Your Next Five Moves

Influencer Style

The book has the style of influencer-created YouTube and Instagram videos. These influencers often structure their content to grab attention for short bursts rather than to provide lasting and actionable knowledge. This style felt jarring and frustrating in book format even though it's standard on influencer platforms. Most of the book is structured as numbered lists of "how to find out who to trust" or "things to do when firing someone".

Patrick has obviously been successful in business, but it didn't seem like his recommendations were things that any reasonable person would actually follow, at least as a general pass.

Impossible but Good Ideas

I was shocked at how often his recommendations were things that would be nearly impossible to actually follow through on. One example that stuck with me was him discussing how to manage trust with people you know. He recommended making a list of everyone you know and giving them one of four categories: trusted, witnessed, vetted, fully trusted. On the one hand, I understand why that might be desirable or advice someone might give. On the other hand, no one is actually going to sit down and make a list of everyone they know and sort them into categories.

These kinds of concepts are spread all over YouTube and other influencer-heavy platforms. Creators will come up with advice it would be hard to argue is "bad", but almost no one would actually follow through on.

Varying Viewpoints

The author tends to jump around and play with varying viewpoints throughout the book. At times he speaks as a CEO, a friend, a mentor, or a neighbor. Depending on which bulleted list he's working his way through it might be advice on firing someone (with you as a manager) or advice on which start-up money to take (as an entrepreneur). This was difficult to track and made the book less cohesive.

Overall Thoughts

This wasn't a "bad book" per se, but it I would claim it was very un-actionable. I found myself mildly nodding along with his discussion points, but I didn't find any actionable recommendations once finished.

The title was also misleading. The author did not make mention of business strategy or how to master it. He repeatedly referenced chess grandmasters and how they think, but there was little to no connection of that concept back to actual business strategy. He then decided to break his book into five sections with no real connection back to how they might fit in with business strategy.

I would recommend skipping this book and have placed it relatively low on my "useful" to "not-useful" list.