16:50Will Barron · Talking Head
Running Business is Hard Until You Focus on These 4 Tasks
A 17-minute case that most service owners stay stuck by doing 20 jobs that should be four.
June 12thThe argument in one line.
The books most people recommend for systemizing a small business are either good at persuading you that systems matter or good at showing you how to build them — rarely both — so reading the right one for your current gap is more important than reading the most popular one.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run a team of 3–50 people and keep getting asked which business books are actually worth reading.
- You've bought one of the popular systemization books and aren't sure if you should push through or just skim it.
- You're in the 'why do I even need systems?' stage and need a persuasive first read, not a manual.
- You're already past the 'why' and need a book with actual step-by-step guidance, not more theory.
- You're evaluating EOS/Traction or Scaling Up and want a candid comparison from someone who's run both through a small-business lens.
SKIP IF…
- You're a solopreneur — the lens here is specifically 3–50 person teams; some verdicts shift at smaller scale.
- You've already read and loved all 12 and are looking for frameworks beyond what's covered here.
The full version, fast.
Most systemization books split cleanly between persuasion and practicality — they either convince you that systems matter or show you how to build them, almost never both. Built to Sell (Warrillow) and Scaling Up (Harnish) are the only two she recommends reading cover-to-cover: Built to Sell for beginners who need story-driven buy-in, Scaling Up for operators who want a textbook-dense reference they'll return to repeatedly. The E-Myth (Gerber) gets a skim because it's persuasive but thin on implementation. Traction/EOS (Wickman) is best adopted 'EOS-ish' — take the goal-setting and role-clarity pieces, drop the meeting-heavy operational prescriptions. Team: GTD with Others (Allen) is the only clear skip.
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00:00 – 02:00
01 · Setup: the ranking system
Defines the audience (3–50 person teams, $300K–$50M), reveals the full book list early for anyone who just wants the answer, and introduces the 4-criterion scoring rubric: Persuasiveness, Practicality, Relevance, Enjoyability.
02:00 – 03:40
02 · Work the System — Sam Carpenter
Score 6/12. Low persuasion, heavy steps, boring. Read only if you have a lot of spare time.
03:40 – 05:40
03 · 4-Hour Work Week — Tim Ferriss
Score 9/12. Best practical examples of delegation mechanics. Dated lifestyle framing. Still worth reading.
05:40 – 08:10
04 · The E-Myth — Michael E. Gerber
Score 9/12. Masterclass in persuasion; almost no practical how-to. Skim the summary.
08:10 – 10:30
05 · Built to Sell — John Warrillow
Score 10/12. Top overall score. Story-based, relatable for services businesses. Best beginner book.
10:30 – 13:20
06 · Traction — Gino Wickman
Score 8/12. EOS framework. Only covers leadership layer. Most users adopt EOS-ish. Skim.
13:20 – 16:20
07 · Team: GTD with Others — David Allen & Edward Lamont
Score 6/12. Dense, flowery, barely actionable. Only for committed GTD fans. Skip.
16:20 – 19:50
08 · Scaling Up — Verne Harnish
Score 9/12. Textbook-dense synthesizer of dozens of books. Read carefully, multiple times.
19:50 – 23:10
09 · Clockwork — Mike Michalowicz
Score 9/12. Delegation clarity and queen bee role. Great message; tone makes it hard to finish.
23:10 – 25:40
10 · Systemology — David Jenyns
Score 7/12. Covers SOP documentation directly. Undermined by proprietary-software plug.
25:40 – 27:40
11 · The Goal — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Score 8/12. Narrative manufacturing case study. Theory of Constraints. For process nerds only.
27:40 – 30:00
12 · Team Habits — Charlie Gilkey
Score 9/12. Most immediately applicable for team managers. Dense and intellectual. Skim.
30:00 – 32:50
13 · Atomic Habits — James Clear
Score 9/12. Individual habits book included because clients cite it as their systems catalyst. Skim.
32:50 – 35:00
14 · Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
Score 9/12. Great persuasion for checklists; thin on how. Skim or talk about at dinner parties.
35:00 – 35:49
15 · Her own book — teaser
Closes with a pitch for her own in-progress book, designed to be persuasive AND practical, and invites readers to join the writing process via email list.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Built to Sell scores highest of all 12 books (10/12) and is the first recommendation for any services-business owner who's skeptical about why systemization matters.
- Scaling Up is the only book on the list she has read multiple times and keeps learning from — treat it as a reference text, not a one-time read.
- The E-Myth is excellent persuasion and nearly useless as a how-to; if your partner or team doesn't believe systems are worth building, hand them this book — don't hand them a process template.
- Most EOS success stories aren't full EOS implementations — they're 'EOS-ish,' taking the useful pieces (rocks, scorecards, L10 meetings) and discarding what doesn't fit.
- Traction and Scaling Up are both leadership-layer books, not operations books — neither teaches you how to write an SOP, document a workflow, or build a knowledge base.
- The 4-Hour Work Week, despite feeling dated in an AI/async era, still has the most specific delegation examples of any book on the list — what emails look like, how to hand off tasks, what to delegate first.
- Team: Getting Things Done with Others (David Allen & Edward Lamont) is the only clear skip — dense, jargon-heavy, and only useful if you're already a committed GTD practitioner.
- None of the 12 books reviewed does a thorough job on the most fundamental systemization task: the boring work of actually writing down your standard operating procedures.
- Books that push proprietary software inside what reads as educational content (Work the System, Systemology) lose credibility — the reader ends up feeling like the book is a sales funnel.
- A book's score on Persuasiveness and its score on Practicality are almost always inversely correlated in this genre: the more compelling the 'why,' the thinner the 'how.'
- Clockwork (Michalowicz) has a high score (9/12) but rarely gets pulled off the shelf for recommendations because the tone and framing make it hard to finish.
- Atomic Habits and Checklist Manifesto both score 9/12 and both land in the 'skim' category for the same reason: they're convinced you within 20 pages and then spend 200 more pages proving the same point.
