Want to Read More Business Books? Join the Club.


You want to read more business books, but when you’re running a business, reading keeps falling to the bottom of the list. The On Book Business Book Club gives you a reason to read and a group of smart business owners to talk through what you learned, so you can turn those ideas into something useful for your business. Keep reading to see how the book club works and how you can join us.

Keep reading

You keep meaning to read more business books, but when you’re running a business, reading keeps falling to the bottom of the list.

And if you run a leadership development firm, there’s a particular irony there because your business depends on ideas.

You’re asking companies to hire you because of the way you think about leadership, communication, culture, teams, or organizational performance. You’re developing workshops. Coaching leaders. Creating frameworks. Trying to find better ways to explain the work you do.

Which means continuing to expose yourself to new ideas isn’t exactly extracurricular.

But then there are clients to serve. Proposals to send. Workshops to prep. Marketing to do. And that book someone recommended three months ago is still sitting on your nightstand.

I know because I realized I’d gotten very behind on reading myself.

And every other week, when I’d meet with a group of fellow business owners, someone would inevitably recommend another book that sounded great.

Eventually, I thought: I need a reason to make time for this.

And if I need one, maybe some other business owners do, too.

So I started the On Book Business Book Club.

Read more. Get ideas. Improve your business. That’s the whole premise.


 
 

You don’t need another business guru in your head

I like business books. This issue is, though, that I also sometimes feel like I have too many gurus in my head.

You don’t have to adopt every methodology you read about. You can use the ideas to expand your thinking and decide what makes sense for your business.
— Annie Figenshu

One person tells you to run your business this way. Another has a seven-step framework. Someone else has the methodology that will apparently solve every problem you’ve ever had by next Tuesday.

And if you work in leadership development, you already know how easy it is to accumulate methodologies.

You’ve got your own frameworks. Your certifications. The models you use with clients. The leadership book everyone in your field has read. The new assessment someone just told you that you absolutely have to check out.

More information isn’t necessarily the answer. Thinking about what you do with it is.

I don’t want to become beholden to every methodology I read about.

But I do want to expose myself to smart ideas.

I want to ask:

  • Does this make sense for my business?

  • What could I take from this?

  • What do I disagree with?

  • Could this help me explain what I do more clearly?

  • What am I going to try?

It’s a more critical, discerning way to read a business book.

And it gets even more useful when you have other business owners in the room asking the same questions.

A business book gets more useful when you talk about it

Our first On Book Business Book Club meeting made this pretty obvious. We read Alex Hormozi’s $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No.‍ ‍And yes, we talked about the book. But pretty quickly, we were talking about our businesses.

One person realized he could bring accountants and attorneys into his offer as bonuses for business owners preparing to sell their companies.

Another started rethinking the guarantee she could offer clients.

Someone else realized he needed to stop leading with a tiny, inexpensive offer and put together something more substantial.

And one of the people in the room had spent 15 years running a service business that he described as, underneath it all, a leadership development company. That led us into a conversation about how the name and positioning of an offer can help people understand the value underneath the tactical service they’re buying.

That conversation should sound familiar if you run a leadership development firm.

You know there’s enormous value underneath what you do. The tricky part is packaging and talking about that expertise in a way that helps somebody else see it, too.

That’s one of the reasons I spend so much of my own work helping leadership development companies with their messaging. And it’s also why I like conversations like these. Because sometimes an idea from a book gives you the language for something you’ve been trying to articulate. And other times another business owner asks the question you hadn’t thought to ask.

Sometimes you hear how somebody else has packaged an idea and think, Oh. I could do something like that with my workshop.

And sometimes you decide the author is completely wrong.

Also useful.

As I said during our first meeting, one of the great things about meeting with fellow business owners is that you can shorten the learning curve for one another. 

How the On Book Business Book Club works

This problem gets particularly tricky when you sell your expertise.

Once a month, we choose one business book and get together virtually to discuss it.

The rules are extremely complicated:

  1. Get the book.

  2. Read it. Skim it. Listen to it. You do you.

  3. Come to the monthly discussion.

  4. Talk about what was useful, what you disagreed with, and what you might try in your own business.

That’s it.

Didn’t finish the book?

I’m not telling anyone.

In fact, someone came to our first meeting specifically because he hadn’t finished the book and knew the discussion would give him some motivation.

This is not ninth-grade English. There will not be a quiz.

 
 

The goal isn’t necessarily to finish more books

But I don’t particularly need another accomplishment to check off a list.

What I want are better ideas for my business.

During our first meeting, Kris Jones mentioned that being part of the book club gave her the accountability to make more progress through the book than she otherwise would have.

But here’s the better part. While she was reading, she started changing her offer.

She decided to make it clear that she only works with two clients each month. She developed a bonus around a video testimonial. She started thinking about how she could use urgency and scarcity without turning her offer into one of those slightly suspect “THIS IS WORTH $14,000 BUT TODAY YOU GET IT FOR $97” situations.

That’s a much better outcome than getting to say you finished Chapter 12. 



Make reading part of your regular business rhythm

When you run a business, there will always be something more pressing than reading.

So if learning matters to you, you have to give it a place in the rhythm of running your business.

You get a reason to finally read some of the books people keep recommending to you. You get other business owners to talk through the ideas with. And you leave with something to think about, test, or put into practice.

You might even meet someone you want to work with along the way.

Not bad for reading a book and investing 50 minutes out of your month.

 
 

Book your spot for the next On Book Business Book Club meeting

Our next meeting is October 13, and we’re reading 10X Is Easier Than 2X: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

Jewels Solheim-Roe is joining me to co-facilitate the conversation.

And while the club is open to business owners in all sorts of fields, I’d especially love to have more leadership development consultants in the room.

You spend your working life thinking about how people and businesses can work better. Bring that perspective to the conversation.

  • Read the whole thing.

  • Listen to it while you walk your dog.

  • Skim it the night before.

  • Show up having read half because your week went completely sideways.

You’re still welcome to join in.


 


Annie Figenshu

Annie Figenshu is keenly aware that many companies are pressed for time, and every minute counts. She helps brands make the most of their content marketing so that their hard work is shared with the world. Annie is certified in both StoryBrand and Mailchimp, has two kids with Beatles-themed names, and is afraid to think what a day without coffee would look like.

LinkedIn: Annie Figenshu

https://downstage.media/
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