[S3E10] Season 3 Finale

Welcome to Business Books and Company. Every month we read great business books and explore how they can help us navigate our careers. Read along with us so you can become a stronger leader within your company or more adept entrepreneur. Today we're looking back at season three. Season three was a landmark season for us, with some great books and a first for us, some fantastic author interviews. We hope you have enjoyed this evolution of our format. As the show has continued to grow, we've been privileged to have our audience along for the ride. Thanks for listening. We're excited to discuss the highs and lows of season three, plus give you a little bit of insight into what we're planning for season four. But before we get nostalgic, let's introduce ourselves.

Hi, I'm David Short.

I'm a product manager.

Hi, I'm Kevin. And I'm chief research officer at a Washington, DC based commercial real estate research and advisory services company.

And I'm David Copack. I'm an associate professor of computer science at a teaching college. So across season three, we read nine different books. About a little more than half of them, we actually interviewed the authors of those books. And what I'm excited about is that we're going to have a bit of a discussion back and forth about some of the best books we read, maybe some of the books that just weren't that great, and some of the episodes that might have gone a little bit under the radar that our listeners would really appreciate going back to. But let's start out thinking about the big picture. David, how do you feel season three was compared to the prior two seasons that you and I did together?

I honestly think this was our best.

Season, and I attribute that mostly to.

The books we picked as well as the addition of the authors.

I really love getting to know the.

Authors a little bit directly, being able to probe them on some parts of the books, and I feel like we.

Were able to get some more value.

For our customers out of it.

What do you think?

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, there was some missing element to the show, and the author interviews really completed it, and they really bring this whole other perspective, and they allow us to kind of dive deep with some inside baseball sometimes. That really adds to the discussion of the book. Kevin, what was it like for you joining us this season? Was being a co host similar to what you expected?

Yeah, it was fantastic to join the show this season, and I'll repeat it again from the first episode that we all recorded together. But Eli Mitchell left some enormous shoes to fill with plenty of relevant corporate experience. And it could be intimidating joining a team that's already had their own rhythm in place, their processes in place, like you, in short. But thankfully, that's all been extremely helpful and echoing copec from earlier. As for being a co host, maybe it wasn't about the books, but the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. You both included correction. I'm pretty sure that our listeners are going to tell us that it was indeed about the books. But as for the friends we've made many. It's been exciting to see our listener accounts go up and even feature some of those author friends here and there. But in all seriousness, being a cohost has been everything. I expected more than that with our format, with Dave serving as an anchor, dave Copec serving as an anchor and kind of mediator, there was a bit more color commentary and thoughtfulness required than I had even expected, but I so enjoy that. It's been a great experience and looking forward to future episodes.

Speaking of the authors, we had a chance to interview some authors that have just extremely popular business books, so it's really been a privilege. And we've also interviewed some authors whose books fly a little bit under the radar but really deserve a platform because they're really great books. I want to know a little bit about both of your process for getting ready for those interviews. How did you prepare for the author interviews and what was it like interviewing the authors? Were there any that actually stood out to you? Was there an author interview that you were like, wow, that was really different than I expected?

Well, first of all, I want to give you a lot of credit, copec, you made it easy by always pulling.

Together a sort of rough script, so you helped out a lot there.

I think both Kevin and I would.

Then contribute and add questions and ideas and tag ourselves against the various questions to try and divvy them up in.

An equitable way and keep the flow.

Natural with the authors themselves. I think that part was a little bit more difficult, perhaps, than the other format we've done, just knowing when one person should hand off to the next, who should, like, ask a follow up question relative to who had asked the original question.

But I think we really were able to figure it out and really want to give both of you credit for preparing effectively for those.

The one that jumps out the most.

For me was just when I nearly.

Missed the interview because I was meeting.

With the priest for a wedding I have coming up in a few months, and I was like 15 minutes late. But you all did a great job.

Starting to talk to Nick, and he.

Was gracious enough to wait for me, and I think we still had a.

Good episode as a result.

But it was definitely a stressful day.

Driving back from the tip of Long Island to record that one and definitely.

Appreciated you being there. Dave short as well, because you are the SME of the three of us. On cryptocurrency and bitcoin. So without you that would have gone very differently. But echoing short, I wanted to thank Dave, also Dave Copack for recruiting the authors as well, going through and emailing Dming at them and getting them to consider our podcast. A little inside baseball here, but before and after the interviews, we would stay on with them and one of the compliments that they paid to us was that it actually felt like we've read the books and we did a lot of research into the content of the books and we definitely did. And I do feel like our audience, our listeners are folks that read through the books as well. And I think that's a big differentiator for us and I enjoyed hearing that from them for some of these folks. So Eric Berger with liftoff with Chris Voss with never split the difference. I so enjoyed those books. And it was almost like they had I had known their voice by the time that they were on the podcast with us. And it was just so cool to like the content, like their writing, like their style, and then immediately speak to them. I've never before had an experience with an author where I read their book the week before and then I was having an hour, hour and a half worth of conversation with them back and forth and that was super unique and I'm so glad that our listeners were along with us for that ride.

Yeah, it was really something special this season and preview, we hope to be doing more of those in season four. Thinking about all of season three, we had a real range of books. I'm wondering which book stood out to you as your favorite. And along with that, what was your favorite episode? Because your favorite episode might not be the same as your favorite book. So what was your favorite book and what was your favorite episode?

So for me, I would say my favorite book was Titan by Chernow, getting.

To understand the history of Rockefeller, I'd sort of known the vague story I knew about Standard Oil and the Monopoly and the breakup and things like that.

But it was just such a comprehensive book. I feel like I really do understand that story in a way that was just like dramatically different from what it was before. I've actually recommended it to my mother, who is currently reading the book and really enjoying it as well.

So I really think that was the.

Best book we read. And then in terms of my favorite.

Episode, I would say, and I'm going.

To guess that I may have some others who agree with me, the Never Split the Difference episode with Chris Voss was just, I think, the best that we had this season. I think that Chris was just a wonderful guest. I think that the book was great.

And I learned a lot from it already. But then he actually added a lot of additional color and value just on that call. And so, yeah, for me that one definitely stood out as the best episode.

So Segwaying from short, I will actually flip it and start with my favorite episode because I agree with him. That never split the difference. With Chris Voss was my favorite episode, though it's also torn with Liftoff with Eric Berger. That's one that's sort of flown under the radar a bit in terms of listens, I think both were fantastic episodes and Conversations. As those of you who listen know, I'm sort of a sucker for the more cinematic or business adventure story narratives, which makes Liftoff one of my favorites, right? Even polaroid to some extent. Polaroid was essentially the story of Edwin Land. It was like time travel through the lens of a company, and I found those three incredibly compelling, but Never Split the Difference would win. On that episode's front, he expanded upon the original material with some reinforcement, some introduction of new concepts, and I think he just brought chris Voss just brought an entirely different set of benefits to our listeners with both personal guidance, personal negotiation guidance, but also that business guidance. On the book side, I have to agree with Short to some extent for structure, message, the meaning, the poignancy, the important historical lessons. Titan was definitely technically the best book. I feel like Ron Share now demands mention as any part of a response to the question that you posed. Dave Copec. On the other hand, though, for me, the level of research, the access, the interviews, the documents and internal memos that this author, Jimmy Sony, was looking at for The Founders, I thought that was my personal best book. It took stories that I already knew, an inch deep maybe, and allowed me to see how each of them had influences a mile wide. There were some of those cinematic vignettes that I liked so much, just like Eric Berger and Liftoff, along with some of that business decision making strategy guidance. John Dors OKRs and Ben Harwich is the hard thing about hard things. I thought The Founders was a good culminating book and had a lot of those lessons, even from other books that we had read throughout. And I think it was interesting too. We started with Elon Musk's story, The Early Days of SpaceX as our first episode, my first episode co hosting, and then we found The Founders later in the season. And it was interesting that The Founders was almost a prequel to what we saw in SpaceX. Little did we know when we were recording this season that we would be watching Elon Musk take over Twitter, and I expect some fun retrospectives that we can cover in Business Book and co's 8th season or so. Be on the lookout.

