10 Books Warren Buffett Recommends The Most

Reading a book a week will not make you rich.

Number 1, every single day you got to feed and strengthen your mind.

I just read and read and read. I probably read 5 to 6 hours a day.

I was very, very bookish. I was reading all the time.

You need to read the exact books that billionaires actually use to make their biggest decisions. If you're on a desert island and you only have one book, what book would you take? Probably you'd take the Bible. Warren Buffett gave me a copy of business adventures, feeling like with our dialogue about trying to understand the world of business, that I'd enjoy it as much as he had. And in fact, it was phenomenal.

Oh, I knew he'd like it. I mean, that was written for him. It was written for me too. If you're going to run a company, you should read The Impact of Philosophy.

And if you keep filling your head with average advice, you will stay stuck in the exact same spot you are in right now.

Listening to advice from other people should be approached with great caution. This is Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich. I've been reading this thing now for 23 years. I'll probably read it for another 23 years. Dr. Joseph Murphy wrote this book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, and that's probably one of the best books that you're ever going to find because you're going to learn something about your mind when you read this book.

When Warren Buffett was just 19 years old, he was just a regular college kid trying to figure out his future. Then he picked up a copy of the book called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. That one single book completely changed the way the way he looked at money. He said it gave him the exact intellectual framework he needed to make smart decisions without letting his emotions take over.

This is a book that first came out in 1949, The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. When I read this book, it changed my life.

He did not need a genius IQ to win. He just needed to follow the exact playbook inside that book. And he said he's used it to make billions ever since. Now, you might look at Warren Buffett and think he has some special brain power that you don't have, making his reading list useless for you. But Buffett himself said that strong character and emotional control matter way more than your IQ. These books are designed to build your discipline, not just test how smart you are. Once you learn how to think like the greatest investor in history, your entire business will change, starting with these 10 books. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #Believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. So Benjamin Graham wrote The Intelligent Investor in 1949. Warren Buffett read it when he was just 19 years old. It gave him his entire philosophy for life and business.

You know, I obviously recommend first and foremost The Intelligent Investor. Well, all of the important ideas in investing really are in that book.

Graham created a character in the book called Mr. Market. So imagine you own a business with a partner. Named Mr. Market. Every single day, he comes to your door. He offers to buy your shares or sell you his. Some days he's very happy and quotes a high price. Other days he's depressed and quotes a very low price. Graham says, "You cannot let Mr. Market's mood change your own mood. You have to look at the real facts of your business." This applies directly to your life and business right now. You are letting outside voices act like Mr. Market. If someone leaves a bad comment on your video, you feel terrible. You wanna quit. You're letting their mood destroy your belief. The world's biggest problem, I think, is that people do not believe in themselves enough. So you have to build an iron wall around your mind. When people tell you your dream is impossible, they are just acting like a depressed Mr. Market. You must ignore them entirely. You have to stay grounded in your own truth. You are capable of amazing things, but only if you take control of your own reactions. When you master your own belief, Nothing the market does can stop you, but you cannot just rely on belief alone. You also need a strong foundation of facts to stand on, which leads perfectly to the next book, Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham. So before Graham wrote his most famous book, he co-authored a massive textbook called Security Analysis in 1934. He wrote it right after the terrible 1929 stock market crash. Warren Buffett still points to this book as a total game changer for him.

If you're a real student of security analysis and you read and understand that, you should do all right.

The book teaches the exact difference between an investor and a speculator. A speculator is just a gambler. They throw money at a stock hoping that the price goes up tomorrow. An investor does the boring work. They read the balance sheet. They look at the actual cash a business makes. They look for safety. You might be acting like a speculator in your own business right now. You're looking for a quick shortcut. You want a viral video to make you famous overnight. You You buy expensive courses looking for the magic trick, but real success takes hard work. It takes reps. When I started on YouTube, my first 350 videos were terrible. I was awkward, I was uncomfortable, but I kept going. I did not gamble on a viral trend. I put in the boring work every single day to get better. You have to expect to suck at the start. If you want to build an empire, you cannot skip the foundational work. You must analyze your own actions and make real improvements every day. Doing the hard work is how you build real value. So look at your daily routines and find the boring work that you're avoiding. But looking at numbers is only one half of the puzzle. To get the other half, you have to look at his next book recommendation, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher. Warren Buffett says his investment style is 85% Benjamin Graham and 15% Philip Fisher.

I would recommend the first two books that Phil Fisher wrote. Back around 1960, Common Sense and Uncommon Profits. And the second one, those are very good books.

