I Read 50 Books Per Year. These Are The Only Ones You Need To Read To Be Successful.

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0:47While life keeps moving, our windows stand strong through every chapter. Let Renewal by Anderson be part of your story. Windows built to last. Visit RenewalByAndersonHome.com to learn more. I've read over 50 books a year for over 10 years. And I want to be honest with you. Most of them are a waste of time. I don't think you should read most business books. They got catchy titles. They have 10 step frameworks. They have tactics that would work maybe in 2016, but they kind of stop working by the time you finish a chapter. But there are some books that can genuinely change how you think because it's not teaching you tactics.

1:23It's teaching you how humans work, how people decide, how people operate, and how history repeats itself. Business is not one skill in my opinion. It's a sum of many skills combined together to make you money. Today I'm going to share with you 13 books that changed the way I think and helped me build two multi-million dollar businesses. And in my opinion, they're worth more than any kind of trend rapport or marketing playbook. They really change who you become. They're going to make you better not only at one thing, but at everything you do. This is not only a reading list. This is what you need to master the game of business, and in a lot of ways, life as well.

2:02So let's go.

2:08Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.

2:45Before we begin, two quick things. Number one, welcome to the studio. We're here in our new studio in Sydney, Australia. I'm here with Josh behind the camera who's running video and helping us produce all our new episodes. We're up in our game so that you can up your business game as well with each lesson. Number two, the books I'm going to share with you today, some of them I read on my Kindle, some of them I like to read on physical, and I also like audiobooks as well. So I'll give you some recommendations on which format to use for each book, because some of these are really good for that format, like for audio or for Kindle.

3:16I'll explain as we go to each book. Let's start with book number one, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This book is really, really important, not because it's going to teach you some sort of marketing tactic, but it tells you how to plan for the future because you cannot predict the future. It's very, very hard to predict what's going to happen tomorrow, next year. And part of business is being able to do that, being able to build your business for today, but also for tomorrow and the years to come. What makes this book so important is that it highlights that the events that change everything in the world, the financial crashes, the pandemics, the technology shifts that happen like AI, the moment that it reshapes the industries overnight, a lot of these moments are hard to predict.

4:01They come outside the range of what you thought was possible. So how do you prepare yourself? And that's what this book is all about, is that a lot of times we think that the unlikely is never going to happen, but the unlikely happens all the time. These rare things that happen in life are so impactful because people are just not prepared for it. And a lot of people just roll the dice in life and not prepare for these black swan events. Now, when I say prepare, I'm not talking about worrying and having a bunker. I'm talking about the fact that you can capitalize on these moments that a lot of people do not expect, whether it's COVID, which is a black swan, or the 2008 financial crisis, that's a black swan, or even the internet when it launched back in the day, that is a black swan event where people just didn't see this coming.

4:48In my opinion, this book is a must read because you need to be prepared for all the contingencies in your business. Not to worry, but to feel secure that you have prepared. Some of you know I love playing poker. And if you play poker, you know that pocket aces is the best hand. But pocket aces, even though it should win most of the time, statistically, it is the best hand every single time. But seldomly it will lose. And that's a black swan event. And what you learn by playing poker a lot is that black swan events happen all the time. So you've got to be prepared to sometimes take the losses. Ooh, I love this next one.

5:21The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Here's a question that you should really, really think about because it terrifies every successful business owner. What if you're doing everything right, exactly what you're supposed to be doing, but your business still gets crushed, still gets killed and goes out of business? That's the central argument of the Innovator's Dilemma. Great companies fail, not because they're badly managed or they don't do a good job. It's because they're managed really well. They continue to do what works for the business. But unfortunately, what works today, not going to always work tomorrow.

5:54This book is all about what you need to do to work on your current business, but also work on your second business, which is the business you will become. And I find this fascinating because what I have found in business and in life, and the fact that you'll notice that we're in a new studio, is that if you don't change, if you don't evolve, if you don't become something new, it's very, very easy for you to die as a business. You become stale. You don't become relevant anymore. And this book is all about how do you continue to do what's working in your business, but also innovate. The masters at this are Apple, Apple computers.

6:29They are in the habit of constantly cannibalizing their current products. They innovate and replace their old products as fast as possible. So for example, when the iPhone came out, they cannibalized their best selling product, which is the iPod, right? the iPod instantly got killed by the iPhone when they came out with the iPhone. Now, why do they do this? Because if they don't do it, their competition will. So they rather innovate and take over their product line and start selling more of the new product line, giving the fact it's the latest thing, the latest technology. It's what the customers want now.