- The Goal (Goldratt) is a manufacturing-based narrative that requires real translation effort to apply to a service business — read it only if you're a process nerd or have time to spare.
- Team Habits (Charlie Gilkey) is the most immediately actionable book for team managers — clients have taken practices directly from it without modification — but it's dense enough to repel casual readers.
Which systemization book to read first depends on your gap.
WHAT TO LEARN
The fatal pattern across all 12 books is that persuasion and practicality rarely appear in the same cover — so choosing the wrong book for your current stage wastes the read.
01Setup: the ranking system
- The right systemization book depends on which of four gaps you're filling: needing to believe it matters, needing to know how, needing something current, or just needing something you can finish.
- The intended audience matters — books written for solopreneurs or enterprises give different advice than books aimed at 3–50 person operating teams.
02Work the System — Sam Carpenter
- Work the System is more memoir than manual — useful if you connect with the author's story, but not a practical guide for most small teams.
034-Hour Work Week — Tim Ferriss
- Despite a dated lifestyle-design framing, the 4-Hour Work Week contains the most specific delegation examples of any book on this list — what emails look like, which tasks to hand off first, how to structure the hand-off.
- The online-business and VA-arbitrage sections feel out of step with how most small businesses operate today, but the underlying delegation logic transfers.
04The E-Myth — Michael E. Gerber
- The E-Myth is the strongest persuasion tool on the list — use it to bring a skeptical partner or leadership team around to the idea of building a business that runs without the owner.
- Don't expect implementation guidance from The E-Myth — its strength is entirely the 'why,' and skim-reading or a summary captures that just as well as the full text.
05Built to Sell — John Warrillow
- Built to Sell's narrative, story-based structure makes it the most accessible entry point for beginners — it pairs persuasion with just enough practical framing to be actionable.
- The book centers on productized services as the mechanism for systemization — especially relevant if you run a client-services business that prices and delivers custom work today.
06Traction — Gino Wickman
- Traction covers how to lead and manage a business — goal-setting, role definition, meeting cadence, KPIs — but does not cover how to actually operate one (SOPs, task management, knowledge management).
- The EOS meeting-heavy model was designed for a pre-async work era; the most common implementation today strips out the meeting dependency and keeps the goal-setting and role-clarity pieces.
07Team: GTD with Others — David Allen & Edward Lamont
- Team: GTD with Others is only worth reading if you're already a committed GTD practitioner who wants to extend the system to a team — the persuasion case for GTD itself is absent.
- The prose density and flowery language make it one of the hardest books on the list to finish; if you're not already sipping the GTD 'Kool Aid,' skip it.
08Scaling Up — Verne Harnish
- Scaling Up functions best as a reference text to be read multiple times — its textbook density surfaces new insights and source authors on each pass.
- Like Traction, Scaling Up focuses on the leadership layer (cash flow, objectives, planning, strategy) rather than day-to-day operations — know what gap you're filling before picking it up.
09Clockwork — Mike Michalowicz
- Clockwork is the clearest book on the list for answering 'what should the owner's job actually be?' — the queen bee role concept forces a useful audit of how founder time is being spent.
- The book's scope is narrow (delegation clarity and role definition) rather than comprehensive — don't expect it to cover documentation, task management, or team workflows.
10Systemology — David Jenyns
- Systemology is the only book on the list that directly addresses writing down what you do — the SOP documentation problem — but its practical guidance is undercut by ties to the author's paid software and certification program.
11The Goal — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
- The Goal introduces Theory of Constraints — the idea that every system has one limiting bottleneck, and improving anything else doesn't move overall throughput — through a manufacturing narrative that requires translation effort for service businesses.
- Read it if you're a process systems nerd; skip it if you need practical, directly applicable guidance.
12Team Habits — Charlie Gilkey
- Team Habits is the most immediately applicable book for team managers — the practices can be installed directly without extensive interpretation or translation.
- The dense, intellectual writing style means it reads better as a manager's reference than a cover-to-cover narrative.
13Atomic Habits — James Clear
- Atomic Habits is worth including in a systemization reading list because it explains the habit-formation mechanisms that underpin consistent process execution — but its connection to business systems requires the reader to make that translation.
- Skim or listen to a podcast interview rather than reading cover-to-cover; the core message lands in the first quarter of the book.
14Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
- Checklist Manifesto is the best book on the list for persuading others that checklists reduce errors and save time — its case studies are compelling and memorable.
- Like Atomic Habits, the persuasion case is made early and repeated at length; skim after the first few chapters rather than reading every case study.
Terms worth knowing.
- EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System)
- A business management framework from Traction (Gino Wickman) covering goals, roles, meetings, scorecards, and processes. Widely adopted in small businesses, often selectively rather than wholesale.
- EOS-ish
- A practitioner term for adopting only the most useful pieces of the EOS framework (e.g., quarterly rocks, role clarity, L10 meetings) while discarding elements that don't fit the team's working style.
- Queen Bee Role
- A concept from Clockwork (Michalowicz) for the single most valuable function the business owner performs — the role that protects the core value of the business and that they should protect from being buried in lower-value tasks.
- Theory of Constraints
- A management philosophy from The Goal (Goldratt) that holds that every system has one limiting constraint, and improving anything other than that constraint does not improve overall throughput.
- Productized Service
- A service offering packaged and priced like a product — fixed scope, fixed price, repeatable delivery — rather than being scoped and priced custom for each client. Built to Sell is the canonical primer on this approach.
- GTD (Getting Things Done)
- A personal productivity methodology by David Allen built around capturing all tasks into a trusted system, clarifying next actions, and organizing work by context and priority.
- Rocks
- EOS/Traction term for the 3–7 most important priorities a business must accomplish in a given quarter. Derived from a time-management analogy about filling a jar with big rocks before gravel and sand.
- SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)
- A documented, step-by-step description of how a repeatable task or process should be performed — the core artifact of business systemization.