Fisher wrote this incredible book in 1958. While Graham only cared about the math and spreadsheets, Fisher cared about the actual people running the business. Fisher created a brilliant strategy he called the scuttlebutt method. So to use this method, you don't just read financial reports. You go out into the real world. You talk to the company's customers, you talk to their suppliers, you talk to their competitors. You find out the real story behind the scenes so you can apply the Scuttlebutt method to your own network right now. You can't build a massive company hiding behind your computer screen. You need to get out there and talk to real people. Your environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are. So if you want to level up, you must change who you talk to. Seek out mentors who are 10 steps ahead of you. Ask your customers what they actually hate about your industry and then fix it for them. Get in the room with people who force you to play a bigger game and think more legendarily, right? The right conversation can completely change your life. So you have to step out of your comfort zone to find the real truth. Reach out to 3 people today who can help you grow. But even when you do the right research, you will still face massive failures, which is exactly what the next book prepares you for. This is Adventures by John Brooks. In 1991, Warren Buffett met Bill Gates for the very first time. Gates asked Buffett for his favorite business book. Buffett loaned him his personal copy of Business Adventures. This book is a collection of true stories about Wall Street. The most famous story in the book is about the Ford Edsel. Ford spent $300 $150 million designing a new car. They thought they knew exactly what the public wanted, but they refused to listen to the real feedback. The car ended up being a massive failure and Ford lost a fortune. You are going to face massive failures on your journey too. It's a guaranteed part of the process. You will launch a product and nobody buys. You'll get a video that gets zero views. I lost a ton in my early career too. I almost quit on my business partner. It was incredibly painful. But your purpose comes through your pain. You cannot let a failure destroy your momentum. You have to look at your mistakes, Learn the lesson and try again. The greatest entrepreneurs in the world have failed more times than you have even tried. So do not hide your failures. Use them as motivation to become smarter and stronger. Write down your biggest failure today and extract the lesson that it taught you. You just have to make sure that you are not taking advice from the wrong people along the way. Where Are the Customers' Yachts? by Fred Schwedt. Okay, so this is the book Warren Buffett calls the funniest investment book ever written. Fred Schwed published it in 1940. The title comes from an old story about a man visiting New York City. The visitor looks out at the harbor and sees dozens of beautiful, expensive boats. His guide tells him that those yachts belong to the Wall Street bankers and stockbrokers. The visitor then asks a very simple question. He asks where the customers' yachts are. The joke is that the advisors get rich, but the people taking the advice go broke. So you need to be very careful about who you listen to right now. The Internet is full of fake experts trying to sell you a shortcut. They'll promise to make you rich overnight, but they're only getting rich by selling you their stuff. You do not need another massively expensive program to succeed. The boldest ideas you have are in your head right now, and they're the right ones for you. You just need to trust your own gut and take action. Stop outsourcing your belief to other people. Stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you. You need to be the hero of your own story. So take one of your ideas and start building it today instead of just buying another book. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just check the link in the description below to go grab it. I'll see you there. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. So this massive book was published way back in 1776, but Warren Buffett still quotes it today. Adam Smith is known as the father of modern economics. In this book, Smith explains a concept called the invisible hand. He says that when people work to create value for others, they naturally end up building wealth for themselves. He uses a famous example of a pin factory to show how dividing up work makes everyone more productive. So he showed that you do not get rich by forcing people to pay you. You get rich by trading something valuable that improves their lives. This is the exact definition, I think, of being built to serve. If you are unhappy in your business right now, it's because you are not serving enough people. If you're broke, it's because you are not providing enough value to people. Time to stop thinking about how much money that you want to make. You start thinking about how many problems that you can solve for others. When you focus entirely on making your customer's life better, the money will naturally follow to you. So wake up every single day and ask yourself, how can you serve? Give away your best advice for free. If you do that, your business will grow faster than you ever imagined. But to serve at a high level, you have to overcome your own inner fears, which brings us to our next book, Personal History by Katharine Graham. Katharine Graham was a legendary publisher of the Washington Post. Warren Buffett invested in her company and became her close friend and mentor. Her book tells a story of how she took over the newspaper after her husband died. She was suddenly in charge of a massive corporation. She had to lead the paper through the incredibly stressful Watergate scandal, and she eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. But in her book, she admitted she was absolutely terrified at the start. She constantly felt like an imposter. She did not believe she was smart enough or tough enough to lead. You might feel the same intense fear right now. You look at your goals and you think that they're may be too big for you. Your brain will try to protect you by giving you smart reasons to quit, but you must take action anyway. Katharine Graham did not wait until she felt confident. She took the job while she was still shaking. So if you lack belief in yourself, you must borrow belief from other people. Find a mentor or watch a video— we make them every day here— someone who inspires you. Let their confidence carry you until you build your own. You will never feel fully ready, so you must start start before you are ready. Building that momentum is the only way to find your true value. The Theory of Investment Value by John Burr Williams. So Warren Buffett read this book