7 Books To Help You Dominate The Rest Of 2018
Let me be honest and clear when I say that I was never a bookworm. The only time I did read was in school and that was usually 24 hours before my test. I took notes, sure, but I didn’t even read those. In fact, after freshman year of college, I never bought a book again. Instead, I would just photocopy the entire lesson plan from the book of another student in class.
The fact that all college students know the resale value of a textbook is probably worse than an automobile was even more proof that what I was doing wasn’t absurd. Nonetheless, all that to say – books had no purpose in my life.
Then I found myself responsible for every dime that I either made or didn’t make. Quitting my job after two years of “corporate America” (I worked in a warehouse office), I now found myself without a reoccurring paycheck. Definitely a position I’ve never been in. I had to find out how to be great in business.
I immediately thought about what I learned throughout my major of business in college; nothing.
Well, I won’t say nothing, because I did learn some things in my concentration of Finance, but nothing that I can immediately remember that provided some guidance as I started down the journey of entrepreneurship. I can say with 100% conviction that we definitely weren’t reading textbooks that taught about mindset, a big portion of business success. At least not in my major.
I knew I had to learn from the best. The individuals who came out on top and experienced what I’m currently experiencing. The individuals who poured their entire journey of success into a condensed easy to follow step by step guide known as a book.
Fast forward a few years and it amazes me how many books I’ve read.
In 2018 we have several sources to receive our books whether reading the physical copy, listening to an audiobook, or even reading it digitally on a Nook or Kindle. In my opinion, reading a physical book is better and you even get a “trophy” to add to your bookcase. It only makes you want to read more, learn more, and earn more.
“Earn more” can be earning more personally, professionally, financially, and/or spiritually. It’s up to you.
I compiled a small list of books that helped me in business and mindset to this day. These books are in no specific order, just as they come to my mind. There’s a plethora of books I have read and that have helped me, but I’ll save those for another article.
One other important note before I jump into the list is that I realize I need more books written by women! Ladies, please bear with me while you read this list and please take the time to comment below on some great books you read that were written by a female author!
Let’s jump in!
1. The One Thing – Gary Keller, Co-Founder of Keller Williams, Author.
“What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything will be easier or unnecessary”
This book is an awesome tool for goal planning and time management and it just so happens to be co-written by the individual who helped propel Keller Williams to the number one real estate brokerage in agent count, closed units, and sales volume.
Does he have a 34 hour day? Nope. He has the same 24 hours that we all do.
This book helps you map out your goals, working backwards to the very thing that you need to do THIS MINUTE to start propelling you into motion. He elaborates that success isn’t a complete 360 degree turn. It’s a one tick adjustment to the left or right. It’s the small habits that we do every day that eventually add up to enormous momentum.
This book also helps you understand that we tend to go into “goal overload” where we set these unrealistic goals instead of focusing on ONE THING that such by doing it, will make everything easier or unnecessary.
Last but not least, prioritizing your day is the key to getting the important things you need done, completed. He mentions the “rest of the world wakes up at 11am.”
Not literally, but around that time and after is when you start to see yourself being pulled in every direction of life. Everybody needs your attention for some reason and usually most of it is a distraction that takes you away from your prioritized work. Your most important tasks should be taken care of in the morning between 8-11am of your workday.
A few hours of extremely diligent work can go a very long way!
You win the day – you win your life.
Read this book if you feel like you need to get a handle on your time management, goal planning, and prioritization skills. Please understand goal planning and time management is a skill, meaning it has to be developed. Goal planning is not as “easy” as just saying it or even writing it down on paper.
2. The 10x Rule – Grant Cardone, Best Selling Author, Sales Expert, and owner of a $350+ million dollar real estate portfolio.
“10 times the actions, 10 times the goals, and you’ll get everything you ever dreamed of”
This book was pure gold for one reason and one reason only – it separates the winners from losers. The book explains how he developed a mentality of doing things on a 10x level and how that took his business to the unbelievable heights that he experiences today. Instead of making 10 calls a day, make 100. Instead of posting on social media 5 times a week, post 20, 30, 40! It may be stretching you beyond your comfort zone, but that’s the point. Don’t get me wrong you have to know your limits of how far to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, but that can’t be an excuse.
