Private Equity Leaders’ Best Business Books of 2025

[00:00:00] Sean Mooney: Welcome to the Karma School of Business, a podcast about the private equity industry, business best practices, and realtime trends. I'm Sean Mooney, BluWave's founder and CEO. Today we have one of my very favorite Karma School of Business annual traditions, where we compile all of the very best book recommendations that our guests from this year have recommended.
[00:00:31] I think any business builder knows that the best business builders in the world are collectors and purveyors and consumers of other people's wisdom, and all my friends and I regularly share books with each other, and it's a way of transferring information so we can get ahead and not have to create the world anew each time.
[00:00:51] And so I think this is a great one, particularly for all of us, including me, because we get some of the very best in the world at building companies who share what they're reading now and what books have made an impression on them.
[00:01:02] So let's kick this off. First off, we've got Casey Myers, former Operating Partner at Edison Partners and current Operating Company CEO.
[00:01:12] Casey shares a book that hits home for anyone thinking about how to keep growing through every season of life. Here's Casey on From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks.
[00:01:24] Casey Myers: And then I read Arthur Brooks' book. In fact, I've got it sitting right here: Strength to Strength. Arthur Brooks wrote Strength to Strength, and it is about making that shift from building things to teaching things and a fluid intelligence that you have in your younger years, just metaphysically versus crystallized intelligence that you have in your later years.
[00:01:47] And it's those things that allow you to kind of maintain fulfillment and go from kind of building things to teaching things.
[00:01:54] Sean Mooney: Sticking with Casey for a moment, he also points to a practical guide for building real happiness, not just chasing it. Take a listen to his take on Build the Life You Want by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
[00:02:09] Casey Myers: His most recent book, Build The Life You Want was also fantastically aligned to those same kind of concepts. We actually had Arthur speak at our annual general meeting this past May, and it was super, super impactful. So I think I'd go back and tell my 22-year-old self, "Listen man, it's okay, like lean into all the different hats you could possibly wear, and it pays off in the second half of your life because you have the ability
[00:02:34] to walk into almost any portfolio company door and relate to almost every one of the functions."
[00:02:42] Sean Mooney: Up next, Steve Hunter brings a perspective that flips the usual script on money and meaning. Here's Steve on Die With Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life.
[00:02:53] Steve Hunter: I think one that I know one of your earlier podcast guests talked about was the Die With Zero book. I'd heard a couple podcasts that guy was on, and so I went and bought the book and read it and it's a really interesting book and it's really hitting home for me because I think if you talk to anybody that has aging parents, what people have always historically worried about is running out of money when they get older.
[00:03:14] And what his whole thing is is like you're probably not going to run out money. You can make sure you don't run out of money. What you're going to run out of is either health or time and kind of reorienting things to sort of say, "Okay, you're probably not going to go hike the Matterhorn when you're 80. Plan your life so that you can do the stuff you want to do."
[00:03:30] And don't worry about running out of money as much, worry about running out of time to do the stuff you really want to do. So I think it's a cool book. I almost feel like it's one of those books where you have to like read it and think about it and reread it and think about it some more, like each increment of your life.
[00:03:45] It's a really interesting way to look at things. So I like that book quite a bit. That's probably the one I would point to recently that I read.
[00:03:52] Sean Mooney: So coming up, Jonathan Metrick breaks down a modern blueprint for financial security with a simplicity that's hard to ignore. Here's Jonathan on The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway.
[00:04:04] Jonathan Metrick: One I read this year was from Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Wealth, and I like his insights. They're usually rooted in data and he swears a lot and he's kind of fun and interesting as opposed to a very kind of like boring academic piece, even though he is a professor at NYU. But one of the notions he kind of covered off was this idea of compounding.
[00:04:25] Compounding, typically, we think about it as relates to investing, right? And so things grow slowly over time, but in one or two years, not a huge impact. But if you've been compounding investing for many years, there's a huge outsize impact. But I think he tees up, what else are you compounding in your life, in your career?
[00:04:42] And money is one facet of it, but how are you spending your time? And what are you compounding? And I think that's a very interesting notion as you think about, "Okay, I've spent my entire career on marketing and growth, and I know a lot about the space of generating revenue is because I've worked in this space for over 15 years."
