2463: Jason's Seven Essential Books for Wealth and Wisdom with Michael Zuber

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You've got the best podcast going, Jason. I love your show, man. It's good stuff. Thank you. I really appreciate it. What I wanted to share was my wife and I, for the first time ever, paid effectively no income tax in 2022 through doing a cost segregation study and generating about a $200,000 Paper loss on our real estate. I'm a real estate professional, and it really works.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self-made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's He's a successful investor, lender, developer, and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Alrighty folks, we're gonna do something we haven't done before and we're gonna ask Jason Hartman what are his 7 favorite books that he has read or he recommends to others. Folks, if you like any of these books, look at the show notes below. I will use an Amazon link. Yes, yes, there is an affiliate code or some crap behind this.

Oh, oh yeah, you'll get like 1 penny per record.

Yeah, if you click on the link that I put there, I'll make 1 penny if you like.

Maybe you'll make 5 cents if we're being generous.

There you go. Well, I just want to let people know they'll be below if you want them. Uh, so Jason, the show is yours. Which one do we start with?

Well, gosh, Michael, I love books. You know, it seems like more and more I'm listening to them on audio nowadays because, uh, sadly, I'll admit to it, I think this happened to all of us, my attention span has just been obliterated by the new form of media that we all have. And I think we all need to fight against this, and we need to view Our attention as a muscle, and we need to, you know, we need to train it just like working out, because it is really hard to just sit down and read a whole book anymore, at least for me. So if any of you watching or listening are doing that, I commend you. My mom loves to read books. She'll just read a book all day and just love it. But some I read and some I listen to on audio, but I do get through either way with both of them together, probably about 100 books a year. Damn, 2 a week? You know, about 2 a week, right? There's 52 weeks in a year, and, you know, maybe some I don't finish. Certainly in the reading component of books, I tend to not finish as many of those because I'll just, I'll just kind of get bored. But, you know, there's some great books out there, and some of them really are better on audio because, as Earl Nightingale taught me many years ago, you know, the spoken word has emotion and has emphasis. It has A lot more to it. There's more data with spoken word than there is with the written word, but some are better in print. And what I tend to do is if I'm listening on audio only at first and I like the book, I'll get the book either on, on the electronic form or the physical book because there are charts and graphs and things to look back on and kind of view your book reading for nonfiction as, as, you know, studying, like do it like you would study and you would look at multiple formats of it and, and go back to it and refer back to it and stuff like that. But, you know, since we're always talking about doomers and how wrong they are all the time, I want to compare 2 books and I'll start with the doom book. Listen, I'm not bashing this guy. Okay. I want to tell you, he's, you know, I would consider him a friend. He's been on my show many times over the years. I discovered his work back around 2006, maybe 2005. And that's Chris Martenson. When he came out with a, uh, a thing called The Crash Course, and he revised it as a book. It's just interesting. It's about an honest approach to facing the future of our economy, energy, and environment. Back way back in 2006, he talked about economic collapse and species extinction and all of these problems, right? And energy scarcity. And none of them happened. Like, this is typical, like, doom stuff. It's doom porn. You know, you need to be aware of it. You need to consume it. I mean, I like his work. It's well-researched. He's a smart guy. He's a doctor, you know, or a PhD, you know, but it's just, it's just all these doomers. It's like, uh, we, we love to follow this stuff because it, it gives us an excuse.

That's exactly what it is.

That's what it's—

excuse to do nothing.

Yeah, an excuse to do nothing and an excuse for our own lack of success or productivity. And in the housing market, as you and I both have talked about ad nauseam. These doomers are just wrong, wrong, wrong. And I think largely they're just jealous people who missed out. You know, they're just mad that they missed the real estate cycles so many times over. They basically ruined their lives by being doomers, and they're jealous. And that's why they troll people like you and people like me and others who are just telling the real story. Yeah, that's, that's what's happening.

All right, what do you got for the opposite? You said you had kind of yin and yang. What's the other one?

I love this book, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. This is a great book. You know, basically he goes through in all of these pages and talks about how we are living in the most— now compared to what, right? That's always the question.

Yeah.

We are living in a very peaceful, abundant time where we have so many opportunities and life just keeps getting better. And nobody appreciates it.

And yeah, it's, it's funny, I, I heard a line the other day which I think is true. I want it to be true, but basically the poor amongst America today is living a better life than King George way back when. Yeah, it's crazy to think about. Yeah. All right.

