The Best Books Of 2022 | SDR #221

Welcome to this episode of Service Drive Revolution where we're going to go through our Top Books of 2022. I'm Chris Collins and this is Chris Choan.

Hello, everyone.

That and much, much more. Coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

This is the time of year, Christian, where you want thinking about your New Year's resolution.

That's right.

You have one.

Oh, for sure.

I know you mentioned that you wanted to drink more in this coming year.

I just think that, like, I don't have enough, like, unhealthy vices.

So that's a bad thing.

Yeah, I just got to catch up to the rest of the world and.

So drinking is an unhealthy vice.

Yeah, I would say very much so. So what do you think about that? Good. Good strategy.

I think you're joking around.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. I don't think you're not a drink. I don't think you're really a drinker.

No, I. I was in a past life, done over. It doesn't do anything for me.

Oh, you drank in a past life?

Yeah. I didn't know that when I was younger.

I'd love to get into your childhood trauma at some point.

Yeah. It's funny that, that you do that every once in a while. You're like, you want to dig in, but.

I don't know if it's interesting. It's pretty vanilla.

It's interesting, Trust me.

You think so?

Well, the outcome of it is interesting. So then the cause of the outcome.

I have a theory. I have a theory. And this really has nothing to do with service tribes or a revolution, but I have a theory that the comedy is a cover for pain.

What if. What if I just actually had a good sense of humor from a very young age and I like to make people laugh.

A theory that the comedy is a cover for pain.

Okay, that can be your theory.

Maybe I know a little something about that.

Maybe.

Maybe my comedy is a cover. Okay.

Well, I remember. It's probably one of my favorite stories. I mean, I've got a few favorite stories of yours, but.

When you got voted funniest in the class. So do you remember us having that conversation that I also was voted funniest in class? For you, it was terror. For me, it was like, heck, yeah, I earned that.

Yeah. Completely different experiences from the same.

Exact same thing. Yes.

Different experiences.

So I thought that that was super interesting.

I didn't even know that I was nominated.

Yeah. And I probably campaigned.

Yeah. Funny.

Super interesting.

How many books do you think that we have in our library now.

20,000.

I think it's closer to 30.

Yeah. I know that every time that I go to your house, there's a new book there. There's a new pile of books.

Pile of books.

Yeah.

I bought some collections.

That's the way to do it.

I just got a set of Napoleon books. They're beautiful and incredible. The old books are really cool. So we're gonna talk about our.

Favorite books of 2022. But they. This isn't a hey, they were released in 2022. This is a hey. They fell into our lap.

Yeah.

And we read them in 2022. So these are all books that we've read in 2022. So we have an exercise we do internally where we take a book, we assign chapters to different people, and then we get on and everybody shares their chapter. They do a book report on their chapter, and by the end of that, it feels like you've read the book. If everybody does a good job, which everybody does, our team's pretty thorough.

They're getting better.

They're doing PowerPoint.

Yeah. Vicki, she started the PowerPoint. Everybody else just ran with it.

A lot of good things come from.

What do you. Before we do that, though, I'll do.

One to one, like, you do one, I'll do one.

Yeah.

So on our list too, by the way, we only have one or two that overlap, which is interesting.

We have one especially because we share. Well, there was also the thing too. We're like, oh, crap, I forgot about that one. That happened to me twice. When you did your list.

Yeah. I would say there's probably twice as many books that I read that aren't on this list but would not be relevant to our audience. Okay, so this is relevant to our audience.

I have one that's not relevant, but I'll make the connection at the end of the day.

Harry Potter.

So you want to go first.

They're in no order whatsoever except for the order that I remembered them. Okay, so there's no order of importance here. The first one that I have was Breaking History by Jared Kushner.

Oh, interesting.

It was really good.

Did you have low expectations going into it, and then it blew you away?

I don't know if I would expect Kushner to write a great book.

I probably need to say, whatever you think my political views are, you're probably wrong.

And so when I go into this.

Book.

It was more one sided than I thought.

In the sense that he definitely is painting one narrative. It's very.

Hard.

One line. Does that make Sense. There's not really an effort to see both sides in there. But that's not what's fascinating about the book. What's fascinating about the book is.

His dad, which I knew, but I didn't know the story from his perspective. His dad went to jail when he was pretty young. Do you know who put his dad in jail?

Rudy Giuliano would be my guess.

Oh, man, you're so close. Just go across the water. New Jersey.

Christie.

Yeah.

Wow.