7:02The next book is Influence by Robert Cialdini. Influence is one of the OG books on persuasion, on communication, on how to work with other people. This falls onto the umbrella of everything in business, sales, marketing, communication in general. Essentially, every sale you make in your business, every negotiation you win, every partnership that you build with a vendor or even somebody that's gonna market your business for you, it all depends on understanding how and why people agree to things. How do people actually get on your side? And Cialdini spent years studying the philosophy of persuasion and understanding how to influence people and he distills it into this book.

7:41I actually find it incredible that we have access to this book. It's like an absolute game changer. And it's the reason why it's got like over 7 ,000 reviews on Amazon because it's a book that has lasted the test of time. I mean, this book came out about 15, 20 years ago. So it's one of those classics that will constantly teach you new things about how to win people over. There are classic rules that if you follow them, you will succeed in business. Things like reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking and trusting somebody, scarcity. All these things are taught in depth in this book.

8:16And these are not manipulation practices. These are understanding how human beings operate and understanding how you can operate knowing how people operate, if that makes any sense. The point here is that you need to understand how to win when people are on the fence, when people are not sure about you, how to make sure that you quickly build a relationship with them so they understand that you have their best interest in mind. This book gives you an operating system of how human decision making is done. And whether you know this or not, this is happening. This is happening in front of you. And if you are aware of it, you could take advantage of this operating system.

8:54You can take advantage of how people just exist and how they work when it comes to making decisions. Now, I highly recommend that you read this book to understand these invisible forces. A lot of sounds a little bit vague, but he makes it super clear. So you understand with every human interaction you have in business that you can understand how to win them over, how to make sure they win and you win. My next book is Super Communicators by Charles Duhigg. I had the pleasure of meeting Charles. We had him here on the podcast. You should check out that episode. We'll link to it in the description.

9:26But most people think they're good communicators. They think, hey, I've been talking all my life. I should know how to talk, right? No. I used to think I was a great communicator given the fact that I've published over 2800 episodes of this podcast, but I had a lot to learn through this book. In this book, Duhigg's research shows that people who connect most effectively are the ones that do something very specific that you can learn, that you can actually learn so that you can connect with other people at a very deep level. And that connection is everything. When you feel like you're connected to somebody and they feel like they're connected to you, you immediately gain their trust.

10:02After reading this book, I started asking myself a lot of practical questions that allowed me to connect with people a lot faster. Questions like, is this a practical conversation that I'm having with this person? Or is this an emotional one? Or maybe it's a social one. Asking these questions allow me to know how to respond in a way that they will be receptive. Most miscommunication happens not because the words that you're saying are wrong, but because the two people that are having the conversation are having two different conversations without realizing it. I'm sure you can think of a conversation maybe with an intimate partner.

10:32That happens a lot. Don't worry. But the question that he puts in front of you is that, are you thinking about the type of conversation you're having before you have it, before you engage in this conversation? Because your approach is going to change completely. Now, this book has helped me so much in business because communication is the mother of all skills. I'm communicating constantly, whether it's on the podcast, whether it's me negotiating deals, whether it's me figuring out if I want to invest in a company or even hiring or bringing on new people on my team? How do I communicate the right way to make sure that they feel heard, but also that I feel like I'm getting my message across and connecting with them at a deep level?

11:11The next book is The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. Robert Greene is one of my favorite authors. Robert, if you're watching this, please come on the show. I love him so much. He's one of my top five favorite authors and he doesn't mess around. When he goes into a topic, he goes deep. As you can see, he is super deep. This is a very thick book. Usually it takes me about a week or two to finish a book. This book took me about three months, not only because it's a lot of pages, but because it's very thought provoking. You will read a line, you will read a chapter and have to put it down and think about how this relates to your life.

11:42Now, if Cialdini teaches you how to decide and Charles Duhigg teaches you how to connect, Robert Greene really teaches you how people behave. And this is really a must read for any human being, because if you don't understand who these people are that are around you every day, how they operate, how they speak, why they speak this way, how they feel, how they think, it's going to be very hard for you to succeed in life. In this book, you're going to learn about the people around you, your friends, your family, their hidden motivations, their defense mechanisms, the patterns of behavior that play out every time they interact with you, every partnership, every negotiation that you have in business.

