Book Summaries

If you like biographies and the entertainment industry, I recommend reading, or listening to, Will by Will Smith. Will did the narration for the audiobook and he did an outstanding job. This is one of my favorite books that I've read in the last year. He shares his humanity and weaknesses as equally as his successes and strengths.

The Ideal Team Player has insights into building company culture, what makes good team players, and specific tactics for interviewing and hiring. The book has value for any leaders, managers, employees, and especially for anyone involved in hiring and human resources.

This is a good book if you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or work in a management position where you have input in how the company operates. It includes a lot of advice for developing systems and processes in your business.

One of my favorite lessons is understanding the difference between working in your business and on your business.

Covert Cows is a well-rounded book about marketing, sales, hospitality, brand building, and creating company culture. While it focuses on the food and beverage industry, most of the lessons can be applied to businesses in other categories.

I wrote this summary several years ago, so it's not as detailed as I would make today. In spite of that, it is one of my more popular summaries so I wanted to make it available in audio format.

Algorithms to Live By is a surprisingly fun book considering the subject matter. It contains mathematical philosophy for decision-making on a wide range of topics. Including hiring, dating, real estate, sorting, and even doing laundry.

Fantastical Prospecting is a well-rounded book on prospecting and sales. I like the advice on leveraging text messaging and social media for prospecting. The section in chapter 9 on building familiarity and the number of touches required was helpful and a good mental model to be aware of.

In 2019 I listened to Getting Things Done and it helped improve my productivity so much that I read it again. David Allen says “The implicit purpose of this book is urging you to operate from a higher level. To assist you in making your total life expression more fulfilling and better aligned with the big picture.”

My notes don’t do the book justice. If this resonates with you, I encourage you to purchase a copy and read or listen for yourself. The author narrates the audible version himself which enhances the delivery of his material.

Deep Work gives insights into the importance of mastery and the value of doing deep work. I really like, and agree with, the thesis and hypothesis of the book. Every one should find value in this book and I often recommend it as one of my favorites.

The book’s thesis: A deep life is not just economically lucrative but also a life well lived.

Deep work hypothesis: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

The purpose of the book is to introduce investors to investing in dividend stocks using the author’s 10-11-12 system. There are several good concepts and ideas in the book, I learned a lot from it.

Note that some of the figures and statistics used have survivor bias, but that doesn’t detract from the value of the book for me. As with any book, you’ll need to use your own judgment when evaluating the charts and figures used.

This episode is also available as a blog post. The post includes links to the resources listed in the book. 

This is my book summary of The Motive by Patrick Lencioni.

My Favorite Quotes from The Motive

Your job as the CEO is to do things that nobody else in the company can do.

If you are having bad meetings, you are making bad decisions. You’re almost certainly not talking about all of the right things.

Just because someone is in their 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s and has lots of experience doesn’t mean they do not need to be managed. Management is not a form of punishment or a sign of a lack of trust.

Good leaders are far more concerned about employees being uninformed than they are about being criticized for redundancy.

It is important for leaders to surround themselves with people who will be honest with them.

This is my summary of Mastering the Market Cycle by Howard Marks.

Howard Marks is one of my favorite writers on investing and I enjoy reading his memos throughout the year. Mastering the Market Cycle has insights for learning to see the big picture in the economy and investing.

My Favorite Quotes from Mastering the Market Cycle

It is from the extremes of the cycle of fear and greed that arise the greatest investment profits.

The rational investor is diligent, skeptical, and appropriately risk-averse at all times. But also on the lookout for opportunities for potential return that more than compensates for risk.

The greatest source of investment risk is the belief that there is no risk.

Cycles will happen to you, what you do in response is key.

Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.

You need a strong stomach for being wrong because we are all going to be wrong more often than we expect. Being wrong is inevitable and normal.

Success is not good for most people. Success can change people, and usually not for the better.

In investing there is a complex relationship between humility and confidence.

Ignoring cycles and extrapolating trends is one of the most dangerous things an investor can do.

My summary of The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger.

These are my favorite quotes from the book.

It is vital to create space in each day to let your thoughts wander beyond your immediate job responsibilities, to turn things over in your mind in a less pressured, more creative way than is possible once the daily triage kicks in.

Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year.

Do what you need to do to make it better.

One person’s unwillingness to give a timely response can cause so much unnecessary strain and inefficiency.

I would much rather take big risks, and sometimes fail, than not take risks at all.

I do not want to be in the business of playing it safe, I want to be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.

The need to be comfortable with failure is the most profound lesson he learned in his first year running primetime at ABC. If you want innovation, and you should always, you need to give permission to fail.

Anything that reminds you that you are not the center of the universe is a good thing.

Managing your own time, and respecting others’ time, is one of the most vital things to do as a manager.

The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you, no one wants to follow a pessimist.

Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.

A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it is often very costly.

You have to approach your work and life with a sense of genuine humility.

This is an audio version of my summary of Talking to Strangers.

If you don’t begin in a state of trust, you can’t have meaningful social encounters.

The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.

There are clues to making sense of a stranger, but attending to them requires care and attention.

When we apply effortless actions to high-leverage activities the return on our effort compounds.

When we invite joy into our daily routine, we are no longer yearning for the far-off day when it might arrive. That day is always today.

After I complain, I will say something I am thankful for.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. -Maya Angelou

When we are fully present with another person we see them more clearly, and we help them see themselves more clearly.

Simplicity, the art of maximizing the steps not taken, is essential.

Most geniuses prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities, but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities. -Andy Benoit

There is no mastery without mistakes.

If you are not embarrassed by your first product launch, you launched it too late. -Reid Hoffman

The most useful knowledge often comes from fields different than our own.

Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.

Identify knowledge that is unique to you and build on it.

Knowledge may open the door to an opportunity, but unique knowledge produces perpetual opportunities.

When we invest our time in actions with a long tail, we continue to reap the benefits over a long period.

Each new moment is a chance to start over, a chance to make a new choice.

Just think how the trajectory of a life can shift in the most fleeting of moments.

My Favorite Quotes from Outliers

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you are good, practice is the thing that makes you good.

People at the top do not just work much harder than everyone else, they work much much harder.

What started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

It is not how much money we make that makes us happy, it is whether our work fulfills us.

The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.

This is my summary of The Art of War by Sun Tzu.