This list changes frequently but as of right now there are 4 resources that are on the top of the pile. These resources are making my business better every day. 

Anything with Paul Akers

Paul Akers is the Fastcap CEO and a Lean manufacturing innovator.

He authored the book 2 Second Lean and it’s ultimately what got me excited about implementing Lean in our shop. It made Lean easy enough by breaking it down into small items. Implementing Lean was a no brainer after reading that book.

He posts a lot of Youtube content and a major plus is that they are usually very short videos, which makes it very easy to keep up with him content day to day. He’s also very easy to engage with on Youtube as well as on other social media platforms too, like LinkedIn.

He always responds when you comment or reach out with questions. He is just a great leader and great to correspond with.

Mike Michalowicz

Author Mike Michalowicz has been taking a lot of my focus lately. He has written several books such as The Pumpkin Plan and The Surge, but my favorite to date is Profit First.

Profit First is a book about dividing your income into several accounts and taking your profit first.

He basically teaches a mind trick that allows you to allocate your profit rather than taking the scraps that are left over. In his thought process, by taking profit first, whatever you are left with is whatever you have to run your business on. By confining your working budget to a certain amount of money to run on, you likely won’t use all the money you have left.

It’s such a great book and we have implemented it in our bookkeeping system because its so visual, it lets you know exactly where you are at day to day, and it just takes all of the guesswork out of the numbers.

So far for us it’s been a success and we plan to continue using it.

I’d suggest for anyone to read it. I actually enjoy listening to it on Audible because there’s a lot of extra content on there that’s not in the book.

iwpawood.org

This is a resource I’ve been tracking pretty much all year and, if you do many cabinets, you’ve probably been tracking it as well. IWPAWOOD.ORG follows the plywood tariffs and all of the anti dumping lawsuits.

If you know anything about plywood, then you know it’s gone absolutely crazy this year and it's going to continue to fluctuate until these tariffs level out and until these AD lawsuits settle. All I know right now is that the domestic plywood and the import plywood are both not stable, which in my eyes affects us business owners that are on the bottom, meaning we are the last ones to buy that product before its turned into something.

I encourage everybody to keep a very close eye on these tariffs. Talk to your distributors make sure you are in touch with your sales people almost on a weekly basis just to see if there’s been any changes. That will erode your margins faster than anything if you don’t start clarifying in your bids that they are only good for a certain amount of time. Stay vigilant because it is fluctuating greatly sometimes from week to week or even day to day on certain products. For specific tips on protecting your profits in light of these tariffs read my article, "My Take on the Import Plywood Issue."

LinkedIn

I’ve been into LinkedIn for quite sometime but recently I've become an even bigger fan. It’s such a great website for businesses and owners and it doesn't seem to have all the nonsense content that we don’t need at work.

The way you can focus on building your network around people in your industry or other business owners like you is so great. I’ve really enjoyed expanding my network with more business owners.

It’s a phenomenal platform for expanding your network, which you can ultimately leverage into making your business better. I’ve learned so much just by paying attention to other business owners and the kind of things they follow and they kind of things they share.

I think LinkedIn is a great resource for anybody and I think all business owners and entrepreneurs should be on LinkedIn and engage as often as possible. Share content that you enjoy because so many others can benefit from what you share.

What's on Your list?

Thanks for reading the 4 resources I’m into right now.

I’m looking forward to some comments below or messages on LinkedIn. Let me know what your favorites are. I’m always looking to learn more, read more, and find more resources to get hooked on so feel free to share yours!