my top 11 books for business growth

Summary

I wasn’t a reader growing up. then I became an entrepreneur and felt so far behind I started crushing books to catch up. 300 plus later, the highest leverage thing isn’t reading more. it’s finding the right book at the right stage. here are my 11, mapped to a framework.

1. quantity isn’t the unlock. depth and implementation are. one book this year you actually apply beats 25 books you skim. the highest cost in business is reading on the wrong problem for the stage you’re in. a book about hiring is wasted on someone who hasn’t made a dollar yet.

2. the entrepreneurial educational framework. imagine it’s raining money and you have a pyramid of cone cups to fill. each cup is a stage. fill one before stacking the next. five stages. mindset and productivity. customer acquisition. systems for scale. customer success and lifetime value. customer acquisition 2.0, multi channel.

3. stage 1, mindset and productivity, $0 to six figures. The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks for mindset. The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan for productivity. Deep Work by Cal Newport. The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham, possibly my favorite book of all time, about setting aside time to think, which nobody does.

4. stage 2, customer acquisition, also $0 to six figures. Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini for the psychology of how people make decisions. Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller for the brand story side. those two together are your first sales and marketing curriculum.

5. stages 3 and 4, the $1M range. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz for systems and finance, took all the entrepreneurial money stress out of my life. The Art of Less Doing by Ari Meisel for delegation. Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman for customer success. The Startup’s Guide to Customer Success by Jennifer Chiang for the dense tactical side.

6. stage 5, customer acquisition 2.0, $10M plus. Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. the whole point at that level is you succeed through other people. you stop trying to learn each tactical thing yourself. read it when the leverage problem starts to actually exist for you.

7. do an honest assessment of where you are. don’t read the level 5 book at level 1. don’t read the level 1 book when you’re staring down level 5 problems. pick the book that meets you where you actually are, go deep, and implement. try harder.

Transcript

why i read 300 plus books

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. So growing up, I was never really a reader, not as a kid, not in high school, not in college. And then my first career out of college in the military, maybe I read one to two books. To be honest, I didn’t really read a lot then.

But once I became an entrepreneur, I started reading a ton. And you may have heard me say, or, you know, read in my writing, I’ve read over 300 books. At this point, that’s the most updated figure. But I don’t say that to pound my chest and say that this is what you should aspire to because there are people a lot more successful than me who’ve read a lot less.

I just felt behind and like I needed to catch up and there was information out there that I did not know. But ultimately, you know, if I had to look at all of those books, which I did in preparation for what I’m talking about today, it’s not the amount, it really is not the quantity. It’s the quality and it’s the depth and the implementation you go through after you read a book.

Like if you could read one book this year and implement everything it says, that’s going to be better than reading, you know, a book every other week, you know, something like that. So what I think is even more important than going deep and implementing is having a book find you at the right time. And that’s what today’s podcast is about.

And that’s really what I want to talk about. If you know where you’re at in business and what you need and you can be self-aware enough to realize that, you can start reading in the right direction, if you will. So the highest cost in business is not knowing what you don’t know. You could be fixing the wrong problem or chasing the wrong target.

For instance, you could be solving a problem in business, but you could be solving it at the wrong time. An example would be if you’re reading 15 books on hiring, you want to get amazing at hiring. You’re like, I just want to be able to hire, make sure it’s the perfect person. But if you’re reading those books and you haven’t made a single dollar as an entrepreneur, it’s solving a problem you absolutely will have.

the entrepreneurial educational framework

You’re going to need to know how to hire and lead humans, but it’s solving the problem at the wrong time. So I firmly believe that you need books to meet you where you are. So that’s why book recommendations can fall flat at times. For example, a seasoned entrepreneur making a lot of money may recommend a more philosophical book about the impact of business on the world.

And if you’re new to entrepreneurship, you’ll read that book and think it was a waste of time because it did not tell you how to acquire more customers, because that’s all a new entrepreneur really is going to care about. Some entrepreneurs have a lot of anxiety and self-doubt they need to deal with, so they need more reading on mindset, psychology, things of that nature.

Some entrepreneurs are unorganized and inefficient, so they may need to read more about being productive, goal setting and implementation. Some entrepreneurs suck with money. Most entrepreneurs suck with money and need more education on finance, accounting, budgeting and things like that. And some entrepreneurs are the worst at marketing or sales and must go deep down that rabbit hole.

So today, I’d like to give you 11 book recommendations and frameworks for working through them, because like I said, I’ve read a lot of different books, but it wasn’t the number of books that has helped me in any capacity, it was finding the right books at the right time. And as I reviewed every single book before I recorded this podcast, I have no idea how on earth I’ve narrowed it down to 11 books out of all of those 300 plus.

So this may be my first set of book recommendations, but not my last. I definitely want to look more into this. But when I started as an entrepreneur, I thought really small, like just wasn’t a big thinker. I had a scarcity mindset, I dealt with a lot of anxiety, and I had issues with money and abundance, just a lot of those kinds of problems.

Some people don’t struggle with that stuff at all. So I had to do some serious work to change my psychological programming. And honestly, it was a lot of work, like I had to focus just on my mindset for years. I mean, I’ve read some woo stuff, a lot on the subconscious mind and in much more some rabbit holes you might not even need to go down.

So for me to recommend those to you might be awesome, you might be in a similar situation or not. But it took a long time for me to change, but who I was 10 years ago is nowhere close to the same person I am today. But that may not be you ever, or it may not be you right now. So I’m going to give my recommendation in relation to a framework, it’s a framework I call the Entrepreneurial Educational Framework.

stages 1 and 2, mindset and customer acquisition

So just imagine it’s raining money outside. So you go outside to catch as much money as you possibly can, but you notice it disappears as soon as it hits the ground. This is the game we’re playing in my hypothetical situation. So you grab one of those water cooler cups. So you know what I’m talking about, like one of those cone shaped cups.