So when Christie was helping Trump run for president, Trump went to his father and said, hey, because Kushner's father and Trump are close friends, he said, hey, he wants to help. Is that okay? But he asked his permission to. To even. And then, like, I always sense, like, a weird tension between Christie and Trump. That was it. Like that Christie, in the way that. That Jared tells the story, he was very aggressive with his father, and his father took a plea deal to not go bankrupt. Not because he was admitting guilt. That's his story. Who knows, right? Well, we weren't there, but it's interesting, but maybe more interesting than the whole thing is Kushner goes to Harvard.

While he's at Harvard, he asks his dad, hey, I want to buy some apartments. He finds apartments that are kind of close to the more desirable part of the campus or around Harvard, buys up these buildings and flips, like, makes tons of money while going to college.

Smart.

Real, you know, a real estate developer while studying business and all that. Later on when he's in the White House helping with things. And his thing really was he tried to stay out of the limelight.

It's fascinating how none politicians going into a political game like you, you would sense that somebody like Kushner would have our sensibility for business in the sense that it is what it is. And, you know, you think about things in a different way. You think that things that are left idle don't get better. Like, and then he. They run into all these career politicians who, in a sense, don't want to make a difference because then that would mean that they wouldn't have a career anymore.

Yeah.

Like, if you fixed it, then you're not needed. And it's an exaggerated version of it, but it's interesting. The other thing that's interesting, and this would be my main point that was interesting to me, is when you go to Harvard, the real thing is you're going with all these kids that are the sons of all these other very influential people. So, like, when Covid came about, he's calling his old roommate from Harvard, who had bought and sold pharmaceutical companies, puts him in a room and gets him to help figure out the vaccine and all that. And so those connections that you make at Harvard or Stanford, you know, really are the upper hand in a sense. You can call somebody from bank of America or, you know, whatever it is and make things happen, because being an alumni and having those connections. So it's a fascinating book. I thought easy listen, too.

All right. I gotta put that on my list.

That'll have to be on my 2023 list. Okay. So.

My first one that I'm coming up with is Jocko's book Dichotomy of Leadership. This was his second book, is a follow up to Extreme Ownership. And it was really good timing for me when I read this because I'm a pretty big fan of the whole Extreme Ownership. We talk a lot about that. We control our own destiny here, and that's what we coach to our clients and everything in Dichotomy of Leadership. I think that the biggest lesson is that you can go too far with that to the point where the people that are working under you, if you own all of their mistakes, then they don't own their own.

I don't know what it is, but I didn't really get that until I started to read that book and get the examples of such. But I think that the way that Jocko writes in Leif, too, is that they take that, Whatever kind of stuff they went through in Ramadi and Iraq and everything like that, and then they immediately apply it to a business case. And I think that that's a really good writing style. But there's a couple of really good lessons in that. But that was the first one I hit that. I was like, oh, that was a good book.

The next one that I have is Expectation Effect by Dave Robson, which is basically exactly what it says. It's the placebo effect. What you expect happens. But well written, you kind of create your own reality in a way.

I encourage the placebo effect. I think anytime I can get it.

Placebo effect, placebo. What about nocebo?

Whatever works.

Placebo, Nocebo.

You're procebo.

All I want is the result at the end of the day, but I have no problem with, like, if someone says they want to hypnotize me to get me a better outcome as horns, give me a placebo. Whatever it is, I'll take it all.

Okay, on the next show, we'll hypnotize you.

I'm all in.

You know what's funny is I never really figured this out until recently, but.

Do you know why cats are afraid to climb trees?

Why?

Because they don't like the bark.

What's your next book?

This one's.

Pretty good. This I'm gonna try to. This one that's probably not relevant to the listeners, but I think there's probably a few people that are. That are really fans. But Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanigan was a phenomenal book. And I listened to it on audio. I did not read it the paper version. But Mark Lanegan was what I would call the fairly tortured soul. He passed away not because of his decades of drug abuse, but the COVID bug bought him, I think, if I remember correctly. But the thing that was really interesting about that book was that the way that he describes it. So a lot of that was about heroin use. And the thing that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks was that how he saw things from a heroin addicts perspective is the opposite of what I think the real world is. Right. So when he was high he called that getting well. And when he wasn't high he called that being sick.

So I think that that's the lesson in that, that everybody can use is that you get to determine your own reality and what is real and what's not. And you can be 180 degrees wrong. Yeah, but do you remember him saying that? It was like, well, we needed to get well.

Well, what's your favorite Alice in Chains album?

Dirt.

And what's one of your favorite songs on there?

I mean, I could go anywhere. Wood, Angry Chair, Sick man, all that stuff's phenomenal.

That's just part of the heroin lingo.

Yeah. So I just thought that was funny.

By the way, that's an ongoing debate here at Chris Clones Inc.

Alice in Chains album. Dirt or Facelift? I say facelift, you say dirt.

