Business Book Club

If you look at the bookshelves of the world's most successful CEOs, you will almost always find a copy of High Output Management by Andy Grove.
Grove was the CEO of Intel. He treated management as an engineering problem, focusing entirely on leverage and maximizing production. But how do you apply theories from the 1980s to a fully remote business today?
To help me explore that, I am joined by Tom Hunt. Tom is the founder of Fame, a B2B podcast agency he bootstrapped with zero funding to $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue.
To achieve that growth, Tom had to stop being a marketer and start being a manager. In this episode, we break down exactly how he used Grove's framework to do it. We cover why your output is actually your team's output, why meetings are highly effective tools, and the art of true delegation.
Key Takeaways & Timestamps
00:00 - Introducing High Output Management and how it shaped modern business.
02:03 - The Manager's Output: Your output is strictly the total output of everyone you manage, not your individual contributor work.
05:54 - High Leverage P&L: Powerful, high-level overview to properly guide your team's focus.
06:56 - Meetings are the Work: Meetings are not interruptions to your day but rather the exact places where management happens.
07:56 - The 7 Types of Communication
10:40 - The Remote Meeting Cadence: A strict and predictable schedule of check-ins keeps a distributed team perfectly aligned.
18:20 - Task Relevant Maturity (TRM): Adjust your management style from highly structured to completely hands-off based entirely on an employee's maturity in a specific task.
23:24 - The Written Agenda Rule: Requiring a written agenda before any ad hoc meeting will eliminate those time-wasting, unstructured calls.
25:51 - Ban Private DMs: Moving all non-sensitive communication into public Slack channels allows you to naturally monitor the health of your company.
Get the book here
📚High Output Management by Andy Grove
Mentioned in the episode
Fame (fame.so): Tom's B2B podcast agency.
EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System): The framework Tom uses for his leadership meetings.
High Output Management with Rich Willan: Our previous episode covering three completely different lessons from this exact same book.

Tom Hunt, Founder of Fame

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Stop confusing being busy with being productive.
The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, do it well, and finish it completely is the key to success. But how do you actually execute that when you are drowning in a sea of emails, Slack messages, and daily fires?
Joining me to share his exact productivity playbook is CJ Bilangino, CEO of Gorilla Commerce. CJ has led finance and operations teams at multiple high-growth startups and relies on the frameworks in Eat That Frog to manage his energy, prioritize tasks, and lead his teams.
Today, we discuss why checking your email first thing in the morning is destroying your momentum, how to ruthlessly apply the 80/20 rule to your to-do list, and why planning your day the night before is the ultimate productivity hack.
Key Takeaways & Timestamps
00:00 – Introducing Eat That Frog and the Mark Twain quote that inspired the book's famous title.
02:25 – Tackle Your Biggest Task First: Why your "frog" is the hardest, most important task—and the one you are most likely to procrastinate on.
03:55 – Stop Hiding in Your Inbox: CJ explains why he wakes up at 4:35 AM to do 45 minutes of deep work before he ever opens his email.
06:11 – Prioritize Ruthlessly (The 80/20 Rule): 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. How to identify the vital few and ignore the trivial many.
09:31 – The Championship Framework: How to use the process of elimination to find the least amount of "moves" required to hit your annual goals.
12:31 – Plan Every Day in Advance: Why every 1 minute spent planning saves 10 minutes of execution time.
15:05 – The ABCDE Method: How to categorize your tasks.
16:20 – Digital vs. Analog: Why CJ uses an app for long-term tracking but relies on pen and paper for his daily task list to force ultimate accountability.
Get the book here
📚Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy
Mentioned in the episode
Todoist. The simple digital task manager CJ uses to track his annual, quarterly, and weekly business goals.
Deep Work by Cal Newport. A highly recommended companion read to help you protect your morning "frog eating" time from distractions.
Atomic Habits by James Clear. The definitive guide to making your evening planning routine an automatic, frictionless habit.

CJ Bilangino, CEO of Gorilla Commerce

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With over a million copies sold, Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things is considered the definitive manual for startup founders facing impossible decisions. It is the raw, unfiltered story of how to run a company when absolutely nothing is going according to plan.
Joining me today is Dr. Minshad, CEO and founder of Bionema Group, a UK-based ag-tech company working on biological solutions to replace toxic chemical pesticides. Coming from an academic background, Dr. Minshad bootstrapped his company from scratch and faced over 50 VC rejections before finding his footing.
Today, we discuss why there is no playbook for the truly hard things in business, the critical differences between a "Peacetime CEO" and a "Wartime CEO," and why you must hire for exceptional strength rather than a lack of weakness.
Key Takeaways & Timestamps
00:00 – Introducing The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Ben Horowitz's journey from near-bankruptcy to a $1.6 billion exit.
02:57 – No Playbook for Hard Things: Why the most difficult skill in business is managing your own psychology, and how Dr. Minshad persisted through 50+ investor rejections.
06:47 – Be the Wartime CEO: The difference between leading in a booming market (Peacetime) versus fighting for your company's survival (Wartime).
08:08 – The Academic to Entrepreneur Pipeline: Why deep-tech investors are looking for a specific co-founder dynamic: one deeply technical academic paired with a commercial business mind.
13:28 – Hire for Strength, Not Lack of Weaknesses: Why settling for a "safe" hire is a disaster, and why a spectacular candidate is worth 10x more than a solid one.
16:48 – The "No Money" Excuse: Dr. Minshad's hard truth for founders: If you don't have the money to hire the right people, you don't have a business.
18:06 – Culture is the CEO's Job: Why you can never outsource company culture to a third-party or a new hire.
Get the book here
📚The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Mentioned in the episode
Bionema Group: Dr. Minshad's award-winning biocontrol technology company, leading the charge to replace chemical pesticides with nature-based alternatives.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z): Ben Horowitz's venture capital firm. Their blog and podcast are goldmines for deep-tech and software founders navigating scale.

Dr. Minshad, CEO & Founder of Bionema Group

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Even smart, well-funded executive teams fail.
Patrick Lencioni's masterpiece, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, exposes the silent killers of company growth and provides a practical framework to turn a group of capable individuals into a truly cohesive unit.
Joining me to unpack this framework is Alisa Cohn, an award-winning executive coach who was named the #1 Startup Coach in the world and has worked with C-suites at Venmo, Etsy, Microsoft, and Google.
Today, Alisa breaks down why your department is not your most important team, how to build vulnerability-based trust, and why self-awareness is the ultimate cheat code for leadership.
Key Takeaways & Timestamps
00:00 – Introducing The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team and the silent killers of company growth.
02:00 – The 5 Dysfunctions Framework: Alisa breaks down the hierarchy of team success: Trust drives Conflict, Conflict drives Commitment, Commitment drives Accountability, and Accountability drives Results. You cannot skip a step.
04:37 – Diagnosing Your Team: Why a lack of accountability is often just a symptom of a team that hasn't learned how to have productive conflict.
07:11 – The "First Team" Concept: Why the CMO's most important team is not the marketing department. It is the executive team.
09:20 – The Cost of Loyalty: How prioritizing your specific department over the executive team leads directly to toxic politics, silos, and blame.
14:24 – Self-Awareness as a Cheat Code: Why managing your ego and acting in service of the company is the hardest—but most necessary—leadership skill.
16:03 – The "Working With Me" Document: How creating a 1-to-2 page personal operating manual builds vulnerability-based trust.
16:59 – The 360 Feedback Loop: How to gather actionable behavioral feedback from the people above you, below you, and beside you.
Get the book here
📚The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Mentioned in the episode
From Start-up to Grown-up: Alisa Cohn's book, featuring 14 specific scripts to help you navigate delicate and difficult conversations.
The "Working With Me" Document: Atlassian's excellent free template and guide for creating a personal user manual.
The 360 Feedback Model: A comprehensive breakdown of how to run these reviews from the Center for Creative Leadership.

Alisa Cohn, Executive Coach & Author
Podcast & Book: From Start-up to Grown-up
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If you are tired of looking at your bank account and wondering where all that top-line revenue went, this episode is for you.
Mike Michalowicz built and sold multiple million-dollar companies before writing Profit First, a system now used by over 600,000 businesses to grow leaner and more profitable.
Joining me to unpack these principles is Sabrina Chevannes, founder of the award-winning No BS Agency and the n0bs.com community for ambitious entrepreneurs. As an international chess master and competitive poker player, Sabrina knows strategy, risk, and how to win.
Today, we discuss how to use human psychology to stop overspending, how to audit your business to find hidden cash bleeds, and the specific bank account structure Sabrina uses to guarantee a profit every single month.
Key Takeaways & Timestamps
00:00 – Introducing Profit First and why top-line revenue is a vanity metric.
02:09 – The Formula Flip: Why changing your accounting from (Revenue - Expenses = Profit) to (Revenue - Profit = Expenses) changes everything.
05:26 – The Software Audit: How Sabrina saved tens of thousands of pounds by cutting "essential" subscriptions and zombie software.
08:42 – Parkinson's Law of Money: Why your business expenses will always expand to consume the exact amount of cash sitting in your operating account.
12:09 – The "Pocket" System: The exact 4-account bank structure (Profit, Tax, Owner's Pay, Opex) to protect your money from yourself.
15:09 – Building the Habit: Why you need to schedule your financial transfers on the 10th and 25th of the month as a non-negotiable meeting.
18:04 – The 1% Rule: Why starting with just 1% allocated to profit builds the psychological momentum you need to scale.
20:33 – The No BS Community: Sabrina explains why she built a community for founders tired of transactional networking events.
24:47 – The Bryan Johnson Method: What the world's most regimented biohacker can teach you about removing financial temptation from your business.
Get the book here
📚 Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Mentioned in the episode
n0bs.com: Sabrina’s members club for ambitious founders.
Starling and Revolut: The challenger banks used to easily set up financial "pockets."
Atomic Habits: The book by James Clear on building habits that stick.

Sabrina Chevannes, Founder of No BS Agency & Community
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