Evan Carmichael recommends The 4-Hour Workweek and E-Myth for streamlining business operations. He outlines a three-step framework: eliminate low-value work, automate what remains, then delegate. He dropped unnecessary mastermind meeting minutes as an example.
Questions this video answers
Evan recommends *The 4‑Hour Workweek* by Tim Ferriss for mindset and process elimination, and *E‑Myth* by Michael Gerber for system design, plus his own top‑10 book list on his blog and related worksheets.
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm answering another question from our YouTube audience. I love you guys.
This is from Mark who wrote in saying, "Hi Evan, great video. If you don't mind me asking, what books or ebooks would you recommend that I may read so I can better learn about business processes? I've never been or had any business education whatsoever and the books that I've read For example, Rich Dad Poor Dad talks about building your character as a business owner, but doesn't delve into how to operate a business, and I would like to learn more about that.
Thanks always for your advice. Mark. So great question, Mark. My favorite book of all time, at least so far, is The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, and a lot of that is about building processes to eliminate the crap in your life, and you may, uh, use it to work a 4-hour workweek or continue to work your regular workweek if you really love what you're doing, which I hope you guys are doing. But it gives you the mindset to be able to remove the crap from your life and focus on where you add the most value. And so some of the things to think about are, one, to eliminate the things that are not adding value and are not your highest use of time. So look at the things that you do every day in your business, and a lot of that can probably be eliminated. Like, you don't have to do it. At all. A quick example is I run a series of mastermind groups here in Toronto where entrepreneurs get together once a month. We talk about our business problems, and part of what I did as a service was take minutes on what everybody said. And one month I got too busy and didn't take the minutes and send it out. And the minutes took a lot of time to write down and format and send to everybody. And that one month when I stopped taking the notes because I got too busy, nobody noticed that I didn't send out the notes. And I thought this was this huge value-add service, it was a great idea, and it turns out nobody cared about it. And so, guess what, I stopped doing it. I eliminated it. And so there's a lot of things that you're probably doing that you can just eliminate straight out. The next thing is to automate. And you look at the things that you're doing regularly and see is there a way that you can have software or some other technology do this for you on an automated basis. Anything that I'm doing on a repeated basis, I always try to look for a tool to help me do it Faster, better. If you look at any kind of software tool, you know, it makes fewer mistakes, it doesn't go on vacation, doesn't call in sick, doesn't give you problems. And so, much better to automate wherever you can. And then the next one is to delegate. So the things that still have to get done that you can't automate but shouldn't be you doing it, you delegate. You find somebody who can do it for you either overseas remotely or locally here as well. And that helps set up the system so that you can focus on what highest value you can bring to your company. And when I go to work every day, I ask myself along the way, what's the most value that I can bring to my business today? And I look at the tasks that I have laid out in front of me and I'll consistently challenge them. Like, should I be doing this? Should I be doing this at all? And if I should, should it be me doing this? I understand my company has to do this, but should it be me who's doing it instead of somebody on my team or some way to automate it? And so as a person personal challenge that I ask myself every day that may be helpful for you. So that, that's the mindset that comes from The 4-Hour Workweek. The E-Myth is another great book that you can check out. And I have a list of my favorite books off my blog. It's evancarmichael.com/blog, and there's a list of my top 10 favorite books, or if you're on my newsletter, you get that list as well. And both of those are on there. So The E-Myth talks a lot about the systems and structure you need to set up to create your business. There's a lot of worksheets that I've created. If you go to the website/worksheets, you'll be able to find all the worksheets that I have on there that may also help you. A lot of those are general. So the worksheets, the 4-Hour Workweek, the E-Myth are very— it's general advice, general business systems, which is extremely helpful. If you haven't done anything before, it'll change how you think and make you a much better business owner. From there, you might want to also look at whatever industry you're in. I didn't see what kind of business you're running. But also follow some of the blogs and experts who cover your industry. So, for example, I'm in online marketing, and so I research and I follow a lot of the bloggers who talk about online marketing. And I look at some of the things that they write about, and often they'll post about their workflow and things they do to be more productive, some of the tools that they use. And very— it's very industry-specific. So what may be really helpful for them may not be helpful for everybody else, but as somebody in that industry, it's really useful. So I'd look at different companies who are blogging in your space and also different experts who are consultants or people who are hired guns who blog in that space as well, and follow them and you'll learn specific skills and, and processes that they may use that you may not find in a book like The 4-Hour Workweek or my worksheets or The E-Myth. So those would be my two suggestions. One, look at those general resources because that will change how you think as a business owner and that will apply over to any kind of business, and that's why those books are really successful. And then I try to follow experts who are in your industry who might give you other specific ideas that can help you even further automate and make your systems a lot better. So hopefully that helps. Congratulations on taking the time to invest in yourself and think of ways to become a better entrepreneur. It's awesome. For those of you who are watching the video, please give it a thumbs up below if you liked it. It always makes my day to see the thumbs ups come in and makes me wanna do more of these videos. And if you have a comment about this video or question or struggle that you're facing that hopefully I can help you with, feel free to leave in the comment section below. I always read those and try to respond as soon as I can. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
