How do You find the Best Mentors? Books, My Best Mentors
Books, Books, Books - Business Coach in a Box
I was recently asked in the webinar "The Three Key Principles that Create more Profits and more Free Time."
What do I look for as far as books are concerned?
What titles or specific authors would I look for? The topics?
I love these types of questions. It gives me some pause to reflect on what I read and why.
I read a quote that said that great teachers are, first and foremost, great students. Being a student is an essential part of being a leader. You become a great leader, I believe, by being a great student. A student has great teachers. This is where I start, finding great teachers. I found some of the most interesting teachers from books, especially the audio version of these books. When I listen to these books, I feel I have some of the best teachers teaching me. When I needed help in an area of life or business development or when I needed to develop a skill, the authors became my personal mentors.
What do I look for as far as books are concerned?
My interest in books goes way back to my high school days.
I have to tell you that I did not so much like what I had to read for high school.
Maybe except for books like Brave New World and 1985.
My dad turned me on. He was an avid reader.
My dad was an owner of an Electronic Manufacturing Company.
Dad had many associates and innovators that would cross his desk during his time as owner of his Electronics Company.
One such associate was an inventor, Lionel Cornwall.
Mr. Cornwall invented the first wall-size speakers for a new-fangled thing called stereo.
Mr. Cornwall showcased these speakers at the 1964 New York World Fair. I saw first-hand the wall-size speakers. He designed one of the rooms in his home with the two speakers. I could walk into these speakers. That's how big they were.
One day, Mr. Cornwall visited my dad to discuss one of his new inventions or ideas. My dad was the man to figure out how to manufacture the inventions. They were a great team.
This time Mr. Cornwall brought two or three big boxes.
He just cleaned out his attic.
The boxes were full of books.
I still can remember the books had this musty smell to them. They turned out to be a treasure.
I never heard these names:
Books from Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, and Norman Vincent Peale.
I asked him which one to read. He recommended starting by reading The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol.
This musty book started my love of this genre, and I never looked back.
I was just a teenager in high school. I found the clues to success and the keys to the mind. I can look back and see that the following books, musty as all, helped me become an excellent mentor and leader:
Claude M. Bristol - The Magic of Believing. This book teaches you that regardless of the circumstances, all the power in the world lies in your hands.
Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich. He examines the power of thought and the brain to further your career and life with monetary and personal satisfaction. This book was written in 1937. Powerful insights are based on the basics. They do not change.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale - The Power of Positive Thinking. He demonstrates the power of faith in action. Great how-to practical techniques that can energize your life. It gives you the initiative to carry out your ambitions and hopes.
Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People. When I read the title, it sounded sketchy. The core idea of his book is that you can change other people's behavior simply by changing your own. The book helps you better understand people to become likable and improve relationships. Later, many of my employees and I learned and studied in many Dale Carnegie programs. Brian Walker was an outstanding coach and mentor. We all became better speakers, communicators, managers, and salespeople.
Can you imagine finding mentors (I mean books) like these? These books stayed with me and shaped my thinking. These books codified much of what I believed today. Teachers in a box.
What do I look for in a book (mentor)?
In the beginning, I looked for any book about successful people and types of leadership.
I wanted to become more successful in business and life.
I thought that success was all about money. I soon found out that success was not all about money.
I read a lot, and I drove a lot more. Summers, for me, was working in my brother's landscaping business. The audio version was a perfect companion.
Jumping quickly from graduating as a Computer Engineer, I become a partner in an Electronic Manufacturing Company. I became my father's partner. For the next five years, we built the business to a multi-million dollar level and decided to sell it.
I bought into the same landscape company with my brother, where I worked most of my summers. Our synergy was soon to be born. During the first ten years of working 24/7, we doubled our business, almost hitting that infamous $1M Sales mark. During that time, I kept reading.
I looked for help with how successful businesses are and how they developed their businesses.
How did the leaders, the owners, act and breathe?
What titles or specific authors do I look for (Solving issues or learning a skill)?
These books catalyzed my journey of growing a successful life and business.
It also showed me that the best companies were all about taking care of the people.
I watched my dad at Veteran, University, and company speaking events. He would always talk about good people and their excellent hands in their work. That mantra was profound in my mind when I started growing my business.
My dad taught me all the aspects of business and how to run a business. The following few books help me grow a business (a different set of skills):
How to put the pieces of the business puzzle together (my words). One of my most essential growth books. This book is about when the rubber hits the pavement. I needed to grow the company. I had an excellent mentor for many years with my dad. He mentored me on how to run an effective and efficient company. But, I needed to learn how to grow a business. Grow a business is a different skill set. After reading the book, I took their Mastery Vocational Program. This four times-a-month mentoring was a 1.5 years program. I is an engineer, as my dad used to say. I utilized the program and coaches for five years. We hired two of his best coaches: Susan Willhelmsen and Swati Sen, to help us grow our organization. I found these programs some of the best in the business development world. His mentors helped me find my values, strategies, and a way to build an environment where everyone thrived. In the first ten years of our business, we grew from $400K to almost $1M. While E-Myth coached me, we grew 20x in the next ten years.
Simon Sinek - Start with Why
Where all great leaders start.
It Inspired me to have a purpose at work.
It helped me mentor my employees to become more successful and purposeful.
It helped me ask what the why of my organization was.
