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Carry the Weight

Category: Nonfiction —Leadership
Author: Joshua Teixidor
Publisher: Curtis Publishing
Publication Date: October 7, 2026
Number of Pages: 220
ISBN-10: 979-8-952851-26-9

Carry the Weight is a disarmingly honest leadership book that traces Joshua Teixidor’s path from top-performing sales rep, the one who never wanted the title, to a leader-builder who discovered that developing people is a craft practiced one honest conversation at a time. Drawing on more than twenty years in sales, Teixidor revisits the season he led with pressure and called it leadership, the moment a sharp young rep named Melissa looked him in the eye and told him, “You only care about the number,” and the gut-punch recognition that he had become the very manager who once inspected him instead of developing him. What follows is the rebuild: learning to assess before prescribing, diagnosing performance gaps through his EKS framework (Effort, Knowledge, Strategy), structuring hard conversations with OIRC (Observation, Impact, Recommendation, Commitment), and guiding people up the Growth Ladder. His methodology helps employees move from struggling to stable, stable to consistent, consistent to excellent, and excellent to leading others. Threaded through it all is the lesson of his IRONMAN 70.3: the race is one day, but the training is every day, and leadership, like endurance, is built in the reps no one applauds.

Teixidor writes with the confidence of a coach pacing the sidelines: short sentences, blunt confession, and a willingness to admit what most leadership books sand off (''If you've ever led a team, you already know: this shit is heavy''). Each chapter closes with a field order: “Carry This into Your Next 1:1,” “Carry This into the Week,” “Carry This into the Room.” This turns memoir into a manual and reflection into something you can act on before Monday. The people are real, names changed but events intact: Alexis, who forced him to make instinct teachable; Ben, whose shattered belief he rebuilt through small, winnable evidence; Ashley, whose surface-level answers told him everything he needed to know. This isn't a playbook from a pedestal, but a field manual from someone still in the arena. Carry the Weight delivers Teixidor’s clearest verdict on leadership yet: it is not how high you climb, but how many people can climb because you held the ladder.

Reviewed By: Joanne Higbee

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Date: October 13, 2026

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Interview with Joshua Teixidor, Leader & Author of Carry the Weight
Interview with Joshua Teixidor, Leader & Author of Carry the Weight
Author Interviews

Interview with Joshua Teixidor, Leader & Author of Carry the Weight

By The Book Commentary  · 

You open the book admitting you never wanted to be a leader, and when your VP promoted you, the entire onboarding was “Congratulations. Don’t fuck it up.” Twenty-plus years later, what did you actually need to hear in that conference room, and what would you say now to someone getting that same call this week?I should...

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