In the last quarter of 2021 and into 2022 I have been focused on GROWTH. Not just how to grow my business financially, but how to grow and develop the quality of what I am offering my clients. While making money is vital to growth today, the core behind my motivation to grow was to see my clients excel in their own businesses. Their growth meant my success and that was the most important thing.
To experience this growth, I needed to expand not only the amount of content and education I received but the variety and depth of the information I was consuming. While Channer Consulting offers primarily marketing-focused services, a big element of our marketing plan development involves business strategy and planning. I began to realize that I could not just focus on learning more about marketing and marketing trends, but I also need to learn more about other aspects of building and running a business. This is where my journey to building a more robust library of resources began.
Today I will share with you four key books that really helped to propel my vision and outlook on starting, running, and ultimately selling your business. There are four books I highly recommend to anyone that is considering starting a business, has recently launched or business, or has been running their own business for some time now. No matter where you are on your business journey, these books will help reshape your thoughts and creativity on how you approach your business.
The first recommendation on my list today is:
The Ice Cream Maker by Subir Chowdhury
The Ice Cream Maker is an inspiring tale about making quality the key ingredient in everything you do. Rather than take you through step-by-step instructions and guidance on how to incorporate quality into your business, Chowdhury accomplishes this through so the art of storytelling. The entire book is told through the eyes of the owner of Dairy Cream, a local ice cream manufacture who needs to get local grocery stores to shelve and sell their ice cream in order to make a profit. There were several internal issues centered around quality that the business was experiencing that needed to be addressed before they could see any growth and get the key customers they were seeking. He encounters a long-time acquaintance who recognizes the quality issues and instructs him on the steps he needed to take to overcome the issues the company was facing. Their dialogue and experiences offer several invaluable concepts and thought processes any business owner and entrepreneur should learn to help improve the level of quality of their product, their services, and their internal processes and culture.
If you are feeling like the quality of any aspect of your business could use a fresh kick in the butt to level up, you will learn everything you need in The Ice Cream Maker.
Built to Sell by John Warrillow
Built to Sell by John Warrillow is the next book on my list as it helps us to create businesses that can thrive without us in the center of it. Can you imagine what your business would be like if you got injured or had a loss in the family which required taking some time off to grief and adjust? If your business will completely shut down without your direct involvement, then you need to check out this book.
This is another book that delivers an impactful message through storytelling. You follow Alex Stapleton, owner of a marketing firm that at the beginning of the story is operating on a month-by-month basis and desperately reliant on the big checks coming in from a handful of clients that they depend on to stay afloat. At the same time, Alex realizes that he also would like to sell the company but doesn’t know where to start. He connects with an associate that he knows that is experienced with purchasing and selling companies for help on where to start. He learns step by step how to transform his business from worth next to nothing to worth more than five million dollars in just over a year.
There are significant steps explained throughout the journey that really details how to turn your business into a system that can not only operate and function without your constant involvement but also be repeatable and expandable which are very attractive features for any investor or buyer.
Whether or not you are considering selling your business at this time, the day will one day come and it is vital that you start to fine-tune your business processes now rather than rush to make it happen in a company that has a history of patterns that may be impossible to break without losing key personnel.
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
The next book that changed my perspective of business and the services I offer, at least how I communicate my services is Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. Dunford teaches us how to nail product/service positioning so customers get what you are selling, buy it and also love it. Do you ever feel like you can hear pin drops when you try to explain what your product or service is and how it is valuable? Chances are you are missing something in how you are positioning your services to your audience. She walks you through 10 steps to understanding and creating a positioning statement for your business or for a key product or service you offer.
There is nothing worse than trying to communicate your services or product and having them not understand what you are speaking about. If this has happened to you before then Obviously Awesome is a must-read for you.
Obviously Awesome helps you to understand your audience, understand your product, and how to communicate the details and value in a way that connects and resonates with your key audience members.
Find Your Red Thread by Tamsen Webster
My final recommendation for leveling up your business in 2022 is Find Your Red Thread by Tamsen Webster. Before you can prepare your positioning statement you need to do the work of making your big idea irresistible to the right audience.
The Red Thread is a great way to capture the already invisible thread that exists between our idea and our audience and helps us make the connection in a way that provides actionable solutions to the problems your idea is designed to fix. We all have an idea, a vision, and a purpose for our company and we know its value but sometimes communicating that value and the process to making it work can be tricky.
Through several illustrations and action steps to take, Webster guides us through the process of discovering our Red Thread and developing a way to communicate its powerful potential to our audience’s minds and their hearts.
Conclusion
These four books alone can help set your business for success in 2022. From improving quality with the Ice Cream Maker, to creating a business Built to Sell, then creating powerful positioning statements with Obviously Awesome, and lastly finding the Red Thread of our ideas and communicating them clearly. With these changes, you can improve your business and the chances of landing the clients your product is perfect for.
I highly suggest you check out these resources and invest some time in reading them each. I have provided links for each of the books I recommended above. If you pick one up and find it to be a valuable resource for your business we would love to hear about it.
I want to leave you today with an invitation to schedule a free consultation session with me to see how we can improve the quality of your small business marketing in 2022. If you haven’t had your first session yet, schedule it now, I can’t wait to get to know you and your business better.
