Archive for category: Book Club

Not too long ago we reviewed Gary Vee’s Crushing It!, which is all about helping business owners understand how social media can help them win in the ever-digitizing world of business. His newest book, Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Success, is another in his series of business books that are unlike anything else in the marketplace. While perfect for business owners, it’s also a great gift for recent high school or college graduates.

For Business Owners

In Part I of the book Gary offers the dictionary definition of twelve traits he feels strong in, as well as one “half” trait (kind candor) that he feels he continues to develop in. These chapters are short but consistently reference Gary’s own life experience and why he thinks proper and consistent deployment of these “emotional ingredients” (as he refers to them) leads to success in business. 

For the record the twelve ingredients are:

1. Gratitude
2. Self-awareness
3. Accountability
4. Optimism
5. Empathy
6. Kindness
7. Tenacity
8. Curiosity
9. Patience
10. Conviction
11. Humility
12. Ambition

It might be jarring to see humility and ambition side-by-side, but Gary resolves this by saying:

“I love talking about my ambition publicly, in front of the world, because it holds me accountable. Doing so also gives the whole world permission to laugh at me if I fail.”

At the end of his chapter on patience, Gary notes:

“Almost every time I put out content about patience, a stunning amount of the comments say, ‘Easier said than done.’ I want to remind you, as you uncover your halves, that all great things should be hard.”

For Grads (to Discuss with Business Owners)

Part II of the book is full of examples in which deploying an ingredient makes all the difference. Here’s one of them:

When your manager or client gives you unexpected negative feedback, how you deliver the following line determines what will happen next:

“Hey, Olivia, can you give me more clarity on your feedback?”

I want you to read that line out loud…the emotional ingredients you deploy in this situation can change your tone of questioning and potentially the outcome of this meeting.

The importance of tone in a textual exchange will not be lost on a recent graduate, but imagine how much more powerful the example can be if it were posed to a relative or family friend, “Have you ever run into a situation like this?” Now, instead of only having Gary Vee’s example, the recent grad will have the feedback and example of someone close to him/her.

The book is chock-full of scenarios worth considering.

The third and final part of the book has challenges related to the twelve and a half ingredients, some of which call for vulnerable sharing on social media, which is probably not for the faint of heart, but still worth considering. While business owners may be used to getting out of their comfort zones regularly, graduates may not be, and this book provides the opportunity and nudge to do just that.

Did you enjoy this review? We’ve got dozens more for you to check out.

We’ve already alluded to Gino Wickman’s Traction here on the blog before by writing about one of the key elements of the book: the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).  But there are so many other valuable nuggets of wisdom in the book that we wanted to make sure we also did a book club article to highlight just a few of its most valuable ideas.

Build Your Leadership Team

A business that is built to sell has a solid leadership team, even if that’s only composed of one or two other non-owners.  Wickman lists five abilities that everyone in your leadership team should have:

• Simplify — “eliminating complexity and reducing everything to the essential”
• Delegate and Elevate — “freeing and elevating yourself to do what you do best, and doing the same for every person in your organization”
• Systematize — “documenting and getting everyone to follow the essential procedural steps in your company’s core processes”
• Structure — “defining and organizing the positions in your organization to reduce complexity and increase clarity, communication, and accountability”
• Predict — Choose the right short-term path (issues over the next 90 days) vs long-term challenges (issues over 90 days) 

Take Risks

Growing businesses have a healthy approach to risk.  Wickman lists three ways to approach it:

• Be open-minded — whether you’re looking at how NFTs might make sense for your business or the possibility of remote work for your employees, you don’t reject ideas out of hand just because you don’t understand them or they make you uncomfortable.
• Be growth-oriented — “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is a truism, but so is “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.”  Be willing to look at different ways your business can grow that you haven’t tried before.
• Be vulnerable — part of why risk is scary for all of us is the possibility that we may lose something or “go backwards.”  But those who are willing to take risks don’t banish fear.  They manage it by being willing to be uncomfortable, which includes being vulnerable.

Know Your Role

Michael Gerber’s E-Myth was famous for parsing the entrepreneur, the technician, and the manager as hats all business owners must wear at different stages of the business.  The two titles that Wickman’s action-oriented book offers are visionary and integrator.

The visionary is a dreamer, strategist, and planner.  The integrator is the executor, the “get things done” person.  Every business needs both, and very rarely are both roles well contained in one person.  In the press it’s very often the visionary that gets the credit (think Steve Jobs) and rarely the integrator that’s even mentioned (think Scottie Pippen).

A lot of frustrations in business partnerships can originate from a failure to understand the necessity (and equality) of both of these roles in a successful business and a subsequent failure for said integrator/visionary to stay in respective lanes.  

