I Read 10 Business Books So You Don't Have To

The day I launched to nobody

I still remember pressing the publish button on my first product. Saturday afternoon, April 2024. After three months of coding, my SaaS was finally live.

"This is it," I told myself. "I'm finally going to make money online."

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I refreshed Vercel Analytics every four minutes, willing the flatline to move. After an hour of obsessive refreshing, I checked if analytics even worked by visiting in incognito mode. Success! One visitor. It was me.

The next day, I messaged everyone I knew. A small spike, then nothing. Following the startup playbook, I orchestrated a proper launch: Product Hunt, Hacker News, LinkedIn, every directory I could find. It brought visitors, sure. But active users? Almost zero.

That week, staring at those pathetic analytics curves, the truth hit hard. I'd spent three months building features nobody asked for, optimizing performance nobody cared about, and polishing a UI nobody would see.

I was an engineer cosplaying as an entrepreneur. I could debug memory leaks but had no idea how to debug a business model.

If I wanted to build products people actually used and paid for, I needed skills that no programming language could teach me.

Why good tactics failed me

Don't get me wrong—I tried all the "right" tactics. I dove deep into SEO, spending months optimizing keywords, making content and building backlinks. And SEO does work incredibly well (it's why I eventually built BlogSEO to automate the whole process). Product launches can drive real traffic too.

But here's what nobody tells you: these channels are amplifiers, not foundations. They're useless if your offer sucks. You can rank #1 on Google and get featured on Product Hunt, but if you're selling something nobody wants, you're just efficiently attracting visitors who won't convert.

I needed to fix the fundamentals first. I needed to understand what people actually wanted to buy.

That's when my business book binge began. I read books on marketing, sales, psychology, design; any skill that could help me actually sell what I built.

The engineer's blind spot

What I discovered in those books hit me like a production outage at 3AM: we engineers are trained to solve the wrong problems first.

Think about it. We optimize for elegant code architecture when users want a solution that just works. We debate PostgreSQL vs MongoDB while our competitors are talking to customers. We perfect our CI/CD pipeline before validating if anyone will pay for what we're building.

I'm not suggesting we abandon our technical skills: our ability to build is our superpower. But these books revealed an uncomfortable pattern: the most successful products aren't necessarily the best coded. They're the ones that solve real problems people will pay for, backed by a go-to-market strategy that actually gets executed. Great code without great distribution is just an expensive hobby.

Over those few months, I read 10 business books. Seven delivered insights so powerful they fundamentally changed how I approach building products. Three were, in my humble opinion, complete garbage (I'll save you from those).

Each lesson comes with a specific action you can implement this week. No fluff, no theory: just what actually moves the needle when you're trying to turn code into cash.

Let's start with the insight that would have saved me those three wasted months...

1. Your offer matters more than your code

From $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

Here's your section with minor fixes for flow:

Here's the painful truth Hormozi taught me: I spent three months perfecting my product's features when I should have spent three days perfecting my offer. An offer isn't your product. It's the transformation you're selling.

Before (engineer brain describing BlogSEO): "AI-powered content generation tool with automatic website scanning, SEO optimization algorithms, and scheduled publishing features. 20 articles for $78"

After (what actually sells): "Grow your organic traffic on autopilot. Watch your Google rankings climb while you sleep - no writing, no SEO expertise needed. Just connect your website and let AI publish lead-generating content every day. 100% money back guarantee if you don't rank on the first page of Google after 20 days. $78"

Same product. Completely different offer. Notice how this maps to Hormozi's value equation:

• Dream Outcome: Rankings climb, traffic grows (high)

• Time Delay: Start seeing results while you sleep (low)

• Effort & Sacrifice: Just connect your website (minimal)

• Perceived Likelihood: This is what I'm working on now: adding testimonials and success stories to prove the product delivers on its promise, plus the money-back guarantee reverses the risk

The key: stop listing features. Start selling the dream outcome. If explaining your product takes more than one sentence, you're still thinking like an engineer, not a marketer.

2. No one knows you exist

From $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi

After fixing my offer, I faced an even harsher reality: having a great product means nothing if nobody knows it exists. This is where you actually start working on user acquisition.

Hormozi's "Core Four" framework is stupidly simple, which is why it works. You have exactly four ways to tell people about your product:

• Warm Outreach (1-on-1): Message people who already know you

• Warm Outreach (1-to-Many): Post content where your network sees it (like this newsletter ;))

• Cold Outreach (1-on-1): Email/DM strangers who fit your ideal customer

• Cold Outreach (1-to-Many): Run ads to people who've never heard of you

There are other acquisition methods like listing your product to directories, launching on Product Hunt, but the principle remains the same: you need multiple channels running simultaneously.

You don't need all four at once, but if you consistently work at least two of these levers, you will eventually get customers. Always start with warm outreach, it's the easiest and has the highest conversion rate. For cold outreach, tools like Lemlist can automate the repetitive work so you're not manually sending hundreds of emails.

3. Good design is invisible

From The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger

Reading these two books ruined my life. I now notice every badly designed door, every confusing baking tray, every form that makes me think too hard. But it also transformed how I build products.

