Private Club Radio Show

478: Books That Build Better Leaders

• Denny Corby

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In this solo episode of Private Club Radio, Denny Corby shares a personal list of books that changed how he shows up as a leader and decision maker, with practical takeaways for private club professionals who want to lead better, communicate better, and stay sharp under pressure. Denny breaks down lessons on creating access when the standard route is blocked, pushing through resistance, recognizing how leadership issues become behavioral as you rise, protecting your edge, focusing on effort as the one controllable lever, and staying open when life gets unpredictable. Books covered include The Third Door, The War of Art, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, How to Win at the Sport of Business, The Surrender Experiment, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

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Welcome to the Private Club Radio Show, the show where you get the scoop on life inside private golf and country clubs. I'm your host, Danny Corby, and each episode is a real conversation with club leaders, the pros, the people, and partners who help clubs thrive. We talk leadership, culture, food and beverage, member experiences, member engagement, marketing, governance, and so much more. If you want practical ideas, better teams, and a club experience members actually feel and talk about, you're in the right place. Now, welcome to the show. In this episode, I am going to share with you some of my favorite books. Not magic books, but books on business, books on leadership, books on the mental game. This isn't an interview, there's no fluff, there's no industry hot takes. It's just some of my favorite books that have brought me joy, that have brought me information, that have taught me things that I have shared with other people and that I want to share with you. And speaking of sharing, before we get to the episode, I want to share with you that thanks to many of you, my schedule is very full for this year for 2026. And if you are looking for some really fun entertainment, a really fun, interactive comedy, magic, and mind reading show with a ton of laughs, gasps, and holy craps that your members are going to rave about. Check out the Denny Corby experience. Head on over to dennycorby.com. That's where I bring my show to the club. There is so much fun, so much audience engagement, so much banter and interaction. Enough about all that. Let's get to the episode. These books are in no particular order. First up is a book called The Third Door. It's by an author named named Alex Benin Benignin. I might be mispronouncing that and I apologize. And the book is all about access. And I'm not talking access like privilege, but access like persistence, creativity, and finding the path that is not listed on the website. His his theory is basically asking how do you get in the room when the official process is slow, when the process is guarded or it's built to keep you out. And instead of just treating it as a dead end, you treat it like a puzzle. And the whole book follows his journey of chasing conversations with high-level people by finding unconventional ways to reach them. Not shady, not manipulative, not anything like that, just relentlessly resourceful. And the whole book is kind of based around the story that uh he hacks his way onto the price is right, which is hilarious. But the bigger point is bigger than the stunt. It's the proof of concept. It's sometimes the answer really is straightforward. You just have to ask, apply, show up, do the work. And sometimes the situation demands a different approach, a creative angle, a smarter route, a way to create a yes when the default answer is we cannot do that. We don't do that. And my note on this is just I love the story and I love the journey because there's always a way. And I love how he keeps finding ways to stay in motion instead of getting stuck. And I love the core idea, which is results are not reserved for people with perfect access. They are reserved for people who keep trying things until something opens. Uh, it's just a really fantastic book, uh, and I love it. If you read it, I was I read it and was hooked. Uh, then I also listened to it and he speaks the books. You get a lot of really cool uh energy in it that he gets to spew out. So highly recommend the book, The Third Door, by Alex Benin. Next is the War of Art, not the Art of War, The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. This is not a feel-good book, it's a get honest book. And Pressfield gives gives a name to the force that blocks all meaningful work, and that is resistance. Not fear in the dramatic sense, more like friction, the invisible drag that shows up the moment you have to try to do something that actually matters, right? When you have to write the proposal, make the hard decisions, record the thing, have the conversation. Resistance is the voice that says, not today, buddy. But he frames it in a way that I think leaders should hear. And that is most of us have two lives, the life that we live in the unlife and the unlived life within us. And between those two stands resistance. And that line is the whole book. And then he draws a sharp dist a sharp distinction that I love. And it is that the amateur plays for fun and the professional plays for keeps. Meaning the pro shows up even when it is inconvenient, even when they're tired, even when it's not glamorous. And and it's just a great book. It's an easy read. I usually read it about once a year, usually at the beginning of the year to kind of kick my ass a little bit. But it's just really about all overcoming resistance and that kind of internal battle and that internal monologue. And in that amateur versus professional line, uh, as a really good gut check in the absolute best way. Next is What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. And that's this is probably one of the best books I've ever read on leadership at a very high level. And because it's not about your talent, it's about your behavior. And he points that out very plain and very simple and very painful. Because it's, it's as you rise, the thing that holds you back are rarely technical. They're interpersonal. The higher you go, the more problems uh you encounter are behavioral. How you listen, how you respond under stress, how you make people feel after a meeting, how you make people feel in the meeting, how you handle disagreement, how you recover when you're wrong, how you recover when other people are wrong. And he gets very, very practical. One of the most simple, useful ideas that I love is for leaders to stop using the language that starts with no but however. So when someone's someone expresses something or says something, it's not about saying or starting the very first, the very next sentence with no, but however, even when you know you're right, because those words, those openers tend to erase the other person. It creates friction that you didn't need. And this is where just, you know, whenever somebody says something, instead of saying no, but however, it's yes and oh, how about, you know, so there's other ways and phrases to go about that that help you keep your standards because you can disagree and you can also keep the conversation moving instead of turning it into a wall. And that's just one of so many great nuggets in that entire book. It's very well written, it's easy to read and a double thumbs up in my book. Up next is How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban. Yes, Mark Cuban wrote a book, and I love the book because it is short, which I really respect. It's short to the point and just full of great nuggets. And uh one of the core things in there is his idea about developing an edge and not some like mysterious edge, but just about being the person who learns faster, adapts better, and stays sharp. And I really like that that edge part because uh if you're a uh fan of the show Entourage, Ari Gold, uh who was who was the the manager in in the show, um uh Jeremy Piven, he actually wrote a book as Ari Gold called the Gold Standard, which is all of which is all of his like business things. And one of one of the lines in there, which is so good in it, and it and it reminded me of of this when I was reading Mark Cuban's book, which is never round your corners because that's how you lose your edge. And another cool part of the book was a really small section. It was, it was just about how no matter where you're at, no matter what opportunity you have, no matter what job you have, no matter what position you're in, you're getting paid to learn. Meaning you have to put yourself in the position where you are building skills, building insight, building leverage, building connections, all while moving forward. And a line that I come back to all the time, and he talks about in the book is is effort, because effort is controllable. Talent is messy, timing is messy, markets are messy, but effort is yours and you can control that. You can control how much you put into it, you can you can control how much value you bring to the table. So it is a really great quick read. Next one is the surrender experiment by Michael Singer. This one is different because he runs an experiment where he stops forcing his personal preferences onto everything. Instead, he practices saying yes to what shows up and following the next clear step. Not in a passive way, more like let me stop arguing with reality and see what opens up if I stay available, if I stay open. This one is a little bit more, I don't want to say floozy. Floozy is not the right word, but you're picking up what I'm putting down. It's a little bit more esoteric, a little bit more not so much straightforward like the other books, like some of the other business books. It's a deeper book, but it's also strangely practical because a lot of stress comes from trying to control outcomes that are not ours to control. And now I will say I listened to this at a very strange time, and it also hit me at an oddly strange time. So I was listening to this back in March of 2020, and we all know March of 2020 was a very, very weird time. And a lot of people don't know this. I I've shared it a few places to a couple friends, and uh I'll I'll share it here on the podcast. But back in 2020, my whole world collapsed. Or I thought my whole world was collapsing. My whole career was collapsing. Because up until March of 2020, I was working on building my entertainment and perform and performing career. I was performing at some of your clubs, I was traveling all over, I was really building things up. I just got off pen and tell or fool us. I it things were going great. And I remember flying home from a gig in Vegas, and everything just started collapsing. Gigs were canceling, people, you know, weren't doing shows, and I just saw years of hard work. All the things I did just to build up just drop, just just be gone. And a lot of people don't know this, but I sulked at home for about a week or two, a lot of wine, and I went back to work for work for my dad. Uh, we we we we have a family business, and I went from headlining shows to cleaning the warehouse. Um, because you know, I I didn't know how long all this was gonna last. We didn't know if it was a month, three months, six months, a year. And I didn't want to wait three, four, five, six months, you know, however long down the road. And now all of a sudden I wasn't doing shows or wasn't trying to do anything. So now I'm going to investments or savings. So I was like, hey, let me just go ask dad if they need help anywhere. I think he just acquired somebody. So uh they they needed help cleaning the warehouse. They had space they had to have do quick inventory and like sweep and clean it up to get ready for different new product coming in. And I was listening to a ton of audiobooks, and this was uh this was one of those audiobooks, and it hit right at the right time. Um, and you know, it's a re it's a reminder that sometimes the move is not to grip tighter. Sometimes the move is to stay open long enough to find the next thing. And um yeah, so it was it it was a it was a deeper book, it's a great book. He pretty much goes from you know, a monk to like he was like literally he was a monk with nothing and built this little community, which then led to him building a huge software company. So just a wild story, but it it really hit at the right time, and I thought it was also a really good book. And the last one I want to share, and this is probably the simplest book on the list, and honestly, maybe one of the truest, and that is Oh, the places you will go by Dr. Seuss, because it's about momentum, it's about setbacks, it's about weird seasons, and it's about the reality that growth is not a straight line. You're gonna have days where everything clicks, you're gonna have seasons where you've where you feel stuck in neutral, and you're gonna have moments where you wonder if you're the only adult who does not have it all figured out, the only person that doesn't have it all figured out. And the book keeps pulling you back to the same idea. You keep going. Not perfectly, just forward. And to me, it's just it's just a classic, and it summarizes, I think, almost every business book, every book in general, and almost every book I just talked about here on this, and somehow makes it feel more true. I I don't know, but I just thought it was a great book and almost just summarizes everything. And sometimes it's those simple, easy books that hit home the most than you know, some of these really thick, deep business books with graphs and stuff. Sometimes you just need a really good Dr. Seuss book to hit you where you need it. So that is my list. Hopefully you read them all, read one, read some. Um, I'm I'm a big reader and listener to books and just content and just information. Uh, those are some of my favorites. If you have read any of them, I would love to hear it and what you've actually applied. Or if you found any of these interesting and you're going to do more, you know what? Connect with me on LinkedIn or send me a message, or if we're friends, send me a text. If you don't have my number, send me an email. And if you don't have my email, you can reach out to my website, reach out to me there, dennycorby.com. And also if you want to book a show too, it's a great place to look. But no, uh, that that is this episode. And I hope you all took something away because the goal is the goal with this wasn't to read more, to force you to read more. The goal is just to be better and to do better. That's all. That's this episode. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Danny Corby. Catch y'all on the flippity flip.

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Denny Corby

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