Read these 10 books in 2024 to become a Millionaire

Fastest way to become a millionaire. Copy other millionaires. Today we have ten of the best books to making your first million bucks from two multi millionaires. Skip the other hundred books telling you about how to make money. We've read them all for you. Let's steal these millionaires homework, huh? Let's borrow one of my rich friends. This is Noah Kagan, who I've known for 10 years.

How is it to sit in first class? What do you do for a living? What do people make in their career? 2021, my company appsuma.com is going to make over $70 million.

He's actually shown me his bank account.

This is one of the accounts here.

So rich. So I know he's legit. And I wanted you to kick us off with one of the first.

Me and you have read a tremendous amount of books and a lot of the most successful people read a lot of books. This is one that broke me out of my shell. Called the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I thought when the aliens came down from space, all I'd be able to do is help them buy and sell things. Like I'd be in business. And I never thought I was a creative person. I always admired the people behind the cameras, the people taking photos, the people drawing. This really made me feel that I can be a creative person too in any of these aspects, whether you're doing cooking, whether you're doing business. There's a lot of actionable items in this book too. I thought it was going to be a woo woo, go be creative and go in the sun and feel your space. And I was like, no, I don't want. What she did. Number one thing that's a huge takeaway in this book is called Morning Pages. And what she tells you to do is every single morning you wake up and you just write. It's called journaling, by the way. You just start writing anything and don't let it limit you, don't let it stop what you're thinking and just go unedited. And you do it every single morning. And you start realizing like, wow, I'm creative. There's more things out there. So here's a few of the different things that she said that I love. Like time travel. List three old champions of your creative self worth. Take yourself on an artist date. A lot of times what she calls out is there's like some early moments where we don't think we're creative that stop us from ever being a creative person. Like as a kid my dad thought my art was you ain't for me. The way I think about that. I was like, my parents had no art in the house. I dressed in really cheap clothes because my mom dressed me for a long time. And it's just like this book. I felt liberated me to be creative in business and to just be creative in life.

You also make a ton of money by creative emails. Yeah, right.

Well, it's even. You know, if you look at our. On appsumo.com, we don't have star ratings. We have taco ratings. What are different ways that you can practice being creative? Whether it's writing, whether it's in your businesses, whether it's in your sales processes. And have fun with this different business stuff.

Yeah. Cause you kind of overlaid the artist way on top of email. How much did you guys make on your first email you sent?

My first emails were making, like 100 bucks. And then Neville came in and wrote an email about a boner. I know, I know. And that was the first time we ever made $10,000. Because the email wasn't just, hey, here's this product, Go buy it. It was, why does fonts matter? But it was just so fun that how do you make your emails and your content so good so that even if people don't buy, they're happy? But that email just crushed because people were excited about, okay, what is this thing? I've got to go find out about it.

I'm gonna do my second one. I'm gonna switch this up, actually. This is Let My People Go Surfing by the CEO of Patagonia, Yvonne Chouinard. Why do I love this book? Because a lot of times people think that in order for you to make a million, to be a millionaire, life has to be miserable and it has to suck and it has to be hard. And you're a great example of your life's pretty fucking cool. You're always biking somewhere in France or find, like, a girlfriend in Spain. Yeah, exactly. And he talks about the easiest way to make your first million or to be successful in any business is you can't compete at anyone else's game or by their rules and win. And so when I think about building a new business, it's that, can you slightly change the rules of the game? Because if you can, it's just easier to win if you write the rules. You know, when you start making money or thinking about making money, it doesn't work more often than it does. Right. And so it's fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. Until one point, it kind of works. And he talks about what he's learned over decades, being in business and building a multi billion dollar company that every time something goes wrong, the answer is almost always to increase your quality. And I love that line because people think it's quantity, but it's not. You could have send 100F emails, but you need to send one that was so quality that it equaled to 10,000 instead of 100. And he says, we believe that quality is no longer a luxury. And they built their entire company around a premise that you should not buy their clothes. That in fact their clothes are such good quality, you should keep it forever.