12:19it really pulls the curtain and also pulls back from history, psychology, philosophy, and teaches you how people just are very, very basic, okay? And there's a set of rules and there's a set of patterns that you can observe that he explains in detail in this book. Most people spend their entire lives trying to acquire painful lessons about how people work. I know I did through painful trial and error and messing up and breaking relationships up and all that kind of stuff, right? So I'm encouraging you to skip the trial and error and pick up Robert Greene's book, The Laws of Human Nature.

13:18in your own business. The moment I learned some of these stuff, I was able to make some significant changes in my own business and saw some major, major results. So hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it comes out. My next book recommendation, it's actually a few books. It might seem a little odd, but just hang with me for a moment. All right. I'm talking about religious texts. I know this sounds strange, but and you might think, Omar, what does religion have to do with building a great business? Well, the fact of the matter is religion has influenced how people think, operate, believe for centuries.

13:48These are not just spiritual documents. They are one of the most comprehensive records of human philosophy, ethics, psychology, social organizations that have ever been assembled. These religious texts, whether the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, or the Vidas, these books have shaped most of human life, the way people live their lives. And still till today, even when people are not practicing, these philosophies, these traditions are still embedded in our societies. I've always been fascinated about how humans work. And even though I majored in education in my university days, I minored in comparative religion because I was fascinated by this idea of religion, about people having faith, about people following a doctrine.

14:32And I got to be honest, those years of study serve me to today, right? Not because I agree with everything that's in these texts, but because I understand why people believe what they believe. And it's a very powerful tool in business to understand where people are coming from. You can't serve people at a high level without understanding what they value. And that's really what religious texts share with you. What people value most really shapes who they are directly or indirectly, shapes their philosophy and spiritual life, their traditions, and what they love and don't love. I recommend studying these texts.

15:07And I recommend studying all the texts that you can get your hands on, not just the religion that you follow or grew up in, but because you'll realize that most people are the same, right? Most people believe in pretty much the same values and the traditions, the rules that might differ. But at the end of the day, people have a moral compass that they follow based on what they were handed down from their parents or what they sought after. Now, I got to warn you, some of these books are a little bit difficult to read, even with a great translation, especially some of the older texts like the Torah.

15:37It's a little bit old language, and you're going to have to figure out the gist and the meaning of what's being said in these verses. And that's enough for you to understand what people value. The next book is On the Shortness of Life by Seneca. Seneca wrote this book roughly 2 ,000 years ago, right? And as you can see, it's a tiny book. You can actually read this in one sitting. It's not too bad at all. It's, you know, less than 100 pages, about 85 pages. and it's kind of like the opposite of this book. But the point here is that this book will teach you so much about what's important, what you need to value.

16:14Now, even though the book is called On the Shortness of Life, the core argument of this book is that life is not short. We make it short by wasting it on the wrong things. Pretty deep. Most people, they spend most of their valuable years on busyness that creates no meaning. Sticking to a job just because it's safe or being in a relationship just so they're in a relationship, even though it's not fulfilling. Seneca argues that time is the only resource you cannot recover. You cannot renew. You can always buy more clothes. You can always make more money. You can always buy a bigger house. You just can't buy more time.

16:47In fact, money can be lost and be earned again, but time that is spent is gone forever. So whatever you decide to do today, this week, this month, you got to make it something that counts because once that month is over or whatever time period, it's gone forever. And the entrepreneur who internalizes this genuinely feels motivated because they feel like, hey, the time is now. I will die. So I might as well go for it. I won't be in my 30s or my 40s or whatever age you are. Again, you got to take advantage of the time that is in front of you. And when you have that kind of urgency and this book will light a fire under you, you take action.

17:24You prioritize taking action because you understand that time is fleeting. I got to be honest with you, this short book that took me about two hours to read taught me more than any online course. Not because it's filled with great tactics and tips, but it reshaped my mind. It rewired my mind to really take advantage of every day. Stocks, ETFs, or what about mutual funds? Choosing your investments is easier with Fidelity. Our step-by-step experience can help you pick out the right investments for you. Plus, with recurring investments, you can decide how much and how often to invest. Lastly, there's 24-7 help if and when you need it.