Yeah, and not surprising because I agree with David a lot, but I felt the same way. And Kevin, you basically agreed as well, I really thought Never Split the Difference was an incredible episode. What an incredible interview we had with Chris Voss. And he's just a great interviewee. He really puts it all out there. He doesn't hold back. And the book is great too. But the episode, like David said, just took it to the next level, and it really resonated with our listeners. I don't mind telling our audience that it is our most popular episode of all time. I also felt Titan, of course, Ron turnout, amazing written book. If we're just going by the quality of the book, aside from the content, the quality of the writing, the quality of the research, titan was by far the best. But the founders would be my number two with Liftoff, my number three. So I'm kind of in the same campus you Kevin. Okay, let's talk about something a little more controversial. And I want you to be honest here, okay? I think the authors can handle it. What was the worst book we read in season three?

I am quite confident this author can handle it, but for me, Measure What.

Matters was the one that I just enjoyed the least.

I'm sure John Doe will be okay despite any negative feedback I may be giving.

It wasn't even a terrible book, right?

I think we read a lot of great books. So, like Stack ranking one to nine, this was the one that came out.

On the bottom for me.

I think it was valuable for me at work. I do have to actually write objectives and key results on a regular basis, so I definitely did get value out of it. But it really just felt like something that could have been a blog post.

Instead of a full book.

And it was kind of stretched out.

To the book length, but there was practical advice in it that was helpful.

I definitely do use it in my career, but I have to say, Measure.

What Matters was the one that I enjoyed the least this season.

In short, I can definitely see where you're coming from with that and agree with your blog post comment, but also agree that John Dork can certainly take the constructive criticism. I think all the books that we read, I learned a lot from. If I were looking at this on a scale of, you know, on one side, the enjoyment, on the other end, the relevancy of a given book, I'd probably say King of Capital and then Layered Money were lower on that personal scale for me. But at the same time, Nick Batilla gave a ton of background, great talking points on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that I just wouldn't have had otherwise. And even on King of Capital, it was incredibly well researched, it was well sourced, and a finance person may very well sit here in my place and say it was indeed the best of those that we reviewed. But I would say it was between those two for me, as far as this kind of unceremonious worst book of fairly good books, but both still have a lot of value, I'm going to.

Pick a different one. I'm going to say the hard thing about hard things. And I feel a little bad saying that because I actually interviewed Ben Horowitz co founder Tim Howes on my other podcast, Copec Explained Software. The Hard Thing About Hard Things does give you a sense of what it's like to start a startup, gives you some good advice. But there were some things in it I found really off putting. One of the things was the analogies to war that are used constantly and I think especially in light of an actual war that we're all very familiar with right now that's going on, I find those a little in poor taste. And the other part of it was, I think some of the advice in it was really specific to the situation but was made to sound like it was more generalized. The writing itself was somewhat captivating in some of the chapters, but as a book, and we had a lot of great books like both you said, but if I had to take the nine we read, that would be my bottom.

And Dave Kopeck, I came this close to agreeing with you and putting Horowitz as the Hard Thing About Hard Things as my, quote unquote worst book. One thing I took away from it as well was kind of the brash wording. The brash approach that you sort of mentioned in terms of the war analogies was a bit abrasive. It was all because we were getting that inner monologue, we were being privy to that inner monologue as readers and he's also earned the right to be brash before I even set down this path. But I thought there were some really good takeaways in the hard Thing about Hard Things. One thing that I really liked was this idea of management debt where as a manager, as an executive, if you're making the easy and reactive decisions which are also inconsistent, you're accruing management debt in your company, in your organization, with your employees. That will come due later. And I can say I've mentioned this idea of management debt to my clients that I'm advising so much more frequently than I have chris Voss's Salsa Red Pearl, Toyota Forerunner but I clearly found Chris Voss's book, that episode, so much more compelling, enjoyable, resonant. When it comes to the Horowitz book, I would definitely repeat my comments from that episode that it is essential reading for anyone who would want to work at a fast growth startup, whether it's like Ops, where Loud Cloud and even now in Dresen. Horowitz, the extent to which he brings you into his brain, his mindscape, the decision making of a startup CEO is just incredible. And I also thought that his viewpoints on talent recruitment and retention, which our listeners have heard me bang the drum on those in every episode were spot on and very useful for executives, particularly in those who are interviewing with those executives. It would be important to read that book. I do think again, that when it comes down to it, we've had a great run of books. Those are some of the weaker of this season, right?

