Ryan Deiss recommends four books for founders scaling from $2M to $20M revenue. His own Get Scalable covers operating systems and team building. Who by Jeff and Randy Smart teaches a repeatable hiring process. No Man's Land by Doug Tatum explains why companies get stuck in that range using the 4 M's framework.
I stake my reputation on helping businesses scale from 7 to 8 figures, and these are the 3 books I recommend to anyone doing between $2 million and $20 million in revenue. First up, we have Get Scalable by yours truly. Yes, I am starting with my own book. Yes, I'm biased, but if you're only going to read one book at this stage, this is the one. I literally wrote Get Scalable because I couldn't find a single book that put together the entire $2 to $20 million operating system end to end. So value mapping, playbook building, scorecards, building high-impact teams, quarterly planning, it's all there. It's a playbook I wish I had when I was stuck in no man's land. Next up, we have Who by Jeff and Randy Smart. Between 2 and 20 million, the team that got you here probably won't take you to the next level, and the worst thing that you can do is just hire fast and hope. This book teaches you a 4-step hiring method, turns hiring from just a coin toss into a system. The scorecard in here, by the way, alone is worth the price of the book, so definitely grab this one. Number 3, No Man's Land by Doug Tatum. If Get Scalable is the playbook for getting out of no man's land, this is the book that diagnoses is why you're in it in the first place. Tatum lays out why this $2 to $20 million range is so dangerous. We talk about the 4 M's, so market, model, management, money. It's one of the cleanest diagnostic tools I've seen for figuring out how to go from 7 to 8 figures. Bonus, again, big book, old book, must read, The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt. Doesn't seem like a fit because it's a 40-year-old novel about a guy trying to save a manufacturing plant in Ohio but it's one of the most important books on systems thinking ever written. It's where theory of constraints comes from, and theory of constraints is the foundation of everything that I teach, which is why I consider it a must-read, um, even if it's not the most tactical.