[00:05:04] As you parlay that to your career or your personal life, your fitness, your relationships, how are you thinking about your time and what do you want to choose to be compounding? Because over time it will grow. I'm reading right now The Philosophy of Money and one stat I know is Warren Buffet, a wildly successful investor, 85% of his net worth was actually generated after he turned 65, and he's been investing since he was 13.
[00:05:32] So the time horizon matters, and if you think about his value investing, if you've been doing that since you've been 13 and you're now in your 80s, that's compounding. And so this is an interesting kind of vector of kind of how do you think about time allocation, how long you're doing something, and choosing selectively, strategically, what do you want to be compounding in your life.
[00:05:56] Sean Mooney: Now we're going to shift gears into one of the classics. Vinay Kashyap recommends a novel that digs into faith, family, and the human condition in a way that really feels current. Here's Vinay on The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
[00:06:12] Vinay Kashyap: Right now we have on the bedside table Brothers Karamazov. They're classics for reasons, and the writing, it triggers something in me both profound and I find it very humorous, which I enjoy. It is just, it's just a true masterpiece,
[00:06:28] Sean Mooney: And Vinay doesn't stop there. Here's another powerful, modern story about identity, belonging and the long arc of life.
[00:06:33] Listen how Vinay reflects on The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne.
[00:06:41] Vinay Kashyap: I'm reading another great book right now by John Boyne, the Heart's Invisible Furies. It's a beautiful book about someone who's gay growing up in Ireland in the mid 1900s, my sort of feeling on reading is the same in that I also start and don't finish lots of books or I come back to them. And so I think again, for me, the journey has been don't force it,
[00:07:02] follow your curiosity. I'm often in the mood to read fiction at night, and I'm often in the mood to read nonfiction in the morning. I don't know why. It's my biological clock, so I sort of follow that and I don't force it. So you just sort of feel your way through learning in a way that's, I think, authentic and natural, and it makes it really enjoyable and fun.
[00:07:21] Don't make it a chore.
[00:07:22] Sean Mooney: Next up, Ran Ding highlights a business book that celebrates leaders who win by zigging while everyone else zags, here's Ran on The Outsiders by William Thorndike, Jr.
[00:07:35] Ran Ding: So the first one is called The Outsiders. It's written by this person named Will Thorndike. He actually was a multi-decade successful investor. He's been a professor and he wrote this book profiling a handful of CEOs, icons in their industries that were able to generate outsized returns. And I think a core thesis around it was just that these people were doing things slightly differently.
[00:08:01] That's why they were outsiders, right? Also another ingredient was that beyond being good operators, they were really good capital allocators. And when I think about that term, it's really just applying an ROI mindset to not just deploying capital, but also deploying resources, deploying time, and they had unique ways of doing that.
[00:08:23] This was a pretty foundational book for me. I read it probably when I was just starting out in the industry. I'm very lucky because, in a full circle moment, 10, 15 years later, I actually share a board with Will today, and so I'm very privileged to get additional insights from him around some of these CEOs, but also other ones that he's come across.
[00:08:44] So that's definitely one that I recommend to people, especially as they're coming into the investment industry, trying to understand just how businesses work and how operators work.
[00:08:53] Sean Mooney: Ran also recommends a mindset book for anyone navigating pressure and uncertainty. Here's his perspective on The Obstacle is the Way By Ryan Holiday.
[00:09:04] Ran Ding: And then the other one is a little bit more on the personal side. It's this book called The Obstacle is the Way. It's a set of short stories and statements about people just encountering obstacles and challenges, and it ties back to ancient philosophy and then certain business case studies, but I think the core tenet of the book is just, look, everybody is going to come across challenges, and for something to happen to you is very objective, is unchangeable, but the way that you react is completely within your control.
[00:09:37] And so nothing is necessarily good or bad unless you make it so, and every situation, even if it's a very challenging situation, can be thought of as a potential opportunity. And so, if that's something that I go back to often. I mean, I think we all encounter different challenges in our life and there isn't necessarily always a solve for it, but I think having the right mindset allows you to navigate these situations in a lot more effective way, at least for me personally.
[00:10:10] Sean Mooney: Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. Wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives and say, "Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources?" And the short answer is yes.
