10 Books That Changed My Life (Out of 627!)

Most of us don't spend any time doing the manager work in our business and we're just completely entrenched and distracted by the technician work, the doing the transactions, the, you know, saving the deal that's blowing up right in front of us. This book lays out a mindset of building a franchise prototype that could actually scale without you having to do all the work.

The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coach thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share all with you the good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics.

And strategies that get results. You just gotta do the work. Welcome back for another episode. This is going to be fun. I went through 627 books to pick out the 10 that I thought were the most impactful in my business and my life growth journey. So that's what we're going to unpack today. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School, which is a business coaching organization that helps agents grow and scale their business without losing their life. So without the grind. So let's get into it. And I'll sort of preface this by saying I'm not actually a prolific reader of books. Meaning like I don't actually pick up books and read them. Maybe a couple dozen books. I've actually gone back and read the book. So the app that I live in, I mean live in is Audible. So I have consumed over 600 titles in Audible and at least I purchased 627 books in Audible, probably read a good or listened to a good 80% of them. So this list does not really include all the health titles that I've like My Physical Body and a bunch of faith based books and all of that. So it's probably less than 627 that are just business. But these are the top 10 in business that I would recommend to anyone looking to grow and scale and have a massive impacting their real estate businesses. And this is in no particular order. The only order this is in is the order that I scrolled through these 627 titles. The first one, and probably one of my top three favorite books is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And this is in a category of books I'm going to cheat a little bit here because I'm going to throw in another couple titles. Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy. Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. So, so three titles. But in the the realm of how do we get ourselves to do the things we know we need to do, but we don't do? And how do we stop doing the things that we know we shouldn't be doing? And it's this concept of, and this is the big takeaway from the book is it's just doing the little things. Atomic. The atom is the, the smallest particle, right, of a physical matter. And so atomic habits are the little things that you could do over time to end up in a different direction. And one of the quotes I love, love, love from the book is, you know, we're something to the effect, you know, we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. So something as simple as. And I do this pretty much every night. I go to sleep with my gym clothes so I know that I'm going to work out in the morning. I'm like, what am I wearing my gym clothes for? You know, oh yeah, I've got to work out today. You know, every day I try to get a 45 minute workout in. And so that's just something that I didn't always do. It wasn't always a habit. The habit was more sleep in late or let my day get the best of me and kind of launch into email and then the kids and then get into work or whatever. And now there's just a habit around that. So atomic habits. A must like this is get the physical book. Listen to it on audible. I've probably gone through it four or five times already, number one. Number two is Profit first by Mike Michalowicz. I haven't had many sort of man crushes or been involved in too many bromances. This one for sure. I actually got to meet Mike Michalowicz at a high level mastermind. He spoke to the room of about 100 business coaches and then about 10 or 12 of us had a private session where he challenged us to do the Clockwork Challenge, which is another one of his books. All of his books are really, really good. Profit first, though. Basically his mission in this book and overall is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And so most entrepreneurs, most real estate agents don't have a whole lot financially to show for. All the hours, all the blood, sweat and tears, the evenings, the weekends they put into their real estate business. They don't have a lot of money to show for it. Now, not that money is the only indicator of success, but there's just not a lot there. So this book allows you to redefine your business in terms of it's not revenue minus expenses equals profit, it's revenue minus profit equals expenses. So you only spend money that allows you to earn a pre decided a predetermined level of profit. Profit first. Okay, number three, and this is a broader commentary is the book Unleash the Power Within. It's actually, it's by Tony Robbins. But the first personal development event that I went to, I guess outside of I was already coached. I started coaching, I got a real estate coach in April 2007. I only got into real estate in March 2007, but the first personal development event I went to was a upw, Unleash the Power Within. It was in Long Beach, California. And I went on to do most everything except platinum partners that Tony Robbins preached. But inside each of us is this ability