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18:44The next book on the list is The Obstacles Away by Ryan Holiday, One of my other favorite authors, Ryan Holiday. This book has gotten me through some tough times. This book really helped me through a particularly tough time when I was trying to grow up in our Ninja R software company. We were stagnant. We were just not moving the needle. And I realized that that obstacle, that challenge is what I needed. I needed to get through that challenge to become who I needed to become so that I can be the entrepreneur I need to be to pull off the numbers and the success that I wanted. Now, if you know anything about Ryan Holiday, he is a big student of stoicism.

19:20Most of his books are rooted in that philosophy. And I recommend this book because Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, which is a great book, is one of the most important books you can ever read. It's actually the private journal of an emperor. You know, this book is a little bit hard to read. It's difficult. And I would say you'd get more out of this book if you're a casual reader, somebody that is not gonna have a Latin dictionary next to them while they're reading a book. Holliday's taken a lot of the core principles of Stoke philosophy and made it practical in modern life. The central idea of this book is that the obstacle is not in the way, it is the way.

19:56Now, what does this mean? Well, like I mentioned, I was struggling in a period of time in my business at Webinar Ninja. Now, we were doing okay, we're roughly$300 ,000 to$400 ,000 in revenue, but I was really trying to hit that million dollar revenue mark, and I just couldn't hit it. I was hitting a ceiling. And in this moment, I read this book, actually read this book on my honeymoon. And when I read it, I realized that I need to go through this challenge because if I was good enough to have a million dollar revenue business, I would have it already. But I don't because I'm not somebody who could pull it off.

20:29I need to become that person first. I got to embrace the obstacle. I can embrace the challenge, learn from it so that I can transform myself and be the person that can pull off a million dollar business. Once you read this book, you will stop feeling derailed by difficulty. You will start to embrace. You'll actually relish in the obstacles that are faced in your business. You will learn to use it. One of my favorite parts of the Rocky movies, if you know anything about me, I love Rocky. Rocky is one of my favorite stories. It's actually one of the best love stories out there. But my favorite part of Rocky is the training montage when he's suffering, right?

21:03Because it makes it all worth it. You understand that that's what it takes to become a champion. Now, I want to move on to some books about money, about time, and changing the way you think about how these things work together. Now, one of the best books on money that I've read is a book by Morgan Housel, and it's called The Psychology of Money. This book is not about spreadsheets. It's not about budgets. It's not about how to save money on lattes. It's about how people think about money, how people actually believe money is going to help them, hurt them, how they use money, how they spend money.

21:37and you're gonna start understanding why you think the things you think about money. You're gonna start analyzing the scripts that are in your head. What I love about this book is that most business books, most money books tell you about what to do with money, what to invest in, how to save, all that kind of stuff. This one tells you why you do what you already do with money and the answer is almost never rational. One of my favorite chapters, one of the first chapters is called Nobody's Crazy. You might think people are crazy for buying lotto tickets, but in their world, it's their only way of getting rich.

22:10It's the only option they have of having a dream. And you can't really judge the way people think, especially when it comes to money, because everybody's circumstance is different. The point is you need to look at your circumstance. You got to look at what you believe about money and why you believe it and analyze it and maybe start changing it. Our relationship with money is shaped by when we grew up. Time period, it could be like a depression or maybe a recession in the economy. It's also based on what we expect, how we grew up in our family, what we were taught by our parents, the emotional associations we've built over the decades when it comes to money.

22:44Things like, you know, rich people are mean or they're greedy. These are things maybe that have fed to us. And maybe that's a big reason why you haven't aspired to grow your business because you feel like if I grow my business, I might be rich. I want to be one of these nasty people like Scrooge McDuck. That's a Scrooge. No one really understands what scripts are going on their mind until you start questioning them. And one of the things that you learn in this book is that when it comes to money, investment, business, no one does any of those things rationally alone, right? There are some emotions involved when it comes to money.

23:18It's a very, very, I would say a hot topic, especially when, you know, people have these discussions with family, with friends. A lot of people don't want to talk about it because it strikes a lot of emotions. It brings up a lot of emotions that maybe they don't want to feel. This book is well written. It's short chapters, clear language, great stories, and even cliffhangers to stories moving on to the next chapter. Morgan Housel has done a great job with this book because most money books are pretty boring. And this is actually quite interesting. It's actually a page turner, in my opinion. I couldn't put this book down.