2/26/25 Update: I created a page with all 52 books I read last year. See it here.

2/27/25 Update: I’ve created a searchable library of every book I’ve read and update it weekly. See it here.

This summer, I set a goal of creating 100 podcasts about books I was reading. It forced me to start tracking my reading in a spreadsheet. It’s nerdy, but it was necessary because every week, I read a book, wrote a blog post series, and created a podcast series about each book. The spreadsheet helped me keep everything organized. I paused the latter two after the summer because they were too inefficient and time-consuming, but I kept updating the spreadsheet and reading a book a week.

I looked at the spreadsheet as I was reflecting on the books I read in 2024. I figured I’d share some stats and learnings.

High-level stat for 2024:

• Books read: 52

2024 breakdown by month:

• January: 0 (I did read, but I can’t remember what books)
• February: 2
• March: 6
• April: 6
• May: 7
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 3
• November: 5
• December: 5

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading two books a week was too aggressive. I tried it in the March–May period, but I wasn’t absorbing as much of what I was reading or making as many connections. I was focused on finishing the books, which isn’t why I read. The pace was too fast, so I reduced it to a book a week, which feels more sustainable.
• Sharing what I learned from my reading was the big unlock. It took my learning and thinking to another level. Writing a blog post series and recording a podcast series forced me to identify insights and organize and communicate my thinking. The key tool in that process was creating a digest of each book, which was an extraction of the information I found important in each chapter, along with my insights.
• E-readers, such as Kindles, are great devices, but I prefer reading physical books. I highlight and add notes about insightful sections and ideas in the books. Those highlights and notes are trapped in each book, so finding and using them later is difficult. See here for more. As I’ve read more, this has become a painful problem. Trying to find something sometimes means reviewing several books’ notes and highlights. Experiencing this pain led me to several feature ideas for the “book library.”
• Reading a book is simple—but learning from what I read is more involved. It’s inefficient and involves lots of steps. The process of sharing what I learn from my reading is complex. It’s hard and has many steps and lots of moving pieces. This realization led me to add several more feature ideas to the “book library.”
• The value in reading lots of entrepreneurial biographies is that you’re exposed to the best ideas and experiences of entrepreneurs, and you can pull from them when you’re faced with a problem. The challenge is that this requires a great memory or knowing exactly where to look to quickly find something you’ve read. I don’t have a photographic memory, and I don’t always remember where I read something. I want to make it easy to find what I’ve read, which will be a big part of the “book library” MVP.
• My best ideas in 2024 came from piecing ideas together from various books. Making those connections was a great way to build upon what other entrepreneurs figured out. Solving a problem by building upon the knowledge of others rather than starting from scratch led to my having better ideas. I’m not an idea guy, so this was perfect for me, and I want to do more of it going forward. I don’t think this has to be completely manual and inefficient. Figuring out how to solve this and incorporate it into the “book library” is challenging, but I think it can be done, and I’m excited to figure this out because it’ll be a huge unlock for myself and others.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2024!

Last week, I read Invested, the autobiography of Charles Schwab, founder of the namesake firm. One of my big takeaways was how well Schwab understood marketing and leveraged it heavily to acquire customers. Marketing and technology were huge differentiators for the company and led to success.

Several months ago, I bought the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I decided to read it after learning how critical the market was to Schwab. The book discusses 22 laws that distill marketing to its bare essence in a way non-marketers like me can understand.

Here are the 22 laws:

