Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 27 - 5 Books Every Business Owner Should Read
Synopsis:
What if the difference between staying stuck and scaling up was just a handful of books?
In this episode, Mike Shreeve reveals the five books that shaped his journey as a business owner—including Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson, Traction by Gino Wickman, Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz, So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, Who Not How by Dan Sullivan, and Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Each one delivers practical wisdom on scaling, leadership, systems, and personal mastery. Mike shares not just summaries but the exact principles he implemented inside Peaceful Profits coaching and services—principles you can use to grow, systemize, and lead with confidence.
Transcript:
5 Books Every Business Owner Should Read
[00:00:00] Hello, my dear friends. Hope you're doing well. Mike Shreeve here. Thank you so very much for listening to today's episode. We're going to be talking about five books that every entrepreneur should read. Now, these aren't necessarily my favorite books, or these may not even necessarily be the best books I've ever read.
However, I do believe that these should be required reading for all entrepreneurs. Okay, so in other words, if you haven't read these, you're very likely missing some core principles to being successful as an entrepreneur. Okay, so these some of them may be familiar to you, some of them may not. I'm going to give [00:00:30] you the titles, the author, and some takeaways that I found profound that I then implemented, so we're not just talking theory that ended up being very powerful in moving my business along.
So this isn't just going to be a book report, there's actually going to be some lessons in this episode as well. Okay, so let's talk about the first one. This is a book by a guy named Michael Masterson, whose real name is Michael Ford. And it is called Ready, Fire, Aim. I think it's the subtitle is something like zero to a hundred million in no time flat, or something like that.
But Michael Ford, Michael Masterson he continues to be, and he [00:01:00] was, a very pivotal figure in the help industry, in courses in working with some of the largest companies in the world, in information publishing and all that kind of stuff. He has his hands in multiple, well known very large, very successful companies that are in the help industry.
In fact, he may be one of the most successful people to have ever done it. And he's much more than just a copywriter, which is what's very important. I think in internet marketing, we often focus a lot on worshiping the marketer, worshiping [00:01:30] the copywriter. And while those are very important skills and Michael Masterson, Michael Ford is definitely one of the better copywriters.
What I liked about reading that book. Was it literally outlines what a successful business in the help industry looks like. So much more than copywriting. It is, what should the team look like? What should your, where should you be operationally? What should you have in place to get to 10 million a year and et cetera.
And the big takeaway for me and I [00:02:00] read this book, oh gosh, I don't even know how long ago many years ago. And it's one that I return to every couple of years. But the one thing that really stood out for me in that book was that a business is supposed to look different at different revenue levels.
Now, you may say, yeah, that's obvious, but let's think about that for a second. Sometimes in business, we want a certain revenue level, but our business contains only the [00:02:30] assets for a lower revenue level. So let's say we want a 10 million a year business, but we only have the team, the assets, the offers, for a million dollar a year business, and we keep buying into hacks, tactics, and tactics.
Distractions thinking that's the key to getting to 10 million. When in fact there are structural things that must occur within the business itself before we're ever going to progress to that next level. And the other thing is true as well, which is Sometimes we're running a million [00:03:00] dollar a year business with the infrastructure of a ten million dollar a year business and wondering why we don't have any money left over or wondering why everything's so expensive and all that kind of stuff.
So what I really liked about this book is it lays out from zero to, I don't remember the exact breakdowns, I don't have it in front of me, but it's like zero to a million. A million to 5 million 5 million 100. What should your business be doing at those specific markers? What should it look like who should it have where should your offers be and etc What should you be focusing on at those particular levels?
So I highly recommend [00:03:30] every entrepreneur Again, this is a required reading to read ready fire aim so that you can have a realistic expectation And look i'm all about dreaming i'm all about setting big goals. I love all that stuff I'm huge in mindset, you know I've spent 10 plus years behind the scenes of some of the biggest personal development companies and brands and etc I love all that stuff.
Please don't get me wrong But I also think having a realistic picture Of what must occur before all of our dreams and goals and etc can come to pass is unbelievably helpful I believe that book has that for those of us [00:04:00] who are in the help industry, so that's ready fire aim by michael masterson aka michael ford next book You Which was so profound for me is Traction by Gino Wickman.
And really, almost all of the books by Gino Wickman I would highly recommend, because, to be fair, and to be frank he has another book called Get a Grip, I think one's called Rocket Fuel, et cetera, et cetera. He, I think the way he wrote his books was, he wrote a book, somebody said, I love that chapter, then he wrote another book about that chapter.
