83 books like The Messy Truth

I loved reading this book so much the first time that I then re-read it every year while I was building CITYROW and gifted it to all employees. Every time I picked it up, I extracted new learnings, saw ideas differently, and came back to my company with deeper insights.

This book is both wide and deep, and I found it compelling time and time again, reflective of where I was in my building journey. I still reference key points in all my work today and credit it as a foundation for some of the reasons why I have embarked on the entrepreneurial journey. 

I feel that understanding and being able to work with all kinds of people is really the key to success in business (and honestly, in life in general). I consider myself a damn good communicator, but I still learned SO much in this book to take my leadership in that area to the next level.

It’s also not just about speaking and relationships, but taking in all of the cues in situation (verbal, visual, context, etc). This should be required reading for anyone working with people (which is most of us!). 

This book hit me hard and is sooooo important for overachievers, especially us entrepreneurs who are never satisfied with ourselves or our progress in a given moment.

This book advises not comparing yourself to others at all, but instead to the progress you have made personally as the litmus test. That was so helpful to me in stopping being so hard on myself because in looking back, I really have done some amazing things and made serious progress!

Who doesn’t love Adam Grant? Just when I think he’s exhausted everything he could write about or interest me in, he comes up with something else!

I love his books across the board, but this one happened to come out as I started the process of an acquisition for my company and moving on to something new for myself, so it felt like great timing for me. His stuff is never dry, and he tells a TON of stories to highlight all his key points, which, as a storyteller myself, I really enjoy.

Ultimately, this book is great for anyone looking to achieve that “success unexpected in common hours” (and though it’s not one of my top five here, you can never go wrong with some Thoreau, either :)

Sam the Man wants a job. His next-door neighbor will pay him a whole dollar each time he can convince her dad, Mr. Stockfish, to join him for a daily walk. But getting Mr. Stockfish to leave the living room isn’t easy. So when another neighbor asks if Sam would like to watch her chickens, he jumps at the chance. Chicken-sitting is way more fun than he expects, and soon Sam the Man is watching a chicken of his very own. The story is satisfying and funny and readers will want to learn all about Sam’s adventures in the rest of the series. Sam’s creative problem-solving skills had me laughing out loud.

This book came by recommendation from Jonathan Siegel, the brains and brawn behind Xenon Partners, a private equity firm that I joined in 2018. This book summarizes several profit models presented by a fictional mentor coaching a business executive. It’s clever, poignant, and was helpful to me in thinking about other profitable business models. For example, in my side-hustle life, I use the Profit-Multiplier Model: running multiple small SaaS businesses in parallel using the same tech stack (make money off the same good or skill in different markets).

This book is short and massively powerful. It gets you to think about all the possibilities you have to reach your full potential and do more than you might have thought possible. This 48-page, 2-word book just might change your life forever. You will learn 3 simple, powerful tools you can use immediately to access your unrealized potential. When you really start to think, What If?, around any issues, goals, or challenges, your possibilities can be endless. This book can inspire you to greatness, in my opinion. I bought hundreds of copies of this book because I thought it was so powerful and wanted to share it with my clients and prospective clients, so if you can’t find this book, I do have 5 more copies left.

Trust is, indeed, the emotion of business but it’s also just a starting point. The endpoint is by contrast to be delayed as long as possible, as retaining workers is best achieved by making them feel appreciated and given respect and a fair degree of autonomy. Great leaders can follow this recipe whether in business, the non-profit sector, or beyond.

I loved being challenged with the idea that there is something beyond resilience, that strength can be redefined as antifragility, and the application of this concept is infinite. Often shocked and kept off balance by the unorthodox words he created and paired, the uncertainty as he jumped from ancient Greece to the 21st century in one paragraph, I was forced as a reader to analyze old ideas through a novel lens.

I admit I feel a little smarter and less fragile, but I am still a novice as a flâneur. I agree with “I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time,” though I don’t pretend to understand everything Taleb means by this. Thankfully, he left a glossary of all his innovative words.

John is the founder of the International Exit Planning Association, the organization that grants the Certified Business Exit Planning Consultant (CBEC) designation I’d place this book much higher than fourth, except that it was written in 2008, and could use some updating on legal and tax issues. Nonetheless, the first half is definitely the best in discussing the psychological and emotional issues of an owner separating from the business.