Three Books That Revolutionized My Business
If you know anything about me, you know that I am obsessed with empowering creative businesses by making the law easy to use. My partner and I have built a business around this concept.
Just like any other business, we have had our share of missteps and false starts — wastes of money and dead-ends. The whole thing has been a learning experience. And while learning from mistakes can teach a lot, we have found it better to learn from experts. So much in these books are things that — had we known at the outset — would have saved us thousands (maybe tens of thousands…ugh!) of dollars.
I chose these three because each of them offers actionable intelligence that allowed us to improve the way that we run our business on a day-to-day level. While I love high-minded theory as much as the next guy, I needed something that would provide concrete steps for the here and now. These books do that.
These are books that my partner and I refer back to and discuss frequently. The outcome of this has been drastically increased revenues (and profits) while creating a business that we enjoy running.
Finally, these books seem to complement each other well, and their lessons apply to many different kinds of businesses, from legal to Amazon online sellers to podcasters. We find ourselves recommending them to our clients regularly.
Here they are.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
The modern workplace is set up to reward distraction. Whether it’s obsessively checking email or getting “pinged” by a coworker on Slack, distractions abound. For some reason, many of us have conceded that this is how things are.
This is not how things have to be. That’s what Deep Work teaches us. That while some distraction is inevitable, the way to be truly productive is to find out what your priorities are and then make distraction-free time for them. Whether that’s coding, writing, drawing, or something else, real productivity comes from deep work.
It’s about reclaiming your time so that you can create real value. Much of the rest is “productivity theater.”
Built to Sell by John Warrillow
The central premise of Built to Sell is that you should make a business to sell, even if you have no intention of doing so. Doing this causes you to create systems and processes that can be replicated and forces you to think of your business as an asset that you are building, and not just as a glorified job (this happens to all of us at some point).
Ultimately, the book advises working towards a situation in which you have built a business that can run without you if you so choose. For many business owners, that seems like a distant dream or a nice to have. Built to Sell teaches us that the opposite is true: that any business owner must create a business that can operate on its own.
John Warrillow on Medium.
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
I devoured Profit First on an island in the Adriatic. I think I read it in an afternoon. Then reread it.
The central premise of the book is that any business should be set up to generate profits. And that profits should not be the money that is left over after expenses, but the money that you take out of your business first. Your costs come second.
This is revolutionary because by taking profit first, you actually become disciplined about your expenses and eventually cut those expenses that do not contribute to profit. This means culling the needless overhead that so many of us business owners are so familiar with.
Mike Michalowicz on Medium. Plus: a video where I discuss the impact that this book had on my business.
Are you looking for more insight and support for your creative endeavor? We have a great mailing list designed to empower creative people. Why not join and see what all the fuss is about?
