Top 3 Business Books I Wish I Read Sooner (From $200M Founder)
In this concise video, Ryan Deiss—founder who runs six companies and has spent 15 years mastering system building—shares the three business books that fundamentally shaped his approach to scaling enterprises. He first highlights The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, explaining how the Theory of Constraints (identifying and elevating a single primary bottleneck, then iterating) is the cornerstone of every system he designs. Next, he recommends Built to Sell by John Warrillow, emphasizing the importance of engineering the founder out of day‑to‑day operations so a business becomes truly scalable and sale‑ready, while also addressing mindset shifts tied to systems thinking. The third pick is Work the System by Sam Carpenter, which he describes as a highly tactical guide offering concrete mechanics for documenting, measuring, and improving processes—more hands‑on than the classic E‑Myth. He briefly plugs his own book, Git Scalable, positioning it as a comprehensive playbook that stitches together all operating‑system concepts for businesses that haven’t yet achieved self‑run status. The video’s purpose is to provide actionable reading recommendations that accelerate system‑centric growth for entrepreneurs.
