May Reading List
by Homer Smith
Here is a quick glimpse into what I have been reading over the last month! I would love to hear if you have any books, business or not, that you think are must reads!
- The Automatic Customer – John Warrillow
- In talking with business owners over the years, we always discuss that the more recurring revenue that you have – that is revenue that you have a high degree of certainty that will come in from repeat (and ideally contractually obligated) customers, the more valuable your business is. You get a higher multiple and value on your business because recurring revenue has less risk than having to generate every client from scratch each year. In this book, the author walks through how to turn any business into a subscription/recurring revenue-based business and provides real world examples and case studies on how this could work. I think there are many learnings that any business, even those that are already subscription based, could take from this book.
- Certain to Win – Chet Richards
- Former Air Force Colonel, John Boyd completely changed the concept of addressing what it takes to win in combat with is OODA Loop Theory. Those that consistently outperform were able to be agile by Observing their environment, Orient themselves to what it all means, reach some sort of Decision, and then must Act on that decision. The more quickly you could run through this process, the better chance you have at winning a battle. Chet Richards has taken these same concepts and applied them to the business world, teaching how leaders can adopt these same strategies to help their companies succeed. One of the highlights is that this is not an individual effort but rather your entire team having built a culture around thinking this way and being able to respond almost intuitively to various challenges and opportunities rather than having to have explicit orders from the top.
I am going to keep it to 2 books this month. I have a couple more I am just about ready to share but need to wrap up a few more chapters! I look forward to hearing from you on books that have been impactful to you!