early in his career, and he says it gave him the exact mathematical formula for investing. John Burr Williams published it in 1938. He explained that the true value of any stock is based on the cash it will generate in the future, discounted back to today. He proved that a business is not just worth its buildings or its inventory. A business is worth its future potential. You can apply the same math to your own life right now. So you're not just defined by your past mistakes. You're not defined by your current bank account balance. Your true value is based on the incredible potential that you have in the future. But to reach that potential, you have to think long term. So we stop getting frustrated because you didn't get that quick win this week. Look 10 years down the road, build habits today that will pay off massively in your future. You must protect your daily routines because they compound over time. The actions that you take right now are creating creating your future value. So you can write down your vision and stop sweating the small stuff in the way. To make sure you take the right action, you need to upgrade your mental software every day. Which brings us to our next book, Poor Charlie's Almanac by Peter Kaufman. This book is a massive collection of speeches and wisdom from Charlie Munger. Charlie was Warren Buffett's business partner for decades. Buffett says Charlie completely changed the way he thought about investing and life. Munger believed that you cannot just use one tool to solve every problem. He said you must build mental models in your head. So for example, he used a model called inversion. So instead of asking how to succeed, he asked how to guarantee failure, and then he just avoided doing those things. He pulled knowledge from psychology, history, math, engineering. You need to take control of the mental models you are feeding your brain right now. Most people, they wake up and they immediately scroll through negative news or toxic social media. They fill their heads with garbage and then wonder why you feel stuck. You need to protect your mind. Start your day by listening to people who inspire you. Change the morning routine today. Read books that challenge your thinking. Watch content that makes you want to play a bigger game. The Believe Walk Challenge: wake up, get outside for 15 minutes, put something on in your ear that makes you believe in yourself more. When you consistently put greatness in your head, greatness will eventually come out of you too. You need to train your mind to see opportunities where other people, they just see obstacles. But all the mental models in the world mean nothing if you fail the final test. The Smartest Guys in a Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Warren Buffett highly recommends this book to show what happens when incredibly smart people make terrible moral choices. This book tells the full story of the Enron scandal. The executives at Enron were brilliant. They had the best degrees from the best schools. They knew how to make massive amounts of money, but they completely lacked integrity. They lied to their employees, they lied to the public, and they lied to themselves. Eventually, the entire company collapsed, losing $74 billion, and the leaders went to prison. Intelligence will not save you if your character is broken. You must figure out your one word. You need a core value that dictates every single decision you make. My word is belief. Every video I make, every business I start, every conversation that I have, I try to align it with belief. If you chase profits while ignoring your core values, you will eventually lose everything that actually matters. You want to wake up every day proud of the person that you see back in the mirror. So stay completely honest with yourself and your customers. When you build a business on the foundation of truth, you build a business that will last for generations. The greatest investment is in yourself. So you already have everything you need inside of you to win. Your past does not define how high you can climb right now today. So take the first step right now and let your momentum carry you forward. Protect your mind, serve others deeply, and never stop chasing your ultimate potential. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's find out if anyone can learn to invest. Investing is not a talent reserved for the rich. It's a skill you have to learn or you'll stay broke. Every self-made investor started with zero knowledge and had to figure it out through learning and effort. If you keep waiting for someone else to show you how to invest, you'll be stuck watching opportunities pass you by while others multiply their money. At 19 years old, Warren Buffett got rejected by his dream school. He had applied to Harvard Business School and they told him he wasn't good enough. Buffett was crushed. He thought this rejection might derail his ambitions before they even began. But instead of giving up, he found another path. He discovered that his hero, Benjamin Graham, was teaching at Columbia University. Buffett applied to Columbia last minute, got accepted, and eagerly soaked up everything Graham had to offer. In one cold Saturday, Buffett took a train to Washington, D.C. and literally pounded on the door of a little insurance company called of GEICO just to learn more. A janitor let him in, and Buffett ended up getting a 4-hour crash course from a GEICO executive. No one has ever received a better half-day course, Buffett said. That one bold move led to Buffett's first big investment profit. He made about a 50% gain on GEICO stock within a year. The point is, Buffett felt a burning urgency to learn everything about investing. He didn't wait for a teacher to come to him. He hunted down knowledge. The pressure he felt to prove himself, to seize the opportunity to learn, is the same pressure that you're feeling right now. When I was 19, I partnered in my first company. It was a biotech software. I worked 12 hours a day and earned almost no money. I was making about $300 a month and eating the same cheap bean salad for lunch every day. Month after month, nothing worked. After 9 months without a single win, my confidence had collapsed. One day I picked up the phone. I called my business partner and said the words I never thought I'd say. Okay, I quit. The moment I hung up, I broke down sobbing. I'd never felt like such a failure. I'd always seen myself as a fighter, not a quitter. Yet there I was, quitting. I barely slept that night. I was heartbroken and thinking I'd just thrown away my dream. But by morning, a new feeling hit me: regret. I imagined looking back years later, knowing that I gave up, and the pain felt even worse than my pain of failing. So I swallowed my pride, went back to my partner, and asked if I could undo my