Norman's core insight: when design works, nobody notices. When it fails, everyone blames themselves. That "Push" sign on a door with a pull handle? Bad design, not user error.

As engineers, we build interfaces that make perfect sense—to us. We add tooltips to explain our confusing UI instead of fixing the UI. We write "Please enter your email in the field below" when good design would make it obvious. The Tailwind founders drove this home with tactical advice:

• Hierarchy beats decoration: Instead of adding colors everywhere, use size and weight to guide the eye.

• Use exponential scales: Stop debating between 16px or 18px. Use predefined scales (8, 16, 24, 32, 48) for spacing and type. Constraints paradoxically make design easier and more consistent.

These design principles transformed how I make design decisions. Both books are quick reads and absolutely worth it for anyone building user-facing interfaces. The test is simple: if you need instructions on your interface, you've already failed. Good design just works.

4. The total addressable market is larger than you think

From Sel Like Crazy by Sabri Suby

Most businesses fight over the same 3% of customers: the ones searching "buy [your product] now" on Google where the competition is burtal. Suby's pyramid changed my entire approach to getting customers. Only 3% are ready to buy today. But 17% are researching solutions, 20% know they have a problem, and 60% don't even realize they need you yet.

The magic happens when you create content for each level:

• For the 3% (Buying now): Product pages, pricing, demos

• For the 17% (Researching): Comparison guides, "X vs Y" content

• For the 20% (Problem aware): "How to fix [problem]" content

• For the 60% (Unaware): Educational content about their industry

This is where Suby's HVCO (High Value Content Offer) strategy becomes crucial. Create a lead magnet so valuable people would pay for it, then give it away free. For BlogSEO, I'm building an "SEO Audit Checklist" that shows exactly what's killing your rankings. Free guide in exchange for an email = permission to nurture the 97% until they're ready to buy.

Your market isn't who's buying today. It's everyone who could benefit from your solution, eventually.

5. The role of an ad is to sell the click, not your product

From Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby

Before (trying to sell in the ad): "BlogSEO - AI-Powered SEO Content Generator. Create 20 articles/month, automatic publishing, keyword research included, no writing needed. Starting at $78/month. Try it today!"

After (selling the click): "This Free Checklist Reveals Why Your Blog Gets Zero Google Traffic"

Same product. 5x higher click-through rate. The psychology is simple: curiosity beats information. When you try to explain everything, you kill the mystery. When you tease the solution, people click to learn more.

This is why pairing ads with lead magnets (HVCOs) works so well. Your ad promises valuable information, your landing page delivers it in exchange for an email, then you have permission to actually sell. The ad doesn't need to close the deal: it just needs to start the conversation.

Stop treating your ads like sales pages. Treat them like headlines. Make people curious enough to click, then let your landing page do the heavy lifting.

Honorable mentions

• How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes: 92 little communication tricks that actually work. Unlike generic advice ("be yourself!") or outdated books like How to Make Friends, Lowndes gives specific techniques, like the "Flooding Smile" (delay your smile by half a second to make it feel more genuine) or "Parroting" (repeat their last words as a question to keep conversations flowing). Apply one tip per week and watch your networking transform. I’m not gonna lie this book also helped me become less awkward at social events.

• Deep Work by Cal Newport: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Newport's argument is simple: shallow work (emails, meetings, "quick syncs") is killing your ability to produce anything valuable. His solution: block 4-hour chunks for deep work, treat them like investor meetings you can't reschedule. The book is split in 2 main parts: the “Why” and the “How”. I found the “Why” very convincing and it really helped me change my habits to be more focused and become more productive.

The books that wasted my time

• Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven: 100 pages of feel-good platitudes. Yes, making your bed might start your day with a win, but it won't grow your business. Pure motivational fluff from first page to last.

• Digital Marketing by F. Scheid: Reads like a Wikipedia entry from 2015. Pure theory, zero implementation. By the time it finishes defining obvious terms, you could have done 100 cold outreaches and landed 5 paying customers.

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel: Brilliant philosophy, thought-provoking ideas, but ultimately VC masturbation. Unless you're trying to cure cancer or colonize Mars, Thiel's monopoly theory is about as practical as using a spaceship for your daily commute. Most of us need customers, not a monopoly.

There you have it: 5 business lessons that took me from zero visitors to making my first online dollars. I hope this curated list saves you from reading the fluff and gets you straight to what works.

If you're thinking "this is obvious," ask yourself: are you actually doing it? I knew I should "talk to customers" for years. But I didn't. I knew marketing mattered. But I kept polishing code instead. The gap between knowing and implementing is where businesses die.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: 90% of people who read business books nod along, save it for later, and change nothing. They keep building features nobody wants, writing product descriptions nobody understands, and wondering why their analytics stay flat.

The other 10% extract the lessons, learn from others' mistakes, and implement immediately. They rewrite their offer using Hormozi's value equation. They message 10 potential customers today. They fix that confusing checkout flow right now.

Which group are you in? :)