5 Must-Read Books for Entrepreneurs

You may have heard the term leaders are readers, but I have a different opinion on the value of reading than most people, especially most entrepreneurs. You see, I believe that what we do and the results that we create are mostly the product of the thoughts that we think and the behaviors that we practice. And those two things are correlated. One of my best friends in the world, Brooke Castillo, likes to say that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our actions, our actions create our results. But where most people need to do the most work is not on forcing new actions, but on changing their thoughts, creating new thoughts and perspectives. So reading is one of the ways that you get new perspectives and you get new thoughts. However, if you look at some people like Gary Vaynerchuk isn't a reader, he's a leader, but he ain't a reader. He just is very in tune with his own thoughts.

When I hit eight books writing, I will accomplish a very rare feat, which is that will be the moment where I've written more books than I've read. I believe that one of my core weaknesses is my lack of reading books.

I just don't read books.

And so my recommendation for when you are choosing the best books to read is to choose the ones that allow you to practice the thoughts that bring you closer and closer to the type of life that you want to lead or read from the people who are already leading that type of life and, and model their thoughts and their behaviors. And reading is one way to do that. Now I have taken on the impossible task of narrowing down the best books that you should read to just five books. We live in a sea of information. We live in an abundance of articles you can read, audiobooks that you can listen to, books that you can read. And I've narrowed it down to just five that I think are essential to your growth and your success as an entrepreneur. So if you want to create more and become more, if you haven't read these five, this is where you should start.

Book number one, the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. I'm going to summarize this book in 30 seconds. The thesis of the Slight Edge is that we are the product of, of small incremental pieces of success, not big jumps in success. It's easy in our world to look at other people, other successful entrepreneurs, other leaders and creators and influencers and assume that their success came from one big jump. But those jumps come on the back of lots of little successes. So our job as growth oriented people is not to swing for the fences for these big leaps in progress, but Instead to practice the things that give us little incremental pieces of success and lead to exponential gains. That is the central thesis of the Slight Edge. The reason why this is so important is because it's tempting for so many of us to try and jump from forward or to look at the examples of times when people did have monumental leaps in progress. An example of this was somebody who wins American Idol has a huge jump forward in progress. But even that usually comes on the back of many, many hours practicing, many doors knocked upon, many nos received. Or if you look at successful entrepreneurs who are known for their big wins, they're not known for their many, many, many losses. The only thing that we can control is the incremental strategies and habits that we practice that put us in the best position for those big jumps forward. But to try and engineer the game for those big jumps is how most people lose. And that's the central principle inside of the Slight Edge.

Book Number two the book that I have gifted and recommended more than any other book.

Straight Line Leadership by Don't ask me to say that name. Nobody can say it. Deucen. I have no idea. Sorry Dusan. We've never met or talked the Straight Line Leadership. Every single one of these chapters, which are usually two to three pages, is, is a central principle that is so applicable to life and so brain shifting. This is the ideal book to keep by your nightstand and to read one chapter a night before you go to bed and just do that over and over and over again. This book is about carving out what you want, lining up the strategy to get it, and working towards that aim and working towards those goals. And now that's a huge oversimplification, but the real benefit of this book is it reveals all of your mental trash and it brings it to the forefront and it helps you clear it out of the way. And that's why it's Straight Line Leadership. Because it is about getting rid of all of the noise, getting rid of all of the drama, getting rid of all of the story that you have about why you're in the position you are and why you want what you want and why you're not getting it and how hard it's going to be and and simply carving out a very straight line towards what it is that you want without all the baggage, without all the drama, without all the story, just creating a clear path to marching towards what you want. So it's one of those undersung gems that when you read it, you get it. Until then, it's just kind of hard to describe, but the general thesis is to clear a very clear path to what it is that you want and to have clear clarity and ease in moving toward it.

Book Number three Three Simple Steps by Trevor Blake I'd show you this one, but I had the audiobook for this one. Trevor Blake is an entrepreneur that I deeply admire because he started late and he won really big and continues to win. I like this book because it is so much about mindset rather than strategy. The vast majority of people do not need another how to book, do not need more strategy. They need more clarity. They need different thoughts and they need different perspectives and they need to work on their mindset more than anything else. Mindset's everything and again, mindset is just a product of the thoughts that we practice over and over and over again. And Three Simple Steps is about taking control of that. What I love about Trevor is how he has structured his life to be fun, full of ease and full of joy while being dripping with success. So the short story on Trevor is that he started a business when he was 43, wasn't an entrepreneur before then, then started three businesses that he sold and today are worth over $600 million. And yet he's done this while working just a few hours a day and having never hired an employee. When someone like that has that type of lifestyle and success, I want to model that. I want to learn from somebody like that. And Three Simple Steps is about controlling your mindset. He calls it mentality control. It is about setting clear intentions rather than goals and and it outlines his thought process of success with fulfillment. Most people have success without fulfillment. Trevor is a master at having fulfillment and a lot of success.

Book Number four Rich dad, Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki I'm including this one in there. And by the way, all of these are linked in the description of this video, but I'm including this classic because if you're under 35 years old, there's a good chance that you haven't read this book. This book changed the generation before the Internet. It changed the mindset of the entrepreneur right before the dot com boom and when social media became a thing. Now if we were to simplify Rich Dad Poor dad into one sentence, it is simply that the way to get rich is is to acquire assets that put money in your pocket. But most people spend their attention and their time acquiring liabilities, which are things that take money out of your pocket. When you see the world like this, the path to riches is very clear and simple. Spend your life Acquiring things that put money in your bank account. We talk about a whole bunch of those here on the channel, like dividend paying stock and cash flowing real estate and businesses, businesses that you start, businesses that you buy, businesses that you invest in. There's an abundance of assets that you can acquire. And the more assets that you acquire, the more chance you have of upside over the long term. And so the way to get rich is to spend your life focusing on that. That's the central principle. And if you get that principle, you put yourself in a position to win when everybody else is really hoping and praying that one of the activities that they do makes them rich. That's not a strategy. The strategy is to acquire assets.

And the final book that you should have on Your bookshelf is 12 months to 1 million by some handsome dude named Ryan Daniel Moran. Hey, it's no surprise that on a list of books I would include the one that I wrote. But if you're going to have one how to plan, especially after reading Rich Dad, Poor dad when we're talking about acquiring assets, this is the playbook to develop your own asset in the form of a million dollar business. I wrote this book so that entrepreneurs had a very clear plan to crossing seven figures in 12 months or less. This is the playbook to starting your first business that you can scale or that you can sell. And when you scale or sell a business, you now have the asset. You have the business that allows you to buy other cash flow assets, to put into other investments and also to live the type of life that you want to live. If your goal is to have a successful business, if it's to be a full time entrepreneur, this is the playbook to do it in 12 months or less. So when you have your mind right, when you have your habits right, and you go to execute on the how to, this is the playbook that will help you do that. And it's 12 months to 1 million and this guy wrote it.

We are the product of our thoughts. We are the product of the habits that we practice that are controlled by our thoughts and our emotions. And the fastest way to change that is to tune into other people who have already modeled who it is that you want to be and created what you want to create. Hey, if you found value in this video, help me share it with more entrepreneurs who don't have a model, who don't have mentors by liking this video. And if you've read any of these books, let me know which one is your favorite in the comments of this video. And if there's one that you never heard of before that you decide to grab, leave a comment below and tell me what you thought of it after you read it. Thank you so much for watching our content. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com and I'll see you on the next video. Take care.