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100 Business Books that have influenced 100 Business Owners (Part 14)

Ciara Ferguson
08 October 2021

Welcome to part 14 of our 100 business books that have influenced 100 business owners!

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”- Stephen King

This week, we are starting off with a book called The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford– a book chosen by the Co-Founder of HotelMinder.com, Benjamin Verot.

“It is an amazingly interesting and entertaining read, a modern fable about the manager of a development team in an IT company and his efforts to bring projects from A to Z. 

As a reader, you follow him on his path from failures leading to unplanned and harrowing work, to learning about the importance of maximizing the flow of work, increasing feedback loops to become more efficient, and developing a culture of continuous experimentation – all of those neatly knitted with just the right amount of business theory to make this book a page turner and confidence booster.

Simply put, it is a must read for anyone working in IT – a toolbox filled with great ideas and problem solving techniques that I always refer back to. Bonus: the end contains a chapter summarizing all the key concepts from the book.” http://linkedin.com/in/benjaminverot

Steven Wilkinson, Founder and Managing Director of Good and Prosper said the most influential book he had read was called Small Giants- Companies that Choose to be Great instead of Big by Bo Burlingham.

“I read it at a time of deep frustration with the culture of my business, my awareness of my own leadership deficits, my disillusionment with my experience of business and the people I had to deal with.

The book showed me a completely different paradigm of business and it and the people who were influenced by it have changed me for the better in every way.” http://linkedin.com/in/stevenknwilkinson

Pauric Brennan of Bren Enterprises (Film & Video Director and Producer) said that when he read Rise of the Filmtrepreneur by Alex Ferrari, it opened up a world of new filmmaking possibilities for him.

As a filmmaker one of the biggest challenges I have is how to fund each project. Film is such a big risk for investors that raising funds can be a challenge especially when you don’t know how it will perform at the box office or if it will even get to a paying audience.

After reading the book I discovered that rather than trying to compete on the same level as the bigger better funded projects, I needed to be more specific and more target orientated with my thinking. Suddenly film became like any other business and not just a constant struggle for funding. By targeting niche and specific audiences I have managed to not only get two great projects on the market but I had two more garner investment from this approach.” http://linkedin.com/in/pauricbrennan

Founder of Reds United, Tony Carroll said that one of his favourites is The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

“It’s a brilliant and inspiring read that helped give me validation and motivation to focus on what I am most passionate about and how to follow my dreams and passions in life with greater balance and harmony.” http://linkedin.com/in/anthonygcarroll

And last but not least, Richard Morton, the Founder of MatchMedics chose Traction by Gino Wickman, as it changed everything for him when he read it on holiday in summer 2019.

“By the time I returned to the office, I had a clear plan on how to re-invent our business and focus on our core strength which is placing internationally trained Doctors into the Irish public and private healthcare system.

“Traction walks you through a simple operating system and gets you to question all aspects of your business -Vision, People, Data, Problems, Processes and Traction.

By September 2019, using the principles of ‘Traction’, we had adopted the simple tag-line of: “MatchMedics – We Recruit Doctors” and ditched other healthcare sectors that were dragging the business in too many directions. We put the right people into the right seats, changed the cadence and content of our team meetings, set new goals (rocks) and got the whole team galvanised and working in the same direction.

As a business, we still use the phrases contained in the book every day and surprise, surprise, we have had our best years ever not just in terms of revenue and profitability but in terms of attracting the right calibre of people to join the team.

I would recommend the book to anyone but especially micro and SME business owners who are feeling stuck and need some practical tools to help refresh and re-focus.” http://linkedin.com/in/richardamorton

And that’s it for now, I hope you got some reading inspiration, especially with the change in the weather this week. Instead of going out in the rain, you should sit in your favourite chair by the fire this weekend, and read a good book!