LIVE | 8 Essential Books for Building Business Systems
Hello, hello. Hopefully you guys are able to hear and see me, all right, I'm very excited to get us started here in just a few moments with my eight favorite books for System Building. So if you are someone who is joining me here live for this talk through, I guess, of my bookshelf, which I have, I have the props even back here.
So you can see kind of a teaser of some of them that are coming. I'm really excited to have you guys here today. Hopefully you are able to see and hear.
As always, I'd appreciate your help just in the chat, if you don't mind. Let me know if you are able to hear and see. OK, it's about 30 seconds later I'm able to check.
So if you can beat me to it, I would appreciate that. I'm really excited today to be walking through eight different books, but not just a list. Right? I'm not going to read to you what could just be a blog post. Instead, today, we're going to be talking about not just what these books are, but the pros and cons of each of the books, because the fact is system building, although it's been around for a while, it's not perfect. Right? None of the documentation out there, none of the resources out there are perfect.
And when I'm talking about these books, yes, they're my favorites. But just like everything else I love, I'm going to be a little critical today about some of the things that are not quite as good as they could be. So hopefully you guys are OK with a little bit of just just, I don't know, straight talk today. I guess that's probably the best way to put it, telling you exactly what I think about each of these eight books today. At the end of today's presentation, I am also going to be talking about the correct order for each of these books.
So if you're someone who is looking to stock up on your reading list, wait till the end so that you can hear at least what order I would recommend reading these. And because they are kind of sequential, because just like many other skills system building or process building, it's a journey. And at the beginning there are better books to read then later on down the line.
So I hope you guys are excited, as I am for this one. And thank you guys all who have voted Hello Diary, and for all of you who have voted for this topic during today's stream. OK, so with that, I think let's just go ahead and dove in to the presentation. If you guys are joining us live, please do go ahead and say hello.
And also, if you hear unsolicited feedback, I get solicited unsolicited feedback. But you guys think the headphones. Is that really weird? I decided that today I'm like, I'm just going for comfort.
So you guys are getting the behind the scenes look. All right. So let's dove into the presentation today and let's hope this is all going to work as I dream it will. Hello, Clive. Hello. We believe that it's always weird to say brand names because I'm like, well, who are you? Your person, somewhere behind their hi Melanie.
Nice to see you. Let's dove into this adventure. Let me hide the little canva thing there as well. So today, like I said at the onset, we going be going through eight system building books. By system today what I'm talking about is how exactly you take something that you do and you think about it and you iterate and you somehow turn that thing that you do into a system, a systematic, intentional how. An intentional way of doing things.
So definitely make sure that you are watching this. If you are a business owner, if you're a business leader, or if you're just a worker who has to do things, if you haven't gathered by now, I really believe the system building is something that is applicable for all people of all walks of life. However, I know we skew entrepreneurs here and I know you guys are where my heart is at, but still everyone can learn from today.
So like I said at the onset, while we are just getting settled, everyone was coming into the stream, eight favorite books. And then at the end of these eight favorite books with pros and cons and kind of my synopsis of each, which hopefully as I have the pile here next to it, hopefully I don't drop anything or spill my water. We're going to talk about the recommended order for reading all these books if you'd like to add them onto your summer, I guess, summer reading list, at least in the states here. And good morning. Hello, Casey. Hello, friends. Hello. Hello. It is nice to see you all this evening.
Morning, whatever it is for you. All right. So let's start with 8 favorite books. That's enough. That's enough. Prologue, right.
We're all are already ready to get started. So working backwards for no particular reason otherwise other than I thought that would be fun. The eighth book on our list today, the I guess first aka, last one that we're going to talking about is let me go through a pile here. This guy. Oh, OK. This book this is service design doing. Now, this book is probably one of the most technical ones I'm going to be talking about today, but I wanted to.
Oh, gosh, lots of books. The reason I want to talk about this at the onset is because it's probably the most comprehensive book of any of the books we're going to be talking about today. So let me just give you kind of the the synopsis of what's going on in this book. This is way too small for you to see, but hopefully you can get the idea.
This is what I would consider the textbook you didn't know you needed. When it comes to system building, it zooms in on what is called service design, which when it comes to systems zooms in, is the perfect verb here. It really hones in on exactly what steps you walk through to take, say, some experience from point A to point B.
So while systems tend to be Big Mac. Ideas, you how does our business work, how is our business model flow service design is like zooming in typically. Typically the scale zoomed in to how a particular process really flows.
And what I love about this, what is this is service design doing book is that it has a lot of really practical diagrams. So not to, like, spoil the book for you because there's definitely a lot you should check out here. This is a really good example of kind of what you can expect when you're looking at this book, these kinds of diagrams, helping you visualize your process in a different way.
It's it's the kind of stuff that when I first read it, I was like, why did I spend so many years trying to figure this stuff out alone? The different ways that they visualize a process for me, at least with some of the first signs I had seen this talked about, it felt like it should have been a college class. And here's just another visual example. It this is the book, I guess I would say this is the book. If you want to truly master how to identify what a process is and then optimize that process for whatever criteria is important for you. This is service design doing because of the name service design, from what I gather at least about this space, it originally really skewed towards services design.
But even as you read through this, you're going to hear them constantly correct. The fact that process design and service design is not just about services. Everything that involves a human experience has a service component. And in that way, I really think this is more of a this is process design doing. And this would be an absolutely great read if someone if you have time to read a textbook, because like I said, I have pros and cons for each of my favorite books here. While I love the practical exercises and the broader community that is part of this service design kind of community that they've built here, this is a really dense book.
This this is No WSC Oestreich that she has four books on her bookshelf right now. Well, I'll tell you what, this is a book that if you have on your bedside table, you probably won't get through more than a few pages before you fall asleep because of the fact that it is dense. This is this feels like it's a college course textbook, which, for better or worse, very comprehensive. But it's not something that the casual business owner would probably want to pick up.