When you want something new, ask yourself, do I really need it? Great wreck.

Yeah. Okay, what's the next book?

All right, this one is not businessy. It's a memoir of Donald Miller. This is my most gifted book ever. It's called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The reason I've read this book so often, the reason I've gifted it so often, is that a lot of us, if we're frustrated at life, and I read this when I was feeling frustrated. And so he shares his experience, doesn't give you advice. He's not telling you, go do anything. But he says, you're the character of your story and how do you want to live your own interesting life and what are you going to do about it? How do I create my own hero's journey? How do I create that own story arc where I can actually live an amazing life and so I need to go be around interesting people? And then he's like, I'm not happy with my health. I'm going to bike across America. And so there's part of the story where, like, he's never really biked, gets on a bike and goes with a group of people and just starts crossing America.

Whoa.

And so the whole story, it makes you realize that all of us can live interesting lives. All of us can do these cool things. All of us can do hard things, like bike across America, be in a committed relationship, write a book, start a business. I think when you start reflecting on your own life as a character and you're the author of this book, you're like, huh? How do I want this chapter to end? Because you can make it however you want. And that, to me, has always been inspiring. Like, I started biking across America because of this book. I just think it's so cool for all of us to realize we can live these amazing dream lives. And you can start doing it today. I talk to people, literally, you know, Hundreds a day. And it's, hey, I'm not happy with my job. Hey, I'm not happy with my partner. Hey, I'm not happy where I live. Hey, I'm not happy. It's like, great, let's start changing the story.

These books are gonna give you the cheat codes to making some money. But often people forget about how important it is to protect what you've already worked for. It's a lesson that took me a while to learn since I've been the first in my family's history to I guess, really make as much money as I have. It's so important that all of this is not just for me, but for my kids. Kids, kids, kids. So I don't know if you ever just sit up like me at night, kind of wondering, could you lose it all? But I got my first life insurance policy at 25 ish back when I was in finance because I sort of died inside of the thought of the confusing, expensive, and ridiculously time consum consuming process. But I didn't want to lose everything. So anyway, we found a company to help with that. They're called Ethos. And I'm all about making more money, but even more, I like to protect the house. Here's how it works. No medical exams. Just answer a few health questions online, apply in minutes, get a quote in seconds, and in most cases, get coverage in the same day. And is it just me that thought that life insurance was way more expensive than that? Could be two less coffees a month to help protect my family's future. You can get your own personalized free quote today by clicking on the link below. Okay, I want to hit the next book which is going to look familiar to you. Million Dollar Weekend by my friend Noah Kagan with a dollar in it. Look at this. This is one of the few books I've ever read that is a literal guide. This is like what people ask for every day on the Internet to me, which is, Cody, how do I become Rich? Steps A through Z. People don't write these books because they're actually surprisingly hard to write. Getting a recipe that anybody can follow is. Is hard, actually. And so you took something complex and made it really, really simple. And so there are a couple things I want to hit on in this book. I'm in the book.

You are in the book.

You little sneak. I didn't even know that. This is amazing. Well, also, I'm doing this video because I'm in a book, which maybe this is the first book I've been in. Look at that, you stud.

Look what page you're on.

Okay, I want to talk about two things that I love. One is the beginning of the book. I think you start out with the number one reason why people will never become a millionaire, which is their excuses.

With this book, I've literally had people live at my house reading the book and walking them through in 48 hours. So it's been interesting to see where people are holding themselves back, where they need support and the steps actually do work if you follow them. I've never had a book start with frequently made excuses, so I thought it'd help people feel seen and feel heard. Like, hey, the problems you've had where you didn't have money. The problems you had were you were obsessed with AI. The problems you had where you don't have any ideas we're going to solve it. So like a common one today is, hey, how do I do AI? The biggest mistake that people get, and the reason that's backwards is that AI is the solution. What is the problem? Having people think about the customer first instead of just like their founder first, like solution mentality with AI. So that's, that's been a huge one, I think have been a breakthrough for a lot of people.