Numbers Matter

One of the most valuable ideas of Traction and the EOS is the scorecard, the idea that you can, at a glance, through a set of numbers and metrics, see where your business is at the moment and where it is headed.  Many business owners know that information intuitively by working every day in the business.  But that’s not a sustainable business practice; it’s not something that can be packaged and sold.  

Numbers should be known and shared by everyone in the business to make real progress.  Having relevant numbers arranged in a regular scorecard allows you to get things done in the present and plan for the future.  When those numbers are integrated with a leadership team that is tracking short-term and long-term issues, it means you also have a chance to catch items that fall through the cracks.

Some of the best people to help implement the principles in Traction are business coaches.  Thankfully, we know a few. Give us a call and we can connect you!

While the book title, The 7 Day Startup, might make you roll your eyes a bit, the author’s premise is simple: it doesn’t take that long to start a business. And the most important knowledge you will gain will come after you launch. So launch!

We won’t be able to talk about the entire book in this review, but we’ll share some of the key highlights that any business owner can review, even one who is long past the days of starting up. Don’t be intimidated by the “7 Day” title. Dan just dedicates one day to various tasks to complete before launching.

Tasks to Complete Before Launching

• The Nine Elements of a Great Bootstrapped Idea?
• WTF is an MVP?
• Choose a Business Name
• Build a Website in One Day for under $100
• 10 Ways to Market Your Business
• Set Targets
• Launch

Evaluate Your Idea

For any business that you want to pursue, there’s an easy nine point checklist Dan has put together. You don’t need to excel in each of these areas, but you should have a decent answer for each one. If you already have a business, you can use these questions to identify weak spots in your business to prepare it for sale.  

Does your business…

Have enjoyable Daily Tasks? It doesn’t make sense to start a business that is going to have you doing daily tasks that you don’t enjoy. What will be your day-to-day tasks for this business?

Product/Founder Fit? What skills do you have, what are you most known for, and where can you provide the most value? If this doesn’t line up with your business, that’s a problem.

A scalable business model? Do you have the ambition to grow your business and will it easily accept that growth?

The ability to operate profitably without the founder? Remember that if you can’t leave your business for 30 days and have it grow in your absence, you don’t own a business, you own a job. If you can’t do this with your business or business idea, you’ll have difficulty selling it.

The qualities of a sellable asset? One of the qualities of a sellable asset is the ability to run without the founder. Others include:

• Product design
• Intellectual property
• Your team
• Website
• Recurring revenue

A large market potential? This is also often called “total addressable market” (TAM). You don’t have to become a national company, but you can’t be too niche.

Tap into pain/pleasure differentiators? What do your customers really care about? Does your business go beyond a “cool idea” and actually solve a pain they have or give them a pleasure they desire?

Have a unique lead generation advantage? This could be as simple as great content like blogs and videos or higher level strategies like webinars and courses. What is going to set you apart from your competitors?

Have the ability to launch quickly? If it’s going to take you a year to launch, you won’t be able to learn from customers as you go. Choose an idea that you can launch and modify quickly. When you start getting real data from paying customers, you can innovate and get the product perfect.

What’s in a Name?

Dan points out that many people agonize over the “perfect” name for their business. Instead, he has six questions that get to the heart of what matters: a name that works.

1. Is it taken? (Have you looked to see if the name is used in your state or country?)
2. Is it simple? (Will the customer get it without you explaining it, or is this about an obscure name that you are tied to?)
3. Is it easy to say out loud? (Will customers enjoy sharing it with friends?)
4. Do you like it? (This isn’t the same as absolutely loving it, but rather does it sit well with you?)
5. Does it make sense for your idea? (Real winners in this category include Chipotle, Google, and Dropbox)
6. Is it broad? (Remember to give yourself some room to maneuver as you build your company.  You don’t have to be very specific to start.  Bob’s Bakery might work just as well as Bob’s Bagels.)

Where are the customers?

“Without question, the biggest mistake people make is obsessing over their idea and not focusing enough on finding people willing to pay for their product.”

“The popular stories you hear about startup validation go something like this: 1. I created a website with a brief video. 2. It went viral. 3. I bought a yacht.”

This is a point Dan keeps hammering home over and over in the book. Instead of spending time perfecting your idea, find out if someone is willing to pay for it. Here, he uses the MVP (minimum viable product) term made popular by Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame. If you can’t find people who are willing to pay for a bare bones version of your product, why would they pay for the version you are cooking up in your mind? “You don’t learn until you launch,” Dan says.

Instead of having everything be perfect on launch day, just focus on being competent. There’s only room to improve from launch day.

So, as Dan says, go for it!

Negotiations aren’t just integral to business transactions, they are part of our everyday lives. As Chris Voss notes in his excellent book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It: “Everything in life is a negotiation… crossing the street, getting your coffee… you’re probably in 3-7 negotiations every single day.”