1. Laws of Leadership – It’s better to be first in a category than to have the best product in a category. “Marketing is a battle of perception, not products.”
2. Law of the Category – If you can’t be the first person in a category, find a new category you can be first in. Amelia Earhart was the third person to fly over the Atlantic Ocean solo, but she’s remembered as the first woman to accomplish this.
3. Law of Mind – It’s better to be first in the prospect’s mind than the first to market with your product. Being first to market with a product is important only because it allows you to be first in the mind of the prospect. “If marketing is a battle of perception, not product, then the mind takes precedence over the marketplace.”
4. Law of Perception – Marketing isn’t a battle of products or product quality; it’s a battle of perception. What matters most is the perception of your product in the minds of people. Studying how perceptions are formed in the mind is key.
5. Law of Focus – The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind. You can “burn” your way into a prospect’s mind by narrowing your focus to a single word or concept.
6. Law of Exclusivity – Two companies can’t own the same word in a prospect’s mind.
7. Law of the Ladder – The marketing strategy you use depends on where you rank on the ladder. If you’re not number one, that’s OK, but your marketing strategy can’t be to market as if you’re number 1. You must own your number 2 position and market accordingly.
8. Law of Duality – In the long run, most markets are dominated by two companies.
9. Law of Opposite – If you want to own the second rung on the ladder, study the number 1 company. Find its strength and present the customer with the opposite. Don’t try to beat it at its game; try a different angle, try to be different.
10. Law of Division – Large categories will, over time, split into subcategories.
11. Law of Perspective – The true effects of marketing take place over a long period of time. The short-term effect is often the opposite of the long-term effect. Discounting boosts revenue in the short term but decreases margins and long-term revenue by conditioning customers to buy only when there’s a sale.
12. Law of Line Extension – Line extension is taking the brand name of a successful product and applying it to a new product. This seems logical and is irresistible because it’s the easy way to jump-start a new product, but it often doesn’t work.
13. Law of Sacrifice – You have to give up something (i.e., you have to focus) to be successful. Being focused allows you to become known for something in the prospect’s mind.
14. Law of Attributes – You must have an idea or product attribute that you own and can focus your efforts on. Don’t emulate and try to own attributes that others own, especially the market leader.
15. Law of Candor – Admitting a negative about yourself is disarming to your prospect, and they automatically accept it as truth. It opens people’s minds and makes them more receptive to whatever you have to say.
16. Law of Singularity – One marketing effort will likely produce the vast majority of your results. This law is similar to the Pareto Principle (i.e., the 80/20 rule).
17. Law of Unpredictability – Marketing plans based on predictions about the future will usually fail. You can’t predict the future, so don’t try to predict how your competitors will react or what the future state of your market will be.
18. Law of Success – Successful people often become less objective. Success breeds arrogance, and arrogance can breed failure. Always focus on what the market wants, not what you think.
19. Law of Failure – Failure is inevitable and part of the journey. Expect it and accept it. Recognize when you’ve made a mistake or failed, and cut your losses early.
20. Law of Hype – “The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.” Things that are going well don’t need hype. “Revolutions don’t arrive at high noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6:00 P.M. news. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of sneak up on you.” “Forget the front page. If you’re looking for clues to the future, look in the back of the paper for those innocuous little stories.”
21. Law of Acceleration – Long-term success isn’t built on fads; it’s built on trends. If you think you’re in a fad, one way to keep long-term demand high is to never fully satisfy the demand.
22. Law of Resources – Marketing is a battle fought in the prospect’s mind. You need money to get into their mind and stay there. Marketers with money get more money because they have the resources to “drive their ideas into the mind.”

After reading this book, I thought about several marketing mistakes I’ve made. If I’d understood these laws, I would’ve made different decisions. If you’re like I was and could use a marketing-principles-for-dummies book, consider reading The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• A developer showed me his new AI solution for enterprise HR teams. His tool uses audio as the input method (i.e., people talk to the software, and it talks back). I asked what powers his tool, and he told me about Pipecat and Livekit. These two open-source, orchestration frameworks can be used to build real-time voice and multimodal AI agents (e.g., phone bots, web voice assistants, or software that the user interacts with solely via voice). “Multimodal” means able to handle multiple input/output methods (text, audio, video, etc.). These tools let you build agents that can accept spoken questions or instructions from a user > convert that speech to text (STT) > feed that text to an LLM (which processes it and provides a text response) > convert that text to speech (TTS), and speak to the user (e.g., answer questions or respond to instructions).

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

This week, I caught up with a founder from SF. He’s building an AI-based solution in the HR space. Several ideas he’s tried haven’t worked, but this one is gaining traction rapidly. He told me his failures made him reflect; he wondered what he was doing wrong compared to other founders.

He asked one of his old professors (he has a graduate degree in computer engineering from an Ivy League school) why he’s having a much harder time than his peers getting enterprise companies to try his solutions. The professor didn’t mince words; he told the founder he wasn’t leveraging his network. He was reaching out to large companies cold and getting the door slammed in his face left and right. No one would listen.

Armed with this new idea, the founder leveraged his school’s network to get warm intros. The results have been drastically different. Large companies are not only excitedly listening to his pitch, they’re trying his product as early users.

I asked the founder what his takeaway is from all this. He said he believes that getting decision-makers in large companies to try technology from start-ups requires warm intros, and to get warm intros you need a strong brand name or a good network.

If you’re a founder thinking about selling to a large company, consider who in your network can make a warm intro to decision-makers. If the answer is no one, ask yourself what you can do to build your network.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• Access to books or other resources that document solutions that have worked for other entrepreneurs isn’t always enough. Many entrepreneurs need to have conversations about what’s in those resources to help them think. Other people’s perspectives uncover their blind spots, foster faster ideation, and help them determine how to apply information to their own situation.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 81
• Total blog posts published: 532

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a framework for thinking about marketing that describes 22 laws that are foundational to marketing
• Added four more books to the library on this site—see more here; these, which I read in 2018, were about the Enron scandal, fracking, process improvement, and investing in post-Soviet Russia

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books that I read before 2024 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week two hundred eighty-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Last week, I shared my decision to pick up the pace on my weekend project—updating my library—so I can finish it by mid to late October.