It's just too much and it's not going to be worth your time. OK, so there's a critical we'll fall back into this one and I'll talk about the next book in our lineup. But actually, I guess before I do that, you guys have any questions about these books as we go through, just post them in the chat. So if you guys aren't aware over on the right hand side, if you're on Facebook or on the bottom if you are on.
Oh, sorry. Put that on the right hand side if you're on YouTube and the bottom if you're on Facebook, you can actually leave a comment and you leaving a comment like sharing all those things, help this free content reach more people. And of course, we have affiliate links for all this good stuff on the YouTube video.
So if you're looking for these links and you want to support the channel while you do it, check out our affiliate links. All right. Next up next up, scaling up. OK, so let me shuffle through the bookshelf, OK? OK. All right. So scaling up this kind of feels like like a Christmas morning. Let me go through my prizes. Scaling Up is one of the earlier books I read in my business journal.
And for those of you who are familiar with scale scaling up or Rockefeller habits, you probably see some echoes of it in some of the ideas I have. In fact, the I used an element from scaling up with citations in the Blueprint workshop, which many of you attended, and if you haven't attended that ProcessDriven.co blueprint, it's where we walked through our full framework for Systemizing ClickUp Systemizing Your Business using ClickUp. And one element of that kind of built on top of one of the lessons that was shared inside this book. So this to me has been a really influential one.
A lot of folks actually do not know about scaling up, but you might know about a competitor scaling up called Traction or Entrepeneur Operating System or iOS, which I've also mentioned here on the channel. You're not going to see traction or EOC in this lineup today, spoiler alert. I know many of you are big fans of the U.S. framework. I am not I am not a big fan, not to say that I don't think it's super helpful for some teams, but for me it just feels a little rigid. And to me, scaling up when I read the two book side by side know, I went through all the worksheets of both of them side by side, because I've worked with clients who have set up both systems, successfully fought inside ClickUp for their teams. To me, scaling up is a lot more. I'll just keep holding it.
So you have a visual. This one is a lot more flexible of a framework, whereas iOS relies on what felt to me at least as very rigid waterfall. Let's plan everything out in advance and track our time for everything. Scaling up to me felt a little bit more theoretical in a good way. So just to give you kind of my my synopsis or my pros and cons on this book, because of course it's not perfect.
Rather than thinking about the nuts and bolts of process, which is kind of where the service design doing book went, scaling up focuses on scale. Wow. That's a shocker, right? No one expected that one. So it is talking more about the broader systems of your business and what scaling up is really known for, at least in the circles that I you know, the cool kids circles that I've seen are the different worksheets that they use. So I'm just going to flash the page from the book up here.
So once again, you know, I'm a sucker for worksheets. The oh. Oh, my gosh. Oh,opsb. I always say the letters in the wrong order, the one page strategic plan and other worksheets like this are what makes scaling up kind of stand out, because it gives you a new way to categorize and think about the overall systems that your business works in.
So that's where I'm talking about. How does it all scale? It's talking about growing your business from one hundred thousand to one hundred million. That is the perspective of scaling up. And that's kind of the phases that it walks you through.
It goes far beyond just systems and strategy into people, Riggo Feebles strategy, execution and cash, all of the elements to scaling versus just looking at the zoomed in level like the last book we talked about. So Asana, thank you for adding this into your most do database. If you guys don't have one to ClickUp, this is the time to make one. And it looks like we are going to need to have a picture circle because ain't nobody got time to buy all these books and then skim through, which are the good ones. All right. So that is that it's much less waterfall
and simplistic than iOS, although they are both fantastic frameworks. One negative about this book, besides the fact that it's just a lot, is that it can feel a bit like a cliché business book. And you're going to hear me talk about that idea a few times throughout this. This could just be a Layla ism. I know. I have I mean, many quirks.
One of them is that I generally find business books annoying. Not that I don't love the content, but I find them annoying to read because to me, the best example of it. Oh, my gosh, I have it back here.
Hold on one second. Due to. Do you do hold on, hold on, hang on there, we're back. This book had to go run to get it.
This book is what I mean by clichéd business book. There's some good stuff in here, but the whole book could have been one 1000 word blog post, and that is my problem with business books. And so there are times inside scaling up and some of the other books are going to be talking about today where it falls into the business book trope.
Here's an idea. Here's an example of a business doing this. Here's a case study of how we've helped them.
Oh, by the way, hire us onto the next idea. And I don't know, maybe that's just me, but I am over it. So that is one downside of this book. One thing I will say, which I've already said at the onset here, is that the ideas that are nested between some of the business clichés are actually really profound. And scaling up, unlike the other books mentioned today, are not was not created by single author. Yes, Verne Harnish is the author, but there are contributing authors to every chapter and section.
So because it compile so many thought leaders ideas, you end up creating a book that is very quotable and compiles kind of some of the best ideas over the past 10, 20, 30 years prior to that book being written. And in that way, it's very quotable and kind of it sidesteps the concerns of the fluffy, clichéd business book, because while it has some of the tropes, it has so much meat that all in all, it's a very pleasant read and actually was able to read through chapters of it in the way that you could not do with these the service design doing book. So that is that one. So we're up to number two or seven of six to be all right.
So here we are at our next business book or system building book, which I have to shake out of the list here. I just dropped a book that's going to be fun to get later. Idea execution, so you could see I buy my books used because, you know, frugality is fun. As I say on the bottom of this, you can use our affiliate links to support me or just go to your library or go to a used bookstore. Idea to execution is one of those books that I do not hear talked about a lot, which is why I want to bring it up today, because I did.