We have in the library, you know we have a signed copy of that book.

I didn't know that. Yeah. At the very least I've seen you with three copies.

I have every book he did, even the lyric one signed by him.

Yeah.

Big fan of Mark Lanegan, Rest his soul.

Good stuff. Smart dude.

My next one is, and I think we did a book report on this one. How to tell a Story. Moth.

The moth. The moth book. Which then always reminds me of the moth joke.

Not the same. But yes, both in their.

In their own lines was.

But it's a great kind of insight into how to tell the story. And then the moth thing is kind of like a little cult where they Go around and they have storytelling competitions and they're online on YouTube and you can, you know, being able. As a.

Person who wants to be effective, the tool of storytelling might be the most valuable one. So I would encourage everybody to think about being a better storyteller. Whether you're coaching somebody or trying to convince somebody or whatever it is, communicate. Storytelling is a very useful tool.

How much time do you think we spend, like curating and kind of massaging and making stories better like that for our content? It's a huge part of it. We talk about stories all the time.

Not enough. We should do it more. I think we're just scratching the surface.

Yeah. It's clearly though, what everybody remembers. Like if we do a, you know, if we do a three hour, six hour session and you ask them two days later what they remember, they remember the story.

You know, I have two on here about stories. Let me just. I don't mean to jump ahead. No, no, please do the other one. Did I put it on here?

Yeah. Wonderworks by Angus Fletcher.

That guy's a genius too.

So that book was so good, I hired Angus to sit in a room and stare at me for two days so I could ask him questions. But he's incredible. There's an incredible interview with him on Jordan Peterson's podcast. But his book Wonderworks different than the moth in the sense that, you know, Angus is.

In that kind of school of everything.

Goes back to like Shakespeare and he. In the Greek mythology.

He helped with the leadership content with some of the stories in that we call it the leadership experience. What we call it. It's not really a workshop, but he helped with that.

He's systematic and scientific all at the same time too. So I think that goes right up your alley.

Yeah. He might be one of the only people that studies story and what happens to your brain and the effects it has on it.

Yeah, he's got a very influential circle of the people that like, really appreciate his advice. That's pretty awesome.

Okay, you're next.

I am. Okay.

This was. This was probably my. When I left this book, I felt the most accomplished of any book I've ever read in my life. It was the Churchill biography. Oh.

So it was again, an audiobook. I do a lot more audiobooks than paper books, but I looked it up just to be on the safe side. You want to guess how many pages that thing is? It's the biggest single volume book ever written about Churchill. And there have been over 1086 Churchill books written. Want to guess how many pages that.

Thing was 875, 1152.

So it was a 45 hour listen.

And you. Oh, you listened 45 hours.

Three months.

And worth it, every minute of it. To understand.

Really?

Yeah.

What's it called?

Churchill.

Who wrote it?

Andrew. And I can't remember the guy's last name, but if you just do Churchill and Andrew Book, you'll find it. I probably have it on my phone, actually.

Biggest takeaway.

Biggest takeaway is that.

Sometimes to be the best leader, you have to go against the grain of what everybody else is trying to make you believe. So a couple of examples were that Churchill, very early on, in the, in the 30s, pre World War II, was one of the first ones to say, hey, by the way, there's a crazy dude in Germany and he's trying to take over the world and nobody else was listening. He wasn't as big a threat. And so he was one of the first people to do that.

So when he did that, he wasn't in power, right?

No.

So he was sitting on the sidelines.

Yeah. He didn't become a prime minister until 1940. So he was on the sidelines. He was, he was in something called the Admiralty for a long time, which was part of the British Navy. So that was really, really fascinating. Also how early he started his political career. But he probably made more of a name for himself by going against the political machine than by working with it. Like he was a politician, but also not a politician all at the same time, which I thought was fascinating. He was kind of of the people because during war times in like the early 1900s, he saw action in World War I. So I think that that helped to build his credibility with the common folk. And he just, he made a career by saying what was really on his mind. Also I got to learn a little bit about the artistic side of him.

And probably I was going to say one of my favorite Churchill books I have is of his paintings.

Yeah. So I don't know if you'll remember this, but towards the end of his life, he actually, he owned a Peter Paul Rubens painting. And it's like something in the mouse. And he didn't think the mouse had a really good, like, he thought it was like not good enough. So he literally took the painting off the wall and repainted the mouse.

A Rubens.

A Rubens mouse.

I love it. I would totally.

It's so cool. But, but I thought that that was really neat. But if you really want to learn about, like, to me, I think that at the end of the day. That guy was a leader. He had.

You know, he had a little bit of level of ego to him, but there was a lot of self. Selflessness to the things that he was trying to get accomplished. So I thought that that was really, really neat.

