7 Books That Will Revolutionize Your Business Mindset

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and today I'm going to share the 7 books every entrepreneur must read. These are 7 books that have had a tremendous impact on my life, how I think about business, and I hope they have the same impact on you. Now, I used to have a ton of books. I used to have walls and walls of books, and when I saw something interesting, I would pick I would pick it up and buy it. Somebody told me to get it, I would buy it. And I found I had all of these books just sitting on the shelves collecting dust, and I was accumulating more books than I could read. And I had great intentions to read them, but I never got around to them. And it created stress. It created stress looking at all these books and knowing I gotta read all of these things. So I decided one day I would get rid of them all, and I donated them to a local library, and I pared it down. I got to my core list of books. That I read and I reread and have given me so much value, and today I wanted to share them with you, and hopefully it transforms the way you think and transforms your business as well. Okay, well, that was awkward. Test, 1, 2, 1, 2. At number 7 is The Fred Factor by Marc Sandborn, and this is a book about delighting your customers. It tells a story about a postman named Fred who goes over and above to always delight his customers, which are the people on his route. And you think about being a postman, it could be a boring job, right? You're doing the same thing over and over and over and over again every single day. But Fred finds a way to get to know his customers, to watch over their houses when they're— when he knows they're not home or on vacation, to always look for ways to delight and surprise them. And so if you have a business where you personally are involved in dealing with customers, which will be most people, or if you have people on your team who are responsible for dealing with customers Give them this book. It's a short read. Look at that. Look how thin that is. It's like not even 100 pages. What, how many pages? 100 pages. Just over 100 pages. Super fast read. It'll change your mindset on how to work with customers. Pick it up. At number 6 is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. This is an awesome book. Another quick read. It is, what, 125 pages? Pretty easy to sift through. You can probably get it through in one sitting as well. And this book is all about giving and helps change your mindset from being a taker and saying, here are my goals and I gotta go out and take what I can, to realizing that to accomplish your goals, you have to give to other people, help others do what they're trying to do, help others accomplish their goals, and in turn they're going to come back and help you. And often the path to reaching your goal is totally unexpected and it's going to come as a result of helping other people. So it totally changed my mindset of what I needed to do in business and not just go and try to reach and take my goals, but to help others along the path. It's an inspiring story. You can't help but feel great after reading it. You can't help but feel changed after reading it. You want to go out and make the world a better place. It's an uplifting, positive, awesome story coming in at number 6. Go check it out, The Go-Giver. Coming in at number 5 is Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal. This is one of my favorite books because it helps you think big. One of the biggest problems with a lot of entrepreneurs is you're stuck in your current bubble, right? The environment that you create for yourself is holding you back where you are. How do you bust through? How do you think bigger? How do you go out and do something that's going to change the world where nobody in your family has ever done that before, where none of your friends have that kind of ambition? So how do you surround yourself with those kind of people You read books like this. Now this is one of the first, I think it's the first nonfiction book that I ever read. I remember I was driving to New York with my family. I don't know how old I was at the time, you know, maybe teenager, driving to New York City, crossing the bridge, and I was reading Donald Trump: Art of the Deal, and it just inspired me to want to do more, to think outside my comfort zone. And this is something that you need to do as an entrepreneur if you want to accomplish big things, you want to achieve big goals, you have to believe, you gotta believe that you can do it. So how do you get that confidence when you've never done it, nobody in your family's done it, nobody in your social networks have done it? You can surround yourself with people like Donald Trump, read this book, you will be inspired, you will be ready to take action, you'll be ready to go out and conquer big dreams. It'll give you that extra motivational boost and you can apply it to your business. Check it out, number 5, Donald Trump, Art of the Deal. Coming in at number 4 is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This book is awesome. It says at the top, this book could, could be worth a million dollars to you. It's super helpful, and the main thought behind this is that thoughts are