The Working Library · 25 Entries
Resources for
service business owners
The reading list we hand to every client. Books, audiobooks, and tools we keep coming back to. No fluff, no affiliate dump. Just the work that's shaped how we run the agency and what we tell clients to read first.
The reading list we send every client
If you only read eight business books in your life, make it these. Every one of them shows up in conversations with clients somewhere between week one and month six. Pick whichever format works for the way you actually consume things.
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01
$100M Offers
How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no. The cleanest reframe of pricing, value, and risk reversal we've ever read. Read it before you touch your service pricing.
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02
$100M Leads
The companion to $100M Offers. Where leads actually come from, why most lead-gen advice is wrong, and how to engineer a real pipeline. Required reading for anyone running paid ads.
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03
The E-Myth Revisited
Why most small businesses fail because the founder is a great technician and a bad operator. The original framework for building a business that runs without you. Decades old. Still right.
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04
Profit First
Pay yourself first, then operate on what's left. The cash management system that fixes the silent killer of profitable-on-paper businesses. We've watched clients go from broke to banked using this alone.
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05
Built to Sell
If you wouldn't sell your business today, what's broken? A short narrative-driven manual on building a business that doesn't depend on you and is actually worth something to a buyer.
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06
Traction
The Entrepreneurial Operating System. Boring on the surface, transformational once you actually run it. The operating manual for service businesses that want to stop being chaotic.
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07
Atomic Habits
Not strictly business. Read it anyway. Every operator we work with running consistently good campaigns runs on systems, not motivation. This is the foundational text on systems that stick.
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08
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
The six universal principles behind why people say yes. Anyone running ads, writing landing pages, or closing on calls should know these cold. The mental models behind half the moves we make on paid campaigns.
Tools · What we actually use
02The software stack behind every Modern Apex campaign. We use these daily and install them for clients on day one. No affiliate fluff, no half-baked "alternatives" list. These are the tools we'd pay for out of pocket.
The platform we live in. Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen. Every campaign we run is built and managed here.
Where we track every conversion, session source, and revenue event. Set up correctly once, GA4 is the source of truth for your business.
Free dashboarding from Google. We build a custom dashboard for every client so you see the same numbers we see, in real time.
How we wire up conversion tracking without touching site code every time. If your tracking is broken, GTM is usually the fix.
Call tracking that closes the loop between an ad click and a phone call. Non-negotiable for service businesses where the phone still rings.
Competitor research, keyword expansion, and SEO auditing all in one place. The starting point for every new client engagement.
The booking layer between ads and a real conversation. Every CTA on a service business site should land on a booking page, not a form.
How we run the agency internally. Client docs, campaign plans, and the SOPs that keep every account running the same way.
The three frameworks we walk every prospect through, live.
We don't gate PDFs. The same audits we run live on a strategy call are below. Pick one and we'll walk you through it on screen, applied to your account, in 20 minutes.
Live Walkthrough
The Google Ads Audit Checklist
The 32-point inspection we run on every new client's account before we touch a single setting. On the call we run it live on your account and you walk away with the findings.
Live Walkthrough
How to Read Your Own GA4 in 15 Minutes
GA4 buried the reports most service business owners actually need. We open your GA4 on screen and show you the four screens that matter, applied to your real data.
Live Walkthrough
LSA vs Google Ads: Which to Pick
The honest comparison for service businesses choosing between Local Service Ads and traditional Google Ads. We walk you through our decision tree applied to your industry, geography, and budget.
Case Studies · Wins in plain numbers
04Real campaigns. Real numbers, pulled straight from the dashboards we share with clients every month. The big one (Ole Man RB's, 10× growth) lives on the homepage in full. The rest are summarized here.
Ole Man RB's Tree Service
Built a full Google Ads + GA4 stack from scratch and stayed in the seat for two years of weekly optimization. Now a category leader in their service area.
RPM Auto Lab
Built a custom client portal (live at app.modernapexstrategies.com) alongside the Google Ads engagement. One operator across every layer of the marketing stack.
Chef Crusco
Private-chef booking funnel rebuilt around high-intent local search and a single-question Calendly. Active engagement, steady growth in qualified inquiries.
Nelligan's Lawn & Landscape
Local-radius search campaign with service-specific landing pages. Steady lead flow through the entire season, with negative-keyword pruning every two weeks.
Blue Heron Electrical
New residential electrician launching from zero. Built the campaign, tracking, and landing experience from a blank account. Generating qualified jobs in month one.
Michigan Trust & Estate Planning
Search funnel built around free-consultation bookings. Targets the top-of-funnel terms where prospective clients actually start researching estate planning.
Talk to us about your business
The fastest way to get a reading list, a tool stack, and a campaign plan tailored to your situation is a 30-minute strategy call. It costs nothing and there is no pitch.
Accepting New Clients · Michigan Based