to do things that quite literally scare you if you knew what was possible. And so just opening my mind to the things that are possible if I could just get out of my own way and I can sort of rewire some of these limiting beliefs that maybe came from my childhood or whatnot. This is a cornerstone work that I feel like everyone has to go through a UPW or at least read the book Unleash the Power Within. Number four. And you guys, if you've been around the podcast for a while, you heard me talk about it. E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Inside of each of us there are three distinct personalities. The technician, the manager and the entrepreneur. Most real estate agents spend no time thinking about the future of their business, which is the entrepreneur. The manager helps build out the future. But most of us don't spend any time doing the manager work in our business and we're just completely entrenched and distracted by the technician work, the doing the transactions, the, you know, saving the deal that's blowing up right in front of us. This book lays out a mindset of building a franchise prototype that could actually scale without you having to do all the work. Monumentally impactful, I would say. If I had to pick two books in this list, it'd be Atomic Habits and E. Myth Revisit by Michael Gerber. Alright, number five is about six or seven years ago I went through this exercise. The book is called Living Forward by Michael Hyatt. And it essentially takes you through how to create and develop and live a life that's forward looking. And so we went through this process in our men's group where we took a full day. It actually took me about eight or nine hours the first day, and I worked on it two or three hours to put together this life plan. Where in the book he talks about drifting in an area of life. So drifting in your marriage, or drifting in your physical body, or drifting in your financial world, your financial picture, a little bit kind of like atomic habits. But a little bit of drift in your marriage can lead you to the point where the kids go to college and you're like, who is this person? I don't want to be married to you anymore. Versus this awareness through a life plan where one of the categories that I pay special attention to is my marriage, right? I can get consumed with the kids and my businesses and my wife can get consumed with the kids and her ministry, which is her podcast, Everyday Miracles Podcast. If you haven't checked it out, check it out. By the way, Shameless plug Living Forward, this ability to have a life plan and you have accounted for each of the areas of life that are meaningful to you is really, really critical. So that exercise, yes, it's a big investment of time, but it will change forever the trajectory of your life and your business. The next book, number six, is Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. And there's another book I think it's called do the Work and the War on Art. So he's got several books that are essentially themed around if you're playing the game of business at a pro level or the game of marriage at a pro level or the game of parenting at a pro level, you don't get shaken by the highs and lows. So I use the example of Tom Brady in football, and he, it didn't work out for him in marriage because he was so focused on football, apparently. But the stories about him, when it came to winning and turning pro, he would win the super bowl and be back at practice and training the next day, apparently, you know, so. And if he lost, he would go back to training the next day. So he wasn't motivated by the wins or the losses. He was just going to do the work required to. To play the game of football at the highest level. So let's take an example in your. In parenting, you know, I'm not going to get thrown off my game if my kids do something that is, you know, not the right thing to do. And just whatever situation they get themselves in, I'm not going to let that, that down, that low point impact me showing up consistently or when they do Something really amazing, right. I'm not going to let that, you know, get in the way of me disciplining them the next day or whatever. So turning pro in real estate, you know, it doesn't matter if you're five minutes into your lead generation time block and you set a listing appointment, the pro keeps working for the entire time block. The amateur says, I got a listing appointment. That's pretty good. That's a win for the day. Let's go do something else, right? So are you turning pro in the business? The seventh book is, and there's I'm going to lump a couple in here by Stephen Covey. His lesser known book called First Things first. And then of course, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But the First Things first book really helps helped me and will help you get clear on what your true priorities are for this season of your life. Oftentimes we will compare ourselves to someone. You know, I'll use an example of, you know, someone who's not married, 30 years old and they're crushing real estate. And maybe you have three kids under five years old and you know, you're not able to invest as much in your business because you've chosen to spend more time nurturing your family for this season, you know, so First Things first gives you permission to win at home for the season and maybe not focus on the business as intensely, unbelievably impactful. Book number eight is Robert Kiyosaki's Rich dad, Poor Dad. I