Daily Dose of Business
365 Days of Insights to Drive Success in Work and Life
Daily Dose of Business collects a year’s worth of daily readings for entrepreneurs.
CEO Robert I. Webber’s inspirational reference text Daily Dose of Business compiles adages and quotations that speak to entrepreneurs.
Filtering advice and analysis from over one hundred resources into daily segments, the book covers six umbrella categories corresponding to Harvard Business School’s first-year MBA curriculum, including leadership, strategy, and marketing. Each daily reading is composed of up to seven quotes, ranging from dense, bullet-pointed technical analyses to pithy statements on the ephemeral nature of leadership and teamwork: “My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income,” says Errol Flynn in the financial management section, and on the topic of career habits, Joe Rogan is appealed to with “There is a direct correlation between positive energy and positive results.” The juxtaposition of different opinions and manners of thinking is provocative, as when Ralph Waldo Emerson is placed in conversation with former IBM CEO Louis Vincent Gerstner Jr. on the subject of leadership by example. In the course of such work, the book is prone to homing in on subjects like hiring processes, the efficacy of interviews, and various biases that can degrade one’s decision-making capacity.
While some of the collected material is well-known, most is not. The quoted voices are diverse, and some fresh perspectives are represented. However, the presentations of the quotes are sometimes muddled, as when those that cannot stand alone, requiring paraphrasing or contextualization, are preceded by summaries or preliminary remarks that appear without lexical distinction or paragraph breaks. In such cases, the introductions blend into the quotes themselves, muddying layouts. This is most common with quotes that include charts, bullet points, and other complex presentation styles.
Further, some voices recur throughout the book, including those of David C. Cole (who appears thirteen times) and Elon Musk: “If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake,” Musk says. “You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.” Musk is also drawn upon to comment on business strategy and production promotion alongside Warren Buffett. In such cases, throughlines sometimes form, threading disparate opinions on countless niche topics together until individual worldviews begin to cohere. But often, the sheer density of the quoted thoughts is taxing; some entries require more time than usual to navigate. Still, the book includes multiple indexes for easy navigation; they are organized by subject, person, book cited, and company.
With a year’s worth of daily readings for entrepreneurs, Daily Dose of Business collects wisdom from leaders of industry to support one’s professional success.
Reviewed by
Willem Marx
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