Execution is about actually executing SystemUp and it's not about, you know, some consultant who has a theory about systemizing. I hate those people, but it is about actually systemizing a virtual SystemUp business at scale. What I find really interesting about it is it is systemizing industry when the industry itself is being bought. So a lot of these books, you're going to see a trend. They resonated with me because of the personal relatability.
There's going to be different books that resonate with you. But for this particular one, the two authors are Indic. They walk you through how they founded their virtual assistant company and how they use systems in order to do that and scale without having a huge cost increase. I'm trying to find a good example of what they have in here because this is one of those ones that is just incredibly practical.
Here's an example. Let me see if it's not very easy to see here. But they even have screenshots of software that they used throughout the business to show you exactly what their operating handbook, what their systems should look like. And, yes, they use I think they even use Trello or Asana something. We don't agree with that. But they have some strategies in here of exactly how they decided to systemize their business, which I think is something that for me at least, I was kind of hungry to see after seeing so many fluffy business folks talking about Urie.
This is a real business who talked about how exactly they systemized their own business so that his idea to execution again, the link to this book is in the bottom. I will say this, as you can tell, this is a thinner book. This is more of a quick read.
It is not like here's exactly how you can do it. This is more of a narrative of how they did it. You guys still with me today? Do I lose anyone on this? This is my first time doing like a book review, so I'm not sure if this is terribly boring or actually helpful. Let me know in the comments, if you can, just to give you the good and the bad of this book. How does SystemUp thinking, Dunwell, look, that's really what I would say this book is all about. So if you're someone who is curious about what does it mean to systemize, what does it feel to systemize, what am I working towards? This would be the book to read.
And because it is so short and sweet, it's a very good one to kind of watch your whistle here. Like I said, it's the real story of how a agency scaled with specific examples and it's an easy conversational read. So when you're actually reading these stories, you're talking it feels as if you're talking to a person, which some of our favorite business books do that and some of them try to do that.
This one successfully did that. Some of the other ones you saw me call out clockwork, which again, great book, terrible writing clockwork tried to do, did not do well. This book is that quite well. So if you're someone who likes to have kind of a conversational book experience, hang out with them in your reading time.
OK, ok, good, good, good. You're still here. I was wondering, I was like, I hope I'm not going too far into the deep end here. So again, links are in the description if you want or support your local library and Skip Bezos because I think he's got enough money. All right. Next up next up, we have built to sell.
So for this one, has anyone read this book? This is an oldie but goodie. And I feel like this is a little bit more of the the trope. And I think this is also the one I dropped on the ground. So excuse me.
Indeed, it was the one I dropped on the ground. Anyone else that's built to sell is this book here? You might recognize the title. Whoops, there you go. The cover more than you actually recognize the book title. It's actually hard one. It's proven to be a hard book title for me to remember, and I'm not sure why Bill to Sell tells the story of a person systemizing a agency, I believe, marketing agency, web design agency.
They do a little bit of everything. This book, one of the reasons I wanted to mention this on this, and it's actually one of the I guess, the books that inspired this video. This is the book. I recommended it to my brother. Hey, Richard.
He's looking to systemize his business. And I he was asking me for what resources I would recommend. And I said, beyond anything else, this is a bit of a teaser for the end.
This is the book I would start with. And it looks like Casey also is in the same boat here. Yes, this is the first business books. Awesome.
Like I said, this is going to be telling you how exactly to systemize a Web agency. But unlike the idea to execution, where we're talking about a service agency, this is specifically talking about what we'd currently call product or service, product or product service. I do not believe the word product or service or the phrase was ever used in this book. And Casey or anyone else who's read this, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I actually think this book might have predated that being a common phrase for those who don't know. Actually, I can pop back here.
A product service is the idea of selling a service as if it were a product. And the way you do that is by having a fixed outcome typically. So there's no proposals involved.
You know, you can just give a title and that is what people are getting. You have a fixed process for how to get someone that result and you have a fixed price. So those three elements are what turned a custom business where someone comes to you and says, hey, I want a website and you're kind of inventing it each time versus having in this book, for example, the signature logo design process, you pay a fixed price. I think it was ten thousand dollars in this book or something. You go through a fixed process that you have time to get better at each time and you get a fixed outcome, which was a brand guide, a logo. This, that and the other product is what otherwise would have been a custom service.
And Casey says in here, great for web designers. I'm going to push it even further. Guys, this is great for anyone in service. And I know just like service design doing the other book we talked about here. Hold on. Oh, gosh.
I get through this without destroying something on my desk. It's going to be a victory just like this book here, the word service in here. And I know already our e-commerce, our product people are creators.
Our makers are watching this video and they're thinking, wait, you're leaving me out again? I am not. This book can be adapted to anything where humans are involved. So, yes, for your e-commerce business, where you're drop shipping, there's no human involvement by you there.
So you don't have control. But everything else in your business, the way you handle customer support, the way you answer the phone, the way you sign off on emails, the way you. Whatever else you do, you do your marketing, everything else in there can take a productize approach, whether in the vendors that you select, maybe you have a preference towards productize providers. I do.
Or you have a approach to prioritizing your own experience inside your business, which goes back to the art of execution. So just because I'm using the word service in here, this this is applicable to anyone with humans performing everything like service design, doing says everything has a service component, even if it's just ClickUp, for example, software company. Does that have a service component? Everyone even the chat? Yes.
No. Do you think ClickUp has a service component? Liberty, you guys leave it to you guys to answer that one. What do you think? I'm going to move ahead and go to the next book, because, you know, the answer is yes, customer support, road map, working with people like me, that is a service that they offer. The style of this book is extremely narrative, very easy to read, very good at actually doing the job to make you feel how this narrative person feels.
And you're going to hear me use narrative teaching a few times here. Let me just explain the jargon. Basically, this is the sense this is delivered in a story format. So that means you're following. I forget his name. Oh, my gosh. Anyone? Alex? No, not Alex.