And they weren't bad episodes, they just weren't as good as the other ones. So, talking about season three, there were a couple of episodes that just weren't as listened to as our average episode is. And I'm wondering for you, which of those stood out as really flying under the radar undeservedly. So an episode that you want our listeners who may have missed this episode to go back and listen to because they really deserve to be listened to.

So for me, that would definitely be instant. The story of Polaroid, I thought that.

Was really one of my favorites. Definitely like in the top few, and I think it's like our second least.

Listened to or something like that.

So it definitely seems to be flying.

Under the radar for some reason.

I know Polaroid might not be the.

Most modern company right now, but at the time they really were.

I thought it was such a fascinating story, like a real, true startup culture.

Coming from like a university lab experiment.

In fundamental technology into creating this massive.

Billion dollar business in a time when a billion dollars is a lot more than it is now.

I really enjoyed it and I think that one would definitely be good to.

Go back and listen to if you missed it.

And we actually interviewed the author on that episode, Christopher Bonas, who was actually really interesting to talk to. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot in that episode that kind of wraps it together in a way that only the author could. So, yeah, I agree with you there, David.

There's an Easter egg in that episode.

Also, if you listen closely at the.

End, I actually took a picture with a Polaroid and you get that very satisfying sound at the end of the episode.

In short, you beat me to it because I was about to say the exact same thing. I appreciated how you sat there recording the Polaroid to, quote, unquote, wrap up that episode at the very end. And just to continue on with this question about episodes that flew under the radar, I think one of them was definitely Lift off with Eric Berger. I know that it is one of our episodes this season that didn't receive as many listens. It was my first episode that I did, so apologies if I was being a little bit of a rookie there, but I just enjoyed that book very much. I enjoyed speaking with Eric Berger. When we talk about cinematic and vignettes, I always still love that idea of the new engineer intern, Zach Dunn, in Liftoff, essentially jumping into the hull of their final rocket that they had while they were 30,000, 40,000ft over the Pacific Ocean. And if we talk about business book adventures, that's certainly one of them. But more importantly, I think it gave a really good with his interviews, with his access to Elon Musk directly while he was writing that book, with the prominence of SpaceX today that maybe folks back then as that book. Was being written. Couldn't even foresee with all the launches with two cosmonauts having gone to the International Space Station on American spacecraft like that. I think it's super important. Especially, too, with Elon Musk taking over Twitter. You really get into the mind of Elon Musk in that book. You see how he's reacting to challenges, and it's an interesting juxtaposition with how he's working on Twitter right now, or it informs how he's working on Twitter right now. So a very important book, and one that I believe did fly under the radar quite undeservedly.

Yeah, I completely agree with you, Kevin. I don't understand why it's actually our least listened to episode of season three. It's a popular book. It's about a very contemporary subject. It's a great author. No idea. But if there was one that really deserved to be listened to by our audience that missed it, I think Lift off is it. Okay. David, this is our third season together doing this show. If you could do this season over again, what would you do differently?

The only thing I feel a little bit of guilt about for the season was our consistency. I felt like we fell off a.

Little bit, and there's been a bit of a gap since the last episode to now. So if we could do it over again, I guess I would have tried.

To be a little bit more on.

Top of things and reach out and keep us on target. But otherwise, I feel really great about the season.

Yeah, we used to be on kind of a monthly cadence, and we've fallen back to kind of a five to six week cadence, and then all three of us, apologies to the listeners have had some personal things going on the last few months. And so it's been a few months since our last episode. Kevin, coming into it for the first time, is there any way you would have prepared differently? Is there anything that you think the three of us as a group should have done differently this season?

