"The Winding Road to Excellence" is a heartfelt attempt to share leadership lessons through personal stories. It may appeal more to readers who appreciate autobiographical elements in leadership books. However, for those seeking a more systematic or comprehensive guide to leadership, this book might leave them wanting more.

Thank you Net Galley for an advance copy of the audio book, read by the author, in return for an unbiased review.

The idea of Mantras for Excellence is a nice way to break up the lessons learned. He gives examples of how he learned the lesson - sometimes the hard way - which also adds credibility to his advice. He breaks it down into acronyms which can be helpful and annoying. "E squared", "3Fs" "4As" 5 of these and 2 of those - became a bit trite at times but they can be helpful in memorizing the lessons.
Most of the Mantras are tried and true aphorisms - I didn't say cliché, but some of them are. All of the lessons are his lessons.

The other annoying thing about this book was how braggadocious it seems. Yes, you need to tell people why you are qualified to tell people how to run their lives and businesses, but at times it seemed like he was selling himself too much.
I would still recommend the book to people who want to learn about business and how to lead people. It can serve as a good reminder if someone is more experienced and a good basis for people who are just starting out.

A Winding Road to Excellence is a book that offers some interesting insights, particularly for readers who are familiar with the Southern business landscape and its unique perspectives. As a reader, I appreciate the author's ability to tell stories and draw metaphors that resonate well within my realm of familiarity.

However, it is important to note that a significant portion of the book tends to reiterate common sense principles, making it somewhat repetitive. Not only are the same points made throughout the chapters, but entire paragraphs seem to have been copy-pasted without much variation. It is unclear whether this was an oversight or a deliberate choice, but it does affect the overall reading experience.

Nonetheless, the last few chapters of the book redeem it to some extent. Here, the author delves deeper into selling insights and presents a more focused strategy, making these chapters the most engaging and thought-provoking of the entire book. It leaves the reader wanting more, eagerly anticipating a follow-up that could be dedicated solely to sales professionals.

In conclusion, A Winding Road to Excellence offers valuable perspectives and entertaining storytelling, but it falls short on originality and structure. With some refinement and further development of the author's selling insights, it has the potential to become a more comprehensive and impactful book within the realm of sales professionals.

This was a pretty standard, entry level business book that applies to all business types. It follows the structure of: share a quote or quotes, simply state what that quote means to the author, share some antidotes, and repeat the message again. One thing that I disliked was the frequent references to his religion. That may work for some, but I don't feel it belongs in general business books.

The book has a lot of repetition, which makes it a good audio book for a distracted listener, though it was tedious at times, and felt like the book was being padded. The author does stay at the start that he has no real ‘original’ material, and it’s all things he’s come across in his career. I appreciated the honesty, as most books like this are filled with things that are passed around and around without credit. I will say that this one had a few things I hadn’t heard yet, so that was appreciated.

The narration was done well.

Enjoying book, but went through my head easily.

There's something about it that makes it very forgetful, maybe getting another opinion on the writting or trying some other narrator.

Still feels like something is missing.

I really enjoyed this look into various areas of business operations and improvement. I wished I had the physical or digital book as I had to keep stopping to audiobook to take notes. I got several excellent nuggets from Stasnell’s time at an array of companies. I was slightly annoyed that he would repeat the same quotations from other people across multiple chapters. It felt as if he’d run out of original material. Overall, I would recommend this book to others and I’m glad I had the opportunity to read it.

Thank you NetGalley.

I enjoyed the consistent structure of each chapter. There was no jumping around so it was easy to follow along with the topics and the book built nicely, a simple read. I felt motivated and entertained by the enthusiastic narrator and the message. It combined advice from leaders, facts, personal accounts and mantras/quotes to see the positive in any situation. Atomic Habits is one of my favorite "self help" books and this ranks right up there with it. When the physical/kindle version is released I plan to purchase as well so that I can use the book as a motivational reference.

This review has already been posted to Goodreads.

This book was full of lots of encouragement motivation for anyone who is trying to reach a high level of success and is feeling a bit discouraged because they didn't reach their goal on the first try. I love the part where it talked about how culture of a company eats strategy for breakfast. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the world.

Thank you so much to #Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced listening copy for an honest review.