For example, if you just made the decision to get your body into better shape for the summer, you can’t just start hitting 200 lb bench presses and 100 burpees. You have to work your way up to that point.
Maybe you can only do 10 pushups, but can’t you do 20 and not kill yourself? I bet you can and you’re still honoring the system by pushing yourself slightly outside of your limits.
The insight I gained the most about the book? I learned it’s not that people don’t have an awesome plan or a strategy, they just don’t put 10x level work into their plan. What can be accomplished in a year for some people, others get done in a quarter. Same plan, same strategy, just one put more intensive work in.
It doesn’t matter what the plan is, just do it on a 10x level. People are usually smart about how to get from where they are to where they want to be. It’s the actions that don’t match their smart level of thinking. Massive goals require massive action.
Read this book if you want to start taking life-changing action towards your goals.
3. Black Privilege – Charlamagne the God, Co-host on the syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club,” TV Personality, and radio personality.
“Your passion is that one thing you can’t stop thinking about, that thing you wake up thinking about in the morning, go to sleep thinking about at night, that thing that you would do for free!”
This book was nothing short of hilarious, educational, and inspiring. An amazing book.
I read this book to start my year and this one definitely fired me up for the success battle of 2018. His definition of your passion can’t be defined any better!
The biggest thing I was able to take away from this book is being un-apologetically you on your course to your dreams. There are God-given talents that only you possess and if you’re afraid to show the world those talents or if you feel like you have to be a totally different person in order to be successful, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities that life presents specifically for you.
Simply put…. You’re already awesome, dammit!
That is more than enough to attract the opportunities.
Keyword: The opportunities.
Charlamagne also covers how most people miss out on the opportunity simply because there isn’t a dollar sign attached to it. Keep your mind open.
Read this book if you need to realign your mindset with who you are and what your passion is!
4. Set For Life – Scott Trench, Real Estate Investor and Vice President of Operations at BiggerPockets.com, one of the largest real estate investing education websites.
“If Average Joe wanted to significantly cut back on spending, in a manner that might give him a real chance at reducing the time to financial freedom by decades, should he focus on the largest parts of his spending or the smallest?”
Make no mistake ladies and gentlemen, this very quote is disruptive of what many of the personal finance books teach us.
Scott Trench is about 26 years old now and has already been able to accomplish the great feat of financial freedom. He talks about the steps he took in order to achieve massive success at such a young age.
To be honest, I had to put my ego to the side to listen to a 26 year old, but at the same time, his results speak for himself.
Most of the personal finance books will have us cut out the small day to day expenses in order to be able to save our money to grow our wealth. That means you can’t go to that happy hour, you can’t hang out with friends, you can’t have that Carmel Frappuccino with whip cream (my favorite), and no, you can’t go on that vacation, sorry.
What makes it so hard to accomplish wealth building under these terms is that it makes us unhappy as our normal day to day and life routine is now disrupted. Maybe you like that morning coffee, the Thursday happy hour, and bi-weekly retail therapy appointments. Are you going to set yourself back every single time?
Instead, Scott suggest that you focus on eliminating the biggest expenses from your monthly budget. The top three things that us Americans spend money on during the month is housing, transportation, and eating out. I would like to add student loan debt as a bonus expense.
Thanks Montclair State University!
I and millions of other millennials can most likely relate to that same budget. Especially the eating out and student loan category.
I always knew I wanted to own rental property and live for free and this book reaffirmed my thoughts. I now turn my sights to my transportation costs and eating out expenses. I am already seeing the benefits of not having a housing expense and I currently have no car payment as my 2000 Lexus ES 300 still gets me from A to B and even C.
I would be naïve to believe my car will last forever and now that business has picked up amazingly, I’ll have to be even more cautious on my next car purchase.
I can easily get sidetracked with the car I want vs. the car I need. My ego hurts from the thought of me not going after my stick shift coupe I always wanted and instead going after an economy car that’s great on gas.
After all, I will be buying more homes that produce more income. Not more cars that produce more ego trips. At least for now. Eventually I’ll have one of my houses pay for my play toy.