Things they pointed at.
02:15bookWork the System
03:45book4-Hour Work Week
05:42bookThe E-Myth
08:15bookBuilt to Sell
10:33bookTraction
13:23bookTeam: Getting Things Done with Others
16:23bookScaling Up
19:55bookClockwork
20:00bookProfit First
23:12bookSystemology
25:43bookThe Goal
27:43bookTeam Habits
30:03bookAtomic Habits
32:52bookChecklist Manifesto
Lines you could clip.
06:34
“If you are someone with a leadership team who's just not getting why you want to build a business that can run without you, this is a great book to have them read.”
19:00
“I have read Scaling Up many times at this point, and every time I read through it, I learn something meaningful and new. I find a new author that's mentioned that I then want to read the source material of.”
12:20
“Most people I know who are being incredibly successful in EOS are using what I call EOS-ish, meaning they've stolen a few things that work, then made the rest of them go into the trash can.”
13:30
“It talks about how, well, no one gets anything done until there's a meeting. So let's have more meetings to make sure things get done more often. And just like — what if we just want to get work done without needing a meeting to force us into it?”
23:40
“I think I would hit a pretty fast wall of almost feeling like I needed to pay money in order for this to actually work.”
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metaphor
00:00If you're looking to build a business that can run without you, you've probably heard of these books. This is the essential reading list when it comes to systemizing your small business. If you're Googling anything about this, you've probably heard of these.
00:10But as someone who's an expert in systemizing small teams who's worked with over 2,000 small businesses to build their systems, if my friends or family reached out and were like, hey, Layla, what business book should I read to systemize my operation? Let's just say I wouldn't recommend the full list.
00:25To explain why, I'm gonna give you a rapid fire summary of each of the books on this list, rank them based on criteria that matters to small team operators like me, and then give you a clear cut recommendation as to whether you should read it, skim it or skip it altogether. Everything I'm gonna be sharing is from the perspective of a small team, which is what I'm gonna define as a team of three to 50 people making 300,000 to 50,000,000 in a given year.
00:49Solopreneurs and larger businesses will certainly get value out of this list, but what they need in books is a little bit different than what you and I need. And so that perspective is gonna kinda go throughout this entire video as well as the entire channel. Before I even dive in, if you're someone who sees the length of this video and are like, oh my god.
01:05I just wanna know what books to read. Don't make me watch the whole thing. I'm just gonna show you the answer.
01:10There you go. These are which books you should read and which books you shouldn't. Are you happy now?
01:15Congratulations. You can leave. Okay.
01:17Bye. For the rest of you who actually wanna know what these books are and why you should or should not read them, watching because I'm gonna break them down one by one with a ranking system that's gonna help you figure out which are actually the best for your exact situation. So digging right in in no particular order, we're gonna start off with work the system.
01:33I'm gonna rank this and all the other books based on four criteria. Number one, is it persuasive? Does it persuade me as to why systemizing my business would be helpful?
01:41Number two, is it practical? If I believe this is a worthwhile cause, is it gonna actually show me how to make this change?
01:50Number three, is it relevant? A lot of these books have been written in the nineties and the eighties. Are they still relevant to us today?
01:58And number four, is it pleasant to read? A lot of these books, maybe it's because of the time, maybe it's because of the the authorship. I don't know.
02:05A lot of them are freaking boring. And I will tell you which ones are boring so you can appraise for yourself whether or not it's worth your time to suffer through the text.
02:14So as work the system shake up. Well, for me, in terms of persuasiveness, this was a one out of three.
02:19Wasn't very persuasive. It felt very much like here is what I did. Didn't really draw me in personally.
02:24Uh, maybe if I had more in common with the author, I might feel differently about that. But I just didn't really connect. Number two, in terms of practical steps, there were certainly a lot of them.
02:34Uh, the reason I'm saying it's a two out of three rather than a three out of three is because the amount of work it would take to realistically follow all of these steps felt a bit unrealistic for most small teams that I know. Speaking of businesses I know, let's talk about relevance. On a scale from one to three, I put this in the two category.
02:51The principles it talked about still felt like they could work today, but again, seems a little heavy for how most teams operate. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, joy to read.
03:02One. We'll leave it at that. So overall, that gives us a score of about six.
03:07If you have tons of extra time, I would read it. Otherwise, I'd probably take it off your reading list. The next book in our lineup is Four Hour Workweek.
03:14Four Hour Workweek, I would describe is another how I did this kind of book, talking about somebody who did more of the digital nomad online business life before that was really cool, where the author kind of designed their business around what they wanted their lifestyle to be, then designed a very arbitrage heavy and delegation heavy business that really made use of virtual assistance and other ways to get cheaper help to make sure the business could run without directly being reliant on their time.
03:41This book is massively popular and for good reason. Okay. So ranking the four Hour Workweek on this criteria, I would give it a two out of three on persuasiveness.
03:48It had some really good arguments, but largely focused on the lifestyle design elements, which is its core premise. And for many of us who are looking to systemize our business for goals other than working from a beach somewhere, I think there might be stronger arguments, especially for the small business viewer.
04:04For the next category of practical examples, I'm giving the four hour workweek a three out of three. It did a fantastic job giving you specific examples of, you know, what your emails would look like, how would you delegate, what kind of tasks you would delegate. The only thing that would have really made it stronger, in my view, is if the examples of business design felt a little bit more inclusive.
04:23If you read this book, especially today, a lot of the examples are gonna feel a little bit online business y, uh, not applicable to the rest of us mere mortals, a lot of, like, hack in a weekend kind of stuff that just feels a little bit out of touch with small businesses. Still, I'm gonna round up and give it a three.
04:39When it comes to the dated part, though, is this information still relevant? This is where the book starts to struggle. Some of the practices in four Hour Workweek just feel very, very out of date with the AI heavy, virtual assistant heavy, and, uh, just changes in how work happens in this day and age.
