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Consumer brand operator reading list! My definition of a good book is that it can immediately improve margins or revenue. No academic garbage :) Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman Default operating system for the companies in our portfolio. Implementing EOS fixes most issues at most businesses. Never used a formal management system? Start here. It’s faster to deploy than Scaling Up and a better fit for companies with lower revenue per head. Scaling Up by Verne Harnish EOS is a simplified version of Scaling Up. I prefer Scaling Up for companies with higher revenue per head. It also makes sense for larger companies. In consumer…this probably means companies doing over ~$50m - $75m or so. Monetizing Innovation by Madhavan Ramanujam Pricing should be designed into the product from day one. The book walks through how to figure out what customers value, what they’ll pay, and how to package and tier accordingly. If you’ve never had a thoughtful approach to pricing, this is a great book. Topgrading by Bradford Smart Topgrading is a great step-by-step instruction manual on how to hire and not mess it up. Every time we implement it, our success rate with hires goes up. The only downside is that the book is poorly written and too long. I’m guessing to please the publishers.. Scaling Compensation by Verne Harnish Reduce churn. Attract the right talent. Align your team around what matters. You’ll cut compensation-related discussions by 80% after launching a comp philosophy, and this book is a step-by-step guide on how to do it. Pair it with whichever operating system you run so your values flow into how you pay people. The Purchasing Advantage by Omid Ghamami One of the best books ever written on supply chain! I mean just go and look at the cover of the book. You can tell it’s going to deliver tremendous value because of how ugly it is. The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt Lean manufacturing principles wrapped in a story. It is gimmicky. If you run any operation with throughput constraints... manufacturing, fulfillment, customer service... this will reframe how you think about bottlenecks. I don’t love how the book is written. What could’ve been 50 pages is 300. The core content is excellent though, and plenty of people enjoy the story format more than a textbook. To the author’s credit, I guess there are a lot of textbooks on this... Profit First by Mike Michalowicz We don’t use Profit First at any of our companies. The system is about idiotproofing a business more than running it well. That said... if you’re new to running a business, don’t have a financial background, or keep ending the year wondering where the money went, Profit First is a great way to idiot-proof things. You allocate revenue into separate buckets (profit, taxes, owner pay, opex) the moment it comes in, instead of paying yourself whatever’s left at the end. It forces discipline. The Kevin Hillstrom Books (Merchandising, Customer Development, Fix It) Three short, tactical books. You can read all three in a day or so. I like these books because they’re short and to the point. There’s no dumb filler. They’re extra relevant to you if you run a business with a lot of LTV or a lot of SKUs, especially something like apparel. Kevin’s blog is the OG e-commerce resource online. It’s full of gold. Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight No financial background? Read this. Double Your Profits by Bob Fifer You’ll find at least one thing that saves an insane amount of money. This is what I recommend whenever someone asks me how to quickly improve margin without a massive overhaul. — Here are a few turnaround focused books. I am including them because I think a lot of the advice is applicable to early-stage brands with less than $100m in revenue as well. They’re about focusing on what matters, managing cash, and how to operate when you are very constrained. Corporate Turnaround Artistry by Jeff Sands Loaded with tactical advice you can implement immediately. I recommend it alongside Double Your Profits for anyone that wants to expand their margins. Corporate Turnaround by Donald Bibeault A foundational classic. Bibeault’s quotes about what makes a great turnaround manager are some of my favorites in business literature. With that said maybe some of this is kind of redundant if you’re reading the Jeff Sands book and I think Jeff’s book is better. Reversing the Slide by James Shein Good tidbits, especially around legal basics. Less tactical than Sands. Still worth the read. Turnaround Management Association textbooks Two solid primers. One on management and strategy. One on the law. Less tactical than I’d like. Still worth picking up for comprehensive coverage of the space.