actually met who claimed to be, and I think he is Keith Cunningham, who's actually the rich dad in Robert Kiyosaki's life. I met him in Fiji at a Tony Robbins event. So rich dad, Poor dad is all about looking at there's four quadrants. There's being an employee, there's being self employed, there's being an investor. I forget what the four quadrants are, but you want to be on the right side. You want to have leveraged income and passive income. So leveraged income is building a business. So when I read this book, I was like, oh, in real estate you could be an employee or self employed. That's the left side. Employee or self employed. So we've chosen to be self employed, but you're still doing linear income, meaning you're still having to put one step in front of the other to make the commission check. And then you got to go out and do it again. Then go do it again. When you put systems into your business and you get some leverage through technology or automations or virtual Assistants or a licensed local administrator, whatever it might be, a showing agent. You are now building leverage income where other people can be working on the lower dollar productive activities in the business so you could focus on the higher dollar productive activities. You can take yourself from earning 20, 30, $50 per hour invested in your business to a hundred, 200, 500 plus dollars per hour. That's leverage income. And then you take that income and you invest it into things that will produce for you with you not having to do anything. There's a cool board game, I think it's called Cash Flow Quadrant that he built out as well. So that's number eight. Number nine is Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy. And I think it's like 21 rules to prevent procrastination or something like that. The one lesson from that book is that every day in real estate and probably in any sales business, there are a couple frogs we must eat. And in the book it talks about eating those frogs early in the day so that you don't have to stare at them all day long. And I know if you think here for a second, you can guess what they are. It's lead generation and lead follow up. So those two categories of activities I call new business development. It's our ability to stay still long enough in the morning, two to three hours of lead generation, those are new conversations with would be buyer and seller clients and then lead follow up for the 90% of folks that you talk to in that lead generation time block aren't ready to go. So we have to do lead follow up and we're just putting nurture sequences in place. We're reminding ourselves to reach back out and touch base with folks. And Those are the two biggest frogs that you could eat every day. Two to three hours of lead generation and 30 to 60 minutes of lead follow up. If you could do those things consistently over the long haul, meaning 12, 18, 24 months, you will have a completely different set of decisions to make in the future. That's what I was willing to do in the early days. So and that was one of the maybe first five books that I read when I got into real estate. And I'm like, ah, the frogs are ugly and I don't like them. I didn't like it. I had massive call reluctance. But I knew that I had to do those activities if I were going to push my business forward. So that was a lasting impression from that book. The tenth and again in no particular order, but the tenth book here is by Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine. This book really takes it from soup to nuts. And Chet Holmes was actually a business partner of Tony Robbins in his business mastery. And I went to both business mastery seminars. One was in Fiji and I forget what the other one was. So Chet Holmes, the entire I think it's 10 or 12 aspects of business that you need to master to be able to build a business that can scale. And there used to be a set of trainings online. They somehow got them offline. I wish I would have saved them somehow. But where he taught each chapter of that book. Powerful, powerful book. Still in my top 10. So those are my top 10 recommendations. And I could have pulled out another 10 or 20 or 30. Those 10 though, if you take your time to be with those books. And I'm going to go back. Let me just look at these real quick. I'm going to pick the top three Atomic habits for sure. E. Myth revisited for sure. Eat that frog. I could almost lump with atomic habits and willpower and compound effect. So atomic habits e. Myth revisited. And then I would say like first things first. I would say first things first. And giving ourselves permission to be in the season that we're in and to set our priorities accordingly. So much love, much respect. Make sure you get into the free Facebook group Real Estate Business builders. Every week I post a ton of value. Two or three times a week I'll just put a value post up there. Something to encourage you or to teach you something that I've been working on or most successful members have been having success on. Once a week I will do a deeper dive live stream training. Typically that's on Tuesdays at 3pm but just go into the group. There's no obligation. It's totally free Real estate Business builders on Facebook and couple questions to to get into the group and I'll see you over there. Continue the conversation over there. Much love, much respect for doing this work. This is not the easy path of business. So I've just got a ton of respect for you. See you on the next episode.