The video presents a curated list of essential books that have influenced a successful entrepreneur in building a substantial business empire. Emphasizing the importance of reading for personal growth, the video identifies key books within four critical areas called the four spheres of influence: mindset, health, wealth, and skills. The books are selected for their transformative insights and practical teachings, offering viewers mental frameworks and strategies relevant to personal and professional development.

In this video, viewers are guided through a thoughtfully organized selection of influential books. These range from ancient philosophy such as Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic" to modern practical guides like "The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Hausel and "Traction" by Gina Wickman. The presenter discusses the impact of each book on their personal journey, highlighting key concepts like growth mindset and effective financial management, while also offering practical advice on implementing the books’ lessons in real life.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. revered [rɪˈvɪrd] - (verb) - To regard with deep respect or admiration. - Synonyms: (respect, venerate, honor)

But Charlie Munger was revered in the world of finance as a sort of business Yoda.

2. primary sources ['praɪˌmɛri 'sɔrsɪz] - (noun) - Original materials or evidence on which other research is based. - Synonyms: (original documents, authoritative sources, firsthand accounts)

Reading from what's called primary sources is the best way to build up a latticework of understanding around a topic, because you're starting at the ground floor and building up your own knowledge base rather than just relying on somebody else's interpretation and then summary of that topic

3. antithesis [ænˈtɪθəsɪs] - (noun) - The direct opposite, a contrast between two things. - Synonyms: (opposite, contrast, contradiction)

Now, to really understand the growth mindset, you have to understand its antithesis, the fixed mindset.

4. nuance [ˈnuːˌɑːns] - (noun) - A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound. - Synonyms: (subtlety, distinction, detail)

Now, there's a lot more nuance to this book than I can give justice here, so definitely go check it out.

5. convoluted [ˈkɑːnvəˌluːtɪd] - (adjective) - Extremely complex and difficult to follow. - Synonyms: (complex, complicated, intricate)

It always seemed like this overly convoluted and esoteric way of understanding the world.

6. esoteric [ˌɛsəˈtɛrɪk] - (adjective) - Intended for or understood by only a small number of people with specialized knowledge. - Synonyms: (obscure, arcane, cryptic)

It always seemed like this overly convoluted and esoteric way of understanding the world.

7. distillation [ˌdɪs.təˈleɪ.ʃən] - (noun) - The extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something. - Synonyms: (extraction, purification, refinement)

And this book is just a distillation of all that learning into simple rules we can use to govern our lives.

8. frivolous [ˈfrɪvələs] - (adjective) - Not having any serious purpose or value. - Synonyms: (trivial, superficial, petty)

Instead of saying, I suck at this, and therefore will always suck at this, the key to the growth mindset is a simple word called yet, yet changes everything.

9. sclerosis [skləˈrəsɪs] - (noun) - An excessive resistance to change or new ideas; a pathological hardening of tissue. - Synonyms: (rigidity, stiffness, hardening)

For as long as you foster a willingness to learn, you will ward off sclerosis of the brain and the hardening of the mental arteries.

10. constraints [kənˈstreɪnts] - (noun) - A limitation or restriction. - Synonyms: (limitations, restrictions, boundaries)

It's called the theory of constraints, and like all the best theories, it is simple, profound and universally applicable

I've read 613 business books - these 16 will make you RICH

So one of the greatest investors the world has ever seen recently passed away at the ripe old age of 99 years old. And if you were to ask most people on the street, they would have no clue who this guy was. But Charlie Munger was revered in the world of finance as a sort of business Yoda. And he said something once that's really stuck with me. He said, in my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time. None, zero. And this is proven true time and again in my own personal experiences.

But something I really struggled with at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey was just figuring out which books are actually worth reading. I mean, a book can transform your life, but the harsh truth is that most books are nothing more than 300 pages of fluff surrounding one interesting idea. Well, I'm here to cut the fluff, and I'm going to share with you some of the books that played a pivotal role in my life and that I've used over the last twelve years in building a hundred million dollar empire.

On a side note, I recently did a video breaking down the twelve books that I reread every single year. So I'm gonna leave those off this list. But you should go check out that video when you're done with this one to see my twelve favorite books of all time. All right, for this video, I'm gonna break these down into categories based on what I call the four spheres of influence, which are mindset, health, wealth and skills.

So let's dive in with the first sphere of influence, which is your mindset. The first book on the list is from one of the grandfathers of the stoic philosophy, Seneca. This book is called Letters from a Stoic. Now, stoicism has gained a lot of popularity over the past decade thanks to the efforts of guys like Ryan Holiday, who've done just an incredible job translating these ancient works for modern audiences. And don't get me wrong, those books are great. But if you really want to understand something, you gotta get as close to the source material as possible.