[00:10:26] Even though we're mostly and largely used by hundreds of private equity firms, thousands of their portfolio company leaders, every day we get calls from everyday top proactive business leaders at public companies, independent companies, family companies. So absolutely you can use this as well if you want to use the exact same resources that are trusted in being deployed and perfectly calibrated for your business needs.
[00:10:49] Give us a call. Visit our website at BluWave.net. Thanks. Back to the episode.
[00:10:58] Coming up now, Chris Scullin brings us a must read on why great companies can still get disrupted and what to do about it. Here's Chris on The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
[00:11:11] Chris Scullin: On the business side, for me, kind of foundational was this book The Innovator's Dilemma, probably not rare or unheard of amongst your audience, but I spent a year while I was in business school working with Clay Christensen and just sort of soaking in his worldview and the thing that I took away from that, beyond just the lessons in the book, is just the overall mindset of, he would describe Michael Porter's five forces as a sort of static view of the world.
[00:11:39] Obviously it's not, that's one interpretation, but. This idea that really you should be thinking about things in addition to just how they are today, but also dynamically. And what Clay was always trying to capture was this idea that things are always changing. And as the environment around you changes, as the forces that you're subject to buffet you in different ways, you have to be mindful of what's going on around you and change your tactics so that you can maintain the same outcomes.
[00:12:06] And so competition changes. Different people are going to come into your life and ask you to do different things and, always centering yourself on what am I trying to do? Or if I'm a business leader, what is my business trying to do? And reacting to that environment dynamically, I think was the big lesson that Clay left us with.
[00:12:23] Sean Mooney: Sticking with Chris, he points to a fascinating blend of psychology and philosophy and what actually makes life good. Here's Chris on The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.
[00:12:35] Chris Scullin: On the personal side, there's this book, The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt. He's since become well known for some of his later books. I believe this was his first book. And the idea that he had was that the things that we can most reliably lean on to develop personal happiness are things that science has validated make us happier, but also that human traditions have enshrined for millennia as making us happy.
[00:13:03] And when you combine those two observations, there's a very clear framework on both. Managing the kind of baseline of your happiness through things like mindfulness, um, things like centering yourself and approaching your day in a more positive perspective, but then also surrounding yourself in a positive environment and learning as Ran was discussing, to understand that your environment doesn't control you and that you can shape the environment around you with your attitude and with your response to things.
[00:13:32] And that led me toward more mindfulness, and I've been on a few meditation retreats. It led me toward Stoicism and some ancient philosophy as a philosophy major that kind of resonates with me. So there's some real lessons to come out of taking a proactive approach to managing your happiness.
[00:13:48] Sean Mooney: Up next, Micah Dawson shares a book that's all about cutting through the noise and focusing on what truly moves the needle.
[00:13:54] Here's Micah's take on The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.
[00:14:01] Micah Dawson: I think tying into a theme, there's something going on in the industry with just a group of high performers that I've had conversations off and on with a bunch of different people on this. It's how do you balance that like ambition, network, like what we do is fun in many ways, with this idea, and there's this term called the hedonic treadmill, where it's just, you get on it and you're just chasing,
[00:14:26] and you're chasing, and you're chasing, and it can be really unsatisfying. And so, I read a few books around that theme and the first two one was called, I think The One Thing, and I'm going to get a couple of concepts probably confused from some other book, but one of the things they said is like, the horizon is constantly receding, and if you're always chasing that, you're going to drive yourself insane.
[00:14:52] One just very sort of practical exercise to do is just look back and look at what you built in sort of a short or a long time. It's a good way to feel good about the path you're on.
[00:15:07] Sean Mooney: Micah also recommends a deeper book on purpose, service, and the kind of success that lasts. Here's his insight on The Second Mountain by David Brooks.
[00:15:18] Micah Dawson: I think a second thing that I'd gleaned from that is like sort of understanding what your purpose and role is, and for me, I got this really great moment of clarity around like, my role is to make my folks successful. And if I do that, a lot of good things are going to happen. And that was really captured,
[00:15:35] so the real book recommendation is there's this great book by David Brooks, who is a New York Times columnist called The Second Mountain. It's all about like we're all trying to climb this first mountain of achievement and at some point, most of us get knocked off of that and we go through a valley and the lucky ones find the second mount of service of personal joy.
