Top 10 Books EVERY Creator Needs To Read!

Can books make you a better content creator? Can they make you more money and help you get more clients? Well, yes. And also no. Let me explain. In this video, I'm going to share my top 10 books for creators. If you're running a business based on content, you're going to learn more from these books than any business school. In these books, you'll find the collected wisdom and experience from people like Steven Pressfield, Alex Hormozi, Anne Lamont, and many others. But I have a challenge for you to keep in mind when you're reading these books. It's what keeps a creator from building a business that they love and also makes them a lot of money. You have to commit to taking action from these experts. Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. So don't stay stuck on the pages. Apply these lessons to your own content and business. If you have a favorite creator book, share it in the comments. I'd love to see it. Now let's begin. All of these are going to be really quick reviews, only a minute to a minute and a half each, and they're all timestamped below. So you want to jump around to a particular book that looks interesting to you that you've been curious about. Go ahead and do that. I divided these books into 3 categories: mindset, business, and process. We're going to start with mindset because I believe you really have to have a strong mindset in order to be a creator, because for a long time, things just might not work out for you. And even if things work out for you for a long time, there's going to be a stretch in any creator's journey where things just don't seem to be working anymore. So the mindset that you cultivate, the belief that you have in yourself, is always going to matter. So here are 3 books that are going to help you build a rock-solid mindset as a creator. The very first book is The War of Art from Steven Pressfield, and this is probably the number 1 book that maybe you've already read before. But if you haven't read War of Art, then I highly recommend it. Even if you have read War of Art before, then I would recommend rereading it. I read this book, if not every year, every couple of years, because Pressfield coined the term of the resistance. That inner voice, that inner feeling of like, ah, you don't have to do this right now, or maybe you could try it tomorrow, or you're not quite ready for this, or you're not good enough, you're not prepared enough. All these little resistance feelings. And what I love about The War of Art is even though he talks about it from his own creative process, it's so applicable to many areas of life. I think he talks also about like his weight loss journey and how like, hey, Stephen, you know, you don't have to get off the couch today. Like, hey, why don't you And what's tricky about the resistance is it can use multiple good things against you. Be like, hey, Stephen, really crushing it on this book right now. You don't have to go out and like do your run or go to your weight training session. These are things— this is like how tricky the resistance is. So just seeing it, calling it out, and knowing that the resistance is after you in this way— really powerful, really valuable. Number 1 on the list: The War of Art. The Pathless Path by my friend Paul Millard is one of my favorite books that I've read over the past few years. And I think it's a really great book for the modern creator because really what Paul is talking about are unconventional paths. Like, Paul was a high-powered, you know, MBA, worked at a consulting— I think he worked at McKinsey. It doesn't say on here because I don't think that he needs to, like, say that anymore. But in his early 30s, Paul Millard had everything he wanted— a high-paying job working with CEOs. Yet instead of feeling fulfilled, he sensed something was wrong. And so this is Paul's story. Of following his own pathless path, of looking for and following the callings that he had that led him to write this bestselling book, to building a community of people who are kind of like burnt out on more traditional beliefs of what work has to be like and what kind of jobs you have to have. So if you're feeling kind of that tug on your heart and on your mind about like, I think I want something different, I'm not quite sure what it is, That's exactly what the pathless path is about. This feeling of, I know I want something different. I know I'm going in a particular direction, but I don't know what it is. That is the pathless path. And really, if you'll allow me a little smuggle, it's also something that Boyd Varty talks about in The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. He talks about this first track mindset where he says, if I can just get the first track of the lion, then I can follow it to the next track. But I don't have to know every single step of the journey. That's what The Pathless Path is. So check this book out. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is one of my all-time favorite creator books. And one of the reasons I love it is this chapter called Shitty First Drafts. And it's a chapter that I've come back to over and over again. It's probably a chapter in a creator book that I've read more than any other because she is saying that even these people that you look up to, she, you know, count Anne Lamott in this. She's like, we don't wake up every single day feeling incredibly fulfilled and ready to work and just with like words streaming out of our fingertips. This is something that has to be cultivated. This has to be something that at times you have to fight against. That's, you know, think about Steven Pressfield and the resistance in The War of Art. These are the same ideas when you're cultivating this mindset. And so Bird by Bird is something where Anne Lamott is giving her reflections on writing and life and creative work. And it's something that if you read it and if you apply these lessons, this mindset to the type of work that you do and an ability to just show up and keep doing the things, Bird by Bird is something that's going to teach you a lot about how to do this creative work. Over and over again for the rest of your life. The next category is business, because as my friend Jeff Goin says, real artists don't starve. By the way, a little extra bonus book recommendation for you there. It's a great one. But I see a lot in my own experience as a creator the past 10 years with the people in the Hey Creator community, the clients that we work with, that there's a lot of hesitation often around selling, around marketing, around like the business side of being a creator. But if you don't pay attention to this and you don't get good at it, then you will not be in business very long as a creator. It'll just be a hobby. It'll just be like a little thing that you do from time to time. But if we're talking about building a creator business, these 4 books are going to help you. Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday is one that you may not realize he wrote because bestselling author, he's mainly writing about Stoic philosophy these days. But several years ago, he wrote this book about the art of making and marketing work that lasts. And what I love about this is It is a business book and it's also a creator book, so it's a nice overlap there. But what Perennial Seller teaches you how to do is how to create work that isn't just a flash in a pan, how to create work that doesn't just last for a month or a season or even a year, but how do you create something that stands the test of time? How do you create something that is going to be around and something that you're going to be able to refer to day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year? That's what Perennial Seller is about. Highly recommend it. Obviously Awesome by April Dunford is a book that you may not initially initially think about for creators, but it covers something that I don't see creators talk about a whole lot, and that is positioning. And when you effectively position yourself, your content, your products, your courses, your coaching, your community, that gives you such an advantage over the competition. I got so much out of this book from April. She has a framework on the 5 components of positioning and how to use that position to instantly connect with your audience because they become your product, your offer, your service becomes the obvious choice for them because it's so well positioned to fit their needs and solve their problems. Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson is a book I read about 8 or 9 years ago. It even has like coffee stains on it from the time that I spilled a lot of coffee on this book. This is probably the most underlined book that I have, and it's also one that you're going to want to like sit with a notepad or sit with your, your email marketing tool open, with your courses open, with Notion open, whatever. It is because you're going to take a lot of notes in this. This is a book that is the most tactical and the most like framework-driven. If you want to be able to sell more of your products with a great offer and be able to like do that through an email marketing tool like ConvertKit, if you have like a course platform or if you have a community platform like Mighty Networks, this is a book that is going to teach you exactly how to do that. So DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson is one that I've read probably 3 or 4 times. It is incredibly actionable. This is the one of all the books that I'm recommending that if you go through this and follow the steps, you're going to make more money. $100 Million Leads by Alex Hormozi is a book that is a great companion piece to DotCom Secrets because while DotCom Secrets shows you how to define your offer and then how to sell it through email marketing and funnels, What $100 Million Leads shows you how to do is create more traffic and more interest and more prospective buyers to that offer that you're selling. Now, Hormozy also has a book called $100 Million Offers that is also a great companion piece. Just didn't make it into— I was only going to put one Hormozy book into this list, but all of those will help you create an offer, get more leads to it, and sell it effectively through funnels, through follow-up campaigns, through email. This is all going to make you more money. These two books in particular, I would say of all the books that are recommended on this list, DotCom Secrets and $100 Million Leads are the two that will help grow your sales the most. The last category is process, because without a good process, you're going to waste a lot of time, energy, and ideas. So let me give you three books that will help you improve your process as a creator. The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicholas Cole is a modern book for digital creators. So where The War of Art and Bird by Bird were written, you know, many years ago and kind of before all this stuff happened with social media and online writing, what Cole has done, I think, is updated a lot of those best practices and mindsets while also mashing it together with, hey, here's how you can get paid, here is how you build an audience. These are things that you're not going to find in War of Art or Bird by Bird. But this is where I think that Cole really has his finger on the pulse of what is happening. And I certainly recommend that you follow him, you check out like some of the work that he's done along with Dickie Bush, because what those guys are thinking about is how do you build a business and how do you build an audience in the new modern digital landscape? So The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicholas Cole is definitely one to check out. The best process book that I've read for creators is Free Time by Jenny Blake. I mean, even just the subtitle of it, Lose the Busy Work, Love Your Business, is one that I read this and I'm like, oh yes, please, absolutely.. And what Jenny is really great at, like former Google, awesome, like just fantastic person, really smart, is she has like systems and processes down to a T. And so when you follow the advice in this book, and it's very actionable, it's very like, these are things that you can do and implement in your business, in your art, in your creative work right away, is it does take away a lot of those recurring tasks that you don't necessarily need to be doing every time. Talks about automations and processes and systems, ways that you can free up more time or be able to hand something off to other people in your business to be able to potentially hire an assistant. If you read Free Time, then you're going to be much better set up for this. Another thing that you can potentially do when you read Free Time is even if you don't want to like grow your business really big and you don't want to hire people, it will give you more free time because maybe something that used to take you 30 or 40 hours now only takes you 15 to 20 hours. So this will literally give you time back in your life, in your business, in your creative work. Building a Second Brain by my friend Tiago Forte is one of my favorite books for creative work. And you may not think of it for creators because it's not necessarily specifically written for creators. It's written for everyone. But I noticed that my creative output, the way that I was using and sourcing and accessing The content that I was creating and the research that I was doing became so much easier and cleaner and faster when I started implementing Second Brain principles, and especially the PARA framework, which stands for projects, areas, resources, and archive. There's another framework that Tiago talks about in this book called the CODE framework that is specifically designed for the output of creative information, the new thing that you can put together out of all the ideas and all the notes and all the research and all the highlights that you have. And CODE stands for Collect, Organize, Distill, and Express. And as creators, it is that expression piece that we love, the thing that we enjoy doing, the thing that, you know, in some ways gets— get us paid. But I know for myself, before I started using second brain principles, before I started using PARA and CODE, that pretty much all I did was like a haphazard spur of the moment, what am I inspired by or what's front of mind right now expression, just like you know, what's in front of me expression. And when I started doing more of this, then I noticed that I was getting much better at accessing old information. I was taking better notes and I was able to retrieve them easier so that then that distillation and expression piece of code was made so much easier. And really, I never had to worry about the blank page anymore. And if you have ever like sat in front of your computer or you've ever looked into the eye of the camera or stared at the podcast mic and wondered, what am I going to talk about? What am I going to say? Using something like Second Brain for me has been a game changer because now I never have the blank page anymore. I can always go find something that can be the source material for the new thing that I want to say. Those are my 10 most recommended books to strengthen your mindset, build your business, and improve your processes. Share your favorite creator books in the comments on YouTube or hit me up @MattRagland on X Threads or LinkedIn.