Mike Michalowicz - Profits First
This method helped me create the cash flow and make my finances work in my business.
The simple idea: Put your net profits, tax, distributions, and company benefits first. All else is an expense.
Domenic A Chiarella - Tomato Paste Leadership
What does it take to be a leader and grow a great company?
An excellent company for your clients, employees, family, and you? How do you create a better life for yourself and your employees?
Creating an environment for everyone can thrive, financially and professionally.
Putting all the experience of owning/running a business and growing businesses. Backed by countless books, countless coaching, and proven systems.
What titles or specific topics do I look for in a book?
There were many areas that I wanted to learn, improve, and implement in my life and business.
To name a few: people development, leader development, self-improvement, financial astutely, organization, strategic planning, coaching, and system development.
Each time I need help in one of these areas, It would seem from high above that these books would present themselves.
These were books to help me in the financial development area:
I was blessed to find two gems to be more financially successful and financially stable.
Again, what I thought financial success was and what I soon learned were two different things. These were books to help understand wealth, how it worked, and how to become financially successful:
Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. - The Millionaire Next Door
Do you want to know what millionaires do? I thought I did, but this book set me straight.
It was a way to understand true wealth. Not what you see in advertisements and magazines.
Ramit Sethi - I will teach you to be Rich.
I still teach this in my business/life programs. I have mentored many of my clients and my triplets with this method. This gem created a way to live life yet invest in the future.
These were books to help me in the business development area:
Running a business. Growing a business takes work.
Sustaining the proper organization takes even more work.
My mission was to maintain and mentor employees toward their success. These books did that for the employees and me. These books help the company and me think in a new way.
Les McKeown - Predictable Success
No matter what kind of organization you have, your number one goal is to maintain your success.
Your company doesn't just stay successful. This book allowed me to understand how it is possible to remain in Predictable Success.
Lots of examples with specific actions and an excellent framework. I wanted to grow a great company. But I wanted to sustain it for a long time.
Jason Jennings – Think Big, Act Small.
One of the reasons I sold my partnership was the new strategic plan to grow the company's revenue. It was going back to the traditional corporate way: cut the benefits, cut expenses, downsize, give inspirational empty speeches, and back to micro-management.
I knew what we did collaboratively and how our culture of a thriving environment was how to run and grow the company. The last 15 years of my partnership and what I now coach other companies to become successful is a proven way.
This book gives examples of nine amazingly profitable and well-run companies. I took some valuable ideas from many of the models. These are some great ideas to implement and use.
Bo Burlingham - Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
I always thought that great companies grew their revenues and profits yearly. Yes, they did. We were increasing sales annually, too.
But here is a book that gave us a different approach.
After reading this book, we doubled down and focused on our values and what we did. Making our culture and values number one created just as much profit but not at the expense of what we believed.
Goals like:
- Being great at what we do and using independent companies for everything else.
- Creating a great environment to also worked for the employees,
- Servicing and providing excellent customer service, and
- Being community minded by helping our employees professionally to be able to take care of their families.
Darren Hardy - The Compound Effect
I needed motivation. I was raising triplets, growing a business, building systems, and failing more than I was succeeding.
This book showed me how to get myself and others to do things we don't feel like doing.
The tools that overachievers used helped us capture and keep our momentum.
I always told my audience at speaking events, my coaching clients, and my past employees, "you could stop me, but I have a team besides me. You can't stop all of us."
Jim Collins - Good to Great and Built to Last
It showed me that the best companies were all about taking care of the people.
What does it take to become better than good?
I read these books because I was looking for clues I could use in my business.
These were books to help me in the employee development area:
Marcus Buckingham - First, Break All the Rules
This was very revealing. What do the world’s most excellent managers do differently?
It has a way to gauge vital performance and career lessons and ideas for how to apply them,
It was something that changed the way I worked with employees. It is a must-listen for managers at every level.
David Allen - Getting Things Done
Helped everyone in the company with managing work-life balance. We utilized systems to manage our time and our resources. We hired a brilliant consultant, Maurice Gavin, from this company to help each employee and the company become more efficient with our time and work.
These were books to help understand what marketing is to be more successful:
Seth Godin - This is Marketing
I learned that great marketers don't use clients to solve their company's problems; marketers solve client problems.
I have found more empathy and connection with my clients using these methods.
Just one of the ideas is that I now do work that matters to the people who care about the outcome.
I always thought that every owner wanted to grow. Yes, they may want to grow, but only a few owners want to do the work and put in the effort. These ideas are where this book helps you.
Donald Miller - Marketing Made Simple
I read the book, Building a StoryBrand by the same author. He came up with this five-part checklist. It helped me cultivate a way to effectively develop, strengthen, and communicate my brand's story to the marketplace. I loved how he has a website companion to the book to work on each of the five parts.
Michael Port - Book Yourself Solid
My favorite mom-in-law thinks of busyness as the equivalent of success, but that's not always the case. I always tell mom what you're busy doing. Success means spending time doing work that gets you closer to your aims in life. I found many strategies, techniques, and skills that helped me get more clients and increase my profits.
I wish you happiness, purpose, and success as you start or continue your journey to grow as a leader. Learn to become a teacher. You will be surprised when you mentor your employees to become more successful. You will find more fun, profits, and passion for your aims in life.
Create your life. Create your business. Just one step at a time. Be Great, Domenic