mistake. It'd be great to take me back, but I knew I couldn't just return to doing the same things. I needed a new strategy. Instead of trying to figure it all out by myself, I studied how Bill Gates built Microsoft through partnerships. I stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and modeled someone who had already succeeded. Within 3 weeks, we landed a $13,500 deal after months of almost zero income. $13,500 felt like a million dollars, and that one deal saved our business. We kept using that strategy, grew the business to success, and eventually sold the company. I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: when you feel like quitting, That's the moment you must push yourself to learn to try something new. Under that pressure of failure, I finally opened up to learning from others and it changed everything. Now, maybe you're still thinking, well, that sounds great for Buffett or for you, Evan, but I have no idea where to start. I'm not a financial genius. I seriously need someone to help me or I'll mess this up. In fact, one of you, Vishal Bhardi, a subscriber, asked me point blank, can anyone help me learn investing? And I get it. When you're new, it feels like you're stumbling in the dark and you desperately want a guide. You might think you need a finance degree or a mentor holding your hand, or you're worried that you'll lose money because you don't know what you're doing. But thinking that is exactly what is holding you back. If you keep believing that you're helpless without an expert, you're giving away your power. The truth is you have more resources at your fingertips today than Warren Buffett did at 19 than I did when I got started. The only permission you need to start learning is your own. Others can help through videos, interviews, books, but nobody can do your push-ups for you. For every excuse you have— I'm not good with numbers, I don't have a mentor, I might fail— there's someone out there with the same obstacle who went out and learned investing anyway. If a broke teenager in Omaha could knock on doors to learn finance, if a struggling entrepreneur could model a billionaire strategy to save his business, why not you? The moment you stop waiting for help and start helping yourself, you'll realize you're not as lost as you think. So let's break this down. Here's how you can take charge and learn investing no matter where you're starting from. Shift your mindset. Anyone can learn investing. The first thing you must do is believe that you can learn this. If you think investing is only for math geniuses or Wall Street wizards, think again. One of the most powerful investing stories is about a man named Ronald Read, a janitor from Vermont who quietly amassed an $8 million fortune by the time he died in 2014. He had no fancy degree, no high-paying job. He simply saved and invested consistently over his lifetime. His friends were stunned. But the message is anyone can be a great investor. In his book, The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel uses Reid's story to drive home that successful investing isn't about social status or IQ. It's about mindset and behavior. Modern psychology backs this up. The research on growth mindset shows that if you believe skills can be developed, you perform better and go further. And investing is no exception. It's a set of skills you can improve with study and practice, not some innate talent you either have or you don't. Billionaire investor Charlie Munger put it like this: I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up. So becoming a learning machine is far more important than having a high IQ or making one lucky trade. Adopt the identity of a student of investing. Commit to being the person who reads, who asks questions, who tries things. Did you know that in a 5-year study of rich people's habits, 88% of self-made millionaires reported that they read for at least 30 minutes every day to educate themselves? They weren't born knowing how money works. They devoured knowledge daily until it started to click. Warren Buffett, one of the richest investors on the planet, famously said that he reads 500 pages a day because that's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest. And he added that anyone can do it, but most people won't. So you can prove him wrong. Start viewing yourself as a lifelong learner of finance. You don't have to read 500 pages today, but do read something. Replace the thought, I can't learn investing, with I'm learning investing every day. Every expert was once a beginner who decided to learn. And so embrace that mindset today. Model the masters. Learn from the great investors. The fastest way to learn investing is to stand on the shoulders of giants. You don't have to invent a strategy from scratch. You can model the masters. I built my YouTube channel on this idea. Success leaves clues. In my own life, modeling Bill Gates's partnership strategy saved my business. In the investing world, the giants have left roadmaps in the forms of books and letters and interviews. Seek them out. You can start with the classics. Warren Buffett became Warren Buffett by studying others. He read Ben Graham's book The Intelligent Investor at age 20, and it changed his life. In fact, Buffett calls The Intelligent Investor by far the best book on investing ever written. So why not read the book the greatest investor used himself? There's a treasure trove of wisdom available to you from investors who've been through it all. Here are a few must-read resources that can kickstart your education. So we talked about The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. That's a definitive book on value investing. And Warren Buffett credits this book for shaping his investing philosophy. Again, calling it the best book about investing ever written. It will teach you how to think about stocks for the long run and not fall for short-term market swings. Next is One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. It's a read that shows how average people can beat the pros by investing in what they know. So Lynch was one of the most successful mutual fund managers ever, and he writes in pretty plain English for beginners. The book proves that your everyday knowledge, the stores that you shop at, the trends you see, can translate into great investments. It's empowering and practical for first-time investors. And third is The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. It's a modern classic on the behavioral side of investing. So Housel's insight is that mastering investing isn't just about what you know, it's about how you think and act. So he shares 19 short stories that show how our mindset and habits impact our financial success. So this book teaches you how to manage your fear, your greed, and impatience, the emotions that most often hurt investors more than a lack of knowledge. So absorb the wisdom from these masters. Read Buffett's annual shareholder's letters. They are free and they're online. You can learn how he analyzes businesses. Watch interviews with investors like Ray Dalio or Cathie Wood or Chamath Palihapitiya. We've done top tens on all of these people to see how they approach decision making. When you study the greats, you're essentially getting mentored by them across time and space. It can collapse your learning curve dramatically. But remember, Learning alone isn't enough. You'll need to actually put it into practice, which brings us to the next point. Start small. Learn by doing. You can read 100 books on investing, but nothing will teach you faster than actually doing it. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. At some point, you have to hop on and start to pedal. Start small and get your feet wet. Open a brokerage account or even a simulated trading account if you're nervous and make your first tiny investment. It could be as little as $50 or $100 in an index fund or a company that you believe in. The amount isn't going to make you rich. That's not the point. The point is to turn theory into experience. Studies on learning show that active practice beats passive study by a mile. Educational research illustrates that people retain up to 75% of what they learn when they practice by doing, compared to maybe 10% retention from reading about it. In other words, you could read about investing for a year and still feel unsure. But if you actually invest, even with play money, you start internalizing the lessons. You'll feel the emotional ups and downs of the market, learn how to place orders, and see how you react when the stock you bought drops 10%, which it will at some point. Those experiences are invaluable. They give you feedback that no book or video can fully simulate. So keep your initial stakes small so your early mistakes are cheap. Think of any minor losses as tuition fees in the school of investing, right? Every mistake is showing you what not to do the next time. And nearly every great investor went through a phase of errors and learning. The key is they learned and they didn't quit. And as you gain confidence, you can gradually invest more. Most successful investors begin with basic low-risk portfolios and learn by doing, growing bolder as their knowledge increases. You might start with a simple index fund or a few stocks, and over time, as you study and observe, you'll get better at identifying what makes a good investment. For you. And here's a practical approach. Keep an investing journal. Each time you buy or sell something, jot down why you did it. For example, I bought Company X because I think their new product will increase profits next year, or I sold Y because I panicked when it fell 5% in a day. Review these notes periodically. Patterns will emerge and teach you about your own psychology. Maybe you'll see that you sell too quickly out of fear, or that your best decisions were when you stuck to companies that you understand. This internal reflection turns experience into wisdom. And don't be afraid to ask questions and engage with communities. Join an investing forum or find peers who are also learning. Teaching somebody else what you just learned is another powerful way to solidify the knowledge. And remember, there's a learning pyramid. Teaching others has the highest retention. You could share a bit of what you learned from a book or discuss a small investing experiment. It will make you more confident that, hey, I do know a lot of things now. The bottom line is this: action creates clarity. So the, the fog of I don't know what I'm doing begins to lift as soon as you start placing that first trade or start that first investing project. Suddenly, P/E ratios, index funds, dividends— they're not just concepts. They're real things that you're interacting with. Every step you take gives you a little more competence and a little more confidence. So start now with whatever small step you can. Buy one share of that company you admire or set up an automatic transfer of $20 a week. Into an investment account, get in the game and learn as you go. Stay consistent for the long term. Remember that investing is a long-term game. The goal isn't to get rich by next Tuesday. It's to build wealth and knowledge steadily year after year. So as you start learning and investing, think of it like a marathon. It's not a sprint. Consistency and patience are your superpowers here. Now, there will be times when you feel discouraged or confused. Maybe the market dips and your portfolio loses some value, or you hit a complex concept that frustrates you. Expect that. It happens to every investor, no matter how experienced. The ones who succeed aren't the ones who never have any doubts. They're the ones who persist through them. Volatility in your emotions and in the market is part of this process. As one investment guide puts it, the market will prove you wrong at times. You will make mistakes. But learning to be a successful investor is a gradual process, and sticking with it for the long run is crucial. So when things go wrong, don't beat yourself up. Analyze it, learn the lesson, and keep moving forward. Remember, every setback is an opportunity to learn. So make a habit of continuous learning and investing. So, for example, commit to reading one investing article or a few pages of a book or one video. No matter what, commit to putting a little money aside every month to invest, no matter what the market is doing. This discipline builds momentum, and over time, your knowledge compounds just like your money does. Think of how compound interest works. A little growth each day can lead to massive growth over years. Knowledge compounds too. Every new thing you learn builds on the last and expands your ability to make good decisions. So 5 years from now, if you stay consistent, you'll look back and be amazed at how far you've come, both in your portfolio and in your understanding. It also helps to keep your why in mind. Why do you want to learn investing in the first place? Is it to secure your family's future? You want to achieve financial freedom? You want to not feel clueless when money decisions come up? Whatever it is, write it down. Think about it. In tough moments, revisit your why. It can help give you more patience. When you know you're in this for the long haul, the day-to-day bumps don't shake you as much. You start thinking like an investor who asks, what will this be worth in 5 or 10 years instead of panicking over today's news. And one more reminder: celebrate your progress, not perfection. Did you finish reading your first investment book? Awesome. Did you make your first profitable trade, even if it was only a $20 gain? Amazing, right? These are