And that’s all you can find, so you go out, you start with this tiny paper cup. Now once it’s full, you can stack another one of these cups on top, and when you stack it, it gets a little bit bigger, right? We’re starting to make more of like a pyramid. And so once it’s full, you can stack another one, and so on and so forth.

You can keep stacking. So what are the different areas? So what I’m saying is, you run outside, you have to collect this money that’s falling, and you have to fill up one cup before you can fill up the next cup. And then once the second cup’s full, you can fill up the third cup. Once the third cup’s full, you can fill up the fourth cup.

And so on, you’re building up this pyramid. And I broke it kind of down into five areas that we’re trying to fill up. The base is of mindset and productivity. Up from there is going to be customer acquisition, which is sales and marketing. The third one level up from there is going to be systems for scale, so really knowing your systems for business.

The fourth is going to be customer success, in order to increase lifetime value. And then the fifth area is going to be customer acquisition 2.0, which is multi-channel marketing. So that’s getting better at multiple channels of marketing. So five different areas that I feel like you should be reading at different stages of entrepreneurship.

So put simply, it’d be best if you didn’t jump studying how to increase LTV, which is like stage four, before you really know how to acquire a customer. It’s always good to focus on customer success and increasing the lifetime value, you can do that a little bit, but if you can’t consistently get new customers in the door, you’re really just doing a fun exercise that’s not going to help you today, tomorrow, next week.

So you need to know which problems to solve and in which order. And then if you miss the base completely, or it breaks, which is mindset and productivity, you’re just going to fail. Mindset is not something you fix and you move on, it’s something that has to continually be worked on and you have to continually be productive.

stages 3 and 4, systems and customer success

So that’s kind of like the base of everything we’re talking about. So of those five areas, I put mindset and productivity, like level one, level two, customer acquisition, sales and marketing, in the zero dollars to six figure range. So that’s levels one and two. Now three and four, systems for scale and customer success, which is increased lifetime value, I put in the six to seven figure range.

So getting high six figures into the million dollar range. And then number five, customer acquisition 2.0, which is multi-channel acquisition, it’s very hard to master, very hard to do, you need a large team to do it, is eight plus figures. So 10 million plus dollars. These are the areas that I have laid out.

So do an honest assessment of where you are in your journey, knowing if you’re level one or two, three or four, or even five. And then select a book from the appropriate category. I’m still learning in all of these areas, but to be honest, I’m focusing a lot on customer acquisition 2.0 multi-channel.

So here are my top 11 books. So for category one, mindset and productivity, I have The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, phenomenal mindset book. More along the lines of productivity would be The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. My third book in this category of mindset productivity would be Deep Work by Cal Newport.

So learning how to properly be productive in your day-to-day life. And then the last one in mindset productivity would be The Road Less Stupid by Keith J Cunningham, which may be turning into my favorite book of all time. It’s really just about setting aside time to think, which no one does. And ever since I’ve started doing it, since I first read that book when it came out, it’s been a game changer.

Now level two for customer acquisition or sales and marketing, two books I recommend. First one is Pre-Suasion by Robert B. Cialdini. The second is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. So those are great customer acquisition books. One more on the psychological side of understanding how to sell stuff, why it works, and then also how to build a brand and a brand story with Donald Miller, probably the best in the business at doing that.

Level three, Systems for Scale. I’m going to jack up his last name probably, but Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. I think that’s how you say it. So Profit First. I was lost as an entrepreneur in finance, and I found Profit First, implement it. I’ve been implementing it ever since. Took all the stress out of finances and how to run finances for my business across all my businesses.

stage 5, customer acquisition 2.0

So if you haven’t read Profit First, go get it. Implement everything it says to the best of your ability. I implement kind of like a quasi version of it, because if you get in the book or you read it, he recommends all these different bank accounts, and that was a little too cumbersome for me, but I still implement it in my own way.

So phenomenal book, really helped me out and reduced a lot of stress on the financial side. Another one for Systems of Scale was The Art of Less Doing by Ari Maisel. The Art of Less Doing, very tactical about how to delegate things and how to make things a system process, all that kind of stuff. The fourth area, which is Customer Success and Increasing Lifetime Value.

Two books I recommend. Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman. Great book on just how to treat your customers, how to do it right, the mindset, and all the even tactics, strategy, everything on how to treat your customers. Great book. And then the second one in that same category of customer success would be The Startup’s Guide to Customer Success by Jennifer Chang.

So great book, very dense, and there was no audio book when I got this book. I don’t know if maybe they’ve recorded an audio book at this point, but had to actually read that one with the old eyeballs. Now the fifth and final Customer Acquisition 2.0 Multichannel is Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

And that book is more about succeeding through other people and helping them succeed and win big while also you having an upside in it as well. And so you’re like, well, what does that have to do with multichannel marketing? And it doesn’t as much, because if you’ve learned all four areas that I’ve mentioned, mindset productivity, customer acquisition systems for scales, customer success, my strategy for customer acquisition 2.0, and I’ve talked about this in my marketing strategy for this year, is succeeding through other people and making sure that they’re having big wins and we’re both benefiting in the process without me having to learn each and every single thing.

Which to be honest, if you’re in level five, I’m saying you should be shooting for or getting to like a $10 million business, an eight plus figure business. And so at that point, you really should be succeeding through other people and not learning how to do everything tactically yourself. So those are my top 11 books for success.

I will definitely update this as I go on, but this is a big question I get. What books am I reading? What books have led to me making any progress? And I would say these 11 have been very impactful. So pick one up, give it a listen, give it a read, let me know what you think.