Next one I have, we did a book report on, and the book is the Person and the Situation.

It is the only book that you and I both have.

So the Person in the Situation is written by a couple Stanford graduates. For me.

Let me back up a little bit. The.

Preface of it is written by Malcolm Gladwell, who says basically.

Everything he's done in some way goes back to the book and that he, when he was younger, made photocopies of the book at the library.

And, you know, has read it many times. The premise of the book is that.

Is it the person that matters in a situation or is it the situation which has more value? And so if you. If you think about, okay, if Tom Brady was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, would he be the best quarterback of all time?

Probably not.

Probably not. And so it ends up that the situation has way more to do with the outcome than the person. And also that we will misread people thinking they're ethical or good people because they were ethical and good in a less stressful situation. But as soon as there's stress or any sort of pressure or opportunity, people lose their ethics very, very quick. It's a fascinating book. One thing that did surprise me is how much our coaches thought it was really dense.

I agree with him. I thought it was very textbook feeling.

I had to look up a ton of words and I feel like I got a decent. I've got a decent.

Maybe I was like that. I don't know. I thought it was fascinating. So person and the Situation.

Yeah, it was another one that was pretty rewarding in terms of getting through. That was a big deal. And then, so, because we've got a carryover.

Oh, I was going to tell you about a couple that I reread this year that are not on my list because I've read them a long, long time ago. I reread how to Win Friends and Influence People in Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And then there was a book that I read that everyone tells me I have to read. And then I read it and was not moved in any way, shape or form. And it was called who Moved My Cheese?

Simple.

Yeah. So maybe it's just that I got it.

Title tells you.

Yeah. So those were also.

It's supposed to be a fair, you know, a Little Kid's Tale and Change.

Yeah.

What about. Shouldn't there be another one on our list? Isn't Change or Die on your list number one? So we have two that are in common.

Oh, you had Change or Die on your list.

Yeah. So Change or Die by Alan Deitchman.

Yep.

Which is also a fascinating book in the sense that he's studying people that, you know, have health issues because of food. Like people that have cardiac arrest because they eat bad and they keep having heart issues or people with drug addictions, that sort of thing. And even when people are faced with change, they don't change, even if it's going to kill them. It's a fascinating book. We did a book report on that one, too. And it's just a fascinating insight into behavior.

Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah, that book was pretty good too. I think Person, Situation and Change or Die was the lesson that came out of both those books for me, is that so many times, if you judge, you lose.

How many more do you have?

I'm done.

Oh, you're done.

Well, okay. So another one I have is Happy by Darren Brown.

Okay. The magician Darren Brown.

I also. I didn't put it on here, but Darren Brown's very first book on magic. Hard to get one, Impossible to get. I got that. And I've read that this year.

It's cool.

Another one that I. That I loved was Death in the Afternoon by Hemingway about bullfighting.

Wow.

Incredible. Incredible.

And Anka Harris has a snack of a book, like, I think maybe the audible is two hours, called.

Conscious.

Okay.

About your consciousness and free will. Incredible. One that Jocko mentioned when I saw him in Florida a couple weeks ago. And I. I ordered it right then, and it is called Military Incompetence by Norman Dixon. Incredible.

Incredible. And the guy's perspective on it is incredible. Like in that he really. He's kind of apologizing in the sense that, hey, I'm trying to help here, but I know this is gonna make you gotta. Kind of gotta unlearn in order to hear this message.

Yeah.

So it's fascinating. Let's try to make one of our resolutions that next year this will be twice as big.

Oh, that's good.

Let's do twice as many books as here.

I feel like I'm kind of on a roll with books. I've got a system.

Yeah. You. You go through stuff. You read stuff really fast. You know, one of the things that holds me back. Right.

I'm not a speed reader.

Right. But you know what holds me back? Joke. No.

You'Re dyslexic.

No.

Your childhood trauma.

When I start a book, I always finish it.

Oh, no.

The book works for you, Christian.

Yes.

You don't work for the book.

So there's times that I'll, I'll waste time listening.

You'll let a $25 hunk of paper or a audible credit control your time.

Terrible, isn't it? I don't know what it is. I just feel like I'm waiting for the by.

Chapter two. If you don't have me, I'm done.

Yeah.

And you know, it's funny because people walk up to me all the time and like, have you read the Subtle Art of Not giving an F or whatever? And it's like, oh, my God, that's good. Those books are terrible.

But I think. I think maybe one of my New Year's resolutions is going to be that, that I'm going to stop doing that.

I want to read more history.

I think history is fascinating. I love, like, Revolutionary War stuff.

Here's the thing, everybody. We really appreciate you tuning in. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.