5 books that have shaped my career
From my own shelves, recommended reading for marketing/growth professionals
I’ve been a reader for a long time.
When I was 7 or 8, one of my old man’s friends gave me a trunk of his grown-up son’s old comics. This was in Shillong, in the gorgeous Indian northeast, and the one thing I had was time. I fell in love with stories then, and stayed in love, easily the longest relationship of my life.
But the books that made me haven’t necessarily been marketing/business books. I read a lot of fiction, but it’s travel writing that has my heart - there’s a romance in wandering that I can never get enough of.
All this reading meant that I came to work related reading much later than should be considered normal for a lifelong reader. I was (and remain) a bit of a literary snob, and reading for work was somehow not something I really wanted to get into.
Well, that was stupidity, and when I did start, I realised what I was missing. Mind you, that doesn’t mean all professional books are good - in fact, most are not. But my pickiness means that I’m careful about what I read, and this has served me well.
Over the last few years as I matured as a professional, I read a few books that changed the way I approached life, marketing, and my career.
I want to recommend the best of these, so you can reap their benefits too, and don’t have to wait to stumble upon them yourself.
Here goes.
Recession Proof Graduate, by Charlie Hoehn
Published in 2014, this one is not even a full length book. It’s barely 100 pages, but if you are in college, this will change the way you look at your job search. In fact, strike that. This will change the way you look for, and land a job throughout your career.
If you are in college right now and know that this book exists, not reading it would be criminal. If you are in your first job, frustrated, and don’t understand how to break into the field you’ve always wanted to be in, this book will show you how.
Buy the Kindle edition and read it. It may be one of the best investments you ever make.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport
Earlier this year, I was speaking to Jeyadevan (or JPK, as he’s better known), friend and former colleague, who’s now part of the startup marketing team at Freshworks.
This was for a podcast he was doing, and we were talking about marketing, and how I got good at it.
This was something I had been thinking about too: In the first part of this last decade, when I started my career, I wasn’t a particularly good marketer. I mean, I was a good writer, and that helped, but I really wasn’t anywhere near good at marketing. I just did what I was told to.
But suddenly, in 2016-17, when I was at Wingify and leading a team, everything seemed to come together. My plans were spot-on, my bets worked out, my strategies made sense, my team was happy and successful. I was as surprised as I was delighted. I didn’t think about it too much; it’s difficult to, when you are doing well.
It was later, when I read Cal Newport’s book, that I understood why I was now a good marketer and manager, and how I could get even better. And that leads directly to the question - is there a formula to this? The book says there is, and shows you how. It’s brilliant, to say the least; I swear by its lessons. For someone 2 - 6 years into your career, and looking around at colleagues zooming ahead and wanting to know how to accelerate your own career, this book is invaluable.
Some of its lessons are surprising and unintuitive, but if you intend to build a serious career in your field, read this book.
Here’s the link to the Kindle edition.
Essentialism, by Greg McKeown
I consider Essentialism essential reading for everyone, regardless of profession or calling. My former boss, Paras Chopra, founder and chairman of Wingify, gave it to me, and I have used its lessons almost everyday since I read it. The book tells you why the intentional pursuit of less is a great way to make sure you are prioritising what is important in your life.
I apply the principle ruthlessly: I do less, but what I do, I do well. This need not apply just to work, it’s applicable everywhere. And in a time when everyone is feeling stretched and tired, it may be the best way for you to reset your priorities.
If all of that sounds a bit like hokum, blame other nonsensical self-help books you’ve read. Essentialism is the real deal, and you should read it.
This is Marketing, by Seth Godin
Seth Godin’s latest is perhaps just all his marketing principles rehashed and refreshed for the era of digital marketing. I don’t know, because I haven’t read all his earlier books. But I know I’ll reread this one.
It left me with so much to think about. The copy my friend lent me was almost disfigured by the amount of notes I took. But at least three ideas from it have become part of the way I think about marketing everyday:
1. That marketing creates more value, both psychologically and in a real sense than you might think
2. That creating scarcity can be incredibly beneficial for your product, or for whatever you are selling
3. And for the concept of psychographics over demographics, which I won’t explain, but is something I’m still surprised more SaaS marketers haven’t caught up to yet.
It’s ridiculously high value reading, and once you have read it, you’ll never think about marketing the same way.
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype
A book not many have heard of, apart from hardcore marketing circles, I guess; I read it during my early years at Freshdesk, and it influenced a lot of my early marketing thinking, the effectiveness of which I realised later.
It’s a short, straight-shooting book and guides you to think about marketing with a simple question: How can I help? As you apply this question to some of your content and (especially) product marketing, you’ll realise how much value this simple framework can help you provide to prospects and customers
Even at that time, it was a refreshing change from the SEO/growth-hacking mumbo-jumbo that was being passed off as marketing gospel.
For a content/product marketer starting out in a new product, this book can help you look at things from the prospect/customer’s POV. This is a way of seeing (yes, I referenced Naipaul there) that cannot be untaught once you have learnt it.
It will serve you well in your career.
A couple of honourable mentions here. Firstly, The Startup of You, which again everyone should read. Most of you know why, but in a way, it is the career bible for the millennial (and after). We live in a world of work that’s different from our grandparents and parents, and no book can help you navigate it better than Reid Hoffman’s now almost-classic.
For marketers, the classic marketing tome The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing should be an annual reread, just to make sure we don’t do stupid stuff like launch Old Spice cookware (or other such silly brand extensions).
I’m also looking forward to reading Julie Zhou’s The Making of a Manager, which everyone is saying good things about.
I also have Rachel Bridge’s Already Brilliant on my table, which is a plea to work on our strengths and use them to move forward in our career and our lives. It sounds like something I can get behind.
I hope the list helps in some way for you to kickstart your own reading. If there are books you think I should read, or should include in some future list, I’d be happy to hear from you.