Camille Rapacz: I am so not prepared with a fancy intro today. Shame on me.
George Drapeau: It's book club.
Camille Rapacz: It's book club day.
Welcome to the Belief Shift, the show that explores what you really need to know about building a successful small business. I'm your host, Camille Rapacz, small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance,
George Drapeau: and I'm George Chappo, your co-host and her brother.
I'm a leader in the tech world, bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity
together. We're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it, but mostly we're bringing practical solutions. So you and your business can thrive.
Camille Rapacz: So as we're getting into summer, I'm gonna do something a little bit different with the podcast for a few episodes. I'm gonna do, I think I'm gonna call it summer shorts.
Just gonna do some short episodes.
George Drapeau: Awesome.
Camille Rapacz: And maybe cuz you'll be listening when you have your shorts on and you're out in shorts walking the dog. So summer shorts, I'm gonna do a few short episodes shorter than today. Today probably won't be as short cuz it's you and I.
The summer shorts I think I'm just gonna do on my own cuz if I do them with you, they will not be so short.
Yeah, because that's, that's what we do. Sure do. So I'm gonna do some summer shorts just to be some quick tips and things like that. Cuz over the summer I know everybody's slowing down and on vacation. I don't want people to feel like they're missing anything.
And also, I want to enjoy summer and not necessarily be having to record a podcast every single week and mm-hmm. You the same. Right. Yeah, that's right. So that's what's coming. But today, I thought also it might be nice to just give our listeners something that they might want to read while they're out there hanging out in the sunshine.
Now, if like me, you have a really long list of books that you still need to get to, and yet you also still love to hear other people recommend books. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a really long list of books you wanna read, George?
George Drapeau: Yes, and it's expressed in book form.
So like there's a couple shelves in our bookshelf that are just books list. Usually, usually when I hear about, or I see a book that I really want or somebody tells me I will actually buy it. That's how I put it on my list. I will buy the book. Nice. And half and half. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm reading if I'm chewing down my list, that's great.
If I'm not chewing down my list, like lately not so great. And I would say half of them are actually physical, tangible books. The other half on Kindle. How about you? How are you reading?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, do you do any audio books?
George Drapeau: Not recently. I loved doing it. Mostly when I'm listening, I'm spending, my audio time is on podcasts that's taken over audio book reading.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I do a lot of podcasts listening too. I do love audio books, but I enjoy them more in fiction. I really enjoy listening to fiction on audio if it's really well, done well narrated, but I will get nonfiction on audio.
But usually if I do that, I end up, if it's a good book, I end up having to get the physical book cuz I, I have to do the, the notes or the post-its or the things, you know, I like to have the physical thing.
George Drapeau: I see that makes sense. Makes sense for you.
Camille Rapacz: And then I try to organize my bookshelf. So like, this is my bookshelf of books that are my go-tos, my favorite books.
And then I have other books. Yeah. It's in the shelf behind me. Yeah. Then I have other books. Like The Top Shelf is like similar to you. I bought them and I wanna read them, but I haven't read them yet. And then I have books down below that are like, they're okay. And then recently I went through and was like, these books are garbage and I gave them away.
George Drapeau: Awesome.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, so, but I do have my go-to books and I thought maybe you and I could just talk about books that have been influential to us. So these don't have to be books about business, this is just, could be business, leadership, life, whatever has just been a big influence on you.
So you wanna get into it? Wanna talk about some books?
George Drapeau: Yeah, please. You go first. I can't wait to hear what's,
Camille Rapacz: oh, you want me to go first?
George Drapeau: Oh, yes, you go first.
Camille Rapacz: Dang it,
George Drapeau: I mean you are more interesting.
Camille Rapacz: This is not true. Okay. You are looking at my list of books.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I wanna hear about this first one cause I don't know it, but the title sounds amazing to me.
Camille Rapacz: You wanna hear about the first one? Okay, so the first one yes. Is one that we have talked about a bit in one of our episodes. So the book is called A Mindset, the New Psychology of Success, how We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, and it's by Carol Dweck. PhD, and I love this book because this is the one that talks about fixed versus growth mindset.
Uhhuh, and we talked about this in a whole episode where we talk about this idea of what does it mean to be open to growth and learning mindset. Remember that?
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yes.
Camille Rapacz: And this book is what really sent me on this path of thinking differently in terms of how you not just have your own growth mindset, but then how you can bring that out in others.
