Books Recommended by Chris Oliver

I remember reading The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday on a road trip one time. It was during a time that I was feeling particularly frustrated with my business and was just having an all around hard time. The idea of the book is that if you recognize things are hard, you should keep going. It teaches you to seek out the obstacles because few people even try and even fewer make it past the obstacles. When I got home from my trip, I remember sitting down and realizing I was being stubborn and not doing the work I needed to do. Immediately, I could tell things were heading in a much better direction.

It's not a business book per-se but it dissects the approaches and practices of people who are exceptionally talented in their fields, typically far better than any of their peers. I found this book to be really reassuring about the amount of practice and time it takes to become great at things. He covers the various steps towards mastery starting with apprenticeship all the way till breaking out on your own and challenging the fundamental ideas of your field.

I'm currently reading Innovators by Walter Isaacson. I love reading books like this because you learn about the lives of people who have created amazing things. It teaches you that their lives were often much harder than you realize and the struggles you're going through are very similar to what they had to go through before they were successful. It's really inspirational.

As for my favorite business book, I'd probably say Competing Against Luck. It talks about the "Jobs to be Done" mindset when you're thinking about why your customers buy your product. I found that it puts you in the right mindset to understand the perspective of your customers so you can serve them better. It's surprisingly hard to understand the reasons why people buy things and this book helps you look at it from a much better angle.