What nearly four decades of reading taught me about selling, leading, and building.
I have been reading for most of my professional life. Not because someone told me to, but because I was curious.National Geographic was one of the first things I read with real intention. Not a business book. Not a management framework. A magazine that exposed me to different cultures, different ways of living, and different ways of seeing the world.
That early habit of reading things that challenge how you think, rather than confirm what you already believe, has shaped everything that followed. The books I return to most are rarely the ones that gave me a framework. They are the ones that changed how I see people.
Below are the books that have made the most difference across the three areas that matter most to me: sales,leadership, and building a business. I have organized them that waydeliberately, but the truth is, they all teach the same thing from different angles.
Where It Started
National Geographic
Before any business book, there was National Geographic. What it taught me was not about business at all, it was about curiosity and exposure. Every issue was a window into a culture, away of life, or a perspective that was entirely different from my own. That kind of reading is both insightful and unsettling, and that combination is exactly what makes it valuable.
The best leaders I have met are students of the world, not just their industry. Reading that challenges how you think is more valuable than reading that confirms what you already believe.That lesson has compounded across nearly four decades.
Topgrading— Bradford D. Smart, Ph. D.
When I started building my first company, I needed to answer one deceptively simple question: how do I find the right people? Topgrading gave me a framework that changed how I thought about hiring entirely, away from skills and experience alone, toward personal attributes and how they align to the specific demands of a role.
One important nuance worth naming:having a team of all A players is not the goal, and it is not practical. What Topgrading teaches is how to put the right person in the right role. An A player in the wrong seat is still a problem. The best business decisions are almost always about people, and this book gives you a way to make those decisions with more clarity and less guesswork.
Sales
Every book in this segment comes back to one idea: the best salespeople are students of human behavior first and sellers second. These three books form a natural progression.
Everyone Communicates, Few Connect — John C. Maxwell
This is the book I recommend to anyone who asks where to start. Maxwell's core lesson is about listening. You cannot connect while speaking. Connection happens when the other person feels genuinely heard, not just acknowledged.
There is a meaningful difference between 'are you listening?', a casual check, and 'do you hear me?', a signal that something important is not landing. Most salespeople are physically present in a conversation but not truly there. Active listening is the discipline that closes that gap. Everything else in a sales relationship builds on this foundation.
Blink— Malcolm Gladwell
The central question in Blink is one that every salesperson and leader should ask: why do people do what they do? Why do they make the decisions they make, often in seconds, often without being able to explain why?
Gladwell's argument is that human decisions are far less rational than we believe. People make up their minds quickly and unconsciously, then construct a logical explanation afterward.Understanding that is not manipulation, it is empathy applied at a deeper level. If you understand why a client behaves the way they do, you can meet them where they are, not where you assume they are. That is what separates a pitch from a conversation.
Never Split the Difference — Chris Voss
One of the best sales books I have ever read was written by someone who never sold anything, a former FBI hostage negotiator. The key lesson is not the negotiation tactics. It is the listening. Voss teaches empathetic listening as the primary tool: understanding the other person deeply enough that they feel it. When someone feels truly heard, resistance drops and trust builds.
'Never split the difference' is the title, but it is almost secondary to the deeper point. The best outcomes in any high-stakes conversation come from understanding the human on the other side well enough to find a solution that works for both of you. This applies equally to clients and to the people you lead.
The thread across all three:Maxwell says listen actively. Gladwell says, understand why people behave as they do. Voss says use that understanding to connect with empathy. Three books,one lesson.
Leadership
The same curiosity that makes you effective in a sales conversation makes you effective as a leader. The skills are not separate, they compound.
Switch— Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Switch solves a problem every business leader has experienced: why does change fail or take far longer than it should,even when everyone agrees it is necessary and the plan is sound?
The answer the Heath brothers give is the one most leaders never consider: human resistance to change. It is almost never factored into the plan, yet it is the most common reason change stalls or fails entirely. The process is designed, the communication goes out,and then nothing moves the way it should.