I found the second hardest part of a business. It's you have the idea, but it's getting like those first dollars. Is that where most people fail? Because you have start it, build it, grow it and you basically handhold people through each. Is it at the grow it which would be the sales part where most people don't grow their business and eventually it dies.

People have success and they're afraid of when that success is happening and they sabotage it, which is a whole separate. That's my sequel. But the initial things that are really holding people back is they never get started. They're like, hey, I want to do this business. Hey, I've always thought about having a hair salon. Hey, I've always thought about being a YouTuber. Post a video today. And that's why in the book, really, there's so many recipe books out there. But what we had to do is put together, okay, well, if there's so many recipe books, what is holding people back? And there's really just two major things. One is they just don't get started today. That's why we have the dollar challenge. In the book, I gave you your first dollar, which is just get one dollar. And in the book I have my Venmo and people are Venmoing me to request a dollar and so I've been paying everyone, I've been their first investor in all these different readers books. So just basically practicing how do I get started right now? Not how that's been a breakthrough for people who are feeling like, hey, I've got to prepare. You're all ready, everyone is already ready. And then the second thing that's holding them back to getting to the. I would say the success is really just asking. Everything in business, in life is an ask. Like you had to ask to buy this house. You got to put an offer, had.

To negotiate it down.

You did exactly. Then you had to ask these guys behind the camera to see if they work with you. Then we have to ask the audience to create great enough content if they'll watch it. And you realize it's actually a developable skill. Like the skill of asking the more that you can get better at it. And you practice it. Like you can keep asking and asking, asking for a raise, asking for a girlfriend, asking for a coffee discount. And you realize when you get rejected, it's never as bad as it seems and there's more out there that you can actually get what you want, but you have to ask for it.

We're going to give away a bunch of books. Details below.

Next up. All right, I'm gonna bring a. This is a classic. So I don't even know if it's in Kindle, but this is an old school book. It's called Maverick. And he's got two of the books. His name's Ricardo Semmler. This is how I run AppSumo. It's from this guy. This is. This guy is like one of my idols of business leadership. And so the story was he went to Harvard and his dad had like a. Like a washing machine business. Business. And it's just run very traditionally. It's like, all right, you clock in at hours. All right. People have to like, submit reports. Like what everyone imagines the hell of a business. Like me working at Intel. It was that. And he starts just kind of reflecting and thinking about, what if we just did it differently? What if people could come to work when they wanted to? What if we treat people like adults? What if we didn't have to have performance reviews? So one of the things I do at AppSumo is I ask people, how much do you want to make? Okay, let's get you to that number. And a lot of is inspired by his story. Going from doing washing machines or like parts in Brazil to creating. I think it's like over a hundred million Dollar a year revenue business. What's crazy, it's not in some sexy business. I mean, you're known for this. It's literally, he's the king of boring. You're the queen. He's the king. And this guy empowered his team to have fun with their business. He empowered himself to live a dream life. And I really like how he shows it through his own story of mapping out. Here's how I've scaled this business through kind of double checking all the rules of business.

