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It is that time of the week again. Actually, it’s past that time. This is why I don’t like schedules and one of the benefits of owning your own company. I was traveling last week, so I had a little catching up to do. That being said, I used the plane rides to read a few more books from my stockpile. You see, whenever, someone sends me a book or recommends that I read one, I add it to my stack. I believe that everything we need and want from life is given to us and that we sometimes pass-up the best opportunities, more accurately miss them. So, I made a habit, several years ago, to at least test every piece of advice I get from someone, regardless of their economic standing and personal beliefs. Testing in the sense I am using the word means: explore, research, possible even try, or adopt. For me now, it’s as simple to adding it to a list and crossing them off one by one. Sometimes when I get backed up, it can take me months to get a book someone recommends, but I do get to it, and if I like the book I make sure to email or snail mail the person – depending on their communication medium of preference – or call them if time permits.

Books: a list of books I read this week with a short summary paragraph.

Found Money by Steve Wilkinghoff

Snippet: Simple strategies for uncovering the hidden profits and cash flow in your business
Wow. This book got the wheels turning. While I don’t agree with a couple of the points Steve makes in the book, I agree with the rest, and that is impressive. He has created what I feel is a very straight-forward and logical way to approach accounting, and it is not the way your everyday accountant does it. Since, we (jiveSYSTEMS) use Infusionsoft (a CRM platform) to manage our business, we are at a significant advantage because I have most of the data I need to make business decisions at my finger tips, including a revenue forecast report for booking and opportunities. What I am saying is this: if you have a CRM platform, the data you need to make sound decisions about how to grow your company [how being the operative word], it makes your life much easier. Regardless, you need to collect the data and then interpret it. The major question that Steve’s book helps you answer is “How does your business make money?” I guarantee that many of you don’t actually know. If you did, you would be a millionaire, or even a billionaire right now — wouldn’t you? I am not totally excluding myself here either. Their are many ways for a business to make money, some will yield better results than others. The key is to find a way that will yield the best results, constantly and continuously. The only way to do this is to create a systematic method for collecting and then interpreting specific data about your business. Google Analytics is only a small piece of the puzzle. How does your business make money? Chapter 10 was my favorite, it explains how to create a Customer Profitability Map and how to use it to generate more revenue based on two key areas of your client base.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubnar [executive summary]

Snippet: A rogue explorers the hidden side of everything
I would have most likely told you this book was useless [aka not even mentioned it], that is if I didn’t read “Found Money” first. The reason: Freakonomics has little to no practical application. The book is more like a colleague of this is what people commonly believe and this is the truth, it’s a academics version of the popular television series MythBusters. That’s all I have to say about the book. However, I did read Found Money and therefore derived a very important piece of insight from this book which I will elaborate on for the rest of this section: their are multiple layers to the data you collect about your business–make sure you are collecting accurate information and taking notes about the ways it could be compromised. Here is an example: your monthly ledger may record a healthy NET Profit but does it include your Accounts Payable (A/P) or outstanding checks? Here is another one: your web statistics tracks the number of visitors to your website, you pull your Unique Visitors, but are they truly unique? How many of them delete the cookie that marks them as an old visitor, and then return to your site? You’ve got to know this stuff! If you don’t, you are making decisions based on compromised data. Entire wars have been hinged on single inaccurate details; for example, we tricked Hitler into thinking we were not invading Normandy. He knew D-Day was coming but he got the location wrong. Granted, we don’t have counter-intelligence operatives doing using Jedi mind trick on us. However, when you look at the data that many business collect, you would think there were. My recommendation, if you have a reasonable amount of clients and collect a healthy amount of data about your business, set aside two full days with your team [if you work alone: go get an employee, or a partner if you can't afford one] and challenge every piece of data you collect about your business. As you business grows, if you have quality data on its performance it actually becomes easier to make it grow as long as you [aka your company] has someone who can interpret the data and make sound business decisions from it.

Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono [executive summary]

Snippet: An essential approach to business management
I did not connect with the genuis contained within this book at first. It all seem fairly obvious to me. It still does. However, some things are easy for some and very difficult and often vice-versa. So what are the Six Thinking Hats? They are interchangeable hats that you wear to expedite problem solving.

Six Hats, Six Colors

The knowledge shared in this book, (well, executive summary of the book), is definitely growing on me.

Blog Posts from Other Blogs: Noteworthy posts from my Google Reader

Reviewing Covey’s 4 Quadrants

The main discovery of which was Covey’s 4 Quadrants which I don’t know how I missed before. I love Stephen Covey’s work. The goal it to spend most of your time in Quadrant 2 [see below].

I feel you should ‘email’ into Quadrant 1. The key to unlocking hidden growth potential is weening yourself out of your inbox and into performing scheduled tasks that are geared toward growing your business.

Closing Thoughts

As I make more time to study and systematically apply what I have learned, my business grows; it grows at an ever-increasing rate. It is often the things that we don’t make time for that have the power to make our businesses grow. The pursuit of knowledge for entrepreneur is a business activity and therefore should be treated as such. You should schedule time to study. Ultimately, the goal should be to study more than you work. This is because growing your business isn’t about doing more work, it’s about more thought. Building a business is about building people, and you are one of those people.