Learning and reading

How accounts get dressed up. Reading it teaches you to distrust a balance sheet, your own included.

Reading an income statement and a balance sheet without being a finance person. It pairs with Schilit: that one teaches you to distrust a set of accounts, this one to understand them.

The minimum numbers of a small business: pay yourself a market salary before you talk about profit. The tax part is US-specific — outside the US, skip it; the rest holds.

A novel about a factory that explains why the bottleneck calls the shots and why textbook unit cost misleads you. The only book on the list that deals with operations and margin at the same time.

Margin is decided at the price, and price is what almost every business manages worst. Worth every page.

Retail margins and an obsession with low prices, told by the man who invented the model. Bezos copied more from here than it seems.

Private label, a short range and prices without tricks, told by the man who designed it. The closest thing to a manual for anyone selling their own brand.

It reads like a Nike biography, but it is really about working capital: growth eats cash. If you import goods, you live this every month.

A brand that chooses to grow less rather than spoil what makes it worth something. Useful if you sell your own product and feel the pull to lower the bar to sell more.

A fast supply chain told from the inside. It is an authorised account and it shows, but Zara’s model is worth understanding.

McDonald's was not built on burgers but on systems that work without the owner in the room. It pairs with Built to Sell.

Zappos turned free returns and customer service into its marketing. It makes you work out what service really costs you and what it brings in.

How PayPal was built: payments, fraud and online commerce before any of it existed.

Eight CEOs who won by deciding well what to do with the cash, not by selling more. They ran public companies, but the question is the same in any business.

It pairs with Schilit: there the accounts get dressed up, here the whole company does. A reminder of how far a well-told story can go.

How Amazon was built, from the inside. If you sell on Amazon, understanding the mind of the man who designed the board changes how you play.

Amazon’s internal methods, told by the people who ran them. Not anecdotes: processes you can copy.

The economics of a marketplace: why the platform charges what it charges and how far it can push it. You read Amazon's terms differently afterwards.

Why most marketplaces die before they get going, and why the few that do are so hard to dislodge. Useful before you open a channel of your own.

Why, online, a long catalogue of slow sellers can outweigh the bestsellers. It dates from 2006 and still explains Amazon's catalogue.

Marketing built on evidence, not intuition: brands grow by winning buyers, not by squeezing more loyalty out of the ones they have. Uncomfortable, and useful before deciding where your ad budget goes.

Owning one specific place in the customer's mind instead of telling them everything. It is over forty years old and still the question many brands never ask.

Advertising written by someone who measured what it sold. For writing a product page or an ad that actually says something.

Why the logical option does not always sell, and why a small shift in perception can weigh more than an expensive product upgrade.

The history of the business of selling attention, from posters to Meta. If you pay for ads, it is the history of whoever is charging you.

How to talk to your customers without them lying to you out of politeness. Read it before you order a production run.

People do not buy products: they hire them to do a job. It changes the questions you ask before launching anything. It pairs with The Innovator's Dilemma.

If a customer uses your product wrong, it is almost always the design's fault. It applies to physical product, packaging and your site.

AI explained by economists: it makes prediction cheap, and that changes which decisions you can automate. The most useful way I know to think about where it fits in a business.

Working with AI day to day, without blind faith or dismissal. Practical for deciding which tasks you hand over and which you check yourself.

It dates from 2000 and still explains better than anyone why digital products are priced the way they are. It pairs with Simon.

Technology told through geopolitics: who you really depend on when your supply chain runs through Asia.

Why companies that do everything right still lose. It reads differently when you are the small one.

Mental models for making better decisions. The book I reopen most often.

Why we decide badly even with the numbers in front of us. Essential before any big decision.

Separating a good decision from a good outcome. It stops you learning the wrong lesson from a bad month.

Useful when your plan is really just a wishlist.

The margin of safety is not just for investing: it is how anyone putting their own money at risk should decide.

Competing on price is the most expensive way to do business. This book explains the alternative.

Negotiating on interests, not positions. If you deal with factories and suppliers, you notice it from the first conversation.

Negotiation backed by research, not tricks. The next step after Getting to Yes, for when the other side does not play fair.

Managing means multiplying what your team produces, not doing more yourself. The book to read when you stop working alone.

Hiring with a method, not a hunch. In a small team, every hiring mistake shows twice as much.

Saying things plainly without being cruel. The hardest part when the team is three people you also happen to like.

A simple system for running a small company: meetings, metrics and one owner for each thing. What is missing when everything goes through you.

Your time is the scarcest thing in the business and almost nobody measures it. Short, and still current.

A business that runs without you is worth more, and is easier to live with. It is about structure, not about selling up.

The story of the shipping container, which is the story of why you can bring goods in from Asia and still make it pay.

What happens when leverage gets out of control. Basic financial literacy, told like a thriller.

The same story eighty years earlier. Read it alongside the previous one and you see that crises change their shape, not their cause.