This is terrible. I forget his name. Anyway, there's a guy named Ted and there's another guy. Let's just call him John. Bob, who knows someone. Bob. Bob has an agency.
And you follow Bob's life for a few years as he's trying to systemize his business in in preparation for selling it. So by telling the story from Bob's point of view, from learning about Bob's home life, this narrative style makes it easier to connect because as humans, we relate better to stories and has just so much less boring than the traditional business books. So narrative style here, very easy to digest. And one element that it does include in here, just like scaling up, is hiring. So one of the things that we often miss in his books about Systemizing is that eventually humans need to get involved in a lot of these books that we're going be talking about today.
Skip that they're just like automate automate system AI systems and they fail to talk in detail about what that means for your current team versus the team. You would need to have a productize or systematic business. The fact is not every person you have with you today is going to be able to work in that kind of environment. So. Yeah, next up, boss life. All right, so this one is probably a little bit of a curveball because this is definitely not about systemizing, just like last time.
I love to hear you guys read this. This one. Sorry if it's a little shiny boss life surviving my own small business. If you go to the affiliate link, they have a slightly different cover photo because this is probably an old one because I buy books on the cheap boss. Life tells the story of a custom desk making or furniture making company based in Oh, I wish I knew where I am not sure I used to know it doesn't matter. Makes furniture, makes tabletops, makes of pieces of custom desks for fancy offices and such. You're following the story of Paul Paul, the author.
Paul is the person who actually wrote the book and Paul is the person who the book is about. This book reads like a private journal and it's absolutely fascinating to read. I don't know that it teaches you how to systemize as much as it teaches you what life is like if you don't.
It is also probably the number one book I would recommend for anyone who is not sure if they want to run a business or not, because I don't know if any of you have read this, but when I read this especially I think I read it a few years in, I wasn't very far along. I read this and it talks a lot about the numbers, the anxieties, the stress, the cash flow constraints of running a business. And you're the anxiety in the page is palpable. So that's why when you see the summary here saying pages of your empathy as if reading another's journal, that is exactly what the experience is. So if you're someone who needs to be scared straight about SystemUp vision. Or if you just want a reality check on what running your business can feel like if you're not systemizing or scaling, I think this is a great book.
And if nothing else, it's just it's just really good because it is a personal story taking place over, I think, one year of time, which was then published as just for fun thing that became a best selling book. So Boss Life check it out. Narrative story style, just like the built to sell book, but actually based on a real person, not fiction. So it goes a lot deeper and pulls on the heartstrings a lot more. OK, number three, you guys knew this one was going to be in here, right, because you saw my post a few few months back.
Next up is SystemUp. So this is SystemUp. If you guys haven't checked this one out, this is the one that I had to buy new because David is not yet in the used markets. SystemUp is a book about building systems. So unlike the other ones which are coming at the systems equation from various angles, SystemUp is coming at it very directly. It's looking at the whole problem and it's saying here is the system for building systems, which, as you can imagine, is something that speaks directly to me.
I just to just to answer a question that I get a lot. I actually didn't read this until this past winter, so long after we started our own framework here. And there are a lot of similarities. I promise it's completely coincidental or just logic based, but some of the ideas at SystemUp algae really echoes that we share. Here is the fact that systems do not need to be built by the business owner.
It also talks about a critical flow for how exactly you build systems, what order you take. We take a slightly different approach to how to get to that, but this would be a great book if you're looking for the overall process in order to systemize an entire business from start to finish. There's a lot of text here, so I'm going to read it to you full, full process. It does have a bit of a service skew because like some of the other ones here, this person's background, the author's background was in an agency environment, also a retail, I believe, but mostly it feels very service. At times we share a lot of beliefs with SystemUp, but I also have some pretty broad differences. So I want to just speak to that as well.
This particular book is a marketing book. So I think that's one difference from things like boss life, which boss life is just someone's life story, basically selling nothing, as it says in the book itself. SystemUp Energy has a little bit more of an agenda, more like scaling up or traditional business books. SystemUp is selling system hub and system ologist. Now, I will not speak to those programs because I've never been in them.
But I will say that System Hub is a software that helps you document CEP's like Train UEL or even Google Docs. And so this book has one cornerstone around keeping your task management and your S.O.P management entirely separate, which, as you guys know, I fundamentally disagree with. But one of the kind of eyebrow raising things is that they they own a software that helps you keep your recipes separate from your tasks. So take that with a grain of salt.
They also run a program that helps other people become SystemUp ologists. So one of the staples of this framework is that you need to have somebody else help you SystemUp something outside. Your organization needs to be there to help you pull the information out of your head, which is what SystemUp ologist do. As far as I understand it, if we have any symbologist in the group, feel free to drop in the chat, say hello, all that stuff, because I know we have quite a few of you in the audience.
I hope I'm not butchering the summary of your profession. I read it with all due respect and all that, but that is a fundamental difference. And I it's hard to know with books like this whether that is a fundamental conclusion that they reached.
And so then they offered the additional service or if they offered the additional services or businesses. And so that became a conclusion that they reached a little funky on that one. Unfortunately, the flow of this book does tend to feel a little bit clichéd business book. So not as but again, not as bad as clockwork. That's like the epitome of terribly written business books, but it is pretty swimmable. So just something to keep in mind in terms of the joy of reading, definitely not quite as charming as some of the other books that we've read here.
Maybe not a vacation book. OK, we're down to our last two guests with me, OK, right. I hope your I got the last two ones here, which you can already kind of see what they are. But humor me just to remind you, once we get through these two, I'm going to be going through the order that I would recommend reading this and based on your proficiency level, your skill and your interest. So keep that in mind. So next up, we have the goal.