milestones. By acknowledging them, you reinforce the identity that you are an investor now, a learner. You're a doer. You're someone who actively is building their future. And that identity shift, that becomes everything. You're no longer the person wondering, Can anyone help me learn investing? You're the person who is helping yourself learn it every single day. You made it this far in the video, which tells me that you're serious about your financial future. Every investing master was once a beginner who simply refused to give up. And now you're on the same path. So keep feeding your mind, keep taking action no matter how small, and be proud that you're doing what most people only talk about. By showing up and learning today, you've already set yourself apart from most people. Now let's learn how billionaires build wealth without degrees. People think a college degree is the only ticket to success, but why do so many billionaires ignore traditional education? This question might shock your teachers, but it's a reality we see with icons like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson. These moguls broke away from the conventional path, and some even dropped out and still built empires. Are they just lucky geniuses, or do they know something about learning that schools don't teach you. In this video, we'll explore why billionaires often buck the traditional education system and more importantly, what they do instead. By the end, you'll see how you can apply their approaches to your life. Let's dive in. Breaking the school equals success myth. So we're all taught that good grades and diplomas lead to success. And yes, education is valuable. In fact, 84% of the richest people did graduate college. But here's the twist. Many of the most famous billionaires succeeded without finishing school. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison all left college early and still landed on world's wealthiest lists. These cases are exceptions, not the rule, but they prove that a traditional degree isn't the only path to extraordinary success. Why is this dropout billionaire story so enticing? It's because it challenges the norm. It makes you wonder if going against the grain might actually work. Now, I'm not telling you to drop out of school. Most people who do that don't become billionaires. What matters is why these outliers felt they could ignore the usual route. They weren't anti-education. They were just pro-learning in their own way. They believed in a different approach to education, one built on passion, vision, and continuous self-improvement. Passion over diplomas. The billionaire mindset. One key difference. It's mindset. Billionaires often prioritize passion and purpose over following a preset curriculum. They ask, is this teaching me what I need to fulfill my vision? And if the answer is no, they aren't afraid to chart their own course. Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college because he couldn't see the value in it for his goals. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. So I decided to drop out. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, Steve Jobs said. Free from required classes, he then followed his curiosity, like taking a calligraphy class just because it fascinated him. That seemingly useless interest later helped him build the Macintosh's beautiful typography. In other words, by pursuing what intrigued him instead of a standard syllabus, Jobs learned things that helped revolutionize personal computers. This pattern, it shows up again and again. These innovators have a burning interest or vision that traditional schooling can't always accommodate. They are hungry to learn, but on their own terms. Psychology calls this a growth mindset, the belief that you can develop your abilities through learning and efforts. People with this mindset thrive on challenges and see failure as a chance to grow. Billionaires like Jobs, Branson, or Musk, they exemplify this. They don't see a grade as a limit of their intelligence. They constantly ask questions, seek new skills, and believe that they can figure things out. As Stanford professor Carol Dweck notes, having a growth mindset is essential for success. And these entrepreneurs, they live that mindset every day. Passion matters more to them than diplomas. Instead of studying something because it's required, they zero in on learning what fuels their mission. This doesn't mean school is bad. It means education is not confined to a classroom. If you have a dream that doesn't fit neatly into a degree program, are you willing to learn in other ways? That's the question these billionaires answered with a resounding yes. Self-education. Learning never stops. Just because they ignored formal education doesn't mean billionaires stop learning. Far from it. In fact, they are often obsessive self-educators. They simply trade classrooms and exams for books, mentors, and real-world practice. Learning becomes a lifelong habit, not a phase of life. Elon Musk is a perfect example. He earned degrees in physics and economics, but he's the first to say that college wasn't where he learned the most. You don't need college to learn stuff. You can learn anything you want for free. I think colleges are basically for fun, Musk bluntly remarked. This isn't a knock on knowledge. Musk arguably knows more than most graduates. It's a knock on the traditional format of knowledge. When Musk wanted to build rockets, he didn't go back to school for aerospace engineering. He taught himself by reading textbooks seeking out experts. One early SpaceX mentor said Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights. All that information, it was out there, and Musk had the self-drive to absorb it. This self-education habit is common among top billionaires. They read voraciously. Warren Buffett, for example, spends about 5 to 6 hours a day reading and has done so throughout his entire career. He says the key to success is simple: Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest. The average person could do it, Buffett insists, but most won't, which is why he gains a competitive advantage. Bill Gates also shared that reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding. So these billionaires essentially create their own curriculum continuously. They treat learning as a daily ritual, not something that stops at graduation. Now, you might not have 5 hours a day to read, but the lesson here is that information is freely available as never before. Books, online courses, videos like this one. Billionaires take advantage of this. They turn their curiosity into knowledge. No permission needed. So ask yourself, when was the last time you learned a new skill on your own just because you wanted to? The tools are out there and the most successful people use them relentlessly.