This book is for those who are looking to get a handle on their finances by taking a different approach on what financial freedom means. Financial freedom = frugality.
Your income is your offense and your spending is your defense.
Last time I checked, you need both offense and defense to win the game.
The same goes for money and lifestyle.
5. Power of Broke – Daymond John, Serial entrepreneur, CEO of Fubu, and Investor on ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank.”
“Don’t wait for the ‘perfect time’, you will wait forever. Always take advantage of the time that you’re given.”
I’ve come to learn in business that everything you need is generally right in front of you. Reading this book enforced the ideology of being resourceful – using exactly what you have at this very moment.
Most of the times the reason we don’t go after what we want is because we’re stuck figuring out how to get from A to Z while completely overstepping B, C, and E. Sometimes we’re looking for that certain connection while failing to ask the individuals in our very own circle if they know someone with the credentials we are looking to connect with.
Other times we are blaming lack of money as the reason why we can’t invest more in ourselves or our business. We think money solves the problem when in fact it creates more. A perfect example is how Daymond John explains that one of the biggest, missed reasons why small companies and startups fail is not because of their lack of funding, but instead, massive over-funding.
When small companies gain access to a lot of money prematurely, they tend to spend money on everything to generate business. Since they are unsure on which aspects actually work, they find themselves blowing through cash as they throw mud at the wall to see what sticks.
The power of broke helps create opportunity where there is no money involved.
Starting off in real estate was tough. I knew I didn’t want to spend money on leads. After all, I had no deals going and a savings account that was depleting quicker than I originally imagined. If I had begun to spend money on leads, like I saw the other agents doing, I would have blown through my savings account much faster.
The ironic part is, I still blew through my savings. Just not as fast.
Real estate will do that to ya’. Luckily I’m not there anymore.
I had to learn how to become resourceful. I knew I had an extensive network, one that would expand into a network I had not yet explored.
Every person knows AT LEAST 250 people. For those who are a lot more socially active, that number can easily be 3x, 5x, or 10x more. With that said, every person you know equally knows at least another 250 people, and that’s if those people, themselves, are not the socially active individuals.
I dug deep into my network and will continue to dig deep within my network in order to continue to grow my business.
Resourcefulness was the main theme of the book and Daymond interviews several other successful entrepreneurs who reveal how they became successful by using their own resources to create an unimaginable life and business.
Your resources are your advantage.
Read this book if you’re looking for ways to organically grow your business.
6. The Miracle Morning – Hal Elrod, Author, Speaker, and Presenter
“Love the life you have while you create the life of your dreams. Don’t think you have to choose one over the other.”
The Miracle Morning changed my entire outlook on my mornings to the point where I became a morning person.
I, Austin, was not a morning person until I realized I could have the morning control the entire energy for the day if I spent an hour or two working on MYSELF instead of my business.
I’ll ask you. What’s the VERY first thing you do when you wake up ?
If you’re like most people, you might have a daily routine before heading into work, usually one that doesn’t serve you. Most likely the bulk of your morning is spent getting ready for work instead of getting ready for life.
How do I know? Easy.
What’s the phrase we all usually say right before we go to sleep at night?
It usually goes something like… “ok, if I go to sleep RIGHT now, I’ll have ___ hours of sleep.”
That phrase alone means that very first thing you’re going to do to greet a God-blessed, brand new day is…… get ready for work.
Do you see what that can do to your psyche ? It can set if off negatively before you even have breakfast.
The Miracle morning is a set of activities that help you get the most out of your day.
Hal Elrod died and came back to life to write this book….. I mean that literally.
He got into a real bad car accident as he was hit head on by a drunk driver traveling over 80 mph. As rescuers started their attempt to clear the wreckage, Hal died.
He was able to be resuscitated, regain his strength and motor skills over the next couple of months and became inspired to write the book.
He began to research how some of the most successful individuals such as Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith start their day. He came up with 6 common practices that all the extremely successful individuals practice in their daily lives. He references those practices as “Life S.A.V.E.R.S”
S – Silence (Meditation)
A – Affirmations
V – Visualization
E – Exercise
R – Reading
S – Scribe (Journaling)
Now, let’s get one thing straight!
I’m Austin.