04:57So I gave it overall a one for relevance. Um, but despite all that joy to read, I actually put four hour work week as a three. There is strong language for people who don't like that.
05:08There's a little bit of meandering side tangents. But I think overall, it was an engaging read, and I found myself getting through it very easily. Granted, I used the audiobook format.
05:17Overall, for the four hour work week, I would actually say if you're really serious about building systems, I would put it on your reading list. It may not be fully applicable, but there's enough specific examples that I think you could really find information that I have not seen well covered anywhere else.
05:32Speaking of well covered, the next book is The E Myth. And this is the book talking about how people get caught working in their business versus on their business. I think Michael Gerber did a great job kind of establishing systems design in some space, really bringing it into the mainstream.
05:47And E Myth is probably one of the most popular books in this list because of the great marketing and industry niching that the E Myth enterprise did attach to this book. I think a lot of the commercial success of The E Myth came down to its ranking in this very first category, which is its persuasiveness.
06:04It is very clearly written in a way that appeals to logic, which is something I really appreciate in text. And it really makes you clearly understand, that's why I need to build systems in my business.
06:15This is why this matters. If you are someone with a leadership team or a business owner or partner who's just not getting why you want to build a business that can run without you, this is a great book to have them read for the persuasiveness power alone. But let's talk about the second half of that coin, which is the practicality.
06:33This is where I just struggle. Um, I do not think the e myth is a book I would grab if I'm looking practical steps of how do I actually act on the the ideas of the E Myth.
06:46Yeah. I don't know. It feels very theoretical to me.
06:49Um, if I'm asking myself, so what? How do I do that? I don't think I would have a lot of instruction.
06:54I'm giving the E Myth a one out of three on practicality with a lot of respect for all that they've built. I just I just don't think the how is the real strength of this text.
07:03That brings us on to our next category of relevance today. Overall, because the book is so theoretical and like, here's why this matters. That's a very universal argument.
07:13And I think the book is still aging like fine wine and still very much worth reading if you're looking for that persuasive angle in the modern day. In terms of enjoyability to read, I think the reason it's a bestseller is because it's very easy to read. It's very clear.
07:28It's very straightforward. Not a lot of funky language with all the flowery text. Three out of three for ease of reading.
07:34That puts the eMyth at an overall score of nine out of a total 12, and that's a solid place to be. But because the text is so much around theory, if I was in your shoes, I would probably read the summary.
07:46I know it sounds terrible to say. I mean, read the book if you wanna support them, but I would probably read the summary or skim the book rather than read this one in detail. Because unless you're really confused by the theory, uh, there's not a lot of extra details that you're really gonna grab from reading the full text, in my opinion.
08:03That brings us to our next book, which is Built to Sell. And Built to Sell, like some of the other ones we'll see on this list, is a story based book. In other words, it kind of reads like a work of fiction.
08:13It feels like you're telling a story about this person who's struggling in their marketing agency. Then Build to Sell kind of walks through how you can change that agency for the better by making small adjustments to how work happens, essentially by introducing systems and most specifically a productized service.
08:30Really great book for anyone who's looking for a primer on what the heck productized service is. Of course, you could also just watch my video up here, but I digress. I find myself recommending Built to Sell a lot for beginners looking to start systemizing their business because it is so strong in category number one of persuasiveness.
08:46Personally, it's the first one I'll recommend even before E Myth because it gives you that kind of story based flow that makes it really easy to get through. However, similar to E Myth, the practical steps when it comes to Built to Sell are a little bit on the weaker side because it's just one case study of this one imaginary person going through this process.
09:06It feels a little bit high level. And if you were to use the book as your instruction sheet to start changing your business, you're going to have to make quite a bit of assumptions.
09:14So one out of three on practicality. In terms of relevance, similar to E Myth, it's been holding up tried and true. Still a three out of three in terms of relevance because there aren't too many dated concepts in there.
09:24And in terms of joy to read, also a three out of three just like E Myth because it's just very clear, straightforward. And that narrative format, I'm just a bit of a sucker for as long as it's done well. So overall, Built to Sell, I'm putting at a 10 out of 12, slightly above E Myth, which is kind of reflective of why I tend to grab that one for beginners more than anything else.
09:42And if I was to tell you whether or not you should read it, I would say, yeah, if you are very early in your journey about systemizing your small business and you need that mixture of persuasiveness, a little bit of practicality, but mainly just something that feels relatable and real, particularly if you're a services business, I would definitely add this one onto your reading list.
10:02Next up, we're gonna talk about Traction, which is a book that talks about the entrepreneur operating system or the EOS way of managing your business. Traction is a book that is a full on codified operating system that tells you how your business should run.
10:18It talks about meetings and goal setting and key metrics and performance and roles and the whole kit and caboodle with a very prescriptive approach to how you should start organizing your team functions, particularly for the leadership layer. A lot of people will consider this a book about systemizing your business, and I think to a degree it is.
10:37But largely, I would describe this book as a approach to leading and managing a small business, not necessarily how you actually operate it, if that makes sense. Traction's persuasiveness is about a two out of three.
10:50It's fine. It's not gonna make you jump up and down, but it's also not gonna bore you to tears. And if you have somebody who's mildly interested in systemization, the book will probably keep their pages turning.
11:01In terms of practical steps, extremely practical is the approach I would say for traction. It does a lot of specific actions. As long as we are clear, we're only talking about the leadership level.
11:11If we want to zoom in as to what it really takes to systemize full operations as I hit my microphone, which would include things like task management, knowledge management and team management, I would probably give it closer to a one or two out of three. But if we're just gonna go broadly at systemizing, does it tell you things you can do?
11:29Sure. Three out of three in this category. Moving on to the next category of relevance.
11:33Is traction slash the EOS approach relevant for small businesses today? My personal opinion, not really.
11:41Uh, most people I know who are being incredibly successful in EOS are using what I call EOS ish, meaning they've stolen a few things at work, then and they've made the rest of them go into the trash can. Um, a lot of the EOS stuff to me feels quite dated. It's, um, I remember reading the book recently, and it talks about how, well, no one gets anything done until there's a meeting.
