Book reviews of 2020 #4/38 'What You Do is Who You Are'

My brief review of 'What You Do is Who You Are' by Ben Horowitz

38.
📚The number of books I’ve read in the past 12 months. Not intentionally trying to boast and I have empathy towards those who have suffered, but 2020 was the best thing to happen for me in regards to a mindset shift and new ventures.
🚀I am obsessed with personal and professional development and I make it a top priority to level up at every possible stage in every area.

🛠The stage I’m in now professionally is running a successful electrical business and have exited a small technology venture.

Over the next few weeks/months I’ll post a few key takeaways from each of these books in the photo and how I will apply it/have applied to my life.
This is a beginning of an ongoing thread.
😅Please excuse the picture cropping quality, I could’ve honestly spent days cropping every image to make it perfectly symmetrical but sometimes you just have to ship it!

‘What You Do is Who You Are’ is a unique book to come from a titan of Silicon Valley and unlike his other book, ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’, Ben presents this book through a number of stories. The primary stories focused on Toussaint Louverture, Shaka Senghor, and Genghis Khan.

After each story, Horowitz highlighted the lesson learned as well as instruction for applying the lessons.
I found the stories and lessons to be quite fascinating and he brought the stories and the business relationship quite well.

The stories mentioned highlight the importance of organisational culture. As Horowitz noted, “Your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there”.

A great quote from the book is: “If you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard”.
8/10
Recommend!
#business #books #entrepreneurship #VC