People on YouTube. The second you start talking about leadership and running a business, snooze, everybody leaves. And it's so crazy to me because that's where all the money is. Everybody thinks I can become a millionaire by myself. I. I don't know. Really hard. And so if you actually want to make millions and millions and then tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of dollars, you have to become a leader, and you have to get people to follow you. Otherwise, it's just never going to happen. And nobody wants to talk about it. And everybody wants to talk about how to invest in an Airbnb side hustle, which is never going to make you your millions. And even if it did, it'll be with 100 employees. Okay, let's go to the next one. You're going to see a common theme here. This one's called Real Artists Don't Starve. This one I thought was really important when I first started out because. And I read it on my phone, so I'm going to go through here. When I was first starting out, I had a lot of fake beliefs in my head about making money. Like, real artists don't sell. Like, salespeople are kind of gross. Asking for discounts means I'm poor or cheap or don't have the money. I had all these lies that I told myself that came from being, you know, an immigrant Latina. Once you start doing that, people push back because people see success and success as a mirror for their failures. You know, the more successful you get, the more you sell, the more people are like, they're gonna on you a little bit. And so this book kind of taught me that was okay. And he had this line that I always remember. What's out there, however scary it may be, is almost certainly better than staying where you are right now. Art is always found on the fringes, at the edge of our discomfort. The second reason why I don't think people get their first million or many millions is because failure is something that they internalize. I am a failure. It is me as a failure, as opposed to like, this experiment didn't work. And the natural outcome of experiments is that most of them will not work. And so he has this line, he's talking about Bezos and the, the fire phone. Does anybody remember that? So Bezos, you know, Jeff Bezos, released a phone that was like a massive failure. But Bezos said something, he said, if you think that's a big failure, we're working on even bigger failures right now. And I'm not kidding. Every important thing that we have ever done has taken a lot of risk and is probably going to be either our biggest failure or our biggest success. I love that. Could you imagine saying, oh, yeah, that failed miserably. I'm actually working on a bigger failure right now. People just don't speak that way. There's a real mixture between can you get inspired, plus can you have the playbook, plus can you learn to lead a team? And I think that's kind of what we've seen thus far. What's your next one?

All right, I'm going to throw a curveball in here. This is one of my. This is probably my newest favorite book. It's called Bringing Up Bebe. And it is the one American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. So you may say, noah, why are you wearing a French parenting book? Because I am neither French nor mom, but I'm about to be a parent. And there's a few things here that I think are super important for other people. I'll read a few of the lines. Number one, some of my best business ideas have come outside of business. For Million Dollar Week, we did a book birthday party. It was a launch party. We went and looked on Instagram at baby showers and then we took baby shower ideas and then copied it over for our business, AppSumo.com, which is, you know, I think we'll do 80 to $85 million this year. Our first million dollar inflection point, meaning it really got us to the seven figures, was because in a women's blog, they did a giveaway to a trip to, I think Italy. I was like, trip to Italy? That's cool. What if we gave away software for life and we did Dropbox for life.

For life. For life, for life.

250,000 email setups one day. That isn't. That was actually is eight figure opportunity inspired outside of our normal category. So in your own businesses, in things you're doing, if you're even a content creator, go look at gardening, go look at a travel channel. Go look at a camping channel, whatever that is. And so I love looking outside my normal category. Secondly, you commented well, and I loved it, Cody, which is like, how are you learning to learn? And it's just been such a cool thing to learn. Like, this is parenting, but it's also, how do you work with other people? And so I think the big takeaway for a lot of people out there is like, what are you trying to get better at? Is it content creation? Don't wing it. You don't have to wing it. And you can get coaches, you can get courses as well as these books. You know, for $10, you can have million dollar businesses. And then also if you're trying to get better at something, like, go read a book about it.

I've actually heard that's an incredible book for kids. It's on Chris and my list. Okay. The next one I want to hit is the Great CEO Within. I think this book is really important to read to become a CEO of yourself, because before you ever lead a team, you have to figure out how to lead yourself. The most important thing in building a big, huge bank account is your daily actions compounded. And so I remember when I was reading this, it was in a period of pain and something was going wrong in one of my businesses, and I was just so frustrated. I just couldn't find a way out of it. I didn't have systems and processes in place for it. So I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to figure out how to have a business that made money and also enjoy my life. And I was like, pretty categorically miserable. So basically, Matt has worked with some of the biggest CEOs out there, and for almost every business or every way, do you make money. Like, the same thing happens again and again. It's like, how do you run your meetings? How do you run your meetings with yourself? So at this point, I actually took this thing called writing versus talking issues and proposed solutions. When you have a problem, what do you do? If you're me, you just like doom spiral inside of your head. You know, like, don't really deal with it right away. And instead I was like, what if I'm not allowed to think about this? What if I'm not allowed to think about it and I just have to write down what's wrong, what some proposed solutions could be, and I cannot think about it outside of that. And that's basically how he runs meetings with problems. First he's like, we're going to write down the ideas Then we're going to write down potential solutions and then we're going to have a meeting about it, but we're not going to discuss anything until we've looked at the written piece. And so I stole that from Matt. I really, really like it. Our entire business now also runs on DRIs, which is the directly responsible individual. So that basically means that for every single task, there is one person who is in charge. Now our entire team runs on this and they have a checklist. So if something doesn't get done, we just go, who? Ah, Buck stops there. So I really like it. It's really a tactical book. So if you're at all struggling with, like, too many to dos, too many tasks, too many meetings, this one's useful, dude.

