Bookapero / Business
July 2026 picksBuilding, buying, and keeping control of a business, by people who have actually done it.
This shelf rotates monthly. Every pick is $2.99 or less on Kindle, verified at the time of listing. Kindle prices can change, so check before you buy.
St. Pierre built a company past $50 million, got fired from it, then grew another past $100 million. The book is the post-mortem plus the playbook: seven principles for scaling without giving away your equity or your control. The recurring theme is that most founders lose their companies not to competitors but to their own growth decisions.
For: the owner growing fast with a quiet suspicion the growth is running them.
Muller’s argument: don’t start a business, buy one. He owns eight companies that run without him and lays out how to acquire a profitable local business, install a manager, and work a few hours a week on it. Contrarian to the whole startup genre, and refreshingly uninterested in changing the world.
For: anyone who wants to own a business but has no appetite for the two-year ramen phase.
A strategy book with an odd but defensible thesis: when you’re outmatched, certainty is a liability and ambiguity is a tool. Crawford, a strategist who has studied movements and organizations for two decades, builds the case through historical examples rather than frameworks. The thinking-person’s pick on this list.
For: the underdog tired of strategy advice that assumes a level playing field.
Pugliese won the highest award in his field of newspaper photography and was offered a 3 percent raise. That did it. He and his wife started a side photography business one month before their baby arrived, and within four years had paid off everything including the house and left their jobs. The book is the how: half memoir, half manual for building a freelance business that buys back your time.
For: the freelancer who is fully booked and somehow still broke.
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