Read These Books - They'll Make You Rich

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

A very special thanks to NZ Mortgages for sponsoring this episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast. You can check them out at nzmortgages Co nz. A huge welcome back to the show. Look, I want to share something with you today that I think will add massive value to your life. Today I'm sharing books that can make you rich. No, not just financially. These books have helped me become rich in spirit, health and mind. Stick around as I share the top lessons from each and how you can apply them to your life, your business, your work, your relationships, what. They're truly incredible books. So first we've got the happiest man on earth. I'm just holding this up. If you're listening on audio, I'm listening up. This is Eddie Jakku. He's the author. He survived most horrific ordeal in camps under the Nazi regime. And the big lesson took from this is one good friend is my whole world. He had so many amazing lessons in it. He wrote this when he was 100 years old and he talks about the important things in life and when you go through adversity, which he did, how to focus on what's possible and what's positive. And I love that saying, one good friend is my whole world. So I took that on board and thought, you know what? For a long time I've been looking at metrics and how many people I get to connect with and how many friends I've got for a long time. And I'm one of billions of people that do that. Because we're told that having lots of friends is a good thing. But actually, after reading that, I thought, you know, what's more important? How deep the relationships go. I was listening to an amazing thing I was reading. It was reading about three weeks ago, there was a study on extroverts and introverts. And they said that extroverts tend to have more relationships than introverts, but introverts tend to have deeper relationships. And what's interesting, I'll share this with you. In my earlier days and younger years, I feel I was very much an extrovert, whereas now I feel a lot more introverted. I don't know if I'm an introvert, but I'm more introverted. I enjoy recharging in silence and solitude and meditation, but it doesn't mean I don't love jumping on a stage and speaking or connecting with people or interviewing great humans. But certainly recharging for me. I do that through reading as well, but one good friend. So I took that on and thought, well, who are my one, two, or three people that I really want to go deeper with? And so for the last few years, I've been doing that with a small handful of people where we have long lunches or long brunches or walks in the hill and we talk, we go deep. We talk about emotions and fear, and we talk about dreams and aspirations and relationship challenges. It's really awesome. So Eddie Jaku taught me that. His book is phenomenal. I don't usually cry when I read books, hardly maybe ever, but I cried during this book. I remember I was on a flight over to Ozzy, and I was very emotional reading it. His story is heartbreaking, what he went through, but his outlook is inspiring. Okay, that was for spirit. The other one, of course, is health. Rich in health. It's super life. I'm holding up Super Life by Darren Olien. And in this, I learned the five life forces. Nutrition, hydration, oxygenation, alkalization, and detoxification. Darren Olin, some of you may be familiar with him. He did a NETFLIX documentary with Zac Efron called Down to Earth. Darren's an incredible human. It's been great having him on the show, getting to know him, but his book is very simple. It's how do we have a super life? We do that through superfoods. You might be quite surprised what you learn, but from reading that book, the big thing that I changed was the quality of the water that I have filtered water. Now I live here in Christchurch, New Zealand, like many other places we've got substances in our water to make it drinkable, such as chlorine and so forth. So I got a filter after I read this book, realizing actually what harm it's doing. So I hugely recommend the book. There's so many deep insights around what you can do very simply to supercharge your super life. So if you want to look after your health, that's definitely a book I'd highly recommend. Now for Financial Insights and Financial Wealth. The book that I've been reading and rereading, I'm holding it up now for many years, probably 20 plus years, is think and Grow Rich. Biggest takeaway from that is the power of visualization and also the importance of specificity, the importance of being really specific. Because when we're vague with our thinking or vague with our focus, we get vague results. And so reading this book, I've read it at different stages of my life. I read it when I was on minimum wage and thought, this sounds really cool, but totally ridiculous. I read this when I started making a tiny bit of money and could afford rent and a car and thought, oh, there may be something to this, but it still sounds a bit kind of woo, woo. And then as I started reading it more and more and trying to implement it, I said, whoa, things are changing quite significantly. And I'm not a skeptic, but I challenge thinking around manifestation, et cetera, because I want to see tangible results and proof of it. And I have to be honest that this book is very old Think and Grow Rich, but the concepts in it are timeless. I continue to use it, continue to read it, continue to challenge myself to implement it, and I can say hand on heart that it has made a significant impact on my financial wealth. So highly recommend it. Great book. It should be on everyone's desktop or sitting somewhere in their book library. It's important. Now, last but not least, I'll share with you in a second. Before I do that, some of you know that I'm in the middle of writing my own book and this is something. Somebody came to me at an event about five years ago and said, james, those last three days that you took us through, that should be a book. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. I didn't think anything of it, but I said, thank you. That's amazing. But never did anything about it. Well, Harper Collins and Penguin both came to the party in terms of an opportunity to work with them. And in the end I've gone with HarperCollins. I'm very excited to work with them and I they publish some of my most favorite authors including the great Robin Sharma. So mid year 2025, so July 2025, my book will be coming out. You will be the first to know about it, but I'm really enjoying the process of getting all of my thoughts onto the page. I'm about.

60,000 words in. 50, 60,000. So three quarters of the way there probably it's been quite the journey. But I'm very excited to share with you and a lot of what I share with you week to week you will see turn up in the book and it's going to be a playbook where you can implement the lessons in it. So stay tuned. I'll let you know when you can pre order and you will be the very first to know. But let's do the very last book. This one is for the mind. I read this probably four years ago, maybe a little longer, probably four years ago. And it's from the incredible Jay Shetty and it's called Think Like a Monk. And the big thing, I mean there's so many lessons in this great book. I'm just holding up the book at the minute, but so, so many great lessons. Gratitude was the thing. I took away the power, the intoxicating power of gratitude. And Jay went and became a monk and lived as a monk and then came away from that and decided I've got so many things I want to share with the greater world that can help elevate their joy, their happiness, their purpose. I really resonate a lot with his messages. His book is phenomenal. He's come out with another book since. But to me, this is one of his best. If you want to elevate your thinking and your mindset, definitely a book I'd recommend. And the whole idea of gratitude, it's a practice, it's an ability to be grateful for the small things. You know when people are going through tough times and they talk about what they're grateful for, I have to say it's pretty inspiring. Don't wait for the tough times. Start today. What's the three things right now that you're grateful for? Just think of them right now.

Take a moment. Who are you grateful for? What are you grateful for? There's a lot to be grateful for. Even in our toughest times, there's things that we can say, well, I'm still grateful for this. So great book. Think like a Monk. Jay Shetty. I hope all those books have proved to be valuable to you. I hope that you buy one or more of them or all of them. Get them ordered, get them on your shelf, and most important, don't let them turn into shelf help. So many people buy self help books and leadership books and mindset books and they help the shelf more than they help the self. Please don't be that person. Get the book, read it and ask yourself, what's the one thing? Now, there was probably 40 things in each of those books I could have shared, but there was one powerful thing from each of them that actually I have implemented. There's no way I can implement all of the things that are in all of the books. And I don't think that's the point. The point of a book is can it help me move forward? So when you're looking at buying a book, just ask yourself, what challenges am I having right now? Is that a challenge with your partner, with your mindset, your mental health, your physical health, your career progression, whatever it is, Find a book in that realm that can help you move forward. Be strategic with your reading and of course, if you want to read novels, that's awesome, enjoy that. But there's so many books out there that can help you with your mindset, with your career, with your health, but just be strategic with them. So I hope that those books will be helpful for you. And for those of you that I'm seeing over the next month or two, come say hello at the different events. I'm speaking at lots of different companies, but also delivering keynotes up and down the country in Aussie, it was in the UK recently and I'm just about to head to the us in fact, when this drops, I'll probably be just getting back from the us but really excited to head to LA and over into Phoenix. So if I bump into you along the way, don't be shy, come say hello. For those of you that keep listening regularly, I love you guys. Thank you. This is why I keep showing up, is because you keep showing up to listen. Your feedback means the world. If you want more of something, if you want me to highlight things that I haven't done before, please let me know. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please leave me a rating or a review. It would be hugely appreciated. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. A very special thanks to NZ Mortgages for sponsoring this episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast. You can check them out at nzmortgages co nz. Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests like lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.