Crushing. The thing I have to add is that I know for myself and I know for a lot of people out there, we're looking for the next book that has the secret. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is this. You too? I feel like this is everyone. We're like, this one book is gonna have the thing that I've been waiting for, and they're not. They're not. Except, you know, and so what I'd recommend, though, find the books that you already know are good, read them twice, go back to what works. And so this is a, you know, rest in peace, Chet Holmes. This is a book that, like, you kind of. I kind of forgot how many things inspired me. One of the things in Million Dollar Weekend that I took from him and I gave him a shout out. It's called the Dream 10. In your companies, let's say you want to do sales. Who's the first three people I could give you today? And people are like, oh, like, yeah, tell me the three customers you want. And so he breaks down the Dream 100. He goes, that's where that came. Dream 100 is from him.

Oh, yeah, I use that all the time.

It's literally like a full business course in one book. And so that Dream 100 is like, all right, who are the Dream Hundred customers you want to work with? He gives you exactly how he breaks out his calendars. So one of the things that I've loved in my calendar inspired by him is I front load my hardest things on Mondays to get the shit out on Monday and then take the rest of the week off. Another thing that I still do to this day, it's so cool. I see this stuff. I'm like, yeah, it's from him gifting. So I'm a huge Business gifter.

You are actually.

Yeah. And that's one of my love languages. I have all five. But in terms of the gift giving, it is like the cheapest way to meet cool people and it's the cheapest way to build a fun relationship. So I was just on, you know, Lewis, how's. I was just on Lewis, how's show. It was such a fun thing. I really appreciate him being on. I saw that he had like old Jordans he was wearing and so I asked my buddies into shoes and then sent him a brand new pair of Jordans. Cool. So it's going to be kind of a gift. He's going to be like, that's so cool. And it's just a fun way. So in your own businesses. And by the way, it doesn't have to be money. You can actually make someone edit. Maybe for Cody, you do her Instagram images. Maybe you say, hey, I read your book and here's drawings or notes that I took of it. And his gift giving is another kind of just a lot of really nice, nuanced things about how to truly run a full business.

I always forget that that's how we met, is that I sent you a bunch of random to your office, remember back in the day? So there is something really powerful about the law of reciprocity. So basically, if somebody gives you something inherently as humans, we feel like we've got to give something in return. I have one last little. This is a technical book. It is going to bore you to tears, but it's also going to make you a ton of money. This book is like hanging out with an accountant. I guess lots of people make money. Many people don't keep very much of the money that they make, meaning they might have high revenue. In a business, you might make a million dollars, but if you don't actually know how to make a profitable million dollars, it doesn't really matter. And so this book is what I give to all of my executives at my companies. And I say I run profitable businesses. I do not burn cash. I run profitable businesses. And so read this before you ever think about working with me, because it's going to feel different. Like we just raised a bunch of money for a startup that I bought and we're incubating. And this is the first book I'm going to give the new CEO of that company, which is we will do one to two raises and never again because I like my business profitable. He has a breakdown of breaking even and how to think about it from a tax perspective, because you don't actually make as much money usually as you think you do. This is really technical, but as you think about hiring people, what should your salary cap be? How do you think about different ways to incentivize your your team and pay them? Because salary is not the only thing that you do. How do you think about debt? Should I take on money for a business or should I not super boring, but super important for making money. We're doing something special for you here today. If you want to win a book, click this link right here. We have a bunch of books we're going to give away and some special information just for you guys to hit your first million bucks. So that's the goal. Anything else you want to say? Subscribe.