And if I know myself very well, these 6 principles are complete woo-woo to me.
Mediation?! You mean like sitting with your legs crossed saying “Hummmmm”
I’m not doing that!
Journaling?! Who am I? Doug Funny? Am I going to close every day saying “Dear Journal………”
Affirmations?! I’ve seen this before. This is where I look at myself in the mirror and repeat “I’m so damn happy. I have millions of dollars coming my way. Money flows to me easily” – I’d then turn around frantically wondering when the next paycheck was coming.
Oh please! I’m good, I’m not interested.
And then I read the book……
And then I practiced some of the practices…..
And then I continued…..
And continued…..
Then my business started to get consistent……
Then I bought an investment property……
Then my business started catching fire…..
And then…..
That’s the key phrase. “And then…”
Read this book. It will change your life. You could literally get so much work done and when you look up at the clock, it will be only be 11am.
Read this book when you realize that the only thing that’s stopping you from getting to where you want to go, is what you say you’re going to do, and whether or not you’ll actually do it.
7. The Slight Edge – Jeff Olson, Author, CEO and Founder of Nerium International
“The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.”
Question for you. Do you do one push up and become fit? Do you eat one bacon double cheeseburger and have a stroke? Of course not.
What happens if you do multiple pushups over time? What happens if you eat multiple bacon double cheeseburgers… over time? The real result shows up, whether good or bad.
My point? Success or failure is the sum of tiny, seemingly mundane efforts. The amplifier is TIME.
By the way, thank GOD for blessing me with the ability to eat bacon double cheeseburgers. It may not hurt me in the short term, but definitely will in the long run.
I’m pretty sure everybody knows this information, but do we pay attention to our habits?
The Slight Edge is a practical book that shows how you can take tiny, mundane actions that eventually add up to massive changes in your life. This book compliments the book “The One Thing,” that I mentioned earlier.
It’s when these habits become subconscious and a normal part of our day that we start to see change.
The physically fit individuals? Habit.
The financially wealthy people? Habit.
The people who have awesome relationships? Habit.
Habits done over time become character. You character controls your destiny. That simple.
There’s another concept to habits that completely blew my mind. How to build successful habits.
Most people love to start taking on habits that are too “heavy” to keep going without willpower.
Can you do 100 pushups every day for a week? Religiously?
Can you make 100 sales call a week? Religiously?
Can you wake up at 5:30am every day? Religiously?
The keyword is religiously. In this context, meaning without fail. Even on the days you don’t feel like it.
You say you can? Cool! Now do it. Week in and week out. It’s actually tougher than most imagine.
The reason why it’s not that simple is because what’s easy to do is also easy NOT to do.
Why aren’t more people wealthy? Simple answer.
It’s easy to save 10% of each check to put towards investments. It’s also easy NOT to.
Why aren’t people more healthy?
It’s easy to run a mile a day. It’s also easy NOT to.
Why aren’t people generally more happier?
It’s easy to focus on the things you’re grateful for. It’s also easy NOT to.
At some point, everybody will be looking to develop a new habit to keep them growing personally, professionally, financially, spiritually, etc.
Someone who can’t do 100 pushups a week might start off with 25 a week. It doesn’t matter the number, it matters about doing it religiously and without fail.
That same individual may already be making 100 sales calls a week, but looking at their goals, they realize they need to be making 200 sales calls a week. They might start their new habit of 125 a week and build up from there.
Read this book if you’re looking to develop new habits easily which inevitably will continue to accelerate your growth. Read this book if you’re tired of seeing some people make it look so DAMN EASY to be successful in any field. I guarantee their habits are consistent with what they want in life.
We’re just about to finish the 1st quarter of the year. That means we still have over 75% of our year still left to crush our goals and to continue our personal development. Take time to read to clear your mind and realign yourself with what you’re looking for in your life.
Think about what you would write in a book if you became the ultimate version of yourself. I’m pretty sure you would be laying down the foundation of what you did to become successful. You would mention both your successes and failures. That’s exactly what these authors did and they’re providing a lifetime experience in a bite-size portion. Learn from their experiences and their mistakes. It will accelerate the learning curve!
What book did you read recently that changed your life or business? Comment below!