Chris Collins buys multiple copies of books to give away instead of loaning them. He shares six titles he gifts most often, including why each one matters and which ones work best as audiobooks on Audible.
Questions this video answers
Primal Intelligence by Angus Fletcher; The Ellipsis Manual (Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior) by Chase Hughes; Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden; The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne; The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo; Shadow Cell by Andrew and Jihy Bustamante.
Chapters
We love books. I'm Chris Collins and this is my library, which I call the Syndicate X Library. The spirit behind it being that syndication is the sharing of knowledge and learning and getting better and constantly improving. One rule I have here in my library is that I don't check books out. Because what I've learned over the years is I will let somebody borrow a book and then I will be looking for that book. And I completely forgot who I let borrow it. They never bring it back and it's lost forever. So what I do is the books that I think or that I want to give out, I buy 10 or 20 at a time. And then I just tell people, keep the book. It's for you. It's my gift. Sometimes people leave here with one book. Sometimes they leave here with six books. And I'm gonna share with you the books that I give away the most. And. The first one is Angus Fletcher's new book, Primal Intelligence. Angus Fletcher is maybe one of the smartest people I've ever met. What he talks about a lot is how stories affect your brain, how they affect us. One of the best books that I've read this year. It's incredible. I give it away to everybody. My team right now is doing a book report on this. So many people have this on their list to the best book of the year. So Primal Intelligence by Angus Fletcher. Check it out. The audible is good also next. And this, this is a book I've been giving away for a long time is the Ellipsis Manual Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior by Chase Hughes. But I would say that I've probably learned more about human behavior from Chase Hughes than anyone else. It's very dense. A lot of information in here. He is an incredible teacher. He has a really cool way of breaking things down so you understand them. I learned more about myself by learning how to read others, if that makes any sense. Like when you start to see what other people do. The abstraction of that makes you understand the things that you're doing. This book is incredible. The Ellipsis Manual by Chase Hughes. Third one is Six Pillars of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon. My favorite quote in this book is that self esteem is the immune system of consciousness. He teaches you kind of step by step how you can build and create good, healthy self esteem. I would say in context, like, I give this book away to so many people for different reasons. Like, one reason is parenting. If you can create self esteem in kids, they have a much better chance in life. This book really gives you. Gives you a perspective on your relationship with yourself. So that's number three. Number four is the Story Grid by Sean Coyne. Unless you're writing a book, writing a movie too, you would have no interest in this. But if you are writing a book, anything like that, that you're telling a story, this is invaluable. Sean Coyne is responsible for some of the best selling books of all time and he's an editor and he has a system for how he edits books. The Story grid is that system. He has a whole podcast website training behind it. But whenever I have somebody that asks me advice on how to write a book, this is something that I give them and turn them on to Sean Coyne in his videos and training. Number five, Cinco is the Rape of the Mind by Joust Merloo. First of all, the coolest name ever. Joust Merlu. Rape of the Mind. He's like really curious why people follow and do the things that they do. Stanley Milgram and Joust Marloux maybe studied the Holocaust and human influence and why people just follow in a way. For me that is the most understandable. Just writing is, is very like, kind of to the point and like a little hard to accept, but it's easy to understand in the times that we live in. When I run into people that say, seem like they're very affected by politics and they can't listen to any reason. This one and Delusions and Mass Delusions by Jocelyn are my favorite. If you're in any sort of leadership position or marketing where you want to influence, those two would be must reads. They're both incredible. And the last one is Shadow Cell by Andrew and Jihy Bustamante. They were a couple that served in the CIA together. They tell their story in here about a time period where they were looking for a mole. They're incredible humans that understand people, politics and they served our country in a really cool way. If I was to recommend buying the hardcover or listening to the Audible, I would probably say listen to the Audible. I loved it. The way that they performed it is special and unique. It's a piece of art in and of itself. Very entertaining and fun. There's a lot of great insights. So those are the top six books that I've given away. I hope you've had a great year and you're making some incredible, fun, aspirational goals for 2026, which I am in the process of doing and I'm pretty excited about the opportunity that next year brings and I hope that everybody kind of feels that way. And we'll see you again real.
