📚 The 17 Books That Will Actually Make You Rich
Are you tired of reading hundreds of books on investing, corporate structure, and the psychology of persuasion, only to find that 95% of what you read is completely useless when it comes to actually getting rich? Well, you're not alone. As someone who has spent thousands of hours reading books that never actually benefited me when it comes to making money, I'm here to save you the time and effort. In this article, I'll be sharing the 17 books that will actually make you rich.
📖 Table of Contents
1. The Alchemist: Tackling the Prerequisite of Making Money
2. Think and Grow Rich: Adopting the Mindset of Success
3. Atomic Habits: Building Habits That Make You Worthy of Success
4. Money Master the Game: Setting Expectations and Understanding How to Think About Money
5. The 4-Hour Work Week: Focusing on Systems That You Can Leverage
6. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: Mastering the Art of Persuasion
7. Confessions of an Advertising Man: Understanding the Fundamentals of Marketing and Copywriting
8. The Lean Startup: Building a Bulletproof Business
9. Never Split the Difference: Mastering the Art of Negotiation
10. How to Win Friends and Influence People: Understanding Human Nature
11. The 48 Laws of Power: Your Complete Guide to Human Relationships
12. The Personal MBA: Understanding the Ins and Outs of Business
13. The Intelligent Investor: Protecting and Multiplying Your Wealth with Minimal Risk
14. Reality Transurfing: Managing Your Reality
15. Misbehaving: An Introduction to Behavioral Economics
16. The Creature of Jekyll Island: Unveiling the Secrets of the Federal Reserve
17. Devil Take the Hindmost: Identifying Trends and Predicting the Future
📖 The Alchemist: Tackling the Prerequisite of Making Money
The first book on this list is The Alchemist. This book tackles the very prerequisite of making money and getting rich, and that's having the guts to actually follow your purpose. Before you can even think about making money, you need to have a very honest conversation with yourself and decide if you're willing to take that bet on yourself and overcome the obstacles that come with following your purpose. When you're starting from zero and you want to get to ten thousand dollars per month, that is probably the hardest income threshold to reach. The reason behind that is because everything is working against you. You need to adopt the mindset that success is not just a desire, it's a necessity.
📖 Think and Grow Rich: Adopting the Mindset of Success
The lesson of the next book on the list, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, is exactly that. If you're able to conceive it and believe it, then you can achieve it. This book boils down to the idea that you need to believe that you can be successful and realize that it's the only path forward. The book also talks about another pitfall that people often fall into when they're getting started. They get stuck waiting for the perfect moment, waiting for the perfect business model, just waiting for everything to be in order to not get started. The truth is, there's no perfect time. In the beginning of any journey, let alone the journey of getting rich, it's going to be messy. Being able to navigate through that mess is what will make you successful.
📖 Atomic Habits: Building Habits That Make You Worthy of Success
The next book on the list, Atomic Habits by James Clear, teaches you how to do exactly that. You need to become a person worthy of success, and to do that, you need to change your actions. You can't just reinvent yourself overnight, so you need to do it in incremental steps by implementing new habits, killing old ones, and keeping the worthy ones. This book will teach you how to stack all of your good habits day by day until they eventually become second nature.
📖 Money Master the Game: Setting Expectations and Understanding How to Think About Money
Once you've built a solid base of habits and perhaps you've already chosen your business model and you're starting to make some cash, you need to start setting expectations. You need to begin to understand how to think about money, and that is exactly what you're going to learn in Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins. This book talks about everything from operations management and finance to leadership and accounting. If you read just this book, you'll know more than most business owners.
📖 The 4-Hour Work Week: Focusing on Systems That You Can Leverage
The next set of books I want to talk about is going from ten to a hundred thousand dollars a month. Instead of working harder, you need to learn how to work smarter. The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss illustrates this point perfectly in describing the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of any given output derives from 20% of the input. In other words, 20% of your clients will make up 80% of your revenue. This book will teach you how to figure out how to work smarter, not harder.
📖 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: Mastering the Art of Persuasion
The next book on the list is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. This book is one of the highest-leveraged skills you can have. The ability to persuade masses of people is crucial, and this book teaches you how to do exactly that. It's paired with David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man, which is pretty much the only marketing book you will ever need to get rich. These books will teach you the fundamentals of persuasion both in marketing and more broadly, as well as the skill of copywriting.
📖 The Lean Startup: Building a Bulletproof Business
Once you've built a solid marketing foundation and you're starting to make some cash, you need to start focusing on building a bulletproof business. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries teaches you how to do exactly that. This book talks about the importance of execution plus having a proper feedback loop. When you're able to execute fast and have proper feedback, you're going to be able to quickly pivot off the back of that and tap into the heart of the demand in any given market.
