Best Business Books to Add to Your Book Club List

The only perspective we have is our own, which is extremely limited. Luckily, some of the world's greatest minds have a passion for putting their ideas on paper, or audiobooks, or podcasts. New business ideas and concepts are shared with every new business book release and if you don’t invest in learning them, you may start to fall behind in your understanding of the modern business world. Below are some recent gems that have an entertaining element, but more importantly, leave you thinking more strategically when you finish the last chapter. 

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

Imagine a world where companies received significantly fewer client complaints. Can you picture rarely having to go to the doctor because you feel healthy the majority of the time? What if we anticipated natural disasters and were prepared to minimize the impact? A sense of urgency is a championed characteristic, but what if we started to embrace strategic, preventative problem solving instead? 

In Upstream, Dan Heath breaks down these different scenarios and unpacks how upstream thinkers start solving obvious but complex problems before they happen. This book makes it obvious that distress and disaster (both in the corporate world and in the movies) lead to crowning a hero who saves the day,  which is why solving problems upstream is a thankless job, but critical nonetheless. 

My favorite example is the chapter on Y2K. If you were around in 1999, you know that there was panic about all the things that could go wrong, but 2000 came and went and there were no issues. Do you remember the hero that saved us from the Y2K headache? Probably not, but you certainly won’t forget a disaster year like 2020, and that’s the point. Change your goals from solving problems to preventing them and watch the stress of things gone wrong melt away.

Read this book if… you’re tired of putting out fires all the time and are ready to strategically optimize how you run your business. 

Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind by Jonah Berger

There is nothing productive about standing headstrong against the opposition. I don’t know about you but I can tell you firsthand that stubbornness and steamrolling your boss, your clients, your friends, your significant other, or dissatisfied children will not get you what you want out of the situation. 

I used to think convincing my colleagues to see my point of view was a tough gig until I read the chapter in the book on how hostage negotiators have to use the power of conversation to diffuse dangerous situations on a regular basis. With that perspective, trying to convince someone that you have a good idea should feel less intimidating. 

If changing hearts and minds feels difficult, it probably has to do with the tactics and techniques you are using. Catalyst explains what the obstacles are to converting non-believers and the work you need to do in order to influence meaningful change. Possibilities open up when you learn how to get people to listen to you and remove barriers to changing the status quo. 

Read this book if… you have good ideas and are the best at your job, but struggle to get others to recognize that on a regular basis.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger 

If you liked Catalyst, then definitely check out Contagious by the same author. The phenomenon of going viral has always seemed like an obscure occurrence. How do seemingly random photos, videos, songs, social campaigns, advertisements, and fashion trends start to spread like wildfire? Contagious explains that there is a science to eliciting emotion, orchestrating the right timing, and arousing action out of the masses. 

This book tells a beautiful story on how data won’t always dictate the best choice building something that will find traction. Berger paints a picture of how Google's approach of testing and evaluating qualitative inputs may be good for product quality, but the messaging that resonated with a massive audience was an ad that following a man using google to buy chocolates, book a flight, find a job, and plan a wedding with his long-distance partner. The creative team’s takeaway? “The best results don’t show up in a search engine, they show up in people’s lives.”

Marketers have made a career in perfecting this effect in order to build a brand. Sometimes referred to as “growth hacking,” most companies have entire departments dedicated to creating shareable content and spreading brand loyalty via word-of-mouth. This knowledge is a must-have for the modern marketer. 

Read this book if… you are interested in learning how to connect with your audience in a meaningful way and build a brand people will remember

The Practice: Ship Creative Work by Seth Godin  

Seth Godin is an iconic business writer who has been guiding marketers toward the light-side and away from the world of cheap tricks and gimmicks for decades. In his latest publication, he writes what I would describe as business poetry for the modern world. 

Constantly cranking out work, calibrating our skills, and leaning into what we do well easily has produced a mindset that creative work is a special kind of output that is reserved for a very limited cohort of eclectic people. Instead of focusing on what feels easy, The Practice leverages very pointed chapters about how to focus on digging deep to ship work that you are really proud of, consistently. 

It is so easy to pat ourselves on the back for “getting things done,” but it’s a completely different feeling when we’ve done something truly exceptional. “Creativity is an action, not a feeling. Your work is too important to be left to a feeling… start the action and the feeling will follow,” Godin coaches. 

No one wakes up one day and builds a multimillion-dollar brand, gets in shape, writes a book, or builds a long-lasting relationship. It takes practice. This book will inspire you to rebuild how you spend your time in order to make your life and career more meaningful in the long run. 

Read this book if… you need motivation and inspiration to revisit your passions and remember why you started in the first place.

This is Marketing: You Can’t be Seen until You Learn to See by Seth Godin

If you remove all the marketing buzzwords, jargon, and software, how would you describe your marketing process and strategy? Connecting with people and building long-lasting relationships that grow deeper and more meaningful is an art. Just because you want people to pay attention to you and trust what you are saying, doesn’t mean they will. Godin teaches how to avoid the pitfalls of the common “hype show” that is many marketing objectives and instead of learning to “anchor your work deeply in the dreams, desires, and communities of those you seek to serve, changing people for the better, and becoming a driver of the market instead of being market-driven.”

This book goes hand-in-hand with Catalyst because This is Marketing explains all the ways influence Marketing is really about influence in situations where you want buy-in. Selling a product or service, asking for a raise, advocating for a cause, and many more scenarios are unwrapped down to the core of what drives successful outcomes. It starts with understanding your market in a very personal way. This book talks about how inner narratives, world views, tribes, affiliation, dominion, and changing one person’s life will yield better returns than focusing broadly on your entire target market. 

Read this book if… you catch yourself using the word “campaign” too much, have become too focused on Marketing software, and need to remember at the core, marketing strategies are about real-life people.