So it's that sort of situation where you, if you buy all of them, You get the full picture. So let's just say Gino Wickman and his [00:04:30] traction series, the book, the thing in that book that really profoundly helped me in my business was this idea of hiring an integrator and that there is no entrepreneur who is truly by themselves.
Now, in fact, all good entrepreneurs have an integrator. Now the integrator, it's not a virtual assistant. It's not even a director of operations. An integrator is essentially the second entrepreneur in the company. They are [00:05:00] someone who is equally tied to the vision, to the mission, to the outcome, who can take the entrepreneur's ideas, who can take the entrepreneur's desires and goals and mission and actually put it into practical application.
And, I, when I first heard that concept, I made the mistake of assuming that was something to hire later on. What I wish I had done instead was realize that the integrator is how entrepreneurs actually get stuff done. In other words, you're going to struggle to get stuff done until you have an integrator.[00:05:30]
So that was a big one for me. And it cause there's a lot of talk on, hiring virtual assistants and, hire your marketing team and hire this and hire that and hire this. I can tell you that I've hired all of those positions. I love everyone on my team who does that, but we really didn't start making progress and we really didn't start making big moves until we had an integrator.
Okay. And so very good. Just, I recommend reading the book. He goes into it in depth and shows you how it all works together. Wickman traction in [00:06:00] that whole series of books. In addition to just the integrator concept, however I should say this really quickly is, What Geno does a very good job of is showing you how chaotic your business is unnecessarily.
I finished the Geno books and I was like, when I read them, and I just realized there actually is a very practical way to do it. Like not pie in the sky, but very practical, very real, very straightforward set of time tested principles that [00:06:30] you can apply to your business regardless of where it is. And you can calm things way down.
Like you can get into peaceful profits relatively quickly. It's not overnight, but relatively quickly by just being better at running a business, just like the skills you've developed in your expertise, just like the skills you've developed in learning how to get clients. You can develop skills and be better at running a business.
And as a result, running that business becomes more peaceful. So that was just [00:07:00] really helpful when I read that quite some time ago. Okay. Next book is Mike McAluwitz's Clockwork. Now I, first off, I like Mike McAluwitz as a person and as an author. And I love all the stuff that they do. We have purchased the Clockwork program from he has that set up with Adrian and they're a great bunch of people.
And we love all the stuff that they do. Mike McAllister's book Clockwork, though, was very helpful to me for two reasons. One, the concept of the QBR, which is the Queen B Roll. So I came across Clockwork at a time when I [00:07:30] didn't know what my job was anymore. Because I had worked myself out of so many things I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing anymore as the ceo as the entrepreneur and if there's anything I know It about and this is experience with my own business and with my client's businesses Is what you don't want to do is let entrepreneurs get bored?
Or not have let them have something to work on or because they can cause chaos, right? How many times have we as entrepreneurs as business owners accidentally self sabotaged our business just because we're bored? You That's such a common [00:08:00] thing in the world of entrepreneurship. And what really helped me in clockwork was this idea of queen bee role.
Now, how he explains it may be a little bit different than my understanding, but essentially this idea that everyone on the, in the business has a role for which it is the best, The most they can contribute to the growth of that business and taking the time. He's got all sorts of activities in there, taking the time to figure out what that role is for you is essentially doing the work of 80 20.
But the way that he meaning, figuring out what contribution you can make, that's 80 [00:08:30] percent that brings 80 percent of the results. For 20 percent of the work but essentially what I liked about that book and then the subsequent program that we purchased was just the way they think about it, the exercises, the way you can involve your team so that they can find their own QBR and help you to find your QBR.
It was really helpful exercise for me to identify what mine was for my business, because then once you do that as a CEO or as the business owner, we often think that we wake up and we have 50 different things to do every single day. And that means we're since, [00:09:00] applying the QBR principle and then doing QBR for ourselves I have found that again, less is more in terms of when we focus on what is the biggest contributing factor, what I'm able to do best in the company that moves the needle the furthest.
I have simplified my daily schedule tremendously. And as a result, the company has grown tremendously. I don't think those things are disconnected. I think they're very connected. So anyway, QBR very good. And then the other thing, and this is something I [00:09:30] tell everybody who will listen clockwork, right?
The whole purpose of the clockwork book is systemize your business and, work yourself out of the day to day and take a vacation, all that kind of good stuff. And. One of the really helpful freeing liberating concepts of that book is yes, you need systems. No, you don't need to make systemized manuals and I just their approach to creating systems is so freeing and so liberating and very helpful I highly recommend anyone to read that for those of you who are constantly getting harped on by other operation specialists and they keep saying you [00:10:00] need systems.
