Five Business Books That Left a Mark on Me This Past Year
Reading applicable business books is like gaining access to a mentor you’ve never met. When one makes an impression, it tends to stick—showing up unexpectedly in how you speak, plan, or make sense of challenges.
What follows isn’t a list of trendy titles or guaranteed breakthroughs. These are simply five books I’ve found genuinely worthwhile—especially if you’re in the business of building, leading, or reimagining something of your own.
5. Blitzscaling — Reid Hoffman
This is probably the least directly applicable book on the list for small business owners or bootstrapped founders. Blitzscaling is about moving fast, growing faster, and prioritising scale above short-term profit or even efficiency. It’s written with venture-backed, Silicon Valley-type businesses in mind—companies playing a high-stakes game with huge funding rounds and pressure to dominate markets quickly.
That said, there are still some useful lessons to extract, especially around decision-making under uncertainty, and the different growth stages businesses pass through. What stuck with me most was the emphasis on tempo—how speed itself can be a strategic advantage, even in smaller, more grounded operations. While the “grow at all costs” model doesn’t suit most SMEs, there are moments when moving decisively matters more than getting everything perfect.
It’s also worth mentioning that Reid Hoffman writes beautifully. The book is laced with lived experience, stories from iconic companies, and a tone of considered authority that makes it a pleasure to read.
4. Entrepreneur Revolution — Daniel Priestley
This one is more about mindset than method. Daniel Priestley does an excellent job of making the case that we are living in a new era—one where traditional career paths are less reliable, and small, nimble businesses have a unique advantage.
What I appreciated most is that it reminds you of the tools you already have. It reframes the idea of entrepreneurship not as something reserved for tech founders or capital-heavy ventures, but as something accessible, immediate, and within reach. If you’ve ever felt stuck or bogged down in overplanning, this book encourages action—building with what’s available, learning as you go, and thinking differently about your own value.
There’s less tactical guidance here, and more of a prompt to think differently about what’s possible. For that reason, I’d recommend it to anyone at the start of a business journey, or those who feel like they’ve lost momentum and want to reconnect with why they started.
3. $100M Leads — Alex Hormozi
Hormozi has built a reputation for being direct, pragmatic, and relentlessly focused on commercial results. This second book zeroes in on generating demand—how to get more people to know about you, care about what you’re offering, and ultimately become customers.
While I found his first book even more impactful (you’ll see that below), $100M Leads still stands out as one of the clearest and most practical marketing books I’ve read. What makes it so valuable is how effectively Hormozi distills complex acquisition strategies into simple, actionable models. It’s structured, no-nonsense, and refreshingly free of jargon.
There’s no fluff—just frameworks. He shows you how to identify what’s not working in your funnel and how to improve it in a way that feels logical and achievable, even without a big budget or a large team.
It’s not subtle, and it’s certainly not soft, but that’s part of its appeal. If you’re trying to increase visibility or grow your pipeline without resorting to guesswork, this book will give you a number of things worth trying right away.
2. Main Street Millionaire — Codie Sanchez
This book sits in a category of its own. Where most business books focus on building something from scratch, Codie Sanchez makes a compelling case for buying existing businesses—specifically the “boring” ones that often get overlooked.
It’s particularly relevant in the context of generational wealth transfer. There are millions of businesses across the UK and beyond owned by baby boomers who are looking to retire, and many of them don’t have a clear succession plan. Sanchez outlines how this presents an opportunity—not just for investment or profit, but for keeping vital community businesses alive.
The most eye-opening element for me was the concept of seller financing. While I haven’t managed to apply this yet (a few attempts didn’t land), just thinking in these terms—acquisition as a growth path—has broadened my perspective significantly.
The execution requires a fair bit of grit and negotiation, and you’ll probably have to face a few rejections. But as a mindset shift, it’s powerful. It’s a book I’d recommend to any entrepreneur looking for unconventional ways to grow without starting from zero.
1. $100M Offers — Alex Hormozi
For anybody who is in the business of selling a product or service, you need this book.
The core concept—what Hormozi calls the value equation—has fundamentally changed how I think about packaging, pricing, and presenting services. The idea is that if you can increase the perceived value of your offer while reducing perceived effort and risk, you can charge more, serve better, and grow faster. It sounds simple, but the way he unpacks it is anything but.
I’ve already started applying elements of this thinking in how we present solutions, pitch projects, and structure client offerings. It’s still a work in progress—there’s testing, refinement, and plenty of learning involved—but the early results have been promising.
What I appreciate most is the clarity. Hormozi writes like someone who values your time. There’s no filler, no indulgence—just sharp insights and practical tools. Every chapter moves the conversation forward. Every page makes you think harder about what you’re really offering, and why it matters to your audience.
And if the book leaves you wanting more, his online content delivers just as much value—short-form, long-form, interviews, breakdowns. It’s an ongoing resource I keep going back to.
If you run a business, I can’t recommend this highly enough. It will likely pay for itself several times over, if you do the work.
Closing Thoughts
Books are a brilliant way to access the thinking of people who’ve built, tested, and refined ideas in the real world. They can introduce new ways of seeing things, challenge old assumptions, or offer practical tools you can try out in your own context. Each of the titles I’ve shared here did one or more of those things for me.
That said, no book can do the work for you. Reading is useful, but experience is what really cements the learning. You get sharper by doing—by making the decisions, testing the frameworks, getting it wrong, and adjusting accordingly.
If any of these titles sparked interest—or if you’ve got others that made a lasting impact—I’d genuinely love to hear about them. I’m always open to good recommendations, and even more so to conversations about what happens when you try to put the ideas into practice.