So this is the old cover of it. If you go to the affiliate link in the description, there is a newer cover that looks actually kind of creepier than this. Believe it or not, the goal is a book around process improvement. And in the slides here, I describe it as the oggi book about process improvement. But before I say that, I should thank you to score a side note.
This is not sponsored. This is just me, like loving on a nonprofit who does amazing work. Scores of free mentoring programs for businesses all across the country, score Lankester, Score, Lebanon, Schaus, York and Susquehanna. You guys are awesome. And Scores who originally introduced me to this book. This is one of the first business books that I have read that actually put words to the work that I now do.
So this was really meaningful to me early on when I was starting out as a virtual system, which that's a whole other video. But, you know, I started out being a hands to keyboard hourly virtual assistant. I want to say my first rate was like fifteen dollars an hour. It wasn't that long ago so far. And one of the things I really credit with that is free programs like scores.
So if you're someone who you read Boss Life and you realize that, yeah, I do want to own my own business, then scores. You have to you have to take time to find the right mentor. But man, invaluable.
So thank you, Katherine, at Squaw for directing me to the goal. The goal is a classic process improvement book. I would say it's the classic as far as I read. I continue to read books and books and books about this and everyone seems to mention the goal. This also uses a narrative style based on fiction.
But you know, it's fictional based on real life, if that makes sense and personal details are added to add depth. So like boss life, this one actually talks a little bit around the protagonists outside life, which makes this book feel a lot more like vacation reading and a lot less like a textbook. And I know I keep mentioning that, but to me that is so important in the books I read. I don't want the books I read to feel like work unless they're really worth it. So this one is definitely an enjoyable read.
This book is powerful because it teaches you the lingo that has since evolved. So just like when I talked about Bill to sell, how I was saying it, use the product service ideas without using that term because it might have predated that or maybe just didn't want to confuse people. This book uses a lot of terms that have since become kind of standard in process improvement in general. This whole book is based around the story of a manufacturing plant which is charged with increasing their productivity or efficiency or throughput. And it's just a very interesting way to change the way you think about a manufacturing facility and the way you think about efficiency in general.
And now I know now is the opposite case. Right now I'm getting all my service providers are like manufacturing. This is about products. This isn't relevant to me.
Hopefully, if you learned anything from this presentation so far, it's that you can always find something relevant to you. And I would definitely recommend this no matter what type of business you are, to start thinking in a way that defines efficiency based on what actually matters or the jobs to be done. So. You guys stay with me on this. I hope so.
We got the last book, the last one, which is the real curveball, which actually kind of sneak preview and showed you at the beginning. So hopefully that's OK. Onward, onward to our last business book today, this evening, which is the millionaire real estate investor. What Layla what the billionaire real estate investor, this feels like a tell a commercial commercial television mercial tell.
Oh my gosh. You know what I mean, like a late night TV commercial, but I promise you, it's actually a pretty good book. So this book minus the spammy title, which just feels dated, actually was checked when this book was created, because I know it's been around for a while. Some of the prices in this book make me think like, oh man, if only timber was that low 2005. So not that old, but old enough that 90 cents to it. The millionaire real estate investor talks about how exactly to approach the world of real estate investing.
For the first time, it is a complete A-Z tour of how to become a millionaire real estate investor. Now, as the title implies or the subtitle. See that little that straight out of the 90s or 80s tagline there as these things suggest, this book is a little woo woo.
But I think it strikes really nice balance. And the reason I'm bringing it up here in a business about Arena Livestream, about systemizing is because when you are looking to get into anything, you need to build frameworks. And this book, even though it has a terrible title, is one of the best books I've seen for teaching someone a framework or process with a careful balance of who you know, you can do it whatever and practical tips. This, I would say, even goes further, no offense, Vern, like scaling up, I love that book. I think it's a great leader. This book goes further.
I wish this existed for business. And maybe one day we'll write that. That's that's the dream. Right. But until then, this is a book that I think even if you have no interest in real estate, if you are someone who is interested in systemizing or teaching systemizing, I just think this book is a great case study of how to do that effectively without going too far into the weeds or being too prescriptive. What I love about this book is it has modularity, so it gives you frameworks that allow for personal adjustments.
So things about your preferred investor profile, examples of how you might learn based on X, Y, Z, the different risk factors that go into each strategy are for real estate investment. And it just does a great job of indoctrinating you into a way of thinking. But better still, it doesn't do so in a way that's kind of putting you into a box like some of these other books, or especially the books that aren't on this list. Some of them can be a little bit heavy handed. I just feel like this does a good job of laying out the foundations with opinions but not opinions that you feel like you cannot break or build upon.
It's very much a foundational process book, and it surprised me by how much this which I've read for my own personal interest. Actually, I'm hugely obsessed with real estate investment. Personally, this has been very, very helpful for me, thinking about how I'm going to teach process building or what we have inside ClickingUp when it comes to systemizing a business. I actually learned a lot from the real estate investing book, which, yes, that's a form of business, but that surprised me. Maybe it surprised you as well.
OK, break time, water time. You guys stay with me, we're going to go into the recommended order for these books. Before I do that, I want to just check in of these books of these eight that we talked about. Have you guys read all these are ready for this? Was there any new ones, any ones that are on your reading list? Let me know.
Also, lemon water is the best, so if you guys if this is any new books here, I'll just go over what we had in case you joined late. And again, links are in the description. And if I'm not careful, books will be in my water cup. We talked about idea to execution.
These are not going to be in order because I threw the pile all over scaling up. We talked about the goal, we talked about SystemUp. We talked about bus life, we talked about built to sell. We talked about, oh, my gosh, this is service design doing, which you're just gonna have to deal with the fact that that's on an angle that's as good as we're going to get today.