Yeah, I mean, one suggestion. So I really enjoyed reading King of Capital by David Carrie and John Morris, the Story of Blackstone. Our conclusion was it's really a book for finance and private equity folks. And I actually feel like while we should not have necessarily invited the authors per se, but perhaps even folks from that community to speak to the importance, the significance of Blackstone of that book, and where some of the lessons from Blackstone's early days can sort of cross pollinate to other industries, even other corporate roles. Now that I've said that, perhaps we might even think about bringing in some nonother domain experts to speak to some of the books we're reading. I remember. And Dave Short and Dave Copec reminded me that in earlier seasons for the Book about Legos, we actually invited someone working for Lego to come and speak to the book. And I think that might be helpful. In future seasons. Just bringing in folks who are affected by the book's topics if it's outside of our own domain experience and talking about what others can learn from that, even if they don't feel it's the exact fit for their industry, their role in their organizations. Because after all, this is all about learning how to be better business leaders and I think that would be super helpful.

Yeah, that was the book Brick by Brick from season two and Corey from Lego came on and really added a lot of great color commentary. So thanks to Corey for that. And if our listeners missed that episode, it's definitely one to go back and check out. Okay, we're going to do something interesting, something we've never done before. We're going to be putting a survey out that's in the show notes of this episode to get a little bit of your feedback about business books and company in general, but also to allow you, the listeners, to vote on one of the books that we're going to do in season four. And the three of us have actually read some books as some extra credit or just on our own just because we're interested and we're going to be picking one of those three books. So we're going to give each of the three of us a chance to kind of pitch the book why we liked it and why our listeners should select it as a book that we're going to do in season four. So why don't we start with David. Tell us about your book and why we might want to do it as an episode next season. Absolutely.

So the book that I enjoyed reading this year the most that I think would be great for our listeners to hear about as well is called Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lafaver. And it's a fictionalized memoir of Larry Livingston, which was based on an actual trader, Jesse Livermore, who made and lost.

Many fortunes through the early 20th century.

It's a really fascinating tale. It's like nearly 100 years old the.

Book now, and I really just learned.

So much from it. If you've ever done any trading.

It definitely feels like it could have.

Been written yesterday, although there is a.

Lot of old timey language that makes.

It kind of quaint and interesting to hear about people referring to each other.

As my boy and things like that that maybe wouldn't fly these days. But I really think it is kind.

Of a timeless classic about trading.

The lessons in it seem to run true. Now, talking about how you deal with.

Bull markets and bear markets, the way that the market reacts to things, the way that the newsman will cover things.

Is going to change based off of.

How the market is going.

And anyway, I really enjoyed it a lot. I think our listeners would as well.

And so that would be my recommendation.

I like that kind of old timey language. And maybe we can have a seance and we can bring the author on the show for an interview. Kevin, what is your pick? Why should our listeners vote for it?

I have to say, I love these season finale wrap ups. We have some comedy going. We're a little bit more flexible. This has been fantastic, guys. But what I would say so hopefully this doesn't disqualify my book. And I do not have as perfect a pitch as Dave short for my book, because I'm actually still reading it. But I've liked it that much that I'm willing to go out there. It's one that I've recently picked up and started. It's called Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. You both may have read it, heard about it already, but it's an enormous book that several important and very intelligent people in my life have said change their lives, change their perceptions of intuitive and cognitive biases, which is what he covers. And they've said it's a must read, so I'm going for it. Funny enough, when my company would participate in sales trainings, we'd often reference what condomin calls system One and System Two thinking just different ways of approaching problem solving that all humans experience. Fast thinking and slow thinking. We would break that down in terms of consultative selling, the sales cycle, how you actually approach prospects. I thought it would be important to dig into this book. I'm finding so much application in it beyond sales, and it's going into other areas of my corporate practice, which now largely focuses on real estate strategy, but it's also going to my personal life. And so I am recommending that book to our listeners, albeit I'm only about halfway through, but looking forward to discussing it for sure.

