Since we started SnowBoardGames, we have a habit of ordering some books in December. I’m gathering suggestions for this year’s order, and I thought I’d share some of the books and insights I found helpful over the last 2 years.
Why 2 years? Because it’s been a continuous process when we’ve been figuring out what kind of business we want to be with SnowBoardGames, how to work with our partners better, and how to structure it so we can manage it in 4 days/month
The Hard Thing About Hard Things:
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz
He was the founder & CEO of a tech company that went from rapid growth to some really hard times. He starts by telling their story, and I have to say I was stressed just reading about it – I can’t imagine what it must have been like going through it.
He then goes on to share some lessons he learned. He argues that most self-help books hype you about some solution to a problem, but when you really think about it, the problem they are solving often isn’t the root problem, a real hard thing. He has a brutally honest, no-nonsense approach, and he gives practical how-tos and shares some great insights into some really uncomfortable situations.
For example, what do you do when you realise that your friend, who you started the company with, is no longer suitable for a lead role, and how do you respond to his counter that you are not suitable to be a CEO either?
We are not a big company, and I won’t have to deal with hiring C-level executives anytime soon (or never), but I still found a lot of the insights really valuable as they help me understand how the business works and help me work with our partners and freelancers.
There are 4 key things that have really stayed with me:
First, Horowitz introduces the concept of management debt. It’s like tech debt – if you take an easy fix instead of a sustainable solution that takes more work, you will eventually reach the point where the easy fixes will accumulate and force you into serious and costly rework. The management debt happens when you avoid making a final decision, or take a comfortable route that works short-term, but starts causing problems in the long run. I remember this every time my inner introvert wants to hide or be non-confrontational, but I know that what we’re doing isn’t good in the long run, and it helps me toughen up and follow through with the decision.
Second, I read it at a time when I felt really insecure about the decisions we were making. Horowitz shares his struggles, and has a whole chapter dedicated to how being the CEO is lonely, stressful, and insecure. It really helped me see that even the people who seem like they have it figured out experience this, and it helped me embrace that if you’re trying to run a business, this is a modus operandi, and that everything that’s better than this is awesome.
Third, he says business is like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek; there is always a move. This is encouraging, as no matter how hard the situation is, there is an idea that you can try. But I think it could also be a curse, because if there’s always something you can try, how do you know you’re not trying to save something that would be better let go of? Though I guess if it’s chess, that implies that there is a checkmate.
And fourth, this book made me realise that if you have a tech company on the leading edge, you are constantly in a race with your competitors and technology. It sounds exhausting, and it makes me wonder if I ever really want to do a tech startup.
The E-Myth Revisited:
Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
by Michael E. Gerber
This one gave me perspective on two very important topics. First, the roles in the business. Gerber argues that a lot of small businesses start because a specialist in the field (he calls it a technician) decides to open his or her own business in that field, expecting to continue his or her technician role. But with a business, two more roles need to be filled: a manager, who is in charge of day-to-day operations, and an entrepreneur, in charge of business development. When businesses start, all of the roles could be held by one person, or they are spread between co-founders.
In his opinion, the problem is that a lot of people who start their business never fill the second two rolls, and they start resenting the fact that they can no longer work in their professional field, and the business spirals. I think we were lucky in this regard when we started SnowBoardGames, because between a physicist and an engineer, who played and developed board games as a hobby, board games were neither of our professional fields. In fact, we started SnowBoardGames wanting to learn about business. So we never resented the fact that we had to work on our business.
The book helped us start seeing the business as a structure, and see the roles needed, and with that insight, we were able to work out which roles we find better suited for us, and divided them between the two of us. We also realised what our weaknesses were, and outsourced a bit more than before.
The second insight the book gave us was that Gerber argues that you have to treat your business as a franchise, providing a consistent experience and establishing step-by-step processes that can be replicated. In this way, you can run the best business you can with the least qualified people possible, which essentially means you’re doing it efficiently.