And then we talked about the millionaire real estate investor as kind of a contradictory choice. This is not include the dozens I don't know, might even be one hundred at this point. Books that I've read that I do not think are worth mentioning today, because like clockwork, like other books like that, there are a lot of junk system building books that are woo woo that could just be long blog posts and instead have been spun out into public works to feed a media empire. And that's not what I want you guys to know. So if you guys have your own book recommendations, please do write them in the comments.
So if there's something that you think I missed on this list, live chat here, or if you're watching the replay, put it in a comment. I am honestly curious to know what books I might have missed. Maybe I've already read it and I was like, not my favorite, or maybe I forgot about it, or maybe I've never even heard of it. So I would love to hear and audiobooks, audiobooks or podcasts. Welcome to I'll admit that a lot of the popular books like ECMWF and those ones I've just listen to podcasts instead of actually listening to the whole book because business books. All right. So let's talk about the order of these.
So if you are looking at all these books that I've mapped out here, I'm not going to tell you the order that I've read them, because actually, maybe it will be kind of interesting. I started with the goal before I went through this whole spider web. But if I were to do it again and I were to have someone tell me, you know, this is the preferred order, I would want to organize it in terms of how knowledgeable I was about system building.
So I gave you guys the example. And if you came late, here you go. My brother Richard. Hello. Is looking for some information about systemizing a service.
And so naturally, I threw him right. I built a cell because I view that as one of the best beginner books. He was at an awareness stage, meaning he was just looking to become aware of what systemizing actually looked like and not necessarily, you know, the nitty gritty details quite yet. If I gave him service design doing, he would not have made it through it, as they say, bless his heart, but he would not have made it through that. So we want to be aware of where you are in the journey. So if you are someone who is just being exposed to the ADF system building, you're going to be down here in the awareness stage, which is a great place to start.
This is where you picture your vision. This is where you figure out what's important to you, and this is where you really decide what matters when it comes to systemizing. Because the thing we don't want to do is to spend a lot of time optimizing for a solution that we personally do not care about. I repeat that we do not want to spend a lot of time systemizing to optimize for something that is not important to us.
So you hear me talk a lot about effectiveness when it comes to systemizing. When I am improving a process, I am looking for effectiveness, which to me means human satisfaction or how wonderful it is for the humans and straight up efficiency, meaning the reduction of cost. I add that human variable because to me work and process is about enjoying it.
The CEO perspective, the team member perspective, the customer perspective, the contractor perspective. It is about the humans actually enjoying the engine of work happening, whereas other folks have a different thing in mind. Idea to execution. When you read that, it's very cost centric, it's very efficiency minded.
And I want to make sure that when you are in this awareness stage here, you are starting to identify what is it that you are chasing, what direction do you want to go from here? Because while it looks like a visual up, this is not a linear path. I really probably drew this as like some kind of squiggly arrow because it is a squiggly arrow. OK, before I go into this order, I just want to go through here, of course, I've read SystemUp. Yes, it's a great book, lots of quotable moments.
Yeah, OK, I can definitely give you some additional ones on here, Daury, about the maybe the ones that are not worth the time or just the ones that are a little bit more WUI. I am not a woo woo person, but I read a lot of woo woo books that I'd be happy to share, which are helpful to the right person. Again, all this is about being aware of what you need and I know what I don't need at this point. So there you go on that one.
And I would say just on this case, just be careful about the tech level. I mean, I think you're talking about technical level, but just for anyone else reading this, I wouldn't trust any books advice about technology just because they're so dated by the time they come out. I mean, even reading SystemUp, I think it came out 20, 20, maybe Asana knows some of the technologies that they reference in there. Just feel so out of date right now. So, Casey, I know you know better, but other people are watching this.
Let's listen for the strategies that are, I don't know, as old as time process. It's an old space. Listen to the old things that continue to remain true and skip some of the Chinese stuff. There we are. There you are. OK, so gentlemen, I wish I had like I think I do have a drum roll, but I'm not going to try to mess with that now. OK, so here are the first two books I would start with.
So if you are in the awareness phase, I would start with boss life and then built a cell. OK, boss, life and then built a cell, if you guys are not remember. Oh my gosh, words. This is why I can't do this. At the end of the day, I guess, Boss, Life is the book about why you what the reality is of running a business.
The reason I put this in first place is because, boss, life is going to scare you straight of running a business if you are not really ready, because unlike some people, I do not believe everyone should run a business. I think everyone could. I think a lot of people would hate it. And I think this book explains exactly why a lot of people would hate running their own business. The boss life is their next stop, built to sell over here, built to sell.
So when you're starting to think about what exactly you offer the world, we want to start thinking in terms of scale selling, stepping back from the business from the beginning. We want to know what SystemUp looks like so we can be aware of whether or not that is something we want to chase. So to me, to sell and understanding what a product service is, this is the one to read. So that's number one and number two, which is why I recommended these to my brother, as I have talked about a few times in here. He doesn't just know he's getting mentioned. So. All right.
Next up. Three and four, so this is going to be when you're just starting to get out of the awareness phase and you're getting into the DIY land. All right. So if you are someone who's like, yep, I know I need a systemize. Yep, I know it's good to do what exactly am I going towards? What are some of the terms I need to know, what are some of the technical knowledge I need? And again, like Casey said, technical strategy, not technical as in what's the tutorial? I need the third one, but to got the wrong one.
The third one, the goal. This is the time to introduce the terminology that you need to think about when it comes to improving a system that you have and then hand in hand with this art of execution. So these two really go, go, go hand in hand. Idea to execution is talking about growing the business. And I think the goal, while it is about improving a business, it really is a better primer on the frameworks and terms that you can then using Google or using YouTube search and find more resources about, because again, in the aware and DIY stage, these early stages here, we're just trying to get out of the terminology down, be able to know enough to be dangerous, as I say, which is honestly where most people it's really all you need to get to.
