I’m often asked, “What book are you currently reading?”
That question pushed me to pause and reflect on what I had actually been reading—and why.
In 2025, my reading was intentional. The central theme was money, not out of obsession, but out of necessity. In the 21st century, money has quietly become one of the most determining factors in how we live, work, and make choices.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry an industry that moves billions of dollars yet many professionals within it struggle to achieve financial security. That contradiction forced me to rethink what I believed about money, value creation, and professional growth. It ultimately shaped my reading choices throughout the year.
I went down the rabbit hole trying to understand why this gap exists and what separates industries and individuals that thrive from those that merely survive. That curiosity naturally led me toward business, strategy, productivity, and systems thinking.
One idea kept resurfacing across almost everything I read:
Money is made by solving a problem that many people need solved.
Put simply: create value, find people willing to pay for it, and repeat.
The books below have significantly shaped how I now think about money, work, health, strategy, and long-term success. What follows are my key takeaways and honest reflections on each of them.
Outlive – Peter Attia
I would recommend this book 100% to any healthcare provider.
This is one of the hardest yet most useful books I have ever read. I picked it up after seeing it recommended by a YouTuber as one of the best books they had read that year, and I thought it would be a good addition to my list. It turned out to be far more demanding than I expected.
The book took me months to finish. The opening chapters were especially difficult because of the seriousness of the subject matter and the heavy medical terminology. I often found myself reading at a very slow pace, sometimes pausing for days before continuing. In fact, I finished two other shorter books while still working my way through this one.
Things began to click for me when I reached the chapter on Understanding Alzheimer’s, and later when he introduced the idea of thinking tactically. From that point, the book became less intimidating and more practical.
Outlive helped me better understand diseases associated with old age—cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and neurodegenerative conditions. Peter Attia strongly emphasizes the role of genetics in determining future health outcomes, while repeatedly reinforcing the idea that many of these diseases are preventable. Where prevention isn’t possible, early diagnosis and slowing disease progression become critical.
If you’re not interested in reading the entire book, I’d recommend skipping straight to the sections on exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and medications. The part where he explains exercise and sustainable weight loss is especially eye-opening.
The E-Myth – Michael E. Gerber
One of my customers once asked me:
“Do they teach how to run a pharmacy business in school? Because I keep looking for this drug and no one seems to have it…”
That question immediately came to mind when I started reading The E-Myth. I wondered whether the book might have answers that could help many struggling business owners—and it absolutely does.
Most pharmacy owners are the business. Remove the owner, and the business collapses. What surprised me is that even large businesses with well-defined job descriptions suffer from the same problem.
The challenge arises when:
There’s more work to do than you can possibly get done.
You become the manager, salesperson, marketer, cleaner, accountant—everything.
Pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists know their technical work very well: handling difficult customers, dispensing prescriptions, patient counselling, organizing the pharmacy, understanding regulations. But when it comes to strategic work—the entrepreneurial work that leads to growth—many struggle.
Michael Gerber explains this through storytelling, outlining the stages of a business: infancy, adolescence, and maturity. From my observation, most businesses are stuck in adolescence because most owners operate as technicians rather than entrepreneurs.
The Entrepreneurial Perspective asks, “How must the business work?”
The Technician’s Perspective asks, “What work has to be done?”
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in building a business that works as a system—not one that collapses when the owner steps away.
Slow Productivity – Cal Newport
The concept of this book is simple:
- Do fewer things
- Work at a natural pace
- Obsess over quality
There’s a common belief that running a pharmacy 24 hours a day automatically increases revenue, or that employees must always appear busy for productivity to exist.
For many business owners:
Productivity equals “working all the time.”
But this definition lacks clear goals or performance measures that distinguish between doing a job well and doing it poorly.
Reading Slow Productivity forced me to rethink what we should actually consider as “work” in the pharmacy sector. Although Cal Newport focuses on knowledge work, the principles apply strongly to supervisors and decision-makers.
Consider two pharmacies making daily sales of KES 50,000. Pharmacy A operates from 9am–8pm. Pharmacy B operates from 7am–midnight. Using revenue alone, it makes little sense to say Pharmacy B is more productive—especially when you factor in staffing, cleaning, and operational fatigue.
In both cases, the same result is produced, but the force driving changes in methods is productivity.
The takeaway is simple: balance effort with outcomes. Do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.
This Is Strategy – Seth Godin
At first glance, this book feels like a collection of tweets or old-school blog posts. Over 200 of these reflections are compiled into This Is Strategy.
The book doesn’t tell you what to do. Instead, it gives direction toward why and who you should focus on.
Strategy is not a set of tactics or short-term wins. It’s a philosophy of becoming—being clear about the change you want to make and who you want to change, understanding the systems and games around you, and committing to a long-term path.
Godin emphasizes that tactics change, but strategy doesn’t.
To me, strategy means knowing when to capitalize on an opportunity and when not to. It’s about deciding who you’re serving, what change you want to make, and what you will consistently say no to.
He outlines four pillars of strategy: systems, time, games, and empathy each deeply relevant to running a pharmacy or any service-based business.
Million Dollar Weekend – Noah Kagan
Who doesn’t want to make a million dollars in one weekend?
I’ll admit—I fell for the clickbait. But it turned out to be a very interesting read. The book is especially useful for anyone looking to launch a product, whether that’s an app, a supplement, or a service tied to pharmacy operations.
The core lessons are simple and recurring:
- Find a real problem people have
- Craft an irresistible solution backed by basic market research
Reading this book helped me realize there is very little pharmacy-related content that people are proud to read, learn from, and share. That gap alone represents an opportunity.
Spoiler alert: I haven’t made a dollar yet.
Noah Kagan explains that most people fail not because of lack of skill or intelligence, but because of fear—fear of starting and fear of asking. I plan to test some of the ideas from this book on a product I’m currently working on and document the process here.
The Diary of a CEO – Steven Bartlett
I listened to Steven Bartlett’s podcast consistently throughout 2025, so reading this book felt like a natural extension.
The book is built around 33 laws grouped into four pillars: the self, the story, the philosophy, and the team. He introduces the idea of filling five buckets in order: what you know, what you can do, who you know, what you have, and what the world thinks of you.
Several stories stood out to me, especially those relevant to leadership, brand building, and reputation—areas many pharmacy owners underestimate.
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
I couldn’t stop reading this book once I started. It left me wondering why it took me so long to pick it up.
I won’t say much to preserve the sense of discovery I experienced, but three lessons stood out clearly:
- Everyone has a unique purpose. Fulfillment comes from having the courage to pursue what truly matters, even when the path is uncertain.
- Growth and wisdom come through experiences, challenges, and failures not just the final achievement.
- Intuition and “omens” guide us when we pay attention. Life often communicates what we need to know if we’re willing to listen.
Conclusion
As I move into 2026, my focus won’t be on reading more books for the sake of it, but on turning ideas into systems, experiments, and better decisions inside the pharmacy.
I’ll continue reading – especially in business and productivity – but with a stronger bias toward execution. Learning without application has limits. The goal now is to consume thoughtfully and create deliberately.
In short: read with intent, act faster, and build more than I absorb.