For instance, if you want to learn economics, you go read Wealth of Nations and Communist Manifesto. If you want to learn about biology and evolution, go read The Origin of Species or The 8th Day of Creation. Reading from what's called primary sources is the best way to build up a latticework of understanding around a topic, because you're starting at the ground floor and building up your own knowledge base rather than just relying on somebody else's interpretation and then summary of that topic.

So if you really want to learn about the stoic philosophy, I recommend you go straight to the primary sources, one of which is this book, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. One of the things I love about it is it's just a treasure trove of wisdom broken down into easily digested soundbites. And this is one of my all time favorites. We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

All right, the next book for developing your mindset is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I think the world would generally be a better place if everybody was required to read this book as a child. The lessons are simple yet profound and universally applicable. They are be impeccable with your word, do not take anything personal, do not make assumptions, and always do your best.

Now you might hear those and think those are incredibly simplistic and there's no reason to dig any deeper. But in my experience, the most impactful lessons in life are the simplest. My favorite lesson from this book, or at least the one that's played the biggest role in my life, is that first one. Be impeccable with your word. Truly, I believe that you could accomplish literally anything in the world if you just do this one thing.

Become the type of person who always does what they say. And this doesn't just apply to the things we say to others. In fact, the most important promises are actually the ones we make with ourselves, and yet those are the ones we most often break. I can't overstate how big of a problem this actually is, because when we break the promises we make with ourselves, we pay a price that's really hard to see in the moment. It's the price of your self esteem. Because at the end of the day, self esteem is just the reputation you have with yourself.

You cannot break the promises you make to yourself without consequence. You will always know, and that's why it's so damn important that you become impeccable with your words. The next book on our list is the Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. Now, Jordan is a bit of a lightning rod for drama, and I know he's not everybody's cup of tea. However, I personally find his perspectives and insights to be deeply well considered, well thought out, and in good faith.

Which means I believe, he's genuinely trying to have hard conversations in earnest so that we as a global collective can move forward toward a better and brighter future. Now, regardless of whether or not you agree with his political beliefs, I think there's a lot to learn from him in regards to self mastery. After all, he's spent 30 years as a clinical psychologist trying to help people become better versions of themselves.

And this book is just a distillation of all that learning into simple rules we can use to govern our lives. My favorite of the twelve rules is this one. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone is today. This is a lesson that I pretty much have to relearn every single day. All right. The fourth book on this list when it comes to developing mindset is aptly named Mindset by Carol Dweck.

This is one of the most important books on the topic of mindset, and I do not say that lightly. In it, world renowned psychologist Carol Dweck introduces the world to a simple yet profound concept called the growth mindset. Now, to really understand the growth mindset, you have to understand its antithesis, the fixed mindset. The fixed mindset is the belief that our traits, our characteristics, and our skills are fixed and unchangeable.

People who say things like, I'm just not a math person, or I'm bad at learning languages are falling victim to the fixed mindset. The growth mindset, by contrast, believes that anything can be learned and developed. So instead of saying, I suck at this, and therefore will always suck at this, the key to the growth mindset is a simple word called yet, yet changes everything. When you say, I'm not good at math yet, you're signaling one of the most important beliefs any of us can adopt, which is, with enough time, effort, and intention, you can master practically anything.

Now, there's a lot more nuance to this book than I can give justice here, so definitely go check it out. In the meantime, let's move on to our second sphere of influence, health. I have read hundreds of books on exercise and nutrition over the years, and without a doubt, the best book I've read is Outlive by Peter Attia. This book lays out a comprehensive framework for not only living longer, but living better.

I mean, what's the point of living until you're 100 if the last 20 years of your life are spent in absolute misery, unable to get out of bed and do the things that you love? That is not a life I think anybody wants for themselves. So it's important you start doing the work now. But that begs the question, what exactly should you be doing right now to ensure you live a long, healthy, awesome life? Well, Peter Rotia breaks it down into core categories, including exercise, sleep, nutrition, mental health, and relationships.

This book is a tour de force, but written in a way that you can start applying immediately because this book is so damn good. It's the only one I'm going to recommend in this section. So let's just move on to the third sphere of influence, which is wealth. Money is by far the thing that's caused me the most stress in my life. It's probably because it's the one that impacts pretty much every aspect of our lives, and yet it's the one that if you're like I was, you know, the least about.

So let's take our heads out of the sand and change that by learning the rules and strategies for winning the money game. To do that, I'm going to break this down into two different parts. We have basic money knowledge and then advanced money knowledge. Okay, so we're going to start with basic money knowledge because you can start applying the lessons from these books to your personal financial situation immediately.

The first book is The Psychology of Money by Morgan Hausel. The first step in winning the money game is just to change how you think about money. And this is so important because most of us have accumulated all sorts of unhelpful baggage and misguided beliefs around money that are unconsciously sabotaging our efforts to get ahead. Listen, how you think about money influences how you feel and ultimately act around money.