And that's a lot of what she talks about, and it's from the perspective of parenting, business, school, relationships, it's all in there. Really. I think you would love this book, so you should definitely read it. It's, it's kind of it's both nerdy and inspiring. That's what I'll say. Huh. So I, I'm, you know how some books are just kind of all fluff and kind of get you jazzed up about stuff, but you're like, but what's behind it?
What's the substance of this? Yes. So I love this book cuz it has some substance but also has a little, you know, stories that kind of make you think differently and inspire you to think about doing some of what she talks about in there.
George Drapeau: That's really cool. Ah, okay. I, I'm in, I gotta read about that. I mean, I feel like I usually personally have a growth mindset, but I, even if that's the case, I'm intrigued by hearing her talk about fixed versus growth and how it applies in different aspects of life. That's sounds fascinating.
Camille Rapacz: It is. And it would be really interesting, I think, for you in particular to read it because I do think of you as having more of a growth mindset. So I'd love if you read it and if ahas came out of it for you, either about things that you're doing that you didn't realize you were doing and those if you know, or things that you realize you could be doing. Yeah. And be really interesting.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Like, oh, that's what a real growth mindset is like, oh, now I get it. That's, yeah. Pretty fun.
Camille Rapacz: That's what I should do.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. Okay. So you should log onto Amazon right now and just buy the book. Just put it in your cart.
George Drapeau: Okay. Yeah. All right. I, I might do it right after the show.
I mean, hey audience, give me a minute while I do some typing.
Camille Rapacz: No multitasking. We're not fans of multitasking.
George Drapeau: No, we're not fans of multitasking.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Okay, so now you go.
George Drapeau: Okay. This one, I'm just gonna say it is a management book just to get it out of the way. But I, and I have mixed feelings about it, and it is called First Break All the Rules.
Mm. So I like this book a lot because what it says about how to manage people. And up there on my pin board, I have the 12 questions that come outta that book. So these are these two The Gartner Management Consultants, I forget I, I'll look it up. There's these two management consultants and they spend half the book talking about how great they are as management consultants, which I find annoying, but they talk about how you should think about managing your teams and They kind of turn around.
So I have this, I've had this tendency in the past to try to manage everybody equally, top performers, troubled performers and stuff. And they talk about like, you know, you're not spending your time most effectively doing it that way. And they don't say, dump your low performers. They don't say that , but they say what you can do to really accept, accelerate your top performers.
And there's other, you know, Common received wisdom rules in management that turn out not to be that effective, and they go through that. So I don't necessarily agree with all the opinions of what they say, but it really shook up my brain thinking about how I manage teams, which I appreciated. And then the thing that I really liked from that book, the one thing that I got from it was they have these 12 questions that if you ask yourself or your manager as a manager, you can ask your directs, if you ask these 12 questions, they will give you a good, quick assessment of kind of where you are. Questions like, do I have a best friend at work? Have I received feedback in the past week about my performance? Do I feel like this job uses my skills and gifts?
12 of these questions, very easy to examine and ask, even if you haven't asked yourselves before, is really powerful. First, break all the rules.
Camille Rapacz: Nice. And listeners, I will make sure I drop all of these in the show notes so you can easily find them in case you're not able to jot them down at the moment.
Yeah, I have not read that book. I'm, I just Googled it to see do I recognize this book? I haven't read it, so now I gotta put it on my list.
George Drapeau: Oh, cool.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. We might not be helping each other much here with making our book lists longer.
George Drapeau: Oops. Gallup. That's where they're from. Not, not Garner. They're Gallup guys.
Camille Rapacz: Gallup. Okay, cool.
Alright. What book do you want me to talk about next? Anything? Does it matter.
George Drapeau: I, I don't know any of them.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. I'm gonna talk about this next one is probably one that most people have read by this point, but I'm surprised you haven't read it yet. I bet your wife has read this one, which is Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. Have you read any of her stuff?
George Drapeau: No, I have not. I. Wanted to have not.
Camille Rapacz: She's got many books for you to read. Okay. But from a leadership perspective this one is just great. So she talks about how leadership requires courage, and it's the courage to be vulnerable.
George Drapeau: Wow.
Camille Rapacz: And that being a great leader means being anchored in your values.
She has these trust behaviors which she lays out with the acronym of BRAVING and it's boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity. I mean, she goes into them in a really thoughtful way.