[00:15:57] I'm not there yet. I'm still trying to climb the first mountain furiously, but I think it was really helpful as I thought about this interplay of like enjoying my job, the hedonic treadmill. How do you find happiness and fulfillment and how do you find balance? I just thought he had a really great perspective on those things that I had found helpful to just kind of settle me down.
[00:16:18] Sean Mooney: Here's one that I think any parent with a newborn or young child is going to 100% appreciate.
[00:16:24] Misha Longinov brings a practical favorite that saved a lot of sleep and sanity for parents. Here's Misha on Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old, by Suzy Giordano and Suzy Abidin.
[00:16:38] Misha Longinov: Instead of maybe pointing out to a business book, which I've read plenty of, and a lot of really great ones, I'll maybe highlight a personal book that was particularly impactful to me and also to some of the folks I introduced it to. I had kids just under three years ago and I had twins, which was a very transformative experience for me and my wife.
[00:17:00] One of the things that we've learned very quickly is that we really have to focus on sleep, their sleep first, and then our sleep second. So recently I gave away a copy of basically the same book to a few of my colleagues who, um, had newborn kids, and it is about sleep training, and it's called Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old.
[00:17:18] It was written by Suzy Giordano. I have to say we didn't quite get to 12 hours of sleep, but we came pretty close with our kids. I think they're sleeping like 10 to 12 hours a night on the typical night, and they've been doing it since they were three months old. So this was absolutely game changing for me personally.
[00:17:35] Now, I've heard some good feedback from some of my colleagues who use the same technique that they managed to get their kids to start sleeping as well. I mean, I think we'll know that, right, that first our kids' sleep, and of course, just as importantly, our own sleep is so incredibly important for both our physical and mental health.
[00:17:52] I found this book to be just a perfect, easy to digest guide for how to basically engineer sleep with our children and then regain a bit of sanity in our own lives. So I can't recommend this book strongly enough. If you are about to have kids pay close attention, I think it's going to change your life.
[00:18:09] Sean Mooney: Next, Dan Gaspar recommends a hands-on operating system for building companies that run clean and scale right. Here's Dan on Traction by Gino Wickman.
[00:18:20] Dan Gaspar: There's a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. That's a great book for how to effectuate change inside a company. I buy a copy of that book for every CEO I partner with. His concept of an entrepreneurial operating system probably most closely matches my approach to management and decision making. So it's a bit of a, "Hey, I'm going to buy you this book, take a look and learn how I think about things without having to write a book myself."
[00:18:48] Sean Mooney: And to close this out, Dan also brings a classic on change, adaptability, and not getting stuck in yesterday's comfort zone and one of my personal favorites that we give to every employee at BluWave. Here's Dan on Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.
[00:19:07] Dan Gaspar: It may sound silly, but my all time favorite business book is Who Moved My Cheese? I don't know if it's really a business book as much as an approach or psychological book, but it's so simple that it has applicability to all aspects of life and to any industry, right, which is embrace change. Never get complacent.
[00:19:27] And I think if you have that attitude, you'll go far in life.
[00:19:41] Sean Mooney: That's all we have for today. I want to give a very special thanks to all our guests for sharing the wisdom and the practical and actionable insights from some of their very favorite authors. If you'd like to learn more about any of these books or the authors, please see the episode notes for links.
[00:19:59] Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcast. We truly appreciate your support. If you like what you hear, please follow five star rate, review, or share. This is a free way of supporting the show, and it really helps us when you do this, so thank you in advance.
[00:20:14] In the meantime, if you want to be connected with the world's best in class private equity grade professional service providers, independent consultants, interim executives that are deployed and trusted by the very best business builders in the world, including many hundreds of top PE firms and thousands of their portfolio companies, and you can do the same whether or not you're in the PE world, give us a call or visit our website at BluWave.net, that's B-L-U-W-A-V-E and we'll support your success. Onward.

Private equity insights for and with top business builders, including investors, operators, executives and industry thought leaders. The Karma School of Business Podcast goes behind the scenes of PE, talking about business best practices and real-time industry trends. You'll learn from leading professionals and visionary business executives who will help you take action and enhance your life, whether you’re at a PE firm, a portco or a private or public company.

BluWave Founder & CEO Sean Mooney hosts the Private Equity Karma School of Business Podcast. BluWave is the business builders’ network for private equity grade due diligence and value creation needs.