In this monologue, Chris Haroun shares a curated list of books he believes are essential for developing business, investing, and entrepreneurial skills. He starts with classic self‑help titles like Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, then moves to cautionary finance reads such as When Genius Failed (the story of Long‑Term Capital Management) and Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, emphasizing the need for independent research and a long‑term investment horizon. He praises Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor as a foundational, albeit dry, textbook for patient value investing. Haroun then advocates using Audible to consume books while multitasking, highlighting the added benefit of hearing authors’ voices. He recommends listening to biographies of successful entrepreneurs, specifically Richard Branson, to capture their enthusiasm and corporate culture insights. Finally, he spotlights Gary Vaynerchuk’s books and social‑media expertise, outlining a hierarchy of platforms (Instagram, YouTube, etc.) for personal or company branding, and notes Vaynerchuk’s honest, sometimes abrasive style that can win listeners over. Throughout, Haroun’s tone is conversational, enthusiastic, and instructional, urging listeners to adopt long‑term, research‑driven investing and to leverage audio learning for continuous personal development.
Chapters
Besides how to Stop Worrying and How to Start Living, which is a book by Dale Carnegie, do you have other books you think would to read to develop our skills? There's one called When Genius Failed. It was written about this hedge fund which Nobel laureates started. Nobel Prize winners. They raised billions. The smartest people on the planet. And they failed so miserably. So miserably. Right. And the name of their firm was Long Term Capital Management. They failed so miserably that they almost forced the economy into a recession. Okay, so the reason I mentioned mention this and it's basically, it's 203 pages. And what you'll get out of this is one thing, which is this, don't ever rely on anyone else's research when you're investing in companies. Always do your own. Another one is called Fooled by Randomness. And this one is, it's by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, really smart guy. But it was hard for me to read, but I'm glad I read it because it actually it helped me out a lot. And the bottom line here, don't be a day trader. Don't ever invest for the short term because I promise you it's a recipe for disaster. You'll be right for the wrong reasons and vice versa. And if you think historically, and I'm talking to everybody, myself included on this call, pick a stock that you did well in years ago. Now I want you to look at how the stock market did that year. If the stock market went up a lot that year or that month when you made money, that might be why you made money on that stock. Or if an entire sector went up a lot that month or that year, maybe that's why you made money on stock. Just be long term focused because I promise you it's a recipe for disaster. And you ever see how there's no amazing traders you hear about that are successful longer term? Do you know their names? Nobody does. You have to be long term focused and not fooled by randomness. And this kind of goes hand in hand. And as always, the green screen gets messed up. So it's called the Intelligent Investor, written by Benjamin Graham and he was a professor at Columbia and that's why Warren Buffett went to Columbia as well. And this will teach you how to be a long term investor. It'll put you to sleep as well. I'm so sorry, it's a little bit dry, but it gets the point across. And so treat this like a textbook. You know, maybe read it first thing in the morning with no distractions. For an hour or two, and that's it. And then come back to it later when you're fresh again. And there are a number of other books, but I really actually enjoy. I enjoy Audible, and let's go to Audible together, and I'm going to show you books that I highly recommend reading. Okay, so Audible is much better than reading print books because two things. Number one, I just don't have time for that anymore, or I'm not as focused as I used to be, to be honest. And Audible, you can listen to these books while you're going on a walk, releasing serotonin at the gym, in the car. I love my drives now because of Audible. And you can also hear, and this is important, the voice of the author, if applicable and if available. And I love listening to biographies from successful people. Like, listen to Richard Branson's. You can feel and hear his enthusiasm when you listen to his books on Audible. He's a genius. And the corporate culture in any company is set by the person at the top. And that's why everybody works in virgin companies like Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, which is a Richard Branson company. They're all so happy. They love what they do. All right, Crushing. Oh, Gary Vaynerchuk, I want you to listen to Gary Vaynerchuk Books as well. Okay? Gary Vee is this guy who. He had this. His dad started this wine company and he took it from 3 million to 50 million, leveraging online stuff. And for anybody that wants to learn about social media stuff, don't take advice from me. Take it. I mean, I'll give you my opinion, but this is the authority, Gary Vaynerchuk. And if you're curious, what social network should you be active on for your company or yourself? Just scroll down and see what he's on. Here they are, in this order. Okay. These are the important ones, in this order. Okay. Notice there's no Google, so Instagram is huge. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. You get the idea. Interesting. He has podcasting here. He's just getting into that now. So anyway, listen to his books. A lot of people find him abrasive, but he grows on you because he's so honest and transparent.