It really does just tap into this idea that to be a good leader does require you to put yourself out there in a vulnerable way as opposed to, you know, she also talks about the, our tendency is to armor up, put armor on and shield ourselves from things whether that's judgment or, you know, whatever it might be, we're shielding ourselves from.
She really goes into why we do this, how that's hurting our leadership and ultimately our companies and how companies thrive better when leaders lean into this form of leadership. And she's got really a lovely way of talking about it and walking you through some examples.
I think she's actually a really great writer. Easy to read, but also very thoughtful. She's studied this stuff. She's a researcher. She's not just, you know, like if I wrote this book, it would just be, and my experiences have been, but she's really been studying these things for a long time.
She taps into the ideas of being willing to fail and building resilience around that so that you are resilient in your failures.
We all need to fail to do better. And how perfectionism is one of the reasons we armor up. Cuz we are perfectionist tendencies. We want everybody to think we got it all figured out when literally nobody does. So I, it's just a really great book and very inspiring and I highly recommend.
George Drapeau: Wow, that sounds fascinating. Okay. Right is, so is this the Brene Brown book you would recommend people start with?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Our audience. You know, thinking about being a good leader, being able to use that, whether you're running a business or you're working as a leader in business. Absolutely. I think this is essential reading.
George Drapeau: Okay. That's really cool.
I need to join the Brene Brown Club.
Camille Rapacz: You should probably. Yeah, you probably should. All right. She also just by the by Big Rush fan. So there's that
George Drapeau: Really? How do you know that?
Camille Rapacz: Because I've listened to her podcast and followed her stuff.
She talks about it, actually, I think, I can't remember if it's in this book or in another book where she tells a story she does the quote that we've talked about from Rush. She's quoted that. Anyhow, and we're talking about Rush, the rock band. Everybody, in case you're not quite tuned.
George Drapeau: The Canadian Power Trio Rock. Rock Band.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. Best ever!
George Drapeau: Tom Sawyer. Red Barchetta. YY Z?
Camille Rapacz: There you go. All right, so that's my number two. What about you?
George Drapeau: I'm gonna go with the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. So what I love about the book is the concept of collective intelligence that it presents, and I'll give an example from very early in the book. It might be the first example of the book. So you could summarize the book saying he describes how none of us is as smart as all of us.
And I got that phrase from a podcast Make Me Smarter. It came out of the N P R marketplace show folks, which I think is a great phrase, none of us is as smart as all of us. He talks about how if you can correctly harness a group of people and collective intelligence to a problem, you're gonna do better at solving that problem than any single smartest person.
And I'll get to where I think it falls down. So the example he gives is county fair. This actually happened, I don't know if this was a hundred years ago, but it could have been yesterday where you have a big jar and everybody can pay a dollar and guess the weight of the cow in pounds.
And so everybody enters their guess and somebody won, but then they took all the entries and averaged out the guesses, and the average guess was the best guest. It was better than any single participant's guess. Wow. Then there's another, this is fascinating.
There's another example. That I think makes it even more clear. Lost submarine, they, there was a lost submarine. They couldn't find the submarine. The people who do that stuff couldn't do that thing. And so somebody, I forget how this happened cause it's been a long time since I read the book, talks about how they asked a bunch of different smart people with expertise in having nothing to do with the ocean or finding submarines and just said, here's a problem. How might you go address it? And all kinds of different ways of thinking about it. And had each of them result in a guess that would be a radius, a search radius overlap those search radius as they found submarine. Yeah.
I think it's a fascinating concept and you know, I come from. Geez, really over 30 years of working in open source software, which is another form of collective intelligence.
There's power in working as a community, if you could harness it correctly where the book falls down is, I don't think he's prescriptive, at least in the, the revision of the book that I read.
I don't think he's prescriptive in saying, look, I, okay, I'm bought into the concept. How do I apply it? My life or my business, he doesn't really give you actionable rules about what you need to do to get collective intelligence working for you. He does point out some pitfalls, like herd mentality. If you have a bunch, it's not good enough to have just a bunch of people thinking.
So common wisdom. For example, that phrase is not collective intelligence. That tends to be a bunch of people thinking the same way about something, not different points of view, but it doesn't really tell you how to make that happen. And I wish the book had that or some, maybe somebody's followed on and come up with actionable rules on how to make collective intelligence happen.
But it's a fascinating book.
