3 Books That Changed The Way I Run My Business
A fractional CFO shares three books that shaped their business: Covey's 7 Habits, which emphasizes beginning with the end in mind; Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality, on creating memorable customer experiences; and Lencioni's The Advantage, which provides a framework for defining company values using four categories. They've implemented all three.
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One of my favorite quotes of all times is, the only difference between who you are today and who you'll be five years from now comes from the people that you meet and the books that you read. That's why I've read over 300 books over the last 10 years. Today, I'm going to reveal three books that I've read that have had the most profound impact on the way that I approach life and business. Let's dive in. Hands down, the most impactful book that I've ever read is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey. The general premise of the book is that Dr. Stephen Covey did this massive research project that took over 10 years, and through his studies, he was able to find that the most highly effective people that he encountered shared seven common habits or character traits. Now, the idea of this book is really cool because it lays out these traits that all these highly effective people had. But for me, it was actually a little bit depressing. And if I'm being honest, it was a lot depressing because as I got into the book and I started reading about every sequential habit that all these highly effective people had, I quickly realized that I literally had zero of those character traits. But I. But rather than use it as something that, like, held me back or made me feel bad about myself, what this book did was it gave me a roadmap. It gave me a roadmap that I could take and say, like, okay, there's these things that highly effective people do, seven of them, and I literally do none of them. It gave me the roadmap for the things that I needed to go and dive into and learn more about so that I could become a highly effective person. When I think about the seven habits, one really sticks out to me head and shoulders above all the rest. And that was begin with the end in mind. Highly effective people always begin with the end in mind. Now, what it's saying is, like, before you start a thing, have the end goal, like, in mind already. Before you take the first step, know where you're trying to go. This helps gives you clarity around how to get there and if the thing that you're thinking about getting into is even worthwhile or not. Beginning with the end in mind has helped shape so much of how I run my business. Everything from how I interact with clients to team members, to the strategies that I decide to employ inside of my business. Where this habit really hit home for me was when I realized that he was actually talking about end of life. What he's really asking here is am I living the type of life today that will result in me having lived the type of life I wanted to live? Author David Brooks does an amazing job of highlighting this point when he talks about resume virtues versus Eulogy virtues. David Brooks says the resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They're the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being. Whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful. What kind of relationships you formed Are you living your life today for resume virtues or eulogy virtues? Begin with that end in mind. The second book on my list is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gidara. Unreasonable Hospitality is written by a world class restaurateur and it's about how to create amazing experiences in a restaurant. So you might be asking yourself, what in the world does that have to do with a fractional CFO firm? What this book is really about isn't just setting yourself apart from the competition through great hospitality. It's about going so far above and beyond what's even reasonable that you blow the competition away. It's about creating an emotional connection between your clients or your customers in the service that you provide. A great example that Will points out in his book Around Unreasonable Hospitality is around the check in process at a restaurant. You know, you walk into the restaurant, the host asks you what's your name and how big is your party? And then they look down at the list and they try to find you. Or they search for you on their iPad. And then once they find you, they tell you to step aside for three or four or five minutes until your table's ready. Will challenged his team to make that not a slightly awkward interaction, but an amazing experience for clients that would totally blow them away. After a few days, his team came up with a revolutionary idea. They decided to get rid of the hostess station altogether. The guestbook, the iPad, all of it. So you might be wondering, how in the world would they know who I am and what time my reservation is and how many people are in my party? Well, they memorized it. At the beginning of each day they would go out and social media stalk everybody that was scheduled to be a guest that day and memorize their names and their faces, how big their party is and what time they were supposed to be there. So when a guest would walk through the door, they would say, hey Mr. King, so glad you're here. We're expecting you to have a party of three tonight for a reservation at 6 o'. Clock. Is. Is that correct? Just the idea of memorizing all of those names and faces and reservations, that's completely unreasonable. I shared that idea with my team and I said, how can we incorporate that into our firm? We've got a list of three or four big ideas that we're really excited to roll out next year that literally nobody else is doing. I'll do another episode later this year where I break down some of the unreasonable hospitality ideas that we're going to be rolling out for our clients next year. The third book is the Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. I absolutely love Patrick Lencioni's books because yes, they are business books, but they're told as fables or stor and they're so easy to read and they're much more exciting than the normal business babble that you get with the vast majority of business books out there. The Advantage is all about organizational health. Well, what in the world is organizational health? Organizational health is just the combination of management, operations, strategy, and culture and how those things combine to determine how things work in a business. My favorite part about this book, and this is the reason I continue to reread it, this is the reason that I share this book with as many people as I possibly can, is because Lincioni, in this book, gives you an actual step by step guide to defining values for your business. In fact, he says there's four types of values that you absolutely have to define in every single business Core values, aspirational values, accidental values, and permission to play values. If you're one of these firm owners that you've heard me talk about so many times that you need to have values defined but you don't have them in place yet, maybe you don't know how to put them in place, I highly recommend you grab this book. It's like $19 or something on Amazon. We went through this book for the first time five years ago and went through exercises. We were able to define our values and we've had those values now for years and years. We reference them like literally every single day. I cannot recommend enough that you take the time to read the Advantage and go through the exercises to get your values defined. All right, that's it for this week. I hope you found this episode helpful. I look forward to seeing you back here next week, my friends. I'll see you then. It.
