Books like Main Street Millionaire — picked by fans

Before Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin were titans of tech and venture capital, they were college friends, and this book tells the partially fictionalized origin story of Facebook and its founders. Like many business partnerships, Facebook started as a friendship. In page-turning fashion, the book tracks the progression, and later regression, of the relationship between Zuckerberg and Saverin from friends to business partners to bitter rivals.

This book is simultaneously an entertaining beach read and a cautionary tale for startup co-founders. 

What I most enjoyed about this book is the core message that business relationships, even successful and productive ones, are not meant to last forever. There is a season for everything. Far too often, partners enter into business relationships in the same way they enter a marriage, thinking that it will or should last forever. But there is a reason that the ceremony and the vows associated with the consummation of a marriage are missing from the formation of a business relationship.

This book advocates for beginning with the end in mind. It also helps readers understand that sometimes, ripping the band-aid off and ensuring the short-term pain is the only way to heal and prosper.

This book is a practical guide to delivering news you’d rather not have to deliver. As someone who has avoided my share of difficult conversations that should have been had years ago, I very much appreciate the step-by-step framework this book provides.

With an emphasis on preparation, compassion, and follow-up, this book explains that delicate but productive conversations are rarely one-time events, but multiple, structured conversations. And while the book is for the person delivering the bad news, the authors are careful to explain that it's not about the person delivering the bad news, but the one receiving it, that matters if a difficult conversation is to be productive. This book is a must for anyone who regularly manages other people or has fraught business relationships.

This book, written in a fable format, tells the story of the aging co-founders of a successful technology company. Although they’ve worked well together for decades, their goals become incompatible when one wishes to sell and the other wishes to bring on a family member as a partner and eventual successor.

This book offers an insightful guide to the financial and psychological challenges and opportunities associated with bringing productive closure to a business relationship.

The bottom line is that the people who focus on what they want, not what they don’t want, achieve their goals and even accelerate the achievement of their goals. So many times we have limiting beliefs (things we don’t want to happen) that get our focus and that is the wrong thing to focus on. No matter what you want in business or in life, the power of focus will help you get there. This book helps you to focus on your strengths and eliminate what holds you back from getting to where you ultimately want to go. It can help you change bad habits into habits that will serve you much better in life. This is a powerful book to help you no matter where you are or what you want in your business and life.

We often times spend all of our energy on the ways we should behave as a leader and do not put any energy into recognizing behaviors that are not helping us. Also, as your career unfolds, what might have worked for you previously may no longer be effective, yet we continue doing this behavior as it worked in the past.

I needed insight into my overall leadership behaviors and greater insight into behaviors I needed to evolve or move away from. Behaviors like “Failure to give proper recognition,” “Passing judgment,” and “an excessive need to be me” are all behaviors from which I needed to grow away and evolve. This is stuff we don’t hear enough of—often, we focus too much on where we need to go and not what we are doing now.

I love this book because it is research-based and a practical manual in one concise, easy-to-digest, engageable volume. I can get cynical about books that cover topics like impostor syndrome, burnout, perfectionism, and leadership because they seem to offer superficial approaches to very real challenges.

I love it because it is illustrated by relatable stories, coupled with questions and exercises that enabled me to realistically address obstacles we all have encountered in our careers. I keep this book within arm’s reach of my desk at all times as it feels like an essential toolkit for work and life.

Dan Hurley is one of today’s most successful head coaches in basketball and sports.

Known for his intensity on the court, the book takes the reader through his journey, starting in New Jersey as the son of a legendary high school basketball coach, Bob Hurley. Hurley’s dedication to success led to consecutive NCAA national championships for the University of Connecticut and a pursuit by the Los Angeles Lakers to hire Hurley as their coach.

The book shares lessons in leadership and greatness.

I was introduced to this book by a business mastermind which we all read together and discussed chapters on video.

Imagine twenty women from different countries trying to not only understand each other and implement at the same time. I’m not sure what was more entertaining our language barrier or our interpretations. Nevertheless, I was blown away by the amount of structure and stretches that this book presents.

We all agreed to do the stretches as they relate to our lives. One of the many to-do’s was making a list of things that are unfinished and getting to it no matter how big or small. Now I must warn you this is a pretty thick book and I use it as a reference whenever I need a pick-me-up when life seems chaotic.

Mostly I reference the chapters that I feel are in alignment with where I am struggling in day-to-day… show more.

I was very fortunate to have a coach from the Covey organization for a few years named Andy Cindrich, and I’m forever grateful for his help to shift my own paradigms around trust. 

I’d been raised with the story ‘Losing trust is like a house burning down… you can try to rebuild it, but it takes 18 months and it’s never quite the same…’ Through The Speed of Trust, I learned managing trust is a skill. When we embrace trust falls courageously and sort through the gap and pain with care and intention, we end up grateful for the problems and issues that allow us to show our character, reinforce our values, and elevate relationships. 

I wish for everyone to have these tools in their pockets, not to maintain perfect trust, but to fix things fast when they inevitably get messy between us humans.