership phase. Multipliers (Liz Wiseman) and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni). leading people without being the bottleneck.

6. capstone for eight figures. Scaling Up (Verne Harnish). the full operating system for what comes next.

the framework matters more than any single book. learn the right thing at the right time. stop reading whatever’s trending.

Transcript

introduction and overview of the podcast

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Today, we’re going to go over the 11 books that took me to eight figures, and I’m also going to give you my entrepreneurial educational framework that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs make sure that they’re learning the right thing at the right time so their progress never stalls.

All right, let’s jump right into the books. So I have categorized all the books. There are 11 books total. The first six books I’m going to say gets you from zero to six figures. That’s the goal in the first six here. And the first four are broken into the category of mindset and productivity. Early on in entrepreneur, in entrepreneurship, you need to make sure you have the right mindset and you need to be productive.

discussion of the first four books focused on mindset and productivity

So the first four books, the first one, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, phenomenal book on the mindset side. He talks a lot about operating within your unique zone of genius, which is where we need to be spending most of our time. He details that out. Definitely go into there, into that information.

And at the same time, he talks about avoiding self-sabotage, which a lot of entrepreneurs do, especially early on. Maybe you have mindsets with money or success, abundance, whatever it is. He talks about those things as well. This is at the top of my list. If you are struggling with mindset at all in entrepreneurship.

The next book is The One Thing by Gary Keller. He really talks about just staying focused on one particular thing, how to set up systems and models to replicate success and stay focused on one thing until you see success. He talks about breaking it down, you know, in a very pragmatic way of what you should be doing this year, this quarter, this month, this week, today.

And so I think it’s a really practical guide to being productive. Now the next one is in a similar vein. It’s called Deep Work by Cal Newport. This book is specifically talking about how to do the deep work, how you should plug in and really focus. And if you implement everything deep work talks about, you’ll be getting twice as much, if not three times as much work done as all of your peers, because not a lot of people do deep work, how Cal talks about it in this book.

Now, the last one within the mindset productivity phase and the fourth book on the list is one of my favorites. And this is The Road Less Stupid by Keith J Cunningham. So what he talks about in this book is the establishing the habit of thinking time. Most humans, most entrepreneurs do not sit around and think specifically on one singular problem or topic.

If you implement this, it will be a game changer for your business. This is one of my favorite books. So not only is he going to talk about implementing the habit of thinking time, he’s also going to give you hundreds of prompts within this book so you can sit around, pick a prompt, think, and it will make your business better.

I’m telling you, this is the secret. This is the hack at all levels, not just zero to six figures. I think this is a great habit for seven figure business, eight figure, nine figure businesses. This is a phenomenal habit to have just as an entrepreneur or human in general, to be honest. All right. The next category is customer acquisition.

insights into books aimed at refining customer acquisition strategies

We’re talking more sales and marketing. And the first, first one I have on this list, which is the fifth book is pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini. Great book. If you’re looking to get into more of the psychological side of, uh, marketing messaging, whether that’s in your social media posts, whether that’s in your email marketing on your website, how to make sure that you are speaking to people on a psychological level and not just so logical and informational all the time.

The second book within this category is building a story brand by Donald Miller. Um, similar on the marketing messaging side, but he’s making sure that your brand message is very cohesive from your marketing material to your website and everything in between. He talks about following the kind of the hero’s journey, but you’re not the hero.

It’s your customer. You are the guide. Really great book. Uh, definitely dive into that. If you’re looking to solidify your message a little bit more. Now that’s the first six books. Like I said, that kind of gets you from zero to six figures. The remaining are the next group is kind of six to seven figures.

What do you need to learn next? And the next category is systems for scale. So the first book I have on the systems for scale, getting to seven figures is profit first by Mike Michalowicz. Phenomenal book. If you are struggling with finance as an entrepreneur, you need to read profit first. I think every entrepreneur, like when you, the day you decide to become an entrepreneur, this book should be handed to you because it saved me so much stress when I just implemented the systems that are in this book because it can be very stressful.

How much money do I set aside for taxes? How much can I take home? How much should be profit? How much should be operating? You know, it answers all those questions and gives you a really good framework. And I’ve followed those frameworks for a very long time at multiple different sizes in business and it always works out.

So it’s a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it for the financial side of your entrepreneurial journey. The next one is the art of less doing by Ari Mizell. It’s a really good book in the general terms of learning how to automate and delegate things. And so if you are looking to automate or delegate a process, he has very tactical ways that you can do this in this, in the book.

exploration of books for implementing systems and financial management

But at the same time, I think people should read the book, not just for like the tactical takeaways, but at this, at a bigger level, like how to think about automation and delegation in the new age of business. Like you, not everything has to be manual. Not everything has to be done by you or an employee.

So it’s part of the mindset that you’re getting from that book as well as some of the tactical how to automate and delegate things. Now, moving on a step up from there would be customer success. So this is where you increase the lifetime value of your customers. You retain them, you keep them around for a long time.

That’s really like the secret to growing a business. And the first book on this list is going to be never lose a customer again by Joey Coleman. If you just want to try and do your best, like to keep a customer, make sure they have a phenomenal experience. I really think you should read never lose a customer again.

It’s a great book on customer retention and a lot of strategies there. Now getting way more into the weeds with this would be the next book. It’s called the startup’s guide to customer success by Jennifer Chang. Good book, very dense. But if you want to geek out and obsess over how to, you know, help the customer in their journey and make sure that they’re seeing success and how to manage all of that phenomenal book.

Now, moving into the last book though, this is like, okay, we’re in seven figures now, how do we get to eight figures? I only have one book recommendation for you right now, and that’s because how you actually scale from zero to six figures and then six figures to seven figures and seven figures, eight figures is actually very different.

