5 books worth reading in 2025

If you’ve followed along with my annual tradition of sharing some of the most impactful books I’ve read over the last 12 months, you’ll notice many are “business” books. I’m once again sharing my list with you of some of the most impactful books I’ve read this past year, so you can fill up your reading list, but the recommendations this year may be a bit different. Only one might fit the definition of “business,” but all five of these books have had a major impact on my personal life and leadership journey this year.

Without further ado, here they are:

“The question we need to ask ourselves is: what is success to us? More money? That's fine. A healthy family? A happy marriage? Helping others? To be famous? Spiritually sound? To express ourselves? To create art? To leave the world a better place than we found it?

“What is success to me? Continue to ask yourself that question. How are you prosperous? What is your relevance?

“Your answer may change over time and that's fine but do yourself this favor – whatever your answer is, don't choose anything that would jeopardize your soul. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don't spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don't depend on drinking the Kool-Aid – it's popular, tastes sweet today, but it will give you cavities tomorrow.”

This was a gut punch. I think back to when I started my first marketing firm over 20 years ago and the beginnings of YMC in 2008, and my goals then were very different than my goals now. I wanted a fancy office building to show how successful we were. I wanted a staff of over a hundred because the more staff, the more successful the agency, right? Back then, success was more about what it looked like from the outside. Somewhere down the line, the definition of success changed for me. Today, success is being free to choose the clients we want to work with and having the freedom to turn some away that we don’t feel we can help. Today, success is having a small but mighty team of experts that are passionate about practicing their craft for the good of our clients. No ego, no toxicity. Just aligned values of wanting to do good work while having a margin for joy in life.

I’ve enjoyed following and studying stoicism over the last few years, thanks to the works of Ryan Holiday. This book was on one of his monthly recommended reading lists, so I took a chance and ordered it. I am glad I did. The Daily Stoic emails and bits and pieces of stoicism I’ve picked up over the years really came together as I learned in depth all of the characters and events of history. And as always, there were a few tabbed pages with impactful lessons:

“Catulus taught Marcus to pay attention to when his friends pointed out his faults because even if their criticism seemed unjustified, by listening patiently to them he might learn how to restore their friendship.”

Another gut punch.

At first, I thought of the mayor of my small city who chooses to label anyone who disagrees with her as being against our city. “Yeah, she needs to hear this!” And then I was convicted. I needed to hear this. In fact, as of the writing of this article, we just received our 360 Reviews from our team members, and my own team had some criticism for me. At first, I wanted to label them “against YMC” and found just how ironic my response was. Then, I recalled the quote above and realized that, even if I disagree with their feedback, that perception reflects the reality of whoever shared those thoughts. There’s something I can learn, if I just listen and digest it with an open mind.

Okay, this was a business book. Technically. It was a book that radically changed our thoughts on leadership and transformed our leadership structure at YMC. I usually don’t like to read a book and then make radical changes. But I knew there was something there when I asked a question in a leadership huddle, and our VP of Operations quoted something from Unmanaged, unaware I had been reading it also. We compared notes and decided as a team to explore “flat leadership.” This meant removing the silos of “team leaders” and breaking down departmental barriers, allowing the opportunity for any team member to contact any other team member to collaborate without having to go through leadership. It meant letting the team know we were there to lead and not manage, meaning they needed to hold themselves accountable for the basics and let the team lead them to growth through education and engagement. This quote was the gut punch for me:

“What if we send all the managers home for the day. Would workers be more productive?”

I also asked, “Would the team be productive at all if we weren’t constantly reminding them of what needed to be done?” We’ve come a long way in the last 12 months of pruning away dead branches of unproductive team members and not-so-ideal clients. We were in a position to start practicing and implementing flat leadership. We’re only a few months in, but so far, our unmanaged team led by our passionate experts has been an overwhelming success.

I don’t recall where I saw the recommendation for this book, but the fact that it was “a good fit for introverted leaders who don’t like small talk” spoke to me. If you missed Episode 26 of The Accidental Leader podcast, I go into detail about how this book spoke to me. Charlamagne recalled a time when his team was goofing off instead of paying attention to their work and it really impacted the quality of his show. I’ve struggled with transitioning from a loud and not so nice leader to embracing empathy and being a better human. But I’ve always struggled with where that line is when it comes to accountability when a team member isn’t living up to their potential and impacting the quality of product for our clients.

“I’m much more secure in myself and how I communicate with people now than when I was a young man. I’m not as thirsty to get my point across because I know I’m right. I try to let my actions speak louder than my words.”

I felt those words as I read them. But Charlamagne shared how he had to handle the situation with his team when they weren’t doing their jobs and being way too relaxed with his feedback.

“What happened today isn’t acceptable. We are one of the top radio programs in the country, but we are also one of the worst produced radio programs in the country. We reach millions of people a day. We are syndicated in over one hundred markets. Look, I CARE! But I don’t give a f*ck.”

Charlamagne went on to share that he sees a difference between caring and not giving a f*ck.

“I care because I want everyone in that room who has the privilege of working on that show to be great and go on to do incredible things in the game of radio. But I also don’t give a f*ck whether they listen to me or not. If they are not committed to being great, I’ll just get some people in there who actually do their job at a high level and continue on about my life.”

I read this right as we were implementing flat leadership, and it was what I needed to hear. We care about our team, but we couldn’t keep giving a f*ck if they didn’t care. Thankfully, through the changes we’ve made and moving to flat leadership, we have a team of people who do care, and in turn we have a leadership team that truly cares about leading them to succeed.

This one sat on my shelf for quite some time. I finally picked it up and, once again, it was just what I needed at just the right time. First, I started reading it right after Hurricane Helene slammed our city and left us without power for 10 days.

“We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives.”

At every point when I wanted to complain that our AC wasn’t working, that we couldn’t watch TV, etc. those words from The Comfort Crises would appear fresh in my mind, followed by many quotes like:

“Heart disease is the Jeffrey Dahmer of modern ailments. It kills more than 25 percent of us. That’s one person in the United States dying of it every 37 seconds. Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.”

I’ve lost a lot of weight over the last two years, but I still didn’t consider myself healthy. I was eating junk again and not going to the gym. I realized that just because I lost the weight didn’t mean I was the pinnacle of health. The book spurred my interest in rucking to improve my health. As of late, I’ve been walking several miles a few times a week with a weighted backpack, and I’m feeling the difference.

And as I close, I want to share one more quote from The Comfort Crisis. Since I constantly encounter resistance to change and new ideas when working with clients and facilitating strategic planning, this is the final gut punch I want to share: