Best-Read Blunders Of 2025
Here's what clicked the most for me on Substack this year. Not my best work, not the biggest story, not even the most-important development – but it clicked.
“Be mindful of clickbait - sensational stories designed to humiliate. Click with compassion.” – Monica Lewinsky
Thanks for sticking with me in 2025 through some of the year’s most painful moments in business.
Laugh when you should be crying, I always say.
Or at least wisen up to the mistakes business leaders repeat each year because they’re trapped in a quarterly mindset, or perhaps they are just plain dumb, mean, disturbed or greedy – and got to where they are because they’re also quite lucky.
Taking an inventory of my work this year, I decided to list the most-viewed posts for each month. I put up more than 160 posts in 2025, and I never really thought about what might rise to the top of my chart. So surprise, surprise.
Perhaps it’s just timing or how well a story was shared or promoted by others.
Sometimes, it’s just putting the word, “sex” in a headline.
Other times I’ve been surprised by more thoughtful posts about authors whose ideas resonate with me.
Both Paul Vigna’s The Almighiter and Dr. Erik Lie’s Catching Cheats: Everyday Forensics To Unmask Business Fraud made the list.
Here are the top-viewed posts for each month of 2025:
December: JPMorgan Chase Can Check Their Butts A young entrepreneur duped the bank out of $175 million. Now her defense lawyers are billing the bank for cellulite butter.
November: A Dead Billionaire Defaults Gary Winnick, the late founder of a failed telecom startup, sacks his lender from beyond the grave.
October: Dr. Lie Erik Lie, a finance professor at the University of Iowa, catches cheats. His numbers don’t lie.
September: Bible Lessons From A Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel says we should worry about the Antichrist. He would know.
August: Stop Counting! Stop Counting! Donald Trump can fire the commissioner at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but we may still suffer a sagging labor market.
July: The Gods Or Money A new book, “The Almightier,” pulls back the temple curtains and reveals what mankind really worships.
June: Silicon Valley Sex Farm OneTaste executives face prison time for a forced labor scheme.
May: Lost In Love Top CEOs who kissed away their jobs.
April: Peter Principle Peter Navarro is a crackpot economist whose forecasts are often muddled with blind ideology, ridiculous conspiracy theories and dubious sources. Nevertheless, some of his predictions for 2025 came true.
March: Bankrupt Barbie 23andMe’s CEO Anne Wojcicki resigns as DNA testing company files Chapter 11.
February: Property Sex A Justice Department crackdown on landlords who sexually harass tenants hasn’t ended the nightmare.
January: Unshackling Ponzi Perps It’s a bad idea to let convicted swindlers go free. Biden just gave clemency to a slew of them.
Read More:
Biggest Business Blunders Of 2025 It was a year of forbidden love, economic anxiety, corporate breakups, bankruptcies, CEO resignations, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Tesla Chainsaw Massacre
The Business Blunders Archive Highlighting the folly that plagues our financial world.
The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame Remembering the nation’s most notorious white-collar convicts.
Blunder Lists Tracking the biggest mistakes in business for those who would rather learn from history than repeat it themselves.
Behind Business Blunders In a rare podcast appearance, hosts want to know who is the intended audience for Business Blunders, and what is my goal for this publication? Like I know?