things. There's a lot of belief in this book that whatever you have in your mind, whatever impact you want to create in the world, whatever business you want to start, it's all possible. It's all possible if you believe in yourself, and it gives you the steps to do it. And it outlines the story of Andrew Carnegie, who was at the time the richest person in America, and his lessons for success for people who are coming up, how he did it himself, his advice for other people. It'll help build your confidence, it'll help you believe in yourself, it'll help you make you ready to go out and do something positive in the world. It'll give you the confidence and courage to start or to continue, the faith, the motivation, the inspiration to keep going when you may be up against the wall and you're not seeing any progress. It's beautifully written, great advice in here. As I was opening the book before doing this video, I had the old book smell coming out at me and giving me a little bit of a headache, so I gotta brush out the book a little, air it out. It's an old book, but awesome, definitely recommend reading it. I know entrepreneurs who read this every year as an annual ritual and every year they take something new from it. So definitely go check it out. Coming in at number 4, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. Coming in at number 3, Keep Any Promise by Karim Ismail. This is an awesome book and it's divided into 2 sections, okay? Now Karim, he came from a successful business but he was overworked. It was causing problems in his family life. It was causing problems in his health. And he totally changed around everything that he did and replanned his life, and he gives you the blueprint for how to do it. Now it's divided into two sections. The first are stories of people and how they've changed their life, and the second are exercises that you can do to start changing your business and your life. I gotta be honest, I'm gonna be honest, this is real talk coming straight from Evan Carmichael, is what this channel is all about. The real talk is the stories in the book I found just okay. I didn't find that inspiring. I found the problems that they were overcoming weren't that huge, and I felt like I wasn't on the same level with the people who were in the book. And I want to be inspired by people who are doing more, right? Looking at Donald Trump and looking at Andrew Carnegie, people who are doing a lot more. That's who I want to be inspired by. So the stories were just okay for me, but the exercises, the exercises are life-changing. That's why it's coming in at number 3. If you sit down and you do the exercises and you follow them, the ones that Cream have laid out, it will change your life. The huge value here, they show the exercises in the book, but the big value is here in the workbook. And I hope, I hope Cream still offers this as part of the deal. If you look here, it says download the Life Blueprint Workbook, $149 value, for free. That's the money that if you go Go through that, do those exercises, follow through on them. I guarantee you it'll change your business life, it'll change your personal life. It had a massive impact on me, and that's why I recommend it as the number 3 book, even if you've never heard of it. It's the secret gem for entrepreneurs. So go check it out, Keep Any Promise by Karim Ismail. Coming in at number 2 is Radicals and Visionaries by Thaddeus Warrow, and the subtitle is Entrepreneurs Who Revolutionize The 20th century. This is such an awesome book. What it does is basically tell you the stories of a whole bunch of different entrepreneurs, and each story is only, what, 4 pages long, 5 pages long. So I can, I can open it up, and so here's a story of Jeff Bezos. There's a picture, there's a quick quote of him, there's his story, there's these little tidbits that come out, more tidbits, story, and then you're done. So in like 4 pages you have the history of Jeff Bezos and how he got started, and it does that over and over and over again for lots of famous entrepreneurs that you would recognize. What I found it useful for is that it was a motivational boost for me. One, you know, I believe in modeling success. You've seen a lot of the videos that I do. It's all about modeling success, and that saved my business. And so this is a, a quick hit of tons of different entrepreneurs that you can model. I used it as Inspiration in the mornings for me. This used to be my routine. You know, when you wake up and you're by yourself and you're trying to challenge yourself to think bigger and do more and stay motivated to run your business, my daily routine used to consist of opening up Radicals and Visionaries and reading one story. And I'd get an idea from them and I'd get inspiration and motivated and get some energy from them. And you can do it in a couple minutes. It's such an easy, quick read. Read. So you'll get lots of ideas from it, you'll get lots of energy from it. Definitely worth checking out. My number 2 book, Radicals and Visionaries, Thaddeus Morrow. And coming in at number 1, the number 1 book all entrepreneurs must read, drumroll. How do I do a drumroll? Drumroll! The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. This is my favorite book of all time. If I