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10 Fantastic Books to Read Before 2025 (and an Apology)
Matt Karamazov
October 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 27 minutes
I’ll have to apologize for not being able to finish my latest book breakdown in time to get it out to you tonight. I mentioned on Instagram recently that it would be ready tonight, and I’ve still got some work left to do on it.
But the book I’ll be featuring in the breakdown is fantastic - one of my top business book recommendations - and it’s called No B.S. Guide to Succeeding in Business by Breaking All the Rules, by the millionaire-maker himself, Dan S. Kennedy.
Like I always say, it seems like every time I finish (and implement) a new Dan Kennedy book, I enter a new tax bracket!
Tonight I’ve got a different Dan Kennedy book for you though…that’s all below, along with ten other books to read before 2025 (or, ideally as soon as possible!)
I have to drive my mother to the airport tomorrow morning (she’s away for my cousin’s wedding), but I should have my full book breakdown finished by tomorrow evening!
While you’re waiting for my breakdown, just read Justin Schlendorf’s breakdown of $100M Leads, by Alex Hormozi!
Justin writes The Capital Challenge, where he does a deep dive into a new nonfiction book each week. He’s written one for $100M Offers, also by Alex Hormozi, Influence, by Robert Cialdini, The Psychology of Selling, by Brian Tracy, and more.
Then there’s my friend Jamie who’s also big into books, and he writes both the Minimalist Hustler newsletter, and the Minimalist Books newsletter!
The former is where 7,000+ online hustlers receive a daily email with 3 quick & valuable resources that help them make more money online.
And the latter is where he shares his passion and discoveries with other authors or aspiring authors who are interested in reading and/or publishing short books.
Each week you will discover:
A minimalist book to read.
A resource to help you publish your minimalist book(s).
A resource to help you promote your minimalist book(s).
I’ve been friends with Jamie for quite a while now, and he does excellent work. Plus I’m always happy to support fellow readers! And now…
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
We’ve got lots to learn today, so let’s hit the books!
“What we’ve done or failed to do doesn’t forever determine who we are or will be. In fact, I believe that we have no idea what we can really do. We may never find out, either – there may always be another level – but striving to reach the top is the most rewarding adventure life has to offer.”
“The multiple demands on an entrepreneur’s time are extraordinary. I am here to tell you that you need to take extraordinary measures to match those demands. Measures so radical and extreme that others may question your sanity.
This is no ordinary time management book for the deskbound or the person doing just one job.
This book is expressly for the wearer of many hats, the inventive, opportunistic entrepreneur who can’t resist piling more and more responsibility onto his own shoulders, who has many more great ideas than time and resources to take advantage of them, and who runs (not walks) through each day. I’m you, and this is our book.”
In this book, the eccentric entrepreneur Dan S. Kennedy shares the extreme time management strategies he uses personally to run his multimillion-dollar company while successfully safeguarding his schedule and his sanity.
Dan’s one of those guys who, whenever he comes out with a new book, I immediately buy it no matter what. Actually, I feel the same way about Michael Matthews, whose newest book is up next.
But even if you’re not a business owner or entrepreneur, this is one of the best time management books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read dozens of them). It’s a little extreme, like I said, but your time is literally your life. It makes sense to be at least a little bit extreme about something that’s so valuable.
I honestly don’t believe it’s possible for anyone to guard their time too fiercely (while still making themselves available to help others, I mean), and if you’re serious about protecting your most precious resource, try reading this book.
“The fact that you don’t want to go to the gym today is a sign that you need to make sure you go to the gym today.”
If you want to get into better shape, have a healthier relationship with food, and learn to team up with your body instead of fighting against it...
Read Stronger Than Yesterday, by Michael Matthews.
Here's What You Need to Know:
💪 Everyone has limits, but yours are probably much larger and further away than you think.
💪 Michael Matthews believes in you, even (and especially) when you don't.
💪 Stronger Than Yesterday is broken up into 169 short, simple chapters that will help you wake up stronger tomorrow than when you went to bed.
💪 There are no wild promises or flashy/weird tricks, just science-based, evidence-based, reality-based, based-based fitness tips and diet advice that ACTUALLY work.
💪 You don't have to settle for the body you have. You can make significant, meaningful moves every day to the body you want.
💪 I also HIGHLY recommend his previous book, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation, which I read last year and absolutely loved.
“Neither a market correction nor rising interest rates (not even a pandemic) will have a negative impact on my investment income. In fact, either scenario will help me increase my income growth rate long term.”
This is the book that got me excited about investing again: Retirement Money Secrets.
The author, Steve Selengut, had more than $110,000,000 in Assets Under Management (AUM) when he sold his company, and when I read his book last month, I found dozens of tremendously helpful insights and strategies in there that I'll be implementing in my own investment strategy.
Retirement Money Secrets is much more conversational than most personal finance/investing books, and doesn't feel like you're being lectured or anything like that...not at all.
Besides a few investing terms I wasn't familiar with (and that he explained clearly), nothing in this book was too challenging, and I came away with strength, confidence, knowledge, motivation, and most importantly...a solid plan.
I highly recommend this one if you resonate with Steve’s approach and want to learn from the very best, and hey, if you buy it from Amazon via my link, I promise to put the $0.40 I’ll earn from that into reliable, income-producing CEFs ;)
“My highest aspiration now doesn’t concern becoming ‘better and better’ as an individual, but rather looking toward ways to lift up and enlighten others. We all deserve to have fulfilling lives, work that matters, and fair rewards for our efforts.
I hope that by sharing these examples of the work I have continued to support as a retired founder, it will inspire others to share their success for the benefit of others; to pursue innovation and opportunity not just to attain material success, but to pay it forward; to donate, to participate, and to make their communities and the world better and better.”
Some of the best, most valuable (not to mention profitable) business lessons are contained in books that are lesser-known. And also from CEO interviews on YouTube that get less than 1,000 views sometimes, which is wild to me.
Anyway, many of us have read Zero to One, Dot Com Secrets, The Millionaire Fastlane, Good to Great, etc. etc. And don't get me wrong. Those are all fantastic books.
But have you read Better & Better, by Bob Stiller? Do you even know who that is? Don't feel bad if you don't, I had no idea until very recently.
Stiller's the man who built Keurig and Green Mountain Coffee into a billion-dollar coffee empire and found a way to do it while massively supporting his employees, his community, and making the world a better place.
None of those things are easy or obvious. But he made it happen, and he wrote a book about it. This book.
“Your pathway to nine figures must be undertaken incrementally - one zero at