Camille Rapacz: Well, this is making me think of another book as you were talking about that, and I hadn't put it on my list, but it's in my honorable mentions of books. But I'm, I wonder if this book is answering the question that what you're looking for. So it's called The Art of Gathering, how We Meet and Why It Matters, and Oh, it's by Priya Parker, and it's really about it's gatherings of all kinds.
If I'm hosting a Christmas party, if I'm hosting a book club or I'm running a big meeting, any gathering of people. So literally just a gathering. So her whole thing is that how we gather matters and that we keep doing it badly because we don't put enough intention and structure into what we're doing.
George Drapeau: Huh.
Camille Rapacz: You know, first, what's the purpose of this gathering? And then how do I create an environment that will bring that out of it, whether I'm just hosting a dinner party or I'm again running a board meeting. So it's a really cool book from that perspective. I love the idea of how we just assume if we put people together, kind of to your point, just putting people together isn't necessarily gonna get the best outcome.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: We have to know what outcome we want from this gathering, and then we can do things to, then we can really get the power of, you know, the wisdom of crowds as the book says. Right. Then you can really make that happen. Yeah, but it doesn't just happen by happenstance. It's not just by chance that that's always gonna result in something great.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Okay, so that was kind of my book recommendation.
So you get to go in.
George Drapeau: Oh, okay. Me again. Okay. Boy, this is a good one. There's one, one author that's on both our list and either one of us could introduce, but I won't, I won't now. So I'll go with anything by Michael Lewis. And if I had to pick one book, boy, that's a tough pick, but I think Moneyball is right up there.
The Big Short is up there, although it's complicated and Flash Boys are up there. What I like about Michael Lewis is, besides him just being a fantastic storyteller, is to me he writes about Information asymmetry where one group has more information about something than the other and how they exploit that to their benefit.
So his first book was Liars Poker when he was Solomon Brothers, maybe he was at one of the big investment firms back in the eighties. He had come outta London School of Economics and he was wet behind the ears and he just kept one of those trading desks, which was kind of built up the mortgage trade industry that decades later led to the 2008 crisis that he also wrote about in the Big Short, he was so good at writing about the Big Short because he was there.
The creation of this stuff decades before was amazing and so Liars Poker talks about his experiences doing this, but he also talks about how some people had more information, than others and how they exploited this asymmetry. That's my take on him. I don't think I've heard anybody else characterize his books about information asymmetry, but a lot of them are, Moneyball is a perfect example how the Oakland As, you know, used a different way of thinking about.
Putting together a baseball team on a much smaller budget in order to make a fantastic team. You know, there's the movie about it, The Blindside, same thing. Football player, Michael Oher there's one more book I was gonna say about him, but I can't, oh no, not a book, but an article he wrote for, I think the New York Times.
About college football coach Mike Leach. Mike Leach came to fame when he was running the Texas Tech offense back in right 2008, and his teams would score like mad and playing football the way nobody else was with the spread offense, which is something that basically every college football team now uses some form of spread, and it's taught in high school.
The article by Michael Lewis talks about very clearly picks apart how Mike Leach thinks about the game differently than everybody else. It's a perfect compact example. I will find the link to put in the show notes cause if you wanna get an example of how Michael Lewis writes and how he what he writes about this is a good primer.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, what a great add. Yes. There's so many Michael Lewis books that I do love. So I'm glad that you brought this up.
You actually gave a whole lot of books. I just wanna point out you just one guy, be an author. So yeah, everybody's got a giant list now for just that one guy.
George Drapeau: I'll read anything he writes.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. So what should, what should I put next on my list? Yeah, I'm gonna go with Playing Big. So this book is called Playing Big, Practical Advice for Women Who Wanna Speak Up, Create and Lead. And All Men should read this book.
George Drapeau: Really? Really?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Because. It's so, I mean, I learned so much reading this book, I learned so much about women and I am one, so what does that tell you?
Okay, so, so men definitely. I go back to it and I use it and reference it all the time. And what's valuable about it is for one part, it really helps explaining why women are struggling with confidence with. I think by now we all understand like it is harder for women to be confident in their work, to own their expertise.
We know that, you know, women tend to not ask for raises as much. We know women tend to not apply for jobs that they don't check all the boxes of qualifications on. We struggle in that arena much more than men do. It's not all women, all men, but there's plenty of research and academia around this.