That was actually the last book my dad read before he died, so we could do another seance, get his thoughts, too. The book I'm going to pick is Return to the Little Kingdom by Mike Moritz, who actually today is a famous venture capitalist. But back in the mid 1980s, when this book was written, he was a journalist and he wrote the first definitive book on Apple. The book came out in 1984. It covered the rise of Apple up to the release of the Macintosh, and it also covered the backstory of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in such a definitive way that it was really used as source material for many of the later books. On Apple and on Steve Jobs that have come out. I actually recently did an episode about it on the show CFO Bookshelf. I'm going to put a link to in the show notes, but I would love to have a conversation with the two of you about the early days of Apple. Apple is a company I'm very interested in. I kind of think of myself as an amateur Apple historian, and I would say having read like 20 books about Apple, this is the best book on Apple's early days. So that's my pitch for our listeners. I hope they'll vote for it. But your books sound great too, so I don't mind if they vote for your books. Talking about the future and talking about season four, let's talk a little bit about what our plans are for season four. So do you want to start by kind of telling us about what we're going to keep, what have we been doing that's going to be the same in season four and what might we be doing just a little bit differently in season four?

So I think we'll definitely try to keep up the author interviews. We don't have any authors specifically committed right now, and obviously we'll still read.

Some of those Lindy books that might.

Not have an author around anymore to discuss with.

But I think we really enjoyed that this season and we'll definitely do our.

Best to maintain that coming into season.

Four and just echoing Dave Short as well. One thing that I know that we'll be doing is also really looking at good quality control for the books that we are bringing to you all as listeners, which includes going through having discussions about the books, our framing, our perception, our perspectives on them before we even go and pick those books. So we want to make sure that we're picking things I mentioned before, my enjoyment versus relevance and residence scales. We want to make sure that we're picking things that are going to be very relevant to you as listeners and again, give you that good background and good knowledge to expand your careers and personal lives.

Yeah, and a couple of things we're going to do differently. We might have some special guests on. We mentioned earlier that we had that Lego episode where we brought on actually a manager at Lego onto the show, and I think we're going to do more of that. There might even be some former co hosts coming back for a couple of special episodes, so that will be pretty exciting. And we're also going to try to get more of your feedback. Like I mentioned in the show notes of this episode, there's actually a survey where you can communicate with us and tell us your thoughts on the show, and we're probably going to do more of that and try to connect more with our audience as we go forward. And of course, we appreciate our audience quite a bit. We love all of you. Thank you so much for listening. But I also want to just take a moment to thank the two of you. David and Kevin, it's been so great working with you the past season. We got to engage on so many different topics with so many exciting authors, and I know we had a great journey together, the three of us, and I just wanted to just put some gratitude out there. So thank you to both of you for everything this past season. We are actually already planning our first book for season four. David, do you want to tell everybody a little bit about it?

Yeah. We're going to be doing how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

It is a classic that I've had.

On my bookshelf, I think literally since high school.

So I think I read the first chapter back then but didn't get pulled.

All the way through.

But I'm really excited to go back and do it and it's been recommended.

By many great people, so I'm looking forward to it.

And I want to mention we're going to be back pretty soon. I know it's been a little bit of a gap before this episode, but we'll be back in the next couple of months with the first episode of season four. I'm excited about that book, too. I've read the first couple of chapters and it's old timey, but it's still very relevant. Okay, before we wrap up, is there anything that either of you want to plug and how can our listeners get in touch with you?

You can follow me on Twitter at David G short.

And I've actually been using Noster lately.

But I think conveying my end pub vocally is not going to be very useful. But you can find it if you search my Twitter account.

And maybe we can put that in.

The show notes as well.

Absolutely, we'll put it in the show notes. Kevin, what about you?

And you can find me on Twitter at hoodaksbasement. That's H-U-D-A-K Sbasement.

And you can find me on Twitter at dave copack. It's D-A-V-E-K-O-P-C. Don't forget to subscribe to us or hit follow on your podcast player of choice and we look forward to seeing you soon for the start of season four. You.