Last weekend, I set a new goal: add a minimum of four books each weekend until I’m done. If I have the bandwidth, I’ll add more.

This project has been fun, but I’ve started thinking about other things that also would be fun, and I’m ready for a new project. This one began at the end of May (see here), so if I wrap it up in October, I will have worked on it every weekend for five months with no breaks. To date, I’ve added 132 books to my library.

I’m in the final stretch. Wish me luck!

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 80 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. Quite recently (see here), I decided to up the pace so I can finish this project well before the holidays—and begin another one!

This past weekend was my sixteenth weekend, and I added four more books:

• The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Red Notice by Bill Browder
• The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman
• The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

Last week I shared that I read a biography of Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade (see here). One of his main competitors—and the company that acquired Ameritrade in 2020, over a decade after Ricketts sold it—was Charles Schwab Corporation. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about the discount brokerage model and the era that birthed the model, so I read the autobiography of Charles Schwab.

Invested describes sixty or so years of Schwab’s journey in his own words. Interestingly, what eventually became Charles Schwab Corporation started in 1962 as a biweekly investing newsletter called Investment Indicators. Annual subscriptions were $60, and at its peak it had about 3,000 subscribers. No money management, just overviews of the economy, insights on select growth stocks, and hypothetical portfolios.

This newsletter catered to independent investors who were smart and capable of making their own decisions. The understanding gained from serving this demographic formed the foundation for what Schwab built over the next sixty years: a place for individual investors to manage their own investing.

Schwab’s journey to build his namesake firm and amass a personal fortune worth over $10 billion had its share of ups and downs. He does a great job of describing each segment of his journey and how he navigated its specific challenges in detail. He also describes what it’s like to navigate multiple stock market crashes when you run a brokerage that makes money from stock trades (spoiler: volume dries up, the brokerage business gets hit hard).

The most interesting aspect of his journey to me was his position in the early 1970s, when he was in his mid-30s. He described himself as “floundering.” He had zero assets and lots of debt. He was recently divorced, had young kids, and was living in a one-bedroom apartment while still trying to build his then floundering firm. Close to giving up, he began attending evening law school classes. But he pushed through and, with some lucky breaks in 1975, had a vision for a new model for individual investors, the discount brokerage.

I’m super interested in understanding the 1968–1982 era, and this book provided another great entrepreneurial perspective of the era and how to navigate challenging macro times.

If you’re interested in learning about Charles Schwab, Charles Schwab Corporation, the asset management industry, or how a nontechnical founder built what I consider a tech company, consider reading Invested.

A few months ago I met with an early-stage founder about his growth strategy and his messaging. He hasn’t found messaging that attracts his ideal target customer profile, so he isn’t growing at the rate he’d like. We discussed some ideas and his current sales pipeline. He told me about a new outbound sales strategy that wasn’t part of his original plan, but it’s working. He’s working with a company that specializes in providing sales development representative (SDR) services to clients who don’t have dedicated SDRs or sales teams. It finds prospective customers, does cold outreach to them, and sets up demos on behalf of its client companies. It gets paid only when it books demos with prospective customers that it sourced. Said differently, it eats what it kills.  

This founder is having early success with this firm. I wondered how this SDR firm is finding the right type of prospective customers. What messaging is it using? Turns out, the founder had given it high-level information about the problem he’s solving and the solution he built. He instructed it to come up with fresh messaging that it believed would be effective in landing demos. The firm created new messaging based on what the founder provided.

Creating messaging is hard. Founders and their teams who’ve been in the weeds working on a product for months or years may struggle to come up with great messaging because they’re too close. It may be challenging for them to view things from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with their company or solution.

Working with an outside firm whose incentives are aligned with yours but that brings a fresh perspective is an interesting hack to get better messaging. You both want the same thing—more sales—but it’s able to see your solution from a perspective you can’t, which enables it to create on-target messaging easier than you or your team.

It sounds counterintuitive, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. An outside sales firm will take what you’ve built and explained to it and come up with simple messaging that’s more effective because it understands the outsider’s perspective (that is, the customer’s perspective!) better than you or your employees do.

This early-stage founder may have found an interesting way to solve his messaging problem in a cost-effective way. He pays only when good messaging created by an outside firm leads to demos with prospective clients. He doesn’t have to pay one firm to create the messaging and another to book the demos. He’s getting a two-for-one deal.