And unfortunately, most of us were taught how to think, feel, and act towards money by people who were not winning the money game. As a general rule, do not take advice from someone you wouldn't trade places with, which means don't take financial advice from somebody who isn't winning the money game. If you do, you're going to adopt their same thoughts, beliefs, and actions that are keeping them from winning the money game. So step one on your financial journey is to break this cycle and learn a new way to think around money, which is where this book comes in.

Psychology of Money. Here's one of my favorite quotes from this book. Saving is the gap between your ego and your income. All right? Now, the next book in developing your basic money knowledge is I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. This is one of the very first books on personal finance that I read when I decided to turn my life around all those years ago.

Now, the beauty of this book is that it's not just theory. Ramit lays out a step by step plan with actionable next steps you can start taking today to automate your finances. And this is important because, as Ramit himself says in the book, it's more important to get started than to spend an exhaustive amount of time researching. So read this book, understand the plan, and start implementing. I promise you're going to be further ahead in six months than you are now.

All right, so the third book on basic money knowledge I'm going to share with you. It has practically zero actionable steps, but it is my all time favorite book on the topic of money. It is called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. So most of the people writing books on money are either millionaires or want to be millionaires. Very, very, very few billionaires have ever written books on money, and so when they do, it's generally worth paying attention to what they have to say.

Now, unfortunately, most billionaires are actually kind of lame and they have zero personality. So the books they write often suck. But this is not one of those books. This book, How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read. And I'm not just talking about money books here. The reason this book is so well written and interesting is because Felix Dennis spent his entire life immersed in the publishing industry and he did some pretty wild things with his life.

Now, you've maybe never heard of Felix Dennis, but chances are good you've heard of his magazines like Maxim or Men's Fitness or Computer Buyer. This book is the rambling insights of a man who managed to summit the money mountain and then spent the last few years on earth just sharing what he learned along the way. Of all the lessons he shares in his book, my favorite is the anyone not busy learning is busy dying. For as long as you foster a willingness to learn, you will ward off sclerosis of the brain and the hardening of the mental arteries.

Curiosity has led many a man and woman into the valley of serious wealth. All right, so now that we've laid the foundation, here are three books for developing your advanced money knowledge. First up is Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlett. I'll be honest, I did not enjoy learning about economics in high school or college. It always seemed like this overly convoluted and esoteric way of understanding the world that politicians and economists created just to make themselves feel smart and important.

And that may be true, but it's also true that economics impacts absolutely everything we do in life, it's everywhere, affecting all things at all times. Remaining ignorant of that truth only makes our lives harder than necessary, and it puts us at a disadvantage relative to those who do understand economics. So do yourself a favor and arm yourself with a basic understanding of economics by checking out this book. It's relatively short, it's easy to consume, but it packs a mighty punch.

Alright. The second book on advanced money knowledge is Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright. I can see your eyes already glazing over at the mention of taxes, but listen up, because one of the most important lessons to be learned when it comes to winning the money game is this. It's not about how much you make, it's about how much you keep. And like it or not, the biggest expense you will incur in this lifetime are taxes.

So if you want to keep more of what you make, you must develop a basic understanding of taxes. Now, unfortunately, most books written around taxes are about as exciting as having your teeth drilled. At least with this book, Tax Free Wealth, it feels like they gave you some anesthesia. So go check it out.

Okay, now, the last book on our quest to develop advanced money knowledge is What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow by Frank Galinelli. Don't be deterred by the title of this book. It's actually really, really helpful, even if you're not interested in real estate. In fact, if you're any sort of entrepreneur, I highly recommend you check out this book. Because accounting is the language of business.

The better you speak the language, the better you'll be able to communicate with the locals. Okay? So as you might imagine, the problem with books on accounting and finance, they're often very dry and boring. And I'm not going to pretend like this is a riveting frolic through fields of dandelions, but here's what I like about this book. It's short, it's clear, and it's very concise.

So suck it up, buttercup. If you want to play the money game at the highest levels, this is the price of admission. Okay? Now, a lot of people like to say that knowledge is power, but that's actually not true. Knowledge is potential power. It's useless if we don't apply it.

Now, the beauty of applied knowledge is that it leads to our fourth sphere of influence, which is skills. Now, here's the truth. I don't actually think reading books is a great way to learn most skills. In almost all cases, you're better off just doing the thing and getting more reps. After all, you can't learn to ride a bicycle by reading about it. You just have to go and try to ride the damn thing.

With that said, there are a few skills which, due to their nature, are kind of helpful to read about, especially when it comes to what I call the three legs of business. Now, the way I think about this is that all businesses have three legs of the stool. They have a marketing function, operations function, and a finance function. Marketing gets to customers. Operations creates the product and delivers it to the customer.

