Jonathan Stark is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts and host of the Ditching Hourly podcast. He has spent two decades helping independent consultants escape the trap of trading time for money. In this conversation, Jonathan breaks down why hourly billing structurally undermines knowledge workers and shares the mindset shifts and practical tools—value pricing, fixed-fee proposals, and access retainers—that can transform a professional services practice.
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Finding Value in Numbers
Most finance books recycle the same material. Finding Value in Numbers doesn’t. Mark Gandy sits down with author Ehsan Ehsani to unpack a book he calls his new favorite finance read with math—and he’s read nearly all of them. From ROIC adjustments to marginal investing frameworks, Ehsan brings fresh thinking to fundamental investing in a way that’s both intellectually rigorous and genuinely approachable.
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Would You Work for Chainsaw Al Dunlap?
Al Dunlap didn’t just cut costs — he cut everything. When he took over Sunbeam in 1996, he slashed 6,000 jobs, closed factories, and sent the stock soaring. Wall Street loved him. But behind the numbers was a fraud: cooked books, phantom sales, and a company quietly dying. By 1998, he was fired, banned by the SEC, and Sunbeam was bankrupt. Was he a turnaround genius or a corporate psychopath? My friend Gordon Graham joins me to find out.
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Sales Punks Who Bash Outdated Playbooks
Kyle Hegarty is a gifted, story-driven writer, best known for his first book, The Accidental Business Nomad. His newest book, Sales Punks, tackles the sales recession facing B2B teams and offers remedies for an outdated playbook. Kyle breaks down the difference between the seller’s journey and the buyer’s journey—and why that mindset shift is critical. You don’t need to work in sales to enjoy this one. Plus, Mark shares his seven all-time favorite sales books.
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Gimme a Crisis With Howard Green
One of the best business books I’ve read in the past five years is Railroader by Howard Green, and it’s easily in my Top 100 business reads of all time. Howard’s newest book is about another CEO who spent 43 years at Scotiabank, known as Canada’s most international financial institution. The CEO is Rick Waugh, and it is a perfect, very readable case study of leadership during a crisis and extreme economic challenges.
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The Bottomless Cup With Kevin Boehm
James Beard Award-winning restaurateur Kevin Boehm has opened 40 restaurants in his 30-year career, collaborating with top chefs while earning Michelin stars. His Boka Group is now one of the world’s most successful restaurant companies. Boehm’s journey has been complex, shaped by a turbulent family life and a shocking revelation about his father that drove him in the restaurant industry. There, he discovered the magic of hospitality and the thrill of a chaotic dining room.
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Superperformance with George Pesansky
Hand me a book by a creative thinker with hands-on experience helping business leaders and organizations of varying sizes get unstuck, full of mental models and thought-provoking frameworks that can be mastered in no time, and I’m hooked. That was the case with George Pesansky’s new book, Superperformance, which helps individuals and organizations achieve their full potential. George is one of those authors who is interesting, compelling, and articulate, and that’s deeply rooted in a unique origin story.
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A Deep Dive Into Stock Exchange Memorabilia
Have you ever wanted to give a gift to someone in the office but had no idea what to buy? Last year, I found myself in that quandary until I discovered Bull Market Gifts, where I found several vintage annual reports. Their collection of New York Stock Exchange memorabilia is stunning, and I was intrigued by how this business was launched, what its best sellers are, and some of the stories behind the products they carry.
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A Case Study in Corporate Fear with Taras Wayner
When I began studying the root causes of business failure early in my career, I believed that faulty cognitive limitations were the primary drivers of poor decisions, ultimately leading to business failure. Taras Wayner is the producer and host of a new podcast called A Case Study in Corporate Fear, where he addresses one of the central emotions in the affective mindset: fear. During this conversation, we learn how fear impacted decisions at Yahoo!, Atari, and Jaguar.
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Revisiting a Good to Great CEO: Nucor’s Ken Iverson
I’m calling Ken Iverson the Alan Mulally of CEOs in the 1980s and 1990s. “Plain Talk” by Ken Iverson is one of my favorite business books, despite its lack of self-congratulation and the absence of so-called transformational management concepts. Instead, this is a book about how people were treated, the idea of decentralization, bonus structures, and using instincts to make business decisions. In this conversation, find out why we rate this a five-star book.
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