📖 Never Split the Difference: Mastering the Art of Negotiation
The next high-leverage skill you need in your arsenal as you build your way up from ten to a hundred thousand dollars per month is negotiation. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is going to give you the baseline you need in your path to a hundred thousand dollars a month. It teaches you a method called tactical empathy, which you can use to build trust and rapport. The techniques in this book will help you make more money, and it doesn't have to be complicated. Simple things like mirroring what the person is doing in front of you will have a profound subconscious effect on them.
📖 How to Win Friends and Influence People: Understanding Human Nature
No matter where you make your money, you're going to have to deal with people. How people act ultimately shapes the economy, and that's what the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is all about. This book will teach you how to inspire others to fulfill your vision and also how to not piss off the wrong people. Friends are far more useful than enemies.
📖 The 48 Laws of Power: Your Complete Guide to Human Relationships
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is your complete guide to human relationships. This book teaches you laws of human nature that are actually rooted in history. It can also be used for evil, so make sure you use it wisely.
📖 The Personal MBA: Understanding the Ins and Outs of Business
Once you've nailed down your marketing, your product, and your relationships, there's one central point that remains. You need to be able to build a bulletproof business, and that means you need to understand the ins and outs of business. The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman distills everything you need to know about business and really 99% of the things you'd learn from doing an MBA in the first place.
📖 The Intelligent Investor: Protecting and Multiplying Your Wealth with Minimal Risk
The next set of books is going from a hundred thousand dollars a month to a million dollars a month. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is going to protect and multiply your wealth with minimal risk. This book outlines everything you need to know about value investing, which is really the only way you should be investing to protect and multiply your wealth with minimal risk.
📖 Reality Transurfing: Managing Your Reality
Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland is less about astrology but is about using the world to your advantage. This book posts a theory that you can manage your reality with Transurfing. Of course, take this with a grain of salt, but there is no doubt that there is much more to reality than meets the eye.
📖 Misbehaving: An Introduction to Behavioral Economics
Misbehaving by Richard Thaler is an introduction to behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is one of those areas that simply doesn't matter when you just want to get to ten thousand dollars a month, but it matters a whole lot when you want to get to a hundred thousand dollars a month and especially a million dollars a month or more. The book explains how investors can use behavioral economics to their advantage.
📖 The Creature of Jekyll Island: Unveiling the Secrets of the Federal Reserve
The Creature of Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin unveils the secrets of the money magicians of the Federal Reserve. It's only once you begin to understand how money actually works that you can start to really get wealthy. This book completely opened my eyes to the real world, a world which most people are blind to.
📖 Devil Take the Hindmost: Identifying Trends and Predicting the Future
Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor is all about identifying trends and predicting the future. This book will walk you through the major cycles of boom and bust in recent history, and after reading this, you're going to be able to identify these trends. That's how you can multiply your wealth tenfold, and it's also how you can protect your wealth.
🎉 Highlights
- The Alchemist: Tackling the Prerequisite of Making Money
- Think and Grow Rich: Adopting the Mindset of Success
- Atomic Habits: Building Habits That Make You Worthy of Success
- Money Master the Game: Setting Expectations and Understanding How to Think About Money
- The 4-Hour Work Week: Focusing on Systems That You Can Leverage
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: Mastering the Art of Persuasion
- Confessions of an Advertising Man: Understanding the Fundamentals of Marketing and Copywriting
- The Lean Startup: Building a Bulletproof Business
- Never Split the Difference: Mastering the Art of Negotiation
- How to Win Friends and Influence People: Understanding Human Nature
- The 48 Laws of Power: Your Complete Guide to Human Relationships
- The Personal MBA: Understanding the Ins and Outs of Business
- The Intelligent Investor: Protecting and Multiplying Your Wealth with Minimal Risk
- Reality Transurfing: Managing Your Reality
- Misbehaving: An Introduction to Behavioral Economics
- The Creature of Jekyll Island: Unveiling the Secrets of the Federal Reserve
- Devil Take the Hindmost: Identifying Trends and Predicting the Future
❓ FAQ
Q: What is the Pareto Principle?
A: The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of any given output derives from 20% of the input.
Q: What is value investing?
A: Value investing is an investment strategy that involves picking stocks that appear to be trading for less than their intrinsic or book value.
Q: What is behavioral economics?
A: Behavioral economics is the study of how psychological, social, and emotional factors affect the economic decisions of individuals and institutions.
Q: What is the Federal Reserve?
A: The Federal Reserve is the central banking system of the United States, responsible for regulating the nation's monetary policy.
🌐 Resources
- [The Alchemist](https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0062315005)
- [Think and Grow Rich](https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon-Hill/dp/193787950X)
- [Atomic Habits](https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299)
- [Money Master the Game](https://www.amazon.com/Money-Master-Game-Financial-Freedom/dp/1476757860)
- [The 4-Hour Work Week](https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Work-Week-Escape-Anywhere/dp/0307465357)
- [Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion](https://www.amazon.com/
