Books

Books that changed the way I listen

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There are books that never teach me anything grand.

They simply make me start listening to life with a different pair of ears.

The three below are like that.

What I am writing here is not a book review.

I am only noting down what changed inside me after I closed them.

01 — Profit First

Cover of the Vietnamese edition of Profit First — Dòng tiền gắn liền lợi nhuận — Dòng tiền gắn liền lợi nhuận — Mike Michalowicz

I used to think I understood my own business, until I realised I only understood revenue.

This book does not speak to me in the voice of a finance textbook.

It speaks with a very ordinary question: after all that busyness, what is left at the end of the month?

I began to look at a business differently.

Not at the pretty numbers on a report.

But at the cash flow, at its ability to survive, at its real health.

Since then, whenever I sit and listen to a shop owner talk about their trade, I hear it differently.

I hear the silences behind the numbers too.

I understand why someone can be full of customers and still be exhausted.

And I learned something simple: work only lasts when it can feed the person who makes it.

02 — The Pumpkin Plan

Cover of the Vietnamese edition of The Pumpkin Plan — Kế hoạch bí ngô — Kế hoạch bí ngô — Mike Michalowicz

There was a time I believed that going far meant doing many things at once.

This book offered me the opposite way of seeing.

Begin with small things.

Find the one that truly fits you.

Stay with it patiently until it is good.

And only then, step by step, grow.

What I learned lies not in the method, but in the choosing.

Choosing what to keep, and what to let go.

After this book, I listen to the market with less hurry.

I listen to my customers more carefully, especially the ones who stay the longest.

And I also learned to listen to myself, to know what I can do well and do for a long time, rather than what I am merely trying to match someone else at.

03 — The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

Cover of the Vietnamese edition of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur — Khởi nghiệp từ khốn khó — Khởi nghiệp từ khốn khó — Mike Michalowicz

I did not read this one as someone looking for inspiration.

I read it as someone who had already failed.

There were chapters where I had to stop, because I saw myself inside them.

The book is about beginning when nothing in your hands is favourable.

About seeing hardship as part of the journey, not as a full stop.

About rebuilding from exactly what you already have, however little that is.

For me, that is nothing strange.

I too began again from a wheelchair, from limits I did not choose.

The book never promised me that things would become easy.

It only said there is still a way to keep going.

For someone who has fallen, sometimes that is enough.

Three books, three quiet friends.

They do not live my life for me.

They only sit down beside me, and teach me to listen a little more closely.

To listen to a piece of work.

To listen to a person.

And to listen to myself, on very ordinary evenings.