It is. Now, I really like— my favorite book of his was a book called Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. And I've had Not Peter Diamandis on my show, but I did share the stage with him at an event years ago and we were both speakers. So I got to talk to him a bit, but his coauthor Stephen Kotler has been on my show several times and he's written a whole bunch of books. And their latest work is We Are as Gods. And basically it says a survival guide for the age of abundance. So this is an optimistic book. Peter's stuff and Stephen's stuff is optimistic on the whole. And what this basically says is like your comparison with the poor and King George. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

We can basically do the things that gods of mythology can do today, and we don't even appreciate it. We have this power to literally modify our genome, okay? And we have this power to have massive telecommunication and talk with people anywhere in the world in seconds, you know, with video, with— I mean, it's just, it's an amazing time to be alive.

Yeah.

Like, you really have to appreciate that. Now, there are certainly threats, and I think probably the greatest threat threat we face is, is Islam, honestly, you know. And we could call it radical Islam, but I don't know, as much as I have many Muslim friends and, and co-workers and employees over the years, and they've all been wonderful people, I think that the doctrine is that of expansion and really takeover. So I think that's really maybe the largest problem facing humanity today, whether we're going to live in the 7th century or we're going to live in modern era, right? And, you know, that's, that's kind of another topic. And I don't have a book on that. All right.

What do you got for book number 4? So far we got The Crash Course, The Rational Optimist, and We Are as Gods.

Yeah. Okay. So The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. This is a great book. Yeah. I've read all 3 of his books and they're all great, but this one shows you, it's really kind of like the Behavior Gap book where he's got those illustrations. And I think we've talked about that book before because when there's an investment, there's a big difference between the return on investment and the investor return. And why is that different? One of the things he explains really well in this book is he explains how people tend to buy when things are exciting and sell when things are negative, right?

Yeah.

And they're always at the wrong side of the cycle. For real estate right now, people should be buying it— for single-family home real estate, okay? This is the opportunity time when it's boring and the news is not very positive. Housing affordability is strained. You know, this is the time people will likely look back on in 5 years and say, gosh, I wish I would have picked up more properties, right? That's the thing. But Morgan Housel, Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness. It's a, it's a great book, and his other books are great too.

All right, what do you got for number— what is that, number 5 coming up?

The next one, this book changed my life. At age 17, I was lucky enough to discover the audio abridged version of this book, and that is The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley. Okay. This is just a great little book. It's really short and it's incredible. It's an oldie. I mean, this book is probably 40 years old now. I don't know. It's old, but this is— it's fantastic. Okay.

How often do you go back and read that book? Do you go back and reread books?

Not too much. I usually don't have time to. I want to be on to the next one, but I do refer to it. This is just an incredible book. And then his next book after this one, which is also incredible, kind of a different spin. They're both This is 10 Qualities of a Total Winner. And it's, it's just so, it's so good. It's, it's incredible. Dennis Waitley, you know, this is an old timer, but fantastic. And then his book right after this one, that's also a very old book is called The Seeds of Greatness. Fantastic also. Okay. Okay. And Dennis Waitley has been on my show. He was episode number 150 and now I'm all, I'm at like a 2,400. So that was a while ago.

Good memory.

He's the only one of my great mentors who's still alive. Jim Rohn has passed. Zig Ziglar has passed. And Earl Nightingale a long time ago. Okay. The next one, Die with Zero.

Yes.

Bill Perkins. Okay.

Great book.

This book is so good. And this is one of those books that kind of changes your thinking on things and changes your, your context because it really shows us that we should be using our money and using our wealth to buy more happiness and buy more experiences. What's the point of accumulating all this money? If we don't enjoy it. Okay.

I've seen so many people on our trips and travels that are 80 and 90 years old that are probably worth 3 or 4x what Olivia and I are, and they just can't enjoy it.

They just can't enjoy it.

It's crazy.

This mindset of scarcity is basically a doomer mindset. Okay.

I don't know if I— so I would call it—

I mean, it's a version of it.

That's what it's a survival instinct for lots of people, at least in the beginning. But what happens, or at least what happened to me, is I did it for so long It actually took work to break it.