12:03So let's have more meetings to make sure things get done more often. So rather than getting done once a month, things get done weekly because we have weekly meetings or daily meetings. And just like, um, what if we just wanna get work done without needing a meeting to force us into it?
12:18That's my main criticism about a lot of the operational ideas inside the EOS framework. However, from a leadership perspective, goal setting, role defining, I think there's a lot of good stuff in here.
12:30So in the age of AI and async work, I would give it a one to three out of relevance. But in terms of joy to read, I would give it a two out of three. There are still valuable pieces in here.
12:38And I would say definitely add traction on your reading list. But rather than reading through it carefully, I would probably put it in the skim category where a few key ideas will really resonate.
12:47But I don't think a page by page thorough review is gonna be worth your time. That brings us to the next book on our list, which is Team Getting Things Done with Others. And this is, as the title implies, a book about getting things done.
12:59The GTD approach to work management, which involves having an inbox and sorting things down based on location and prioritization metrics that you define. GTD is an insanely popular individual productivity method for tracking knowledge and tasks. And this book attempts to bring it into a team environment by essentially navigating you through case studies sort of of how you might actually take the GTD concepts and put them on a team.
13:26Now, full disclaimer, I've actually not read the original text of GTD. I'm just familiar with it from working with clients who use that system. And for the sake of this review, I'm going to assume you haven't read the original GTD either.
13:38And so let's talk about the overall value of this approach. When it comes to persuasiveness of the book team, I would give it a solid one out of three.
13:46It was not. It it was not.
13:50If you know what GTD is and you're already sipping the Kool Aid and you're like, I want my team to do it. Fantastic. You don't need the persuasion piece.
13:58If you are more like me and you aren't a huge GTD fan, you are probably gonna have a hard time engaging in this text. Which brings us to number two, practical steps. Now, if I wanted to be a real jerk, I would probably have given this a one out of three because in terms of the practical steps for how I can use GTD with Team, it wasn't really much.
14:18It was just like, get your team to use it. However, I am going to be generous here and assume that if you're reading this, you've never read GTD. And the original approach of individual productivity had some pretty interesting practical guidelines of how you keep track of things.
14:33And so if you were hearing these for the first time in this book like I was, then you could say is a little bit more practical than it might be for returning viewers. So I'm gonna give this a two out of three, uh, just because I'm assuming you might not have read the original text like I also hadn't at the time of reading this.
14:47Now moving on to the next part of relevance today. Does this still feel current? I mean, this book just came out.
14:52So, yep, still current. So let's just say two out of three for the reasons I'm gonna address in the next category, which is enjoyable to read. Namely, it was really not enjoyable to read.
15:05I am writing my first book now. I recognize I'm a jerk to say this. But for people who are in small business who do not appreciate flowery language and don't need 14 different prepositions and adjectives and just to say one simple thing, oh my god.
15:21Was ready to rip my hair out listening to this book, and I was listening to it, which made it perhaps worst. I remember I was painting my shed while I was listening to this book, and I literally painted half of the freaking shed before the introduction seemed to stop.
15:37The whole book was just telling me what the book was going to tell me without telling me what it was trying to tell me. It was insanely frustrating. And if it wasn't for this video, I'm not sure I would have made it through.
15:48So if I had a zero out of three, it would have zero. But one out of three, is giving team an overall score of six, which, um, feels right.
15:58So I would put this one solidly in the if you really, really want to or if you love GTD or if you really have a lot of the time, go for it. Otherwise, skip this one and and move on.
16:10Just go paint your fence in silence. It's it's better. Now, if Team was a bit of a downer, this next one's gonna bring you back up with scaling up.
16:18So scaling up is arguably competitor framework to entrepreneur operating system.
16:23It kind of covers the same scope of how do we manage a business that can scale. However, I do think scaling up kind of understands what it is a little bit more than traction.
16:33Rather than viewing themselves as an operating system, yet only focusing on leadership and management at its core, ScalingUp owns its lane. It really seems to be a book about how do you manage and lead a scalable company and doesn't really get as lost as Traction does into the weeds of things that it really doesn't know what it's talking about.
16:52Scaling up gives you some pretty clear directives about cash flow, objectives, planning, strategy.
16:58It has some stuff about process and responsibility, but it's a very straightforward book on how do you run a business effectively. And I really appreciate that about the scaling up approach.
17:09Overall, between traction and scaling up, I am much more of a scaling up fan. I've read the book multiple times because I just think I keep learning new things. Also, I will say, as opposed to traction, I really like that scaling up is almost like a textbook in a good way.
17:23Like, it combines dozens and dozens of other books and principles and ideas into one comprehensive text, which is strangely helpful, uh, in a way that it does not sound when I'm describing it.
17:35But it's good. I promise. It's good.
17:36When it comes to scaling up, I'm gonna give it a two out of three on persuasiveness. It has really good facts and persuasive arguments, but it's not the most like rah rah sham wow kind of approach that's going to just entice anyone who happens to pick it up. Uh, when it comes to practical steps, though.
17:52Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna put scaling up at a three out of three similar to traction. I I think it's practical only at the high level, and it really struggles with the details, but that's okay.
18:01I'm gonna accept it for what it is. And like traction, I'm gonna give it a three out of three for the specific exercises and approach. I mean, when I say it's like a textbook, it's like a textbook, and it literally tells you each thing you need to do to systemize your business.
18:15If I could give it a 3.5, I probably would in this regard. Moving on to the next piece of relevance.
18:21I think scaling up is highly relevant today. There are a few concepts and and references just because it is such a massive scope that do feel out of date. Similar to traction, we've got this emphasis of meetings.
18:32We've got this very PDF worksheet style approach to organizing a team, which is a little outdated to how small businesses typically work in usually software rather than PDFs. But still giving it a two out of three. And in terms of enjoyable to read, I think it is very well written and a lot of great ideas.