This idea really spoke to me, as we already said that we want to do a lot of things, like pre-launch marketing and fulfilment, ourselves during the first Kickstarter campaign, so we know exactly what they entail. And then next time, we will be able to outsource it better.
In addition, we took a physicist’s and an engineer’s approach to everything, finding patterns, creating checklists for systems with the end goal to automate where we can – where the tasks are repetitive and they don’t require creativity. So we can focus only on the fun, creative stuff. This approach is why I believe we could run SnowBoardGames on the side in the long term, and why I hope we can build a platform that will help others publish their games, too.
Key Person of Influence:
The Five-Step Method to Become One of the Most Highly Valued and Highly Paid People in Your Industry
by Kevin Harrington and Daniel Priestley
This one was an eye-opener. Priestley says that in the past, when businesses were local, it was good to be a generalist. A store that had a bit of everything could serve everybody. But now, when business is done online, you have to be a specialist; the more niche you are, the better. If you’re looking for a specific service or product, you can google services and products globally and choose the best one. Therefore, people who can position themselves as the top experts in a niche get most of the business and the best opportunities of that niche.
He also argues that we all stand on a mountain of value already, accumulated from hobbies and past careers, and urges the reader to think about what their niche is. He then presents steps to help position oneself as an expert.
I was really conflicted when I read it – between physics and board games, what is my niche? At first glance, the two areas don’t have much in common. I took a few days to dive deep into my interests, and I talked to people who know me, and after a few days, a theme began to emerge, underlying practically everything that I do, from hobbies to work.
The theme is efficiency. I’ve always been frustrated by inefficiency and wasting resources, especially time. I hated the gaps in school schedules, I tackle my sports climbing projects methodically, and I’m currently researching how to make power systems’ transmission lines more efficient. We’re already optimising how we publish board games and do Kickstarter, and I have a future project in mind that screams efficiency, too.
Since 2021, I’ve been finding an efficient way to balance a job and running a business while still having free time. So I guess my niche is efficiency, though I’m not sure if that’s a good niche to be an expert in.
Oversubscribed:
How to Get People Lining Up to Do Business with You
by Daniel Priestley
I read Oversubscribed after I finished the Key Person of Influence, and I think that’s the intended sequence. I will have to read this one again, but one of the main highlights from this book is that you should do business in campaigns. Think product launch campaigns. You can do a few big campaigns a year, and have spikes of income, or a lot of smaller campaigns in a year, where the income is more distributed, or a mix of the two – a few big campaigns that grab attention with smaller campaigns in between to stabilise you.
The fewer campaigns you have, the riskier your business model is, as a small perturbation in your campaign has a huge effect.
That really hit home, as so far, our main income has been from the Kickstarter campaigns. The first one was super successful (3451 backers & 120,000€), but with the second one, there were a lot of things that went wrong, and we felt like it didn’t reach its full potential (though we still reached 30,000€ in the end).
We already knew that it would be good to stabilise the business with something in between the Kickstarters, but this book inspired us to take the campaign approach. We’ve since had a very successful mini product launch that sold in a few hours, but we’ve also had a not-so-successful campaign targeted at board game retailers, where we learned a lot about how they do business. So I guess we know how to do the campaigns, but we need to choose which ones to do better.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
I’ll finish this list with a fiction book – I used to read a lot of fiction, but I mostly read educational books at the moment. The book follows two computer game developers through the launch of their first game, which is a hit, through the startup phase and the ups and downs. I haven’t read a fiction book about this topic before, and it was refreshing to see it in this light.
After the success of the first game, the team is deciding what their next project will be, and one of the characters notes that this is her favourite part, as all of the possibilities are open, and the project can be anything. I love that part of the design process too.
I wish the second part of the book had not unfolded the way it did, but hey, life rarely goes the way we want it to either.
And fiction books can be a great escape from reality. So do board games. (And if you’re in need of one, we can help you 😉 )
Do you have any suggestions for us? Feel free to leave a comment or write to us!