Ilise Benun's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I love this book because it connects the dots between money and marketing for creative professionals, who are naturally sensitive, good listeners, and attuned to their collaborators but who neglect to bring those talents to the business side of their business. 

Taheripour makes her points through storytelling which makes the ideas more accessible. Plus, it's very rare to find a negotiation book that talks about self-employed people and how they can negotiate.

I especially appreciate how Taheripour shows readers how to harness those talents so that we can all value ourselves more and therefore advocate for ourselves and ultimately get what we deserve.

First of all, I love the idea of trust, the challenge of trust, the multiple meanings of the word “trust” and this book speaks to the various meanings on multiple levels. That intrigued me from the start.

Second, I love that it’s a novel about business and investing – two topics famous for being very dry and boring, but certainly not in the hands of this talented author.

I love business, I am learning to love investing and it seems unusual to find a really good novel centered around these topics. But it's not just a novel – it’s a story told from 4 different perspectives in 4 different voices, so it’s impossible to know which one to trust. I couldn’t stop reading and kept hoping it wouldn’t end. But, alas, it did.

I love cognitive biases so of course I’m going to love books about them.

But what I love most about this book is that it explains ideas and concepts that I know and understand intuitively as a marketer – for example, how to make it easy for people to engage and buy.

It also simplifies what would otherwise be complex ideas from behavioral economics and uses familiar situations to help me understand how to make better decisions about all sorts of things, from business to insurance to investing and beyond. I need to read it again!