18:49But, again, it's got that text book double edged sword. So I'm gonna give it a two out of three rather than the three of the three we see on the more enjoyable and narrative books. Overall, scaling up ends up with a score of nine, which puts it solidly on the read list.
19:04Like, if you are looking to build out your shopping cart of what book should I go through? If I really want to become a business owner rather than someone who's working in my business and start to implement the ideas from E Myth, I would add Scaling Up to your checkout cart or go get it from library and read through it carefully.
19:20I have read Scaling Up many times at this point, and every time I read through it, I learn something meaningful and new. I find a new author that's mentioned that I then wanna read the source material of. I definitely recommend this book being one of the first you put on your list.
19:33But there's a few more we have to go over next. Now, the next book on our list is called Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz, who's also the author of Profit First, which is a popular book that kind of gives you the one zero one of bookkeeping. What Profit First attempted to do for bookkeeping, I really think Clockwork is attempting to do for the idea of delegation and role definition in small businesses.
19:54And this one really stood out to me because for a long time here at ProcessDriven, I have looked up to the book Profit First. I think what they did for bookkeeping and financial management for small businesses is really admirable and kind of what I'd like to see ProcessDriven do for small business operations.
20:09So when I found out that the author of that had written this, was like, oh, God, maybe my work work is done. Um, Fortunately or not, that was not the case. So Clockwork, I think, is a great book to describe how you can figure out what is really your job versus other people.
20:25And it promises a lot more about how you organize your team. But I think respectfully, would probably focus it in that scope if I'm really gonna tell you what I would read the book looking for.
20:35Clockwork written by Mike Michalowicz and his ghostwriter, AJ Harper, who I'm actually reading her book right now. So it's kind of fun to see the worlds collide. What makes it so great is its persuasive power.
20:46It is a bestseller in part, I suspect, because it is so accessible. If you start reading through the pages, it won't feel like you're reading a boring business book. And by the end of it, you'll be convinced that you need to find your and figure out what you should be doing.
20:59So for persuasiveness, I'm giving this a three out of three. When it comes to practical steps, though, closer to a two out of three.
21:06There are some specific exercises you can go through, which is fantastic. But, again, this book is really just about defining what role you should have in the business, very simplified approaches outside of that. And so I don't think you're going to get a lot of practical takeaways from this, especially if you're not very much struggling delegation.
21:23By the way, I know like many of the books here, what I'm sharing is just my opinion. You might not agree with it. That's okay.
21:29That's what the Internet is for. Share your opinions in the comments below. Because if any of these books I'm saying are like meh and you're like, no, they're amazing.
21:36I would love to hear your thoughts. Help your fellow small business owners out by writing that in the description below and explaining your must read list for small businesses. Uh, that would be a huge help.
21:46Now this last ranking is gonna be probably my most contentious. But when it comes to Joy to Read, I'm gonna give Clockwork a a one out of three. I don't know what it is about Clockwork, the the term queen b roll, some of the phrasing in this book.
22:00It just gives, like, this weird mix of, like, girl boss with soccer dad and just I just did not enjoy the tone of it and the vibe with respect.
22:12I know a lot of people love it. I just I had a really hard time finishing this one. So, um, in terms of Clockwork, I would say if you have time, definitely read it.
22:20It's overall getting a high score for me. I just just not like reading it. So it's not one I grab off the shelf when folks are asking for recommendations.
22:29This brings me to my next one, which is Systemology by David Jennings. Systemology is an approach to systemizing teams from perspective of somebody who runs a software company and certification program that helps people document their processes. So this is very much focused on how do we write down the things we do in a way that gets them out of our head.
22:48And I love the concept of this book because writing down what you do is a key part of systemizing. And none of these other books really talk about it in part because it's so boring. But this book does a really nice job.
23:01So if you're trying to figure out, how do I start writing things down? How would that even work?
23:06I think systemology is in a great approach to help you figure out what does this massive effort of writing down standard operating procedures actually look like in reality. But now on to the ranking side.
23:17So in terms of persuasiveness, I would give this a two out of three. It's not gonna make you say, oh my god, I need systems. But if you're already keen on the idea, it's going to pull you in further in a positive way.
23:28The next section of practical steps, I'm giving this book a one out of three, and this is with a lot of respect to David and everything he's built. But I think the overall approach to systemizing the business feels a little funky for a small business. I think larger businesses could find this to be a lot more practical.
23:44But a lot of the activities and exercises described in systemology, I feel like are better served for sometimes it feels like it's selling the software that helps you write down your your systems rather than actually telling you how to write down your systems.
23:59And I hate to say that because I know there are a lot of books in this category who do the same thing. They're always I think work. The system is also one of these where they're like, and you should use our proprietary software, blah, blah, Something about having so many of those plugs just makes it feel so much less relatable because the whole time I'm like, oh, okay.
24:16So I just have to use your proprietary software and then everything's easier and work with your certified consultants and everything's easy. It's just practically, if I was a small business owner trying to follow systemology to start organizing my business, I think I would hit a pretty fast wall of almost feeling like I needed to pay money in order for this to actually work.
24:35In terms of relevance today, systemology is not that old of a book, so I would say about two out of three. There's not a lot that feels outdated other than the software promotion. And in terms of joy to read, two out of three.
24:45I mean, it's fine. Nothing remarkable. Nothing terrible.
24:48It's just kind of like a very straightforward business book. Overall, Systemology falls in at a seven. So what I would say is if you find yourself with lots of time or an audible credit to burn, by all means, but probably wouldn't be the first one I grab if I'm looking to systemize my business.
25:02Next up, we have The Goal. And this book is very near and dear to my heart because it is the book that set me on my trajectory of getting into the space of business systems and processes.
25:11Uh, the Goal is similar to Built to Sell in the sense that it is a narrative book. So you're kind of going through the story with characters, with dialogue back and forth. And it follows the story of a manufacturing, uh, business that is struggling with getting orders through the system.