Once you are scaling beyond seven to eight figures, it’s all about people. It’s not necessarily becoming more productive. It’s not necessarily about the mindset or the systems. It’s going to be about people. And so the main book I’m recommending most people read is who not how by Dan Sullivan. So really getting into the mindset of who can do this, not how do I do that?

recommendations for books on enhancing customer success

And once you can shift that, you’re always looking for who can do this, not how do I do it? You will unlock a lot of progress because to start moving faster, you need to start utilizing everyone else’s talents and get them to bring the business to the next level. Now this opens a whole door of like leadership and other things that you need to be doing.

So there’s a lot of books on leadership you might need to read, but this is a great start for just a mindset unlock of like, I need to stop just focusing on how productive I can be and how much output I can have. And in all of these things, you need to start focusing on people. How do I succeed through people?

Once you start to learn that, you really start to unlock some serious success and some serious scale at a very fast velocity. Now that’s all 11 books that I recommend for entrepreneurs, wherever that they’re at in their journey. But as you can see, I kind of categorized them and said like, Hey, here’s zero to six figures, six to seven figures.

Here’s eight figures and beyond. And that’s because that’s how I think about it. So what I have for people and for entrepreneurs to go through is what I call the entrepreneurial educational framework. Because if you just sit around and like, say you and I are sitting down and you just started your business and you ask me, you know, I’ve been doing this for a lot longer.

You asked me, Hey, what’s a book recommendation or what are you reading right now? And what if I have some book that’s like super philosophical in nature or it’s about something specific, like a problem I’m trying to solve right now. And you’re like, Oh, well he’s a successful entrepreneur. I’ll, I’ll read the same book, but it’s the right book at the wrong time.

It’s just, you’re not ready for that book. You know, it’s, you’re not ready for that book. It’s not necessary for you to learn that information right now. Uh, it’d be like when you’re starting your business and you’re reading all about leadership and hiring and, and how to be the best manager, but you might be a year or two away from hiring anybody.

You have to learn everything on the marketing and sales side before you even need to be concerned about that. So I do see people asking for recommendations, but like a book recommendation has to hit the right place at the right time. So that’s why I created the entrepreneurial education framework. So what it is a triangle upside down triangle and the bigger it goes, like we’ll just call it a funnel.

introduction to the capstone book for scaling to eight figures through effective leadership

Like the bigger your funnel, the more money that you can catch, right? Like let’s just say money is raining down from the sky, but you can only catch so much of it in your funnel and the very base level of this, of, of success and getting, going up the entrepreneurial educational framework is mindset and productivity.

So I mentioned some books, but if until you feel like you have that mastered, you shouldn’t move up to the next level. So step one, mindset and productivity. Okay. You’ve read all those books. You feel like you haven’t mastered next would be customer acquisition. That would be, what do I have to do to get my sales dialed in my marketing dialed in and you know, how do I continue to refine those things?

Read everything you can. Again, none of these areas are gonna be a hundred percent mastered, but like once you feel like you’re ready to move on to the next thing and your business is growing, you move to step three and that would be systems for scale. That’s where the next step in the funnel is. So systems for scale.

I kind of mentioned some books there, but again, learning the systems, the process, the software, all the things that you need, that’ll get you to the next level. A step up from there is going to be customer success. Now you should always be taking care of your customers throughout every stage of this, but I’m talking about, this is where you obsess over it.

And the reason you can’t obsess over it in the beginning of entrepreneurship is because you’re doing too many things. Like you might have a really good product or service, but let’s say you’re 80, 90% of the way there. You’re like, this is, it’s really good. But if I had unlimited time and resources, I would do this much more.

And that’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that last 10 to 20% you’re maybe not doing because you lack the time you lack the team or you lack, lack the resources. So that’s what I’m talking about. It’s not, Oh, I’ll focus on my customers after I make a bunch of money. That’s not how it works.

It’s, I will perfect this customer journey, even though I already have a really good one as I learn more. So that’s what we’re geeking out on in this next to final stage is just how do I absolutely knock it out of the park with a customer? How do I really take care of them? And how do I go overboard?

Who, who do I need to hire? Answer all those questions and just educate yourself in that area or hire someone to do a customer service or customer success at a high level. Um, and take that over for you. Now, the last one, it can kind of go two different directions. I, I say customer acquisition 2.0.

This is where you learn multi-channel marketing, and this is where you’re learning to get customers from multiple different areas, but at the same time, I put it in the who, not how leadership category as kind of that final level. But if we’re not talking about just starting to delegate and succeed through people, I would say the next level of success that you need to learn is customer acquisition 2.0, which is multi-channel, which is like, how do I get customers from YouTube, Instagram?

How do I get them from advertising? How do I get referrals? How do I get word of mouth? It was just all of the different areas. If you can start to scale in that direction, that will significantly grow your business. But at the same time, you need to be thinking of who, not how, who can do these things, not just how do I do them?

So that is it for this. This is the entrepreneurial education framework. The 11 books that you ultimately need to succeed, or at least that have really helped me, you don’t have to read those same ones, but I think each one of those have been hand selected and I’ve read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of business books and I’ve selected these 11.

How I got down to just these 11, I really looked at them. I thought, Hey, what was the most impactful? And really, what did I take the most action on? Cause some books I read, I get one or two ideas on, and then I’m onto the next. When I sit with a book, I’m highlighting it. I’m implementing, I got the computer out.

I’m like taking notes. Those are the books I recommended to you today. The ones that were, have had a significant impact on my journey. So you will be well on your way. If you read all these to leveling up your business through the right sequence of education, reading the right book at the right time.

So grab one of the books that I mentioned. Never stop learning, try harder, live bigger.