had to pick one book to keep, this would be it. And at the core, this book is a productivity book, okay? It'll teach you how to automate, how to delegate, how to eliminate, how to outsource, how to apply the 80/20 rule to your business, how to, how to be more efficient, get more stuff done so that then you can go live the life of your dreams. It teaches you a lot about productivity, and since reading this book, I've become a productivity nut and have applied a lot of strategies that Tim suggests in this book to my life, to my business, and it's had dramatic impact. The other thing though that you learn from it is Tim thinks way outside the box, and even now a lot of the strategies here are still way, way, way, way outside the box, and you don't even realize that some of these things are possible. That was what I was so excited and interested in reading from him. This is the, this is the extended and updated version. So I got the original and then I bought the updated version, and if he puts another one out, I'm gonna buy that one too because it's awesome. But it challenges you to think differently. It challenges you to step outside your comfort zone. It challenges you to look for other ways to accomplish your goal that you may not have ever thought possible. So on top of all the great productivity advice that you get, that I get from it, and taking notes and, and read through it. It also makes you think more creatively, makes you look for other options, and as an entrepreneur, that's what you're going to have to do to be successful because chances are it's not just going to be the straight path to success. It's going to be a crazy, wild, bumpy ride, and you can't just do the things that everybody else does. You got to be creative, you got to step outside the box. That's what this book helps you do. Tim Ferriss for our Workweek The number one book for all entrepreneurs. You must read it. Now before signing off, I gotta give you my bonus book. It's the only fiction book in my collection and I had to share it with you. Now when people look at my bookshelf, you see the Steve Jobs quote at the top, makes sense. You see the books, I don't have a lot of them, and when they look at it, they look at the top and they see, what the heck is that Three Kingdoms book? What is it all about? And then they look below And you see this statue and you're wondering what he's all about and those little characters underneath and what they're all about. So I have to tell you the story. So Three Kingdoms, also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is one of the most popular books in China, in all of Chinese history, that has then been translated to English. And it'll teach you about leadership, it'll teach you about motivating people, teach about having a purpose. It teaches about honesty and trust and loyalty. And it's a story about 3 warring kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty who are fighting for control of China. One of them is led by a man named Cho Cho, who is evil and lies and cheats and steals and does whatever it takes to win. And the people hate him, and he's very oppressive and has tons of rules and is the dictator. His way has to go, and he's evil and cruel. And the other side is run by a guy named Lao Bei, who is fair and honest and just and treats people with respect, and people love him and they follow him, and he'll never screw people over. And these two guys are constantly fighting. And at the start, Lao Bei is losing all the time. He doesn't have the military, he doesn't have the money, he doesn't have the team, and he's always just retreating and running away. And eventually he builds up his team and the people believe in him and they continue to follow him and they love what he's all about. And he starts to win. And so it's all about this fight that continues to happen between those two kingdoms and another one that's in the third that's not as talked about. But I love the story. It always gives me ideas about strategy, about loyalty, about teamwork. And I like to pick it up. I like to play the video games. I like to buy the statues. That decorate the stuff. I like to name my products after them. The Zuga that I sell come from this book. Other companies that I've started have come from this book. And so it has a lot of deep personal meaning to me. And if you're looking for kind of an off-the-wall fiction book that challenges you, that will make you think, that'll be kind of outside the zone of usual entrepreneur how-to books, then check it out, Three Kingdoms. Thank you guys so much for watching. Those are the top 7 books that I recommend every entrepreneur must read, plus the bonus book at the end. Let me know what you guys think. Leave a comment below, tell me what your favorite books are. And if you like the channel, you want to see more, you can subscribe. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon. And believe. Coming in at number 4 is Think and Grow Rich by Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich. Coming in at number 4 is Think and Grow Witch. Grow Witch. Grow Witch. Why can't I say Grow Rich? Grow Rich. Grow Witch. Okay, again, coming in at number 4. Okay, me, me, me, me, me, me. Make sure to check out my newsletter. You're gonna love it.