25:28And what the book introduces is things like the theory of constraints, throughput and these other measures of how to know if your system is actually working with a lot of really specific examples around the manufacturing arena that with little creativity, you can apply to any other business as well.
25:44Now in terms of persuasiveness, I wanted to put this as a three out of three because clearly it was persuasive enough to set me on my course. But when I think about the average reader and my average small business client, I'm going to say two out of three.
25:57I think you kind of have to already be very curious about the nerdy side of the stuff to really appreciate this text for what it is. So two out of three in this category. Number two is practicality.
26:08So because this is that narrative case study format and it has a manufacturing example, I'm going to give it a one out of three for practicality. I think if you're outside of that sector, I think if you're not working in the process space, it does a great job of teaching you concepts.
26:25But practical application is something you will have to translate after reading the book. That brings us to relevance today. I would put this book at a two out of three.
26:33It still makes sense, uh, because it's a narrative structure. It hasn't really aged too much. The dialogue might feel a little dated in some pretty obvious ways, but there's still a lot of value to be gained.
26:43In terms of joy to read, I put this one as a three out of three. I think there's other people I've recommended this book to who would probably say it's a two out of three. So let's just put it at the optimistic score of an overall eight.
26:55And even though it is one of my favorite books about process, I would say only read this one if you are a hardcore nerd or you find yourself with extra time, not an essential one as much as I enjoy it. Now, speaking of enjoying, I actually picked up this next book based on enjoying a wonderful conversation with its author at a Meetup event a few years back.
27:15Team Habits is a book by Charlie Gilkey that describes operating systems or patterns or habits that are specifically poised to help small teams work together. Charlie brings his experience in operations as well as in the military into this almost intellectual discussion about how do we actually operate as a team and what are the practices we can practically do to allow ourselves to work better together.
27:41Overall, I think this team habits book is definitely a book by and for nerds. So, um, if you are someone who is a team manager, a leader or just someone who works on a team who's looking to have your team work together more efficiently. Oh, my God.
27:54I use the word team a lot in that explanation. Team habits is a great read. However, I don't think it's gonna do a great job of appealing to people who aren't already interested in this topic.
28:04It's just so dense and nerdy in spots that I don't think this is gonna be that, you know, e myth replacement or built to sell replacement. So I actually gave this a one out of three in persuasiveness.
28:14I really think this is more of an insider's book. Moving on to the next category of practical steps. This is where the book really shines.
28:20As always, it seems like these are always opposites for folks. Um, but I think Charlie does a great job giving you very specific steps of what you can install in your team to get yourself more organized. In fact, I even had a client of mine, Ellen, who flagged this book and was like, oh, my gosh, the practices in this were so helpful to me because she was able to take things from the book and immediately apply them into her business, which gives us a solid three out of three.
28:44Now in terms of relevance, this book just came out. It's brand new. It's very of the time.
28:49So I would give this a three out of three in relevance. But in the joy to read category, I think is where it gets a little bit more difficult for me. I'm someone who is not a great reader.
28:57I feel like we've talked about this already here. I love reading, but I mainly listen. And this book definitely got to be a little bit theoretical and intellectual, which I enjoy in conversations, but is hard for me to follow in books.
29:10So I gave this one a two out of three enjoy to read. It kind of reminded me of the books I've read by Tara McMullen and, you know, just very intellectual, which is it sounds I mean, just owning it.
29:21Right? Like, intellectual made me overwhelmed. I am not that smart.
29:25And if you are very smart, you may love this. I was too dumb. And so I'm putting this at a two out of three for enjoyable to read.
29:31Overall, putting this as a nine, I would say the book is a great one to skim. Probably not one I would stop everything in my tracks to go pick up and read right now. Speaking of stopping in my tracks, I recently ran into this one at a bookshop while at a mastermind event when we were seeking air conditioning.
29:44Atomic Habits by James Clear is a international at this point, I think bestseller. It is a massively popular book about the power of habits.
29:53And I put it on this list reluctantly because it's not really a book about systemizing your business. It's more about the the power of habits and how you can create habits, much like the premise of Work the System, uh, in order to build a better life.
30:07The difference is Atomic Habits took a quite mainstream approach to talk about the ideas, kept the concepts very simple, added a ton of anecdotes, and made it a very broad appeal book. I didn't originally want to include it on this list, but I have so many clients who cite Atomic Habits as one of the reasons why they started organizing their business that I was like, alright, let's put it on the lineup.
30:28As with many of the overwhelmingly popular books on this list, Atomic Habits kills it on the persuasive power. Three out of three super enticing. I was talking to my editor for my own book recently, and she was talking about how, wow, Atomic Habits is one of those books you just pick up, you start reading, and you don't even know what the book is about, but you keep reading because of the catchy introductions and the stories all the way through.
30:50Rochelle makes very great points, and so I wanna highlight that to you here as well. If you were looking to get somebody bought into the power of establishing good habits and good practices that you do regularly to replace the not so good habits in your life, this book would be a good one to add to the list.
31:05In terms of practical steps, I'm giving this a one out of three. Yes, it talks about how you can reform habits, habits, but it is very much focused on an individual basis. Yes, you can apply them to work, but it's going to require you to do a lot of mental work in terms of relevance today.
31:19Like most bestsellers, I would say this is a three out of three. Still, it's a pretty universal evergreen topic. I don't see habits going out of style anytime soon.
31:27So three out of three on this one. When it comes to Joy to Read, however, I would say similar to the other bestsellers, actually, I'm going to give this a two out of three because like many of the bestsellers, I found myself getting bored.
31:40This style of book has this tendency to follow this rhythm of let me tell you a compelling story. Here's something you should believe. Here's a reason you should believe it.
31:49Here's a reason you should believe it. Here's a you should believe it. Here's a reason you should believe it.
31:55And it just feels like so many words to make a point that I want to lose my mind. I'm like, dude, I don't need a fourteenth anecdote to prove to me why habits are helpful. And yet so for me, I put it as a two out of three.