And finance manages the bank accounts to keep marketing and operations out of trouble. Now, we've already discussed the finance leg in the previous section, so let's turn our attention to the skills we need for marketing and operations. Okay, so let's start with two books on operating a business that I've used to build multiple eight figure businesses. The first is Traction by Gina Wickman. This is the closest thing you're going to find to an out of the box operating system that you can immediately, immediately plug into your business.

In fact, this book will teach you a framework called EOS, which stands for Entrepreneur Operating System. And this is a very helpful system, especially when you're new, because one of the biggest struggles entrepreneurs ultimately face is a lack of structure. You know, when you're working for somebody else and collecting a paycheck, chances are there's already systems and processes in place. All you got to do is follow the system and it will produce the desired result. I mean, you just show up at this time, you do that thing for this long, then move on to that thing for this long, and then you call it a day.

But you don't have any of that structure. When building your own thing in the beginning, you're going to be tempted to just slap something together on your own. And don't get me wrong, that can work. But when you go that route, you're building systems and processes for what you can see immediately in front of you. And spoiler alert, in the beginning of your journey, you can't see very far.

This means you're going to eventually hit an inflection point where the systems you built to get you here are insufficient to get you there. And to be honest, this first inflection point is what breaks most businesses. If you want to avoid this, then just start from day one by implementing a proven process. And it might seem like overkill in the beginning, but if you do everything right, you're eventually going to grow into it and then you're going to be glad that you did alright.

The second book that's going to help you with your business operations is called The Goal by Eliahu Goldrat. This book is not so much a system as it is a framework for thinking through the obstacles that are going to keep your business from growing. It's called the Theory of constraints, and like all the best theories, it is simple, profound and universally applicable. The core concept is this, every process has a single constraint, and the total throughput of the process can only ever be improved when that constraint is removed.

Another way of thinking about this is that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So all the time and energy we put into improving any link in that chain that is not the weakest is a waste because those links are not the limiting factor. The difficulty in business and life is that it's not always so clear which link is the weakest. So learning to identify the constraint in any system, it's one of the most valuable entrepreneurial skills because it unlocks a roadmap for continual improvement and therefore growth. This book, The Goal, it's going to help you do that. So go check it out.

Okay, so now I personally lump product design into the operations bucket, and by far the best book I've read on this topic is $100 Million Offers by Alex Hermozzi. If you want to learn how to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no, then go grab a copy of this. It's like $0.99 on Amazon. I wish this book had been available when I started my entrepreneurial journey, as it almost certainly would have helped me get to $100 million company way faster than we ultimately did.

But I'm psyched it's here now, because even with a decade of experience behind me, I've still learned a ton in this book that I've used over the past couple of years to make a lot more money than I otherwise would have. Now, speaking of making money, the way that you do this in a business is by selling customers a product or service. But the question then becomes, where exactly do you get the customers?

Well, this is where marketing comes in. And honestly, there's no shortage of great books out there that will help you develop this particular skill. But here are two of my personal favorites. First is another Hormozi book. It's called $100 Million Leads. This book only came out a couple months ago, so unfortunately it was a little late to help me on my learning curve.

But damn, if I would have had this book ten years ago, it would have saved me so much trial and error, not to mention a ton, ton of heartache. Because at the end of the day, in the life of an entrepreneur, there's nothing quite so disheartening as having a great product that you can't find customers for. This book is the step by step process for generating leads periods. There's nothing like it.

And by acquiring the skill of generating leads on demand, you pretty much have a money printing machine. As an entrepreneur, you can't afford not to know how to generate leads. But once you know how to find them, you gotta learn how to convert them into paying customers. And to do that, there is no skill in the world more valuable than copywriting.

My favorite book on this topic is Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. So, copywriting is a skill by which we use the written word to influence perception, conjure desire, and drive action. And Ogilvy himself was one of the grandfathers of this powerful craft. He practically pioneered the process by which we engage, educate, and convert leads into customers using nothing more than the written word.

I don't know about you, but I find that there's something almost magical about the fact that you could sell practically any product in the world if you just wrote down the right sequence of words on a piece of paper and put it in front of the right customer at the right time. To be a great copywriter requires clear thinking, a deep understanding of human psychology, and the ability to communicate a message with impact.

This book, Ogilvy on Advertising, is a great first step in learning what I consider to be one of the most valuable skills, skills in the world. And if you take the lessons from this book, you combine it with all the lessons from all the other books on this list, then it's just a matter of time until you build your own $100 million empire. So, good luck.

So what are you waiting for? Go read a book.

Education, Entrepreneurship, Motivation, Books, Learning, Money Management, Anthony Vicino