Their Rider and Elephant framework,outlined in the book, captures this precisely: the rational mind can understand the change and even endorse it, and still not follow through, because the emotional mind is not on board. You cannot logic someone out of a feeling. You have to understand the human first. Before your next change initiative, ask yourself honestly, was human resistance part of the plan, or was it a surprise when it showed up?
Humble Inquiry — Edgar H. Schein
The foundation of Humble Inquiry is asking questions, genuinely, not as a tactic. Schein's argument is that before you can lead someone effectively, you need to understand where they are coming from: their background, their culture, the experiences that shape how they see the world, and how they respond to you.
One of the most important and least examined factors is hierarchy. In many cultures and in many organizations, people do not speak freely to those above them. They filter,they hedge, they tell you what they think you want to hear. If you are leading across cultures or managing people with different relationships to authority,you may be getting a version of the truth, not the full picture.
Ask yourself honestly: are the people on your team genuinely comfortable telling you what is not working? Or does your title, your experience, or your confidence in the room close that conversation down before it starts?
Entrepreneurship
The same empathy and curiosity that make you an effective leader also help you see your market clearly as an entrepreneur. These three books span three decades and together tell a complete story.
Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey A. Moore
Crossing the Chasm is most often taught as a go-to-market framework. Read it through a different lens: it is really a book about buyer psychology. Why do some people trust early, before the evidence is in, while others will not commit until they have seen substantial proof, multiple references, and months of validation?
The chasm is not a product problem,it is a people problem. The early adopter and the mainstream buyer are fundamentally different humans. One is energized by possibility and comfortable with uncertainty. The other needs to feel safe, needs social proof, and needs to know that others like them have already made this decision successfully.Knowing which type of buyer you are sitting across from changes everything about how you sell to them.
The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
Whether you are the disruptor trying to unseat an incumbent, or the incumbent trying to see the threat coming, the determining factor is the same: how well do you understand the people who matter? Your current clients, your prospective clients, and the ones you have not yet reached.
Christensen's insight is that incumbents do not lose because they stop listening; they lose because they are listening to the wrong people. They optimize relentlessly for their existing clients and, in doing so, become blind to the buyer the disruptor is quietly building for. The honest question, whether you are the disruptor or the incumbent, is the same: who are the clients and prospects you do not yet fully understand, and what would it take to reach them?
Growth Levers and How to Find Them — Matt Lerner
Growth Levers brings the entrepreneurship conversation back to earth. The challenge for most companies is not identifying the right strategy. It is execution. And execution fails most often not from lack of effort, but from lack of clarity about what you are capable of doing with the resources, team, and stage you are at right now.
Lerner's framework helps you identify the small number of high-leverage moves that drive results. But here is where most growth thinking stops too early: every lever you identify is a hypothesis, not a fact. Not all growth signals are legitimate or actionable.Validation needs to occur before you commit resources. Correlation gets mistaken for causation constantly, and the cost of that mistake compounds quickly.
Before you commit to a growth initiative, ask two honest questions: have you validated that the signal is real, or are you reacting to something that has not been stress-tested? And even if the lever is legitimate, does your team have the clarity and capacity to execute on it?
The thread that runs through all of these books, from National Geographic to Growth Levers, is the same.Understand the human. Whether that is the person across the table, the employee who goes quiet in meetings, the buyer who needs evidence before they commit, or the customer you have not yet reached, the answer always starts there.
Watch a replay of our livestream where we discuss the books in more depth with practical examples.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/wMC9QlVQ_Z8?si=u2cOe1Fk7WUU8RrU
Reading that changes how you think is one of the most valuable investments you can make. What is one book that genuinely changed how you approach your work?
Phil Tetreault · Founder, Rapid Growth Services · rapidgrowthservices.com
https://www.youtube.com/live/wMC9QlVQ_Z8?si=u2cOe1Fk7WUU8RrU