32:08It was just far too repetitive. I also recognize that's why people like it, because you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want. But overall, that puts Atomic Habits as a nine out of 12 for a book to read if you're looking to systemize your business.
32:19However, because of the repetitiveness and the lack of direct connection to systemizing your business, I'm gonna put it in the skim category. Meaning if you listen to a podcast interview or get the book and skim over key sections, amazing.
32:32I probably wouldn't comb through it piece by piece by piece. And this is gonna sound terrible, but the next one on my list is pretty much the same exact result. Checklist Manifesto is another book that my clients seem to read again and again while they're trying to figure out how do I become the CEO of my business.
32:47And without fail, Checklist Manifesto somehow ends up onto the CEO's desk. Checklist Manifesto is exactly what the title says. It is a manifesto and collection of case studies of why checklists are powerful.
33:00Would say Checklist Manifesto is a fantastic book if you're looking to collect examples of why checklists are helpful.
33:10Yeah, that's why to read it. And sassiness aside, it is a really entertaining book.
33:16I think it's really interesting to hear these niche situations where having a checklist really changed lives or changed the world in some way. But similar to Atomic Habits, the scoring is actually identical.
33:27Super persuasive, three out of three. Practical, not really, one out of three. Relevant today, definitely three out of three, but enjoyable to read, two out of three because I found myself losing my mind.
33:39I was convinced 20 pages in that, yes, checklists are helpful. And then we had hundreds of pages left to go or we had many pages left to go. And I just found myself wanting to skip over sections because, again, not a great attention span.
33:52So overall, I give Checklist Manifesto an identical score to Atomic Habits, bringing it in at a nine out of 12. Great book to collect and talk about at a dinner party. Not necessarily the best book to read to systemize your business unless you really need to add more stats into your persuasive score.
34:10Overall, I would say put this on your skimming list, skim key sections, read a blog post or listen to a podcast. I wouldn't stop everything to read the full thing. That brings me to the last book, and this is probably going to be the worst one in the lineup because it is mine.
34:23I'm doing all this research and reading all these books because this is what I do for a living. And after recommending these books again and again and again over years with caveats and hour long recordings where I go through the pros and cons of each approach, I decided it's time to write my own. And is it gonna be a must read?
34:38Probably not. It'll probably suck. I shouldn't say that.
34:42My benchmark for writing this book is to make sure it is persuasive and practical and highly relevant today while also being enjoyable to read and, like, feel like someone's just talking to you rather than this academic research paper that you're expected to digest. But that all starts with you. So if you're someone who's read any of the books on this page and you have opinions as to what makes a great business book or what you'd like to see in the next book that comes out to help you systemize your small business, I actually have a link in the description below where you can join my email list to be involved in the book writing process.
35:14And no, I'm not just writing it so that one of these books is written by a woman. But like, also, how are none of these books written by a woman? What the hell?
35:22Most small business operators are women. I know traditionally authors are, like, sitting in their caves and writing and writing and writing and then blah, I finished everything. That's not the approach I'm taking for this book.
35:31I'll be sending out polls and behind the scenes snippets to anyone who joins that list over the coming year. And if you wanna be involved in the process of what I hope be a future bestseller, it all starts by just heading the description below, um, even if it's just to check out some of these other books as well.
35:46Thanks so much for watching and enjoy the process.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She opens with the spreadsheet already on screen — a full ranked grid of every book, color-coded by score — then offers to skip ahead for anyone who just wants the answer. When the impatient viewers leave, the real video begins: a methodical, scored teardown of every book that gets recommended when you Google 'how to systemize my business,' delivered by someone who has actually helped 2,000+ small teams build their systems.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:00list
4-Criterion Book Scoring Rubric
- Persuasiveness (does it sell you on WHY?)
- Practicality (does it show you HOW?)
- Relevance (still applicable today?)
- Enjoyability (can you actually finish it?)
Each criterion scored 1–3; total out of 12. Verdicts: Read / Skim / Skip. Designed for small-team operators, not solopreneurs or enterprises.
Steal forAny product review, book club curation, or decision framework where you need an opinionated multi-factor score rather than a simple thumbs up/down
12:40concept
EOS-ish adoption model
Take the parts of the Entrepreneurial Operating System that work for your team (rocks, scorecards, role clarity) and discard the rest. Most successful EOS users implement it selectively.
Steal forFramework for how to adopt any prescriptive methodology without over-committing to its full complexity
20:50concept
Queen Bee Role
From Clockwork (Michalowicz): identify the one function in the business that drives its core value and protect the owner's time for that role above all else. The foundation of delegation strategy.
Steal forRole audit: force yourself to name the single activity that only you can do and that the business depends on most
26:20concept
Theory of Constraints
From The Goal (Goldratt): every system has one bottleneck limiting its total throughput. Improving anything except that constraint doesn't move the needle. Find the constraint; fix it; repeat.
Steal forOperations audit or bottleneck diagnosis — forces you to stop optimizing steps that aren't the real limit
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
35:00newsletter
“I have a link in the description below where you can join my email list to be involved in the book writing process.”
Soft close — shared her own book is in progress and invited viewers into the writing process via email list. No hard sell. Natural extension of the video's credibility.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
- 🔗 Why All Small Businesses Should Use This ↗
- 🔗 Read Work the System ↗
- 🔗 Read Built to Sell ↗
- 🔗 Read Traction ↗
- 🔗 Read Scaling Up ↗
- 🔗 Read Clockwork ↗
- 🔗 Read Systemology ↗
- 🔗 Read The Goal ↗
- 🔗 Read Team Habits ↗
- 👉 Grab our FREE SOP template to start documenting processes your team will actually follow ↗
- 👉 Get a FREE operations audit to measure how systemized your team is with a Systemization Snapshot™ ↗
- 👉 Want to steal our gear/setup/software stack? ↗
- processdriven.co ↗
Visual structure at a glance.