While we can’t get into everything Chris discusses in his book in a short article, we can discuss a few key takeaways to improve what you’re doing in business (and life) right now.

Mirroring

While Voss now runs a renowned consultancy called The Black Swan group, he got started in negotiations with the FBI in hostage situations.

One of the earliest and most basic techniques taught is mirroring. This consists of repeating back words used by your counterparty, but with a tone of question. For example, “This deal point is really important to us.” The mirrored response could be, “When you say ‘really important,’ what do you mean by that?” or “Really important?” and just let that tone hang.

By repeating their words back to them respectfully and in a tone of inquiry, you allow the counterparty to give you more information. The more information you have, the better position you are in to negotiate.

The 7/38/55 Rule

A UCLA study some years ago explored the importance of three factors in communication: content, tonality, and body language. The importance broke down across those ratios, i.e. 7% of what was said, the content, was important; 38% was the tone used in communicating that content; but a whopping 55% of what came across to the person hearing the content was captured in the body language.

We may all know this instinctively as part of living life in society, but hearing the numbers broken down really underscores that instinct. Tone of voice is more than five times more important than what you are actually saying! If we keep 7/38/55 in our minds more as we communicate, our communications will be better and our negotiations sharper.

The Accusation Audit

A fascinating technique Chris promotes is something called the “accusation audit.” It’s used to disarm people at the very beginning of a negotiation, by calling out all the possible fears and thoughts that the counterparty might be thinking. In a way, it’s calling attention to the elephant in the room so it can’t be an unspoken threat.

An example Voss gives comes from one of his clients who was getting squeezed from above by changing demands from a federal contract and thus had less money to pay out their subcontractors. Voss’ client had a meeting with one of the subcontractors and wanted to pave a way for things to move forward smoothly. She started out the meeting by saying, “I know you might think we are the big contractors squeezing out the little guy.”

By letting the subcontractor know from the outset that she understood their perspective and saying what was unsaid, Voss’ client was able to disarm and explain what the real situation was, which was something beyond their control, and then look forward to a mutually acceptable solution.

If video hits home with you more, Chris also has a Masterclass available.

We’ve got some great negotiating tips as well. Give us a call if you’ve got questions about a business negotiation you’re involved in.

The subtitle of Aaron Muller’s book is “How to Buy a Business, Grow Your Profits, and Make it Run Without You.” While entrepreneurship has perhaps never been more in the public consciousness, the phrase “lifestyle business” is still not commonly known in the general public, and this book goes a long way to addressing that gap while sharing some important lessons along the way.

Let Your Business Be Your Business

For those who are considering buying a business, there’s often some soul-searching: is this my passion? Muller’s response to that query is one we tend to agree with: “Finding meaning and purpose in your life is hard enough. Finding a profitable business that also gives your life the unique meaning and purpose you are looking for is doubly hard.”

It’s a lot to ask of a business to offer meaning and purpose for your life. Rather, you should focus on:

• Soundness of the business.  Are the taxes and paperwork in order? Are the financials up to date and do they show promising trends?
• Role in the business.  Are you being asked to be an owner-operator (someone working on the business each day or at least each week) or an absentee owner (someone who only periodically checks in on the business or if there is a major decision to be made)? Do you think this role would suit your talents and current desire to work?
• Growth potential.  Is this something that you can build on in the next 3-5 years to give yourself more options, i.e. build from owner-operator to absentee or from absentee to another exit.

Leverage Previous Mistakes

In a previous article we shared that a buyer of a business was able to more than double his income simply because he fulfilled the orders that the previous owner failed to do. The author shared a story about a business he once bought which had alienated many customers: “In fact, I even put up a banner on the building that read, “New Owner. Friendly Service.” Within one year, revenues increased by over 65 percent.”

Sometimes previous owners have made mistakes they haven’t told you about just because it’s too personally embarrassing. One of them might include poor attitudes with clients or times they simply could have done better on the customer service side of things. Never underestimate the power of a restart and the second chance a customer might give to a new owner.

Bring Your ‘A’ Game… and Teach It

“Whatever it is that is causing your customers to come, you need to transfer that skill to your employee,” Muller opines. He’s right. Whenever you are able to bottle your value-adds into training and company manuals, you’ve created a better asset for a future customer.  

At the heart of a lifestyle business is the unique proposition of creating a schedule you determine and an income you’re responsible for. Don’t be beholden to a 9-5 office paradigm. You can work the hours you want on the days that you want… as long as you set up the proper systems to do so. While the lifestyle you build for yourself may limit scalability and growth for your company, this will be a conscious choice you make that will also make the business an attractive acquisition for someone in the future, who like you, wants a lifestyle business.

We offer businesses of all “speeds” here at Apex, including lifestyle businesses.  Learn more today!