I Assumed This Memoir Was Just Another CEO’s Personal Brand Reinvention. I Was Very Wrong.

You Might Learn About Entrepreneurship Reading Andy Dunn’s Burn Rate But You’ll Learn Much More About Being Human

The realization of how mistaken I’d been hit somewhere around page 24 when the author details slipping into a psychotic state where he believed he was the returning Messiah. You see, my purchase of Andy Dunn’s Burn Rate was primarily to be supportive (I like him), and this past spring, it went from its Amazon package to a ‘Later’ pile in my office. Last weekend, the yellow-covered memoir moved from that stack to my hand. And then I proceeded to binge-read Andy’s memoir.

Burn Rate punched way above its weight, but before I celebrate it, I want to be honest about what caused my initial hesitancy: Skepticism around whether the author was the right avatar to become celebrated for talking openly about mental illness. Andy and I are friendly and have that shared “lots of mutuals” Venn diagram which makes people feel connected. In short, I knew the public-facing version of Andy but actually not much of the human behind. And so my not-overly-generous assumption was this book was going to be more like a press release than a personal journey.