Honestly.

The school of experience. Learning by doing. Beyond books, billionaires learn by doing. This is a huge factor in why some of them cut short their formal education. They felt they could learn more on the job or by starting a venture than sitting in a lecture hall. There's a saying: experience is the best teacher. These entrepreneurs take that view to heart. They see the real world as their classroom. Let's look at Sir Richard Branson. He struggled in school because of dyslexia and dropped out at age 15 to start a youth-run magazine. Pretty bold move, right? Branson says it was the hands-on experience that taught him what he needed. I left school at 15 and I was struggling to survive in the jungle, and that was a great education. Just getting out there hands-on teaches you a lot. His magazine venture became his first success, and he kept building from there, from music to airlines to telecom. Branson believes if you want to be an entrepreneur, then don't waste your time going to university or business school. Just get on and do it. It's not that he sees no value in knowledge. He simply learned by jumping in and figuring things out on the fly. In Branson's own words, my career has been my education. He wrote about how tackling real business problems taught him more than any textbook. In the end, solutions to big problems won't come from doing school reports but by getting out there, asking questions, seeing differently, and finding the answers ourselves. That quote is awesome because it's so empowering. You can learn by trying, by creating, by failing, and then by trying again. And schools often fear failure. You get a bad grade and it hurts your GPA. But in the entrepreneurial world, failure, it's feedback. Every failed product, every mistake teaches a lesson that brings you closer to your goal. Take the example of software billionaires. Many of them started coding and launching projects as teenagers. Bill Gates was programming computers in high school and even got early business experience through a deal to analyze traffic data. By the time he dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft, he'd already been doing tech and business for years. The doing gave him the confidence that he was on the right track. Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in his dorm room. It grew so fast that he left Harvard to devote himself to it full-time because he experience of running a real company was teaching him more than any class in that moment. Here's the practical insight: don't wait until you graduate to start pursuing your dream or testing your ideas. Start your projects now. Get that experience. Maybe it's a side hustle, a YouTube channel, a nonprofit initiative— whatever drives you, treat it as your personal hands-on MBA. Classroom learning is valuable, but it complements experience. It can't replace experience. Even if you stay in school, which can be great, seek out internships, build prototypes, join competitions, get your hands dirty. That's how you internalize skills and stand out. Billionaires often have a head start on mastery because they began their 10,000 hours of practice long before others did. Mentors and networks versus professors and grades. Another thing billionaires do differently is seek mentors and learning from people, not just from institutions. So instead of only listening to professors or chasing A's, they actively find teachers in real life—experts, fellow entrepreneurs, even competitors—to learn from them. They treat networking as learning. Elon Musk, as we already talked about, he cold-called rocket experts when he was starting SpaceX. He wasn't shy about asking questions and getting guidance outside of formal class. That aerospace consultant, Jim Cantrell, became Musk's mentor in the early days. And Musk soaked up knowledge from him and others in the field. Essentially, Musk created his own advisory board of experts to educate him. This kind of mentorship and advice seeking is something you can do at any stage. If you're curious about a field, reach out to people who know more. Many successful people are surprisingly willing to share advice if you're genuinely interested and respectful of their time. Billionaires also learn from peers. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has often cited how important his network at Harvard was not the classes, but the people. He met co-founders of Facebook there and even met his wife in college. Zuckerberg valued college as a great social experience to meet talented people, but he's not sure that college is preparing people for the jobs that they need today. In a podcast interview, he pointed out that huge student debt and lack of practical training are big issues with the current system. He even suggested that maybe not everyone needs to go to college, especially as more alternative paths emerge. This is coming from a Harvard dropout who clearly learned a lot from other people and from actually launching the company. What billionaires do is surround themselves with smart, driven individuals and learn from them. It's often said that you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. If you spend your time only in structured classes, you're limited to that environment. These entrepreneurs went out and found communities where they could exchange ideas, get get feedback and be inspired. Think of the PayPal Mafia— that's Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others who built PayPal in the early 2000s. They learned from each other, and after PayPal, that network spun out into multiple billion-dollar companies— Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir, YouTube, etc. They didn't learn that in a lecture. They learned it by collaborating and mentoring each other. So the actionable insight for you: find your mentors and your tribe. If you're in school, those could be a professor whose outlook you admire or club with like-minded innovators. If you're already in the working world, seek mentors in your industry or even online. We live in an age where you can follow CEOs on X, you could join startup meetups, or watch interviews. This channel right here is full of advice from legends, effectively giving you access to virtual mentors. So take advantage of that. Don't learn in isolation. Successful people often credit mentors for their breakthroughs, so why not proactively look for those teachers outside of the classroom. Skills over degrees. Value creation is the real test. Traditional education is big on credentials, grades, degrees, titles. Billionaires, however, focus on skills and value creation. They ask, what can you actually do? What problems can you solve? Paper qualifications alone don't impress them as much as real capability. Elon Musk shows this attitude in his companies. When hiring, he He famously says a college degree means little to him compared to someone's ability to get things done. We don't care where you went to school or even if you went to school. Just show us your code, Musk wrote when recruiting engineers for X. He has hired people without degrees who demonstrated talent through coding projects or practical work. Musk even noted that he'd value a candidate who built useful software on their own over someone with a PhD but no tangible output. This mindset permeates many innovative companies today. Google, Apple, and others have relaxed degree requirements because they realize what billionaires knew all along: skills are more valuable than credentials. Billionaires ignore traditional education in the sense that they don't blindly trust the system to prepare them. Instead, they take responsibility for mastering the skills they need. If school provides it, great. If not, they'll get those skills elsewhere. It's no coincidence that many self-made tycoons are essentially essentially self-taught in key areas of their business. Another example is how these leaders often encourage unconventional problem solving. They're not looking for how well you can memorize textbook answers. They care how you think. The conventional education model sometimes trains us to avoid mistakes and just follow instructions. But in business, the big wins come from thinking differently and sometimes breaking the rules legally and ethically. Of course, billionaires often credit their success to understanding the limitations that traditional thinking imposed. They keep an open mind and adapt quickly, which is a skill in itself. So ask yourself, what skill do you need to reach your goals and how can you start developing it today? It might be coding, marketing, design, public speaking, anything. You can learn so much through practice, online