I, I'm still trying to break it. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. Yeah, you know, during COVID I remember specifically the day I was sitting at my desk at my house in Florida, in Palm Beach County. I remember I just didn't have anything to do, and so I finally— I never really did this— I just opened up a Google Sheet and I started adding up all my assets And my liabilities. I, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, I'm done. Like, why am I—

Why am I working so hard?

Why am I chasing money? Now listen, don't get me wrong, I love to work. I think it's important to work. I don't think retirement is a good idea because statistically people in retirement do not live very long. You need a purpose and a mission. But you know, when you have enough money to live like multiple lifetimes, really just get over it and stop stressing about it. Okay. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's bring us home. You got one book left. You gave us a little— you gave us 6. What's the 7th?

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Now, this is not the exact book I'm recommending. Okay. What I'm— this is like a guided workbook, a journal. Okay. Which, you know, I haven't journaled in it. Okay. But, but it looks pretty clean. Yeah. This book is much better on audio. And I don't have the actual book. The book I want you to get is called The Untethered Soul. This is like a workbook about that book.

Got it.

And I want you to get that on audio because the narrator is so good. It's just a fantastic book. You know, it's kind of new agey. I get it. And, you know, I'm not sure what anybody's into, but it's a great book. You know, like, really think about it. I remember going to this program many years ago, one of those self-development programs when I was like 24 years old. And one of the assignments In the group is you had to get up in front of the group and all they would ask you is, who are you? And most people would start out with their job or their title.

I'm a father.

You know, I'm a dad, I'm a, I'm a, I'm an insurance salesman, you know, whatever it is, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's not who you are. Okay, right. You have to differentiate between the concept of what is happening to you and Being the observer of what is happening to you, right? And there's so much more depth to that. And, you know, I haven't listened to it lately, but it's fantastic. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Not about wealth, more about development. He's got another great book after that called The Surrender Experiment, which is also great. There's 7 great books for you.

Oh, I love it. I got 5 new books. The only 2 that you brought, which I totally agree with— Psychology of Money, must read. Die With Zero is— that's life-changing no matter where you are in this journey. Certainly if you're on my channel, you're trying to build wealth, but Die With Zero by Bill Perkins is, um, that was game-changing.

Just understand that won't help you build wealth, it'll just help you spend it.

Yeah, well, it'll help. What I think it does, at least did for me, is it gave me permission to enjoy.

Yeah, right.

It gave me permission to enjoy.

Same here, same here. Yeah, after reading that book, I started a new company, which I think you've heard about. It is a company, it's an LLC, but the goal of it is not to make any money. Okay, it's just to simply have fun. It's called Mastermind Adventures.

Yes.

And I just charter these yachts around the world and invite people to mastermind for about 2 and a half hours a day. We just mastermind a bit and then we just have fun the rest of the time. And what I do is I try to just maybe break even vaguely or even lose money. It doesn't matter because it's— the goal of it is just the networking and the fun and the life experience and the memories that you create. Because one of the things he says in Die With Zero that was very enlightening to me is the idea— and you remember it, Michael— of memory dividends.

Yes.

Okay, how having an experience, you recall that experience, and every time you recall the experience, it's like getting Interest paid on your investment. Okay, it compounds, it has a compounding effect. So, the lesson for me is use your money to buy experiences as quickly as possible so they can start compounding for you. It's just like all the charts we've seen that financial planners use that say, hey, if you start investing early, you're going to be much better off. So, I want to say there's 2 sides to this. You know, it really is important in your first stages of wealth creation and wealth building to delay gratification.

Correct.

Okay. You know, that is the—

You got to get escape velocity.

Yeah. Yeah. That is a character-building thing. Delay gratification, right? That's what your tenants usually can't do. Okay. That's why they're not owners. Okay. But once you've delayed gratification long enough and you've got this compounding effect of your real estate investments, your wealth is just growing for you. Don't forget to enjoy it.

There you go, Jason. You're amazing. Where can they find you?

empoweredinvestor.com or on YouTube or any podcast platform. Just type Jason Hartman, you'll find me. And I do want to say, Michael, that we have a great software. It's totally free. It's called Property Tracker, propertytracker.com. It's the best deal analyzer in the business. It also helps you track your investments for free. just propertytracker.com. And we have free monthly masterclasses. You can sign up for those at empoweredinvestor.com/wednesday because they're on the 2nd Wednesday of every month. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com, for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe.

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