You need systems. You need systems and you say yourself I hate systems. I hate systems They have a great approach because you frankly do need systems and the way that they approach it is really great. Okay, next book that I highly recommend is Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You.
Ah, that, I think every person should read that book much less business people. But the thing that stood out to me and the thing that I have tried to follow ever since I read that book many years ago, it's very simple. The things we desire from a career or a business [00:10:30] tend to be the things that people who are very good at what they do experience, right?
In other words, it's not the technique. It's not the tactic. It's not the business model. It's not all these things. It's the fact that when you are good at what you do, you experience the benefits of what people who are good at what they do experience autonomy. higher pricing, et cetera. I think sometimes in the world of business, we, especially if you're very [00:11:00] involved in the help industry and purchasing programs and courses and stuff, we have developed this false belief that the secret, the thing you don't know about business and why you're unable to be, make tons of money and be successful is because you just haven't done this one tactic.
When in reality sometimes that can be true. There can be things that you can do to improve your current situation. But none of that matters if you aren't trying to be good at what you do. And I just, I recommend if you are a thinking person to read So Good They Can't Ignore [00:11:30] You. He makes a very strong case about the reality of being successful, being well paid, what it actually takes and etc that book in and of itself set me on a path I read robert green's mastery I read talent is overrated and then I just went on this kind of path for a long time Just focusing on how do I become better and better and better because that's what I want in my life Is what people who are good at what they do experience therefore I need to be the person who's good at what they do that was just for [00:12:00] me very helpful, hopefully you'll read it and have that same experience because When we have business owners in this world who are in the help industry and that's their main driving force Rather than what's the hack?
What's the trick? How can I manipulate people into giving me more money and they say, you know what? What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna be better I'm gonna be better at delivering results and be better at what I do I'm gonna be better as a person and when we can make that shift as an industry I'm looking forward to that time, when that's the focus.
Hopefully I'll be able to contribute to that in some way. I'm trying [00:12:30] to with some things that we're working on. Okay, anyways. So that's one I would highly recommend. Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You. Dan Sullivan's Who Not How. Now, this is a book that gets mixed reviews because some people say that the concept can be summed up in a single sentence.
I actually tend to agree that it can be. But the book does a very good job of I would recommend actually listening to it on audio because you get a bit more of a sense of the message because there's like side conversations and stuff that go on between the author that Dan hired to write the book and Dan himself, Dan Sullivan.[00:13:00]
Now this is a very simple concept. I'll sum it up for you. And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to stop worrying about how to get something done. Spend more time figuring out what exactly is it that you want and who can help you get it. That's the whole book. The problem is that. That's a simple sentence, and you may like it, but if you're like most human beings, you probably have all sorts of baggage around that.
Or false beliefs around that. Or you may know it intellectually, but you're not actually totally convinced of it. Because you're not doing it. You [00:13:30] are an independent let me put it this way, you call yourself an independent person, therefore you can't rely on others, and et cetera, et cetera.
So there's a whole bunch of mental and emotional garbage that keeps us from actually deploying what I agree is a very simple concept. And the people who read that book and leave bad reviews, oh this is so simple, tend to be the people who are struggling the most with actually deploying that concept in its fullest form.
I'll give you some examples. There is, I'll give you an extreme example, and this [00:14:00] is common in the help industry. We are the experts, right? We want to do the courses. We want to do the programs. We want to be the one teaching and talking and it's us and we're in the front and all that kind of stuff.
I took the book, Dan Sullivan's Who Not How, and I really took it to heart and I started to challenge myself and I said, what if I stopped being the person who's giving the lessons? And I really started saying, what do I actually want? And realizing that one of the things that I want to do is I want to raise other people up and give them [00:14:30] opportunities and etc.
And I want my buyers of my programs to have the absolute latest, the absolute greatest, the absolute real, tested, proven, no theory, we only teach what we actually do kind of situation. And I realized that I needed help to do that. Help to create the lessons, help to run tests, help to actually implement.
And so one of the things that we've done in Peaceful Profits Is we're literally moving me out of doing all the teaching And doing all the courses we've already implemented a couple of you know We brought in experts who are better than I am at doing what we do and etc And wouldn't you know that [00:15:00] one of the other things that I desire is to have a sellable business Which if you're in the help industry and it's your face and it's your stuff.
That's not sellable I don't know if you guys know this and I say that with an annoyed tone because I was I've Been a part of a lot of like some of my heroes, like Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, once they passed what actually happened to the value of their intellectual property when they were no longer a part of it, it's we get this idea that we'll always be the showman, the show woman, the person doing all the courses and et cetera.