So next up next up, we have got five and six that are there we go. SystemUp alguien scaling up. So now we are starting to go beyond just the wire and we are going into the provider stage.
OK, so if you're someone who's like, you know, I understand the terms of how to do this for myself, but now I really want to like I almost want to be good enough that if I wanted to, I could sell this to somebody else because I know my stuff. When you're in that stage, I recommend reading SystemUp or and scaling up. If you were someone that does not enjoy scaling up methodology or if you are someone that just prefers something simpler, you could choose to replace scaleup with traction iOS. But like I talked about the beginning, this is my preference. These two so these are ones that if you're someone who's entering this video, you are someone who is either already a service provider or you're a VA pivoting to one, or you're the ops manager or the CEO of a business. This would be where I start because you probably already have your baseline knowledge figured out.
Scaling up, like I said, is about going from zero to 60 in a business. It gives really good examples about how other businesses have done that, although it does fall into some business tropes. But so many good ideas in there that you're going to be quoting for years like I do. Then there is SystemUp LG, which actually gave you these in the backwards order, five and six, six and five. But SystemUp is talking about how to systemize a business.
It is the process for processes and this would be the next book to read. If you're moving into the I want to be good enough to do this for other people space. I realize I'm talking fast help. So with me, what is next? What is next? Voila. All right, so last two millionaire real estate investor and this is service design doing this is probably not surprising because I kind of gave you some teasers about this along the way.
These are going to be ones that you're going to want to introduce when you are going from the provider level. Honestly, I would say when you're at the provider, the last ones are about when you're getting to provider, when you're really starting to offer these kinds of services. This is where I would go. I would go to service design doing if you are working one on one with clients or if you're a facilitator or if you're UX designer or if you're an operations manager who wants to have a more customer experience mindset. This would be the book, and this is a textbook, so honestly, I'm not sure if I've even read every page of this is something that I continue to go back to.
I read a chapter I mentioned. I reference it back, especially when I was doing client work. You can see it's all dog eared.
It's it was kind of like almost a Wikipedia for me of different ideas and exercises for someone who's looking to get into this work professionally. This is the book. They also have a whole bunch of other books. So if you make it through this and you're like, I am hungry for more, this whole organization has a whole bunch of content around professionally doing this service design.
It does like many of these process books on the high end, they tend to feel a little enterprises. I know. And as in the comments and other folks who have experience working in larger organizations. Scaling up this a service designed doing. And to an extent, SystemUp allergy can start to feel a little big business, and that's something I want you all to keep in mind.
I am talking from the perspective of system building for a small to mid-sized business. So once you're over a hundred, one hundred and fifty people, I'm not your person anymore. I'm not your person anymore. And that's OK.
But these books are really for that size bracket of company and people who are looking to figure out all the quirks in that size bracket now. This one, the reason I'm putting this on here, besides I just enjoy it, is because if you are looking to educate, so while service design doing is about facilitating, consulting, maybe even coaching, that would be service design. Doing this is around when you're looking to teach what you know. So you're becoming a provider, you're pivoting into that expert space. You won't be able to start teaching these systems that you have a book like this might not be this one.
Maybe find something else that's, you know, something that you're interested in learning more about to learn how to teach a framework. And I didn't realize how important that was. I read a lot of teaching or instructional design books. None were as helpful as just experiencing instructional design, in fact, effectively done in just a book format.
And imagine supplementing that with video to build your own way of explaining how you do things. Now that if I actually see the visual is the preferred order and I know someone in here asked for my bonus books, so I actually have one. If you hold on while I go run back to my bookshelf here. Hold on. I'm coming. I'm coming this way. All of their.
Almost they're hang out. Come in, come in, come on, there's a lot of folks here trying, trying, trying, OK, OK. Hopefully you can still hear me. All right. I got four bonus ones. So for those of you of hung out, you want to hear some other ones that didn't quite make the top eight list, but I think would be ones to check out. I don't even think I have affiliate links for these.
They're just they're just good books. Maybe we'll add them later, this one. So if you wanted the companion book. Well, to this one. Here you go. Mapping experiences.
This is your bonus book number one of four I have here. I'm sure there's way more that I am forgetting about, but these are the ones that are 025 sorry, five bonuses, mapping experiences, talks more in detail about creating customer journeys. It's a different form of what they talk about SystemUp.
This is service design doing. And again, if you want to be in that expert provider level, these are the books that I would start reading. Also side note, I meant to make this point earlier, I don't have any books for the expert level because despite what some people on YouTube think, I am not an expert in this either. I am not I do not know what perfection in ClickUp expertize or perfection and process expertize looks like.
I will let you know as soon as I'm there. And that's why I'm grateful for you guys checking out this channel for following me along this journey, because I'm not there and I'm a few steps ahead of some of you. I'm a few steps behind the rest of you, but I'm hopefully documenting how we go through this learning curve. So as I discover those expert level books, you'll be the first to know. So continuing on my way, more about real estate investing, because that's what I'm interested in. But you could use many books for this practical guide to actually systemizing a real estate business.
This is another example of using a framework and prescribing exactly what someone can do, prescribing a system playbook. This book does a great job. It is by one of the co-founders sorry, is by one of the founders of bigger pockets.
Actually, I'm not sure if he's a founder or just a founding employee. But anyway, I've listened to like 300 episodes of air pockets and you think I would know that. So for any real estate investors or people who are interested in learning about the space, that is a good book that works a lot like the millionaire real estate investor, but is a little bit more updated.
That's an example of a book that prescribes an entire operating system for a business specific to one industry, which things like scaling up in those are industry agnostic. More want more bonuses or is this like, ah, we are burning out? I mean, over burning out here, what do I want to go next? OK, we'll do this one. I mean, this isn't really OK, we'll clue this this isn't really a system book, let my people go surfing. So if you guys haven't read this, this is a cultural book. I guess this is around thinking about your business as doing more than business.
