I was reading this book recently.
There's a bit where this guy - Chuck Feeney, was actually successful, with a couple of ventures that already turned over many millions in profit, and had international offices and staff, etc
On paper, everything looked fine, but the balance sheets would fluctuate wildly, Cashflow was erratic, so he gets his directors together and they have a meeting, which involved them reading from a business book, and passing it around and discussing parts of it.
They suddenly realized that, although they based their management style on GM (separate divisions could make their own decisions, for example) they still had a head office with a treasurer - a kind of 'main guy' in charge of budgets and spending - which they themselves didn't have - the offices could spend whatever they wanted, so they did.
Hence no capital accumulated, which left them dangerously spending their Cashflow like it was a salary. By the time they hired an accountant to act as a treasurer, and merge all the books into one balance sheet, he informed them their 'profits' were just numbers - in reality, they had been pissing money away and rapidly sliding into debt as they had no working capital reserved for overheads/operating costs.
Now, I will be the first to say that guts and execution and a certain perception and mindset will get you far, and info like this could have come from a course, a video, or an adviser or consultant, but for the sake of a $2 used book (or free, from a library, or the internet now) they could have saved millions and avoided a schoolboy error that set them back.
I would say the first 20 'right' books for me helped me greatly, but the right books to unlock potential or fill in the blanks for you may be different.
Having said that, Babylon is pleb tier shit that you should download a one page summary of, or buy for a kid/nephew etc not an adult.
>it was literally written as a series of free pamphlets commissioned by a bank