tutorials, mentors, etc. Don't wait for a syllabus to tell you that it's time to learn a skill. Seek out the knowledge and practice on your own. Your ability to create value is what will ultimately determine your success. not just the name of a school on a diploma. Education in your traditional sense is one way to gain skills, but it's not the only way. And billionaires prove that by hiring and succeeding based on real-world abilities. What you can do: design your education. By now you might be thinking, okay, I get it, billionaires learn differently, but what about me? The great news is you can apply these principles in your own life starting now. You don't have to be a billionaire or ignore your classes to benefit from this approach. This segment is all about you taking these insights and turning them into action steps for your personal growth. Step number 1: take charge of your learning. Even if you're in school, don't be a passive student. Identify what skills or knowledge you need for your goals and actively pursue them. This could mean reading books outside of your coursework, signing up for an online class, or building something on your own. Be the CEO of your own education. So for example, if you dream of starting a business, start learning about entrepreneurship right now, not just theoretically, but by running a small venture or side hustle. Remember, all the knowledge you need is accessible if you're resourceful. As Elon Musk said, you can learn anything you want for free in today's world. So make a list of topics you're curious about and commit to learning a bit each day. That habit is like compounding interest on your personal value. Number 2: Follow your curiosity and passion. So if there's a project or subject that lights you up, dive into it, even if it's not part of a formal program. Steve Jobs learned calligraphy with no idea how it would help him. It seemed useless at the time, but it became incredibly useful later. Trust that your interests have value. Your passion can become your superpower because you'll naturally put in the hours to excel at it. So if you're coding late at night, or you're tinkering in a workshop, or you're writing stories, or you're designing games, know that you're building real expertise. It might even turn into a career or a company. Billionaires often started with a personal fascination that grew. Think of Zuckerberg with social networking or Musk with space and electric cars. Give yourself permission to explore outside of the lines. Number 3: Embrace failure as learning. So don't be afraid to make mistakes. Just treat them as lessons. In school, failing a test feels like the end of the world. But in life, failing a test just means learn and try again. The road to success is paved with trials and errors. Instead of chasing perfect grades, chase improvement. Did your idea or prototype flop? Great. You just found one way that doesn't work. As Thomas Edison would say, analyze it, adjust, and try again. Each iteration makes you smarter and more resilient. This is how entrepreneurs eventually hit on billion-dollar ideas, not usually on the first try, but through persistence and learning from each attempt. So start reframing failures as feedback. The faster you learn to do this, the faster you'll grow. Go. Number 4: Seek mentors and peers who inspire you. You don't have to figure everything out alone. Reach out to people who are doing what you want to do or who have the skills that you want to develop. That could mean emailing a professional in your field for advice. It could be finding a teacher or coach who believes in you, or joining a community of like-minded learners. Build your own personal board of advisors. As they say, success leaves clues, and by surrounding yourself with successful, positive people, you'll pick up on their habits and their mind mindset. Many successful entrepreneurs say they got a crucial boost from mentors. So look around. Who in your life or your extended network could be a mentor for you? And how can you contribute value to that relationship as well? It can start as simply as asking the question or seeking feedback on your work. Don't be shy. The worst that can happen is you get no reply, but the best is you gain a lifelong coach or friend. Number 5: Focus on skills and impact. So starting today, Pay attention to what you can do, not just what grades or certificates you have. Make a list of skills you want to acquire in the next year and start working on them one by one. Treat it like a game or like a challenge. You can't code? Cool, try a beginner project on GitHub or coding bootcamp online. Want to improve public speaking? Awesome, join a local Toastmasters club or practice by making short videos posted on YouTube. Each skill you build is like adding a tool to your toolbox that can open new opportunities for you. And when you do pursue formal education or apply for jobs, you'll stand out because you can demonstrate real abilities. You will have a portfolio of projects, not just a resume of classes. And that's the kind of thing that impresses visionary leaders. They see a bit of themselves in someone who goes beyond the syllabus. Believe in your own path. At the end of the day, the reason billionaires ignore traditional education is is because they believe in their own path. They have an unshakable faith in their vision and in their ability to learn what's necessary along the journey. And this is perhaps the biggest takeaway of all: self-belief. When Steve Jobs dropped out, or when Elon Musk started a rocket company with no aerospace background, there was an immense level of self-belief at work. They bet on themselves. They believed that they could figure it out even if they took an unconventional route. And guess what? You have that same potential for self-belief. It doesn't require billions of dollars or a genius IQ. It requires giving yourself permission to trust your intuition and abilities. Believe that you can learn whatever skill or knowledge you need. Believe that you can contribute to the world in a meaningful way, degree or no degree. Education is everywhere if you have the mindset to seek it. This isn't about saying college is worthless. College can be an amazing resource and experience for many people. It's about realizing that your education is ultimately in your hands. You don't have to be limited by what's taught in the classroom. You can learn from books, from people, from trials, from YouTube, from every experience life throws at you. Billionaires become billionaires in part because they never stop learning and never stop growing. They cultivate themselves relentlessly. And as a lot of the stories on this channel highlight, each of these leaders had moments of doubt and obstacles but they push through by focusing on growth and keeping their vision front and center. They model success, they learn from others, and then they turn around and innovate in their own way. Now it's your turn. Believe that you can craft your own path, and maybe that means excelling in school and doing extra on the side. Maybe it means taking a non-traditional route in your career. Whatever it is, know that the same principles apply. Stay curious, be courageous in action, seek wisdom from everywhere, and trust yourself. You have the ability to achieve great success and fulfillment by learning and adapting continually, just like the billionaires we talked about. In the words of one of those billionaires, stay hungry, stay foolish. That was Steve Jobs. And be hungry to learn and unafraid to do what others might call foolish when you pursue an unconventional dream. That's how you break new ground. That's how you end up changing the world. So why do billionaires ignore traditional education? Because learning on their own terms empowers them to achieve the extraordinary. And you can do the same in your life. It all starts with a choice to take ownership of your growth. Remember, you have what it takes to succeed with or without a fancy diploma. Use every resource available. Never stop improving and believe in yourself even when the road is different. Forge your path. Keep learning and keep going. Ultimately, the most important school is life itself. And class is in session every day if you're willing to learn. So go out there and make your own education, your own destiny. You've got this. If you want to learn how to ignite your inner mind, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Inside of you, there's a fire, a whisper that says reach higher, a feeling deep within your chest that won't let you settle for less. Your dreams might scare you. That's okay. Fear comes, but courage stays.