Yeah. But the why of it, she really digs into that and spells it out, and it's not rocket science or anything. You couldn't just Google and know, but she spells it out in the book in a way that really was helpful to me in just having this aha moment of, well, of course, no wonder it's like that. It's not me, it's not, women are just our brains are different. It's, it's not that, right? It's not this like men are from Mars, women are from Venus scenario. We're all trying to, women are trying to operate in a system of work that was never intended to have them in it, the way it was built initially, we couldn't work.
And so it kind of starts from that. And it starts from just kind of the foundation of societies. Western culture, that foundation and how it was built and what the role of women is supposed to be and how that's been changing and the struggle of that.
That's the reality of what we're living in. She talks about that and then she talks about what do we do about it, and she lays out all these very, like it's, the book is like a workbook. You can go through the chapters and do the actual steps, and you can then, choose which parts of this really work for you, so you don't have to do, it's not like you have to do all 10 steps.
It's here's 10 tools and try them and then take the ones that really work for you. Mm-hmm. And it's really empowering, I go to it a lot, I'll reference it for my clients in another way for them to think about how to approach what they're struggling with.
Wow. And it is about helping women, you know, play big. That's basically what it is. How do we help you sort of step into your expertise and really own it and live in that confidently and use it to its full extent as opposed to what women tend to do, which is hold back. Mm-hmm. We hold ourselves back.
So I think men should read it because if you read that, you'd have this understanding of, wow, women have to think that way. Wow. Women have to do that. Like, I think it would give you such a great perspective on, like, for you, thinking about what your wife experiences trying to be a, you know, she's a strong, intelligent leader in business and she's up against a lot just in her own head of being a woman, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah. That's cool.
Camille Rapacz: Even if she's not working with men. Like, this isn't about because I work with men. It's just about how women have the, the work for women has been shaped over time. It's really about that perspective.
George Drapeau: Interesting. Mm-hmm. Okay. Huh I like that.
Camille Rapacz: What's your next book?
George Drapeau: I'll go with The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Yeah. Highly influential to me, and I've listened read that book and its successor solution. Listened to the book in three different forms. There's A talk that he did that was maybe 45 minutes long.
Something like that. And it's a great condensation of the book. I will find that as well. There's a short version of it. I forget where, and then the full book, the Innovator's Dilemma, which talks about how companies who are highly successful.
What happens when they become super successful and then they have a hard time at the next level of innovation and how they get caught up to, and take it over by disruptors. Many examples in there, which I won't go into, just, I'm gonna stop here and say, I think I like the way Clayton Christensen explains very clearly and patiently.
But I noticed you have Clayton Christensen and I think it was his last book before he passed away, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. How will you measure your life?
George Drapeau: I have not read it. Yeah. So what's that one?
Camille Rapacz: It's great. I think of it as like the, the book I recommend to workaholics. Wow. Or people who are really, you know, you're defining your worth by the job that you have.
Right. That's what we do. Yeah. And it makes sense he's writing this later in life. Yeah. It's the wisdom of having lived this full, very successful life, but also realizing my worth isn't the number of hours I put into my job. And that sounds like a, I feel like I'm really oversimplifying, how could he write an entire book about it?
He's just a wonderful writer and you should just read it because it will, yeah. It will help you reframe how you think about how you're moving through life and how you 're tackling your professional aspects of your life, whether you're running a business, working in, whatever you're doing, it will help you to sort of rethink and reframe it in a really good way, in a really good way.
Yeah, highly recommend.
George Drapeau: Okay. I, I should put that on my list cause I, I love him too. I think I would, I've liked everything I've read and heard. Okay. Yeah. Do I go again?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Now that you made me recommend that one. Yeah, go ahead.
George Drapeau: I just thought, yeah, it was interesting. We both have Clayton Christensen on our list and different books, but for similar reasons.
That guy's great.
Okay. So this one is just a phenomenal book. It's one of my favorite books, ever favorite nonfiction books ever. It's Guns, Germs, and Steal by Jared Diamond.
Camille Rapacz: Ooh, that's a good one.
George Drapeau: And yeah, the reason I like it is because I think it's just a fantastic example of getting to root causes. I mean, the story, so, I'll tell you about the book. So he opens by talking about the Spanish conquistadors going to South America and just ravaging the continent. And he asks, well, why did that happen?