You could also consider a book like this in line with learning more about the course. So if you're someone who's looking to have a business that does more than just make a profit, which I know in ClickingUp, we tell people to organize your business around the main objective and typically it's make a profit. And some people really are. I mean, it's amazing.
It's a really stresses people out to think about the fact that their businesses, they're just for profit. So if you have a broader purpose or if you'd like to design a business that is built around the stakeholder rather than the shareholder, books like this are good ones. This is not teaching you a process so much as a bias or a variable. You can add into your decision making to start thinking about how to make different decisions. Like I talked about, my own view is that efficiency plus human effectiveness or efficiency, plus human happiness or humanity is effectiveness.
And that humanity variable is really guided by books like this or by folks who follow a lot of crazy stuff like this. I'm trying to learn more about radical transparency, and it's those are very interesting ones to check out for sure. So if you're looking for more cultural biases and these ones do make the list, but nonetheless. All right.
So if you guys liked built to sell, I got one more book related to that. Let you just throw these books on the ground here, pick them up later. No, this guy we talked about earlier, so many of you read this, Built to Sell is a great book about product, has a service. But let's check the date, actually, 2010. Wow.
You think they would have been using product service by then? Maybe I'm just crazy either way. 2010, this book, Bad Ass Your Brand. Which I've had actually on my website for a while in terms of just a book that I recommend, all people read this twenty, seventeen.
All right, seven years later, builds builds on top of built to sell. All right. So these are kind of like the part one, part two, even though they're in no way affiliated and could not be more different in style that has Your Brand is a book by a brand designer named Pia Silva, who has a podcast as a website.
She provides design services, obviously. And to me, when I was reading this, it really felt like she was embodying exactly what Bill to sell said minus the sell part. She talks about product in your design service in almost a VIP day minus the VIP day. So Jordan Gill, she she owns the VIP space right now. But I kind of think Priscilla has been doing it first.
So they have a radical process for building out brands. They outline exactly how they do it in this book, which this book is a sales tool, but it includes cartoons and just so much good stuff that I forgive them for being a little bit sales at times. But he talks about how you can build a brand that's unique and it's outlining their framework once again, teaching you how to teach a process by taking it. And again, the cartoons just really help make it more engaging. His book, I think last I checked, this company, which I believe is just a husband and wife, Sophia and her husband, I think they're charging like thirty thousand dollars for a brand.
Forty thousand something. I mean, crazy to me. Right? That's the whole thing about this book. It's the mindset shift around what is a lot of money, what is a worthwhile experience. It's a lot of the things we now hear popularized by the VIP days, which are become a little bit overdone. But before they were, I guess, before they were cool.
So that as your brand, that would be one to check out. Last but not least, and this is another one that I'm going to guarantee you that almost none of you have read because it is so, so niche. And I think I just heard about it on a podcast. And it's like I think it's self published. I'm pretty sure it is just by the cover, this guy.
So don't judge the graphic design, the customer support handbook, because anyone read this. Let me know if you have, because I would feel very seen. I don't know Sarah Hattar personally. She's the author of the book, but the Customer Support Handbook. Is a collection of stories from customer support leaders about how to approach customer support processes, which once again, just like the goal.
Hold on. Here we go. Just like this one didn't feel relevant to many of us because it's about manufacturing. This is about customer support. How many of us work as a customer support representative? No one. Almost no one here I would. That is a customer support representative.
But how many of us at some point in our day or life are wearing the hat of a customer support representative? I am. I don't know about you guys. I am definitely customer support representative more often than I'd like. And this book talks about practically what processes and values can you instill in a customer support process in order to build a better customer support flow? That's a bonus book. I keep getting these headphones.
Can you hear that? Of this is the bonus for number five. So the customer support handbook. I actually do not think this is on Amazon. Last I checked. At least I think you actually have to go to their website to find it, which is, let's see, co support, great name, good business name. But it has chapters from a bunch of different industry leaders talking about different ways in order to in order to approach customer support in a radically different way.
And again, short read, because each chapter is almost a standalone idea. There are some chapters that are better than others. But I learned something from each one. I would love to see the author actually write just a book by themselves because I think they had some of the best chapters. But you get the idea. Tom says, OK, one book I'll add to your list is The Myth Revisited.
Tom, I got some feelings about the MF. I don't know. I should put that out here, though. If anyone is completely new to the productivity book world, the IMF is like the Bible of it. I feel like it initiated a lot of it that in the four hour work week, which I also didn't mention here, the IMF is one of those books that I didn't even read.
I actually got it from a library. I skimmed it and I was like, why is this book so long when it could have just been a blog post? It was one of those. So I just listen to a bunch of podcast interviews from the author rather than reading the book, which is probably not good for the author, but I don't think he needs any help at this point.
Michael Gerber, if I remember correctly and thank you Asana that the customer support handbook is on Amazon. I think when I ordered it, it was just on their website. But I might be I might be missing something. However, I should say not to shut you down, Tom, at all, because this book, a lot of people claim that this just transformed their life. So if you were someone who is new to the idea of delegation systemizing, this seems to have helped.
A lot of people didn't resonate with me personally, but it's probably because I am just allergic to some of the business book tropes, as I've talked about here. So all the ones that are on this list are free of tropes for the most part, or the troops are very worth it. So that is that's that, guys. That's it. If you guys enjoyed this video at all, I'd appreciate you saying like and subscribe and please do what Tom did. I promise.
Tom, I will leave this to you because I know you won't be offended, but I will not shut you guys down for having your own book recommendations. Tom can take the heat, but any of you guys, if you have your own book recommendations that I missed here, I am genuinely interested in adding to my reading list because I'm rereading this right now. But otherwise I'm ou
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