The Reading List
The books behind the book — every title the manuscript sends you to, and why it earned the mention. No affiliate links, no filler: just the shelf.
From the chapters
The Great Game of Business
Named in: Build HarborJack Stack & Bo Burlingham
If open-book management resonates, read the book that built the model. The full SRC Holdings turnaround story.
They Ask, You Answer
Named in: Riding the WaveMarcus Sheridan
The River Pools playbook: out-teach, don't out-sell. “We're not selling. We're solving.”
The E-Myth
Named in: The Voyage BeginsMichael Gerber
The book that named the divide between working in the business and working on it. “I paid for the lesson years before I ever read it.”
The Innovator’s Dilemma
Named in: The Product TrapClayton Christensen (1997)
Names the pattern where your best product blocks the next harbor.
Zag
Named in: Reputation HarborMarty Neumeier (2006)
Source of the “onliness statement” the Brand Keel's Wedge is built on: “We are the only ___ that ___.”
Start With Why
Named in: Reputation HarborSimon Sinek
One idea, run everywhere: a twenty-year speaking career on the same Wedge.
The classics
Peter Drucker
Start with his 1973 work
“If you haven't read Drucker, go read Drucker.” The three questions every business needs to answer trace to his 1973 work — the questions the Navigation Officer now runs every morning.
Marketing Myopia
Theodore Levitt (Harvard Business Review, 1960)
The railroad question: what business are you actually in? An HBR article, not a book — but it earns its place on this list.
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