Why were there so imbalanced? Like for one reason, the Spanish had all these weapons and armor that the native South Americans just didn't, they had guns and steel. But they also carried, you know, it was like small pox and I don't know what else, what are the diseases. And wiped out a lot of the South American, North America has happened as well when Europeans came over. And he asked, well, why did that happen? I, you know, growing up, I mean I've learned this history and I've never really asked myself, well, why didn't it go the other way as well? That's an obvious question and when I hear him ask it, but like, why didn't diseases that the North and South Americans have kill off a bunch of the invaders would cuz it, that didn't happen. Oh yeah. That's a great, yeah. Now I wanna know why. So he starts with why did the the conquest happen? It's because they had these weapons, they had this technology and they had germs that kill off these people. Then he goes and ask, well, why did one side have them and not the other?
So then he talks about where these germs, infectious diseases come from. Most of these things hop from animals to us. Well, they have animals in South America, but it's domesticated animals. And we live with domesticated animals that live with us. Well, why did they have domesticated animals and not the other guys?
So he talks about where domestication comes from. It's like, well, this is farming. Well, where did farming come from? And he keeps going and digging and digging and digging until he gets to this, keeps asking why. And you learn so much along the way, which just his exploration, I. Keeps going until he gets to, what do you think is a root cause? And I won't say what the root cause is, but if people ask, if you send questions on the podcast, then we will respond and tell you George's take on the root cause of the book, guns, germs, and steal. I mean, it's a fascinating way of looking at the world, but what stuck out to me was the exploration of root causes, taking a question and asking why.
And you think, I mean, most of us I think stopped at that question, including myself, and I think of myself as a pretty good root cause, guy like, ah. You got me. Keeps going and go. It's an amazing book. It's not an easy book to read, but it is very satisfying in my opinion.
Camille Rapacz: I love that you brought up this book as such a great example of root cause.
Cause we've talked about that too on the podcast. Just the idea that we tend to not do that in business. We tend to, we're at work and we're just like, oh, that must be the reason. Okay, I'm gonna go fix it. Yeah. But there's always another layer underneath that. Because we're not taking the time to get, cuz we're moving too fast, right?
Yes. Ugh. So good.
George Drapeau: What you got?
Camille Rapacz: Should we do at least one more? How many more do you have on your list?
George Drapeau: I Mm. I could stop here. I have one that's a non-book. It's a podcast recommendation. My main book recommendation. I'm gonna, this is, this is good for me.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. We'll do another book and then you can do a podcast too. Okay. I have more, plenty, more books on my list that I'll put in the show notes.
George Drapeau: I know. I want you to talk about all your books, man. We'll just be four hours.
Camille Rapacz: I know. Let's see. I'm gonna say, oh, these are a close tie. Yeah, I do need to talk about two more books. So one of them is, and this is a book that is specifically written for business owners, but I actually think like all people in business would benefit from reading this book. And it's called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.
George Drapeau: Oh.
Camille Rapacz: And it's basically the tagline is why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it. Whoa. And the reason that I think this book is so great is it's most books about business. They always have some little what do I wanna say? Some little spin or some little, like their personal take and what you really should do is this in your business. Yeah. This book is just, this is just how business works. So if you wanna understand business as an entire system and how it all works together and what you would need to pay attention to if you were a small business owner starting, cuz you could easily then translate all of that to, oh, then that's what that means in a big business on scale.
So if you're working in one little piece of business and you wanna have an understanding of the whole system, this book is great and it's a very actionable book. So if you're a small business owner, you absolutely have to read this book because it will tell you, these are all the pieces of the system you need to build out and how you need to think about them because the whole and the reason that he, so E myth stands for entrepreneurial myth.
Oh, which is the myth to bust is that being an expert or having a great product means I'm gonna have a great business. And he is like, nope, that does not mean that you can create a great or successful business, or that you're gonna be good at this. And here's how you can be good at it. Here's what you need to know.
So it's very focused on how to be good at business regardless of what your business is.
George Drapeau: That's cool.
Camille Rapacz: And I love it because we do have this myth of like, oh, if I just come up with this great idea, I'll be super successful. Right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's total bull. Like that's not, I could be the most amazing business consultant, coach, whatever.
It doesn't matter if I don't actually know how to run my business yeah. I need to know how to manage the financial piece, I need to know how to run solid operations. I need to know how to do marketing. So he goes through all of them and he, and he uses an actual business as an example, as he walks through it, which makes it really great to just understand clearly what he's talking about.
And I also love it because it is absolutely not a hustle your butt off to build your business kind of book, which so many books are in the small business world, telling you how to build your small business. And I just think there's a lot of books out there that just have really bad advice and there's very few books that just speak very generally about the business itself as a system and how to do it well. And that's what really, another reason I love this book.
I also think about it as it really is emphasizing kind of like the boring part of business, cuz let's face the exciting part is like what I get to do and what I'm good at and the programs I can build or the products that I put out are right. Yeah. There's all this underlying stuff that frankly is just the boring stuff.
Yeah. But it's it. It's actually what makes it successful. All the boring stuff is what will make your business successful and that's what he tells you. It's fabulous.
George Drapeau: That's cool. Wow. Yeah. Sounds amazing. Okay. You said something was tied with that.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I gotta do this other one too. Can I do a double take?
George Drapeau: Yeah, please.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. So my other book that I highly recommend is, called Quiet, the Power of Introverts. In a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, she has a super popular TED Talk. You could just watch the TED Talk and I think it would give you a really great understanding of what this is all about.
So extroverts and introverts all should read this book. As an introvert, I found it similar to when I read Playing Big, I found it very helpful to help me explain some of myself to myself. Yeah, well that's what's going on. Oh, that's what I'm doing. Well, that's why that's happening. But more importantly, what it does is it she really emphasizes that we live in, in Western society specifically.
So extroverts are the winners. They're the ones considered more qualified, smarter. They have these great sociability skills, like we put extroverts at the top of the list. We do, yeah. Nice job, George. Yeah. Yeah. You got white privilege and extrovert working in your favor.
George Drapeau: I know. It's awesome.
Camille Rapacz: Insane. It's awesome. So what she talks about is what the strengths are of being an introvert. But also then why we struggle in the extrovert world and she talks about it as not, it's not just an either or, it's, and so it's just not this black and white thing either.
Introverts can extrovert, we're all in a spectrum. It's not just you're either or. We all have a little bit of both, but some tend to lean one way or the other. She explains all of that and how that works and how you know. She defines introvertness separate from shyness, which I found really helpful.
And that there is such thing as a shy extrovert, which I don't think people think about that much. And one of the things that this also led to was me discovering how many famous people who go up on stage or are actors for a living are total introverts. And we don't think of people who can get up in front of people and do that and be vulnerable in, in that way is also.
Being an introvert, we sort of think that, we sort of put that as like, well, that must be what an extrovert looks like, but it's not. Yeah, yeah. So I just love that she really digs into this in a very thoughtful way because we tend to toss these terms around very lightly. And she gives it much more depth and meaning and understanding that makes you then really value the both and like, oh, we need both extrovert and introvert in creating this diversity. Like even thinking of when you mentioned the Wisdom of Crowds, you want a little bit of both in that crowd so that you're getting the benefits that both bring to the table.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I have not listened to Susan Cain or read her yet, but I saw on my priority list. Interestingly for me, I've heard about her from both you and our stepsister. Both strong, both introverts, both strong believers in her. Yes. And both of you two are very smart. So I think if you both like her, she's somebody I need to read.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, it's very helpful I think also for extroverts, because you probably have lots of introverts in your life and you'll go, aha. Like, you'll just, such a great understanding of people and their needs and how they're, why they're doing what they do will just make, they'll help you make some more sense of it and help you interact with them better.
George Drapeau: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, I love that aspect of it too.
Camille Rapacz: I also know a lot of marriages tend to be like, at least most of the people I know, I would be curious, I should Google this, I wonder what the stats are on this, extrovert married to an introvert, I. Huh. Right. That's my marriage. Yeah. I think that's your marriage, right?
I do too. Yeah. I know. So like, I'm trying to think if I know anybody who's not like that. It's very rare that they don't have a little both. And so I think even for couples, if you read this book, be like, oh, that's, some of it would explain some of your interactions or some of your, you know, your asks of each other.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Camille Rapacz: Alright, these are great. Your turn.
George Drapeau: My last thing is a podcast. It's a podcast I've been listening to for years, and there's actually two, two podcasts by these guys. It's the Manager Tools podcast, so go to manager- tools.com. They have these podcast episodes that they record weeks me on every conceivable aspect of management. They're, they are verbose, but the promise they make is that every topic they talk about, they will make actionable and they follow through on that promise. Like they have a 35 minute podcast on shaking hands, which is 35 minutes on that.
But you know what? It's actionable. They tell you how to shake hands properly and they spend a lot of time talking about why and all kinds of stuff. So it's in a way kinda ridiculous. But it's great. They also have a Career Tools podcast, a lot of the same topics, A lot of topics overlap and it's, that's more for, if you're not a manager, an individual contributor, but you're in a business environment, what to do.
It's great. I've gotten a lot of great advice from that podcast.
Camille Rapacz: Wow. Okay. I did not come up with a podcast recommendation, so I love that you did
George Drapeau: The Belief Shift!
Camille Rapacz: I'm gonna start, listen,
George Drapeau: that's your podcast recommendation!
Camille Rapacz: our podcast, of course. But I'm gonna start listening to this podcast.
That sounds fantastic. We will definitely have to put a link to that in the show notes, so you'll have to send me that. All right. I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I have like six other books on my list, so I will put them in the show notes. Awesome. I'm just gonna rattle them off really fast just so people have a sense of it.
Cause Yeah. Some of these you might have heard of. So Leadership is An Art by Max De Pree. Did you read, you didn't read that George, did you? No, that's an old book. That's like 1980s. That's one of the oldest books on my list. Mm-hmm. It's also one of the shortest ones. So there's that one. Start With Why Simon Sinek.
Yeah. You could also just do watch his TED Talk that would tell you. All you need to know with Start With Why.
Yeah, that's, that's true.
You don't really have to read the whole book. I mean, it is a good book, but it also has a workbook and it's really about starting with why in business instead of what.
Yeah. And it is foundational to everything that I do. Why are we doing what we're doing is always the first question we should ask.
Five Dysfunctions of Team Patrick Lencioni. Do you know this guy? Do you know this thing?
George Drapeau: I've heard this, but I've not read it.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, it's great for team building when you're really looking at well, what causes a team to be dysfunctional.
So he talks about trust, conflict commitment, accountability, and attention to results. And he talks about what you do about that. And it's really great if you're looking for something very substantial and actionable for team building. Not team building like I would trust falls team building, like actually raising performance.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And then I kinda have a double by the same author. The, the main one is called Humble Inquiry: the Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Edgar Schein is the author. He also wrote Humble Leadership, Humble Consulting. So he did other takes on how to put humility into these other parts of business. And just lovely actually the second book he wrote, co-wrote with his son, so that's kind of fun.
George Drapeau: Oh, cool.
Camille Rapacz: But really great, just really about being more relationship based, more about investing in people, building relationships, all of that kind of focus, which is great.
Wow. That's awesome.
And then the last one I'll mention is and I have some of this guy's books are on my list yet to read which is author Adam Grant. And the one book I was gonna mention is called Give and Take. I love that book. I like the way that Adam Grant thinks and he has his latest book that I just can't believe I haven't read yet because the title just sounds exactly like something I would wanna read is Think Again, the Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.
George Drapeau: Yeah, cool.
Camille Rapacz: That just came out like a couple years ago, so that one's been on my list to read, and yeah, my list is way too long.
George Drapeau: These are fun. These are great. Yeah, so happy to see your list.
Some of these I had no idea about and no idea that you'd read them. This is really cool.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, this was fun for me too. You definitely added books to my list, but also reiterated books that I like. Oh yeah, I did wanna read that book. Shoot. I gotta get back to it now. So very helpful.
George Drapeau: Yeah. That's great.
Camille Rapacz: All right. There's your summer reading list. Everybody grab a book, whichever one sounds most intriguing to you or maybe even most challenging, like, I don't know, is that something I need to, sometimes those are the best books we have to read, is just getting out of our comfort zone on some books.
George Drapeau: Yeah, that's true.
Camille Rapacz: If you have thoughts about books that maybe we should have had on our list that we didn't, that you love and wanna recommend to us you should leave us a voicemail at
George Drapeau: Oh yeah.
Camille Rapacz: thebeliefshift.com or we are definitely gonna be showing up now on LinkedIn a lot more. So you can always message us on there. At least once a week there will be a post out about the podcast, but I'll start sharing more out there as well. But you can always find us there and, and shoot us a message so at Camille Rapacz or at George Drapeau, you'll see us hanging out on LinkedIn.
George Drapeau: Let us have it. Bring it.
Camille Rapacz: All right. Thanks for the fun, George.
George Drapeau: Yeah, thank you. This was great.
Camille Rapacz: Thanks everybody.
We'll be back in your ears next week probably with the summer shorts episode. So tune in for just a few minutes of fun.
George Drapeau: Wear your shorts. Listen to shorts.
