As business owners, the word ‘freedom’ has a deeper meaning.

We have the opportunity to create freedom in our lives that most people don’t and never will.

It’s important that you recognize that there’s a critical handoff between your marketing and sales team. If you can’t make this exchange cleanly and well, your sales team is going to struggle and you’re not going to grow your business as quickly.

I was having this conversation today and decided to make it into a blog post. These are three of the most impactful books I’ve read as a business owner.

They cover a broad topic area – from building business systems to branding and messaging to advanced marketing strategy. But they’ve each been very valuable for me and my businesses.

If you haven’t read any of these, I think you should check them out!

Every business relies on its marketing to fuel growth. Effective marketing produces a steady, predictable flow of qualified leads for a business, which their sales team converts into paying clients. But if the flow of leads dries up, so does business growth.

Too many business owners compartmentalize their marketing and don’t spend enough time thinking about it.

It’s like they put “marketing” in a little brown box, seal it up, put it on a bookshelf, and only pull it out once every blue moon.

Creating happy clients and customers is the key to growing your business. Happy customers are loyal customers, and they become the most powerful promoters of your business when they spread the word to their network.

The easiest way to go wrong with your marketing is to stop paying attention to results. I’ve seen business owners waste small fortunes on marketing initiatives that don’t produce. The problem isn’t that they tried something and it failed. That happens to all of us, often. The problem is that, after it failed, they kept pumping money into it for months and years to come. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results!

The most expensive thing you do in business is acquiring new customers and clients. It takes a significant investment of time, thought, energy, and money to create new clients for your business. Here’s an important fact: it’s nine times more expensive to create a new client than it is to sell to an existing client or customer.

You need a better message than “hire me because I’m cheaper than the other guys.” Even if you ARE cheaper than the other guys! Because sooner or later, you will find yourself being undercut by the competition.

The first step to building your personal brand is to define the brand you’d like to build. How do you want to be perceived? What strengths and abilities do you want to highlight? What story do you want to tell? How much of your background do you want to share, and how will you make it relevant to your target customers?