Running a business is hard. You must know something about all aspects of business. Things like taxes, law, and managing sales teams - but most ed programs ignore this stuff. It's boring!
So here's my list of areas you must know as a CEO and 20 books:
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How Taxes Work
TITLE: J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes 2022
WHY IT MATTERS: You have a silent partner in your business and life. They are the IRS. You need to know how to pay them as little as legally possible.
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How Business Law Works
TITLE: Barron’s Business Law
WHY IT MATTERS: You need to know how to navigate the law to stay out of trouble, court, and jail (not necessarily in that order!)
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How to Manage Yourself
TITLE: The Effective Executive by Drucker
WHY IT MATTERS: Work on the wrong stuff and you're screwed.
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How to Manage a Business
TITLE: Traction by Gino Wickman
WHAT YOU LEARN: Fill in the blank systems to solve the challenges every business has in strategy, vision, process, and organization.
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How Marketing Works
TITLE: Strategic Marketing Management
WHY IT MATTERS: This book is mostly theory which is very helpful for when you do marketing (i.e. generating awareness) in practice.
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How to do Marketing Tactics
TITLE: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
WHY IT MATTERS: Each business has 1-2 marketing channels that will work well. Here’s how you find them.
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How to Build Defensible Businesses
TITLE: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
WHY IT MATTERS: Business is inherently unfair. Do the things to make it in your favor. Also, understand why your friends are richer than you :-)
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How Private Equity Works
TITLE: Mastering Private Equity: Venture, Growth, and Buyouts
WHY IT MATTERS: When it’s time to sell or buy a business, you need to be armed with this knowledge about the types of private equity.
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How to be a Great Leader
TITLE: The Score Takes Care of Itself
WHY IT MATTERS: If you want to build a great business, learn how to be a great leader.
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Origins of Business Philosophy
TITLE: The Daily Drucker
WHAT YOU LEARN: Drucker is the O.G. of the study of management and business. A compilation of Drucker’s ideas and learnings in a single book.
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How to Have An Allocator Mindset
TITLE: The Outsiders by Thorndike
WHY IT MATTERS: Great CEOs need to have both an operator’s and an allocator’s mindset.
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How Strategy Works
TITLE: Understanding Michael Porter
WHY IT MATTERS: People will talk to you about Porter's 5 forces. Read this so you can know what they're talking about.
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How to Build Scalable Sales Processes
TITLE: Predictable Revenue
WHY IT MATTERS: Scaling businesses means scaling outreach and selling to customers.
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How to Manage Sales Teams
TITLE: Cracking the Sales Management Code
WHY IT MATTERS: Sales is the life-blood of every business.
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How to do Corporate Finance (Basic)
TITLE: Corporate Finance for Dummies
WHY IT MATTERS: Learn to create operating budgets, calculate future cash flows, run scenario analysis, etc.
NOTE: I know this is a For Dummies book but it's pretty good.
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How to do Corporate Finance (Advanced)
TITLE: Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice
WHAT YOU LEARN: Advanced corporate finance techniques, theories, and topics.
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How to Understand Financial Statements
TITLE: Financial Statements
WHAT YOU LEARN: How to interpret the financial statements of your business including the income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet.
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How to Do Cost Cutting
TITLE: Double your Profits
WHAT YOU LEARN: Dozens of tactics to cut costs.
WHY IT MATTERS: There is one method guaranteed to help you earn more: reducing expenses.
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How to Value Companies
TITLE: Valuation
WHAT YOU LEARN: Learn how to value a company using multiple approaches
WHY IT MATTERS: If you’re going to buy, sell or refinance a business, know what it is worth.
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How to Be Scrappy
TITLE: Ready Aim Fire
WHAT YOU LEARN: Tactical ideas around the changing role of the CEO, growth, and mindset.
WHY IT MATTERS: Entrepreneurs make stuff happen – and that requires being resourceful.
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There are 100s of more great books out there all worth reading. These are my favorites for someone that wants a solid foundation in being the CEO of a small business.
Have a recommendation? Want to ask about a book? Feel free to respond!
Michael
P.S. There's also a lot of great learnings in my HoldCo course that helps business operators become HoldCo operators - check it out here