And that's not a real exit plan. Okay. The value of a help industry business is very low comparatively. And if you can [00:15:30] make an exit, it's very difficult to do so because you typically have incredible stipulations. on what you have to do to earn the exit. And it's not if you built a chain restaurant and sold that, right?
So anyways, point is when I identified my desire, I wanted an exitable business in the help industry and then realizing that I need help with other people and et cetera, et cetera. It's now all working. So the point is the point of all this is I would say that very likely there are areas in your life.
Where your belief system around whether someone could or couldn't actually help you is keeping you from [00:16:00] getting what you want. And I found the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan to be very helpful in challenging my own ideas. Now, I had a team already, okay, when I read that book. It's a very recent release.
I think it's within the last year or so. I had a team. I had gone through all the training yes, I know, outsource, okay, yes, whatever, make the system, tell people what you want, delegate, blah, blah, blah, I knew all that. But there were some things in that book that helped me to really challenge even my own limitations of implementation of who, not how.
It just expanded my worldview. I hope that [00:16:30] it does for you. It's a really good book in that regard. Okay, my dear friends. Last one, I promise. And this is Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book Now, I'm a big fan of historical recounts and biographies. For example I learned more about leadership and business growth by reading the Walt Disney biography than I have in probably any single course I've ever taken on [00:17:00] leadership, on systems, or anything like that.
I find that a good biographer can basically make it like you're job shadowing someone. So this is like really powerful stuff. And so I've always been inclined towards biographies as a tool for teaching me how I should be. If I want to achieve a certain thing that somebody else has achieved, right?
Jim Rohn says success leaves clues. And so just find out who is successful, find out, see if you can figure out what they're doing. And that should generally give you the path that you're looking for. I find biographies to be helpful in that. But [00:17:30] this particular book, leadership in turbulent times is a book about leadership during obviously turbulent times, but.
It includes several different leaders in the United States. So they are Americans that are featured in this, if that makes a difference to you. Abraham Lincoln is one of them, etc. And it's not just the biographical recounting, but there is some analysis included as well, as to who these leaders were as people, and how they dealt with the very extreme difficulties that they had to deal [00:18:00] with.
Now, Some of you listening to this are early enough in your entrepreneurship journey that you don't have leadership issues yet You don't have the challenges of running bigger teams and etc But I would say if you're in the help industry you are by definition trying to be a leader you lead your customers you lead your clients you lead the industry if you're a high performer in this industry because it's still the Wild West in a lot of ways people are still You know, figuring out the basics.
And so I [00:18:30] highly recommend this book as a life raft as a guidebook to how to do the actual hard parts of being a leader and what to do when things get very difficult because no matter how good you are, no matter how successful you have been in the past, eventually as a business owner, you will hit a point in your career where you go through turbulent times.
That is a guarantee. You may have been all, golden rainbows and fields of flowers, unicorn [00:19:00] happiness up to this point. Maybe everything has gone your way. Green lights all the way, as the song goes. But eventually you're going to hit some turbulent times, whether you have a team or not. And if you are unprepared for that, if you haven't sat down to digest the strategies of other people who have successfully gone through very difficult times, It's going to make a difficult time unnecessarily more difficult, and I'm just a big fan of Understanding that there are going to be hard things Accepting that and then preparing myself so that I don't have to [00:19:30] unnecessarily suffer Because I knew in advance something you know something look I'm telling you right now.
You can't long because you've listened to this podcast. Okay. You no longer have the option of saying I didn't know it was ever going to be hard. I'm telling you it's going to be hard. So prepare yourself and you can make it less miserable when it is difficult. Anyway. So that's a really good book.
Leadership in turbulent times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Okay. My dear friends, that's it for today's episode. Hopefully it was helpful to you. If you [00:20:00] are the kind of person who. is looking for this kind of wisdom applied regularly. In other words, you're like me, where you just say, I'm gonna go find the smart people who already know and who have already been through what I'm trying to go through.
And if you would like help from those kind of people, which includes my team and myself, to grow your business, please book a call with us. PeacefulProfits.com/call. What we can offer is What we can offer you is not just the knowledge that you'll get from a book [00:20:30] but we are constantly studying books and applying them and then turning those applications into usable tools, into usable guidance, into basically helping to assure that the outcomes you desire actually come to pass.
And we have a whole team who's doing it and it's So all kinds of cool stuff's happening right now in peaceful profits. If you'd help with that in growing and scaling your business and want to find out what kind of things we can offer you, PeacefulProfits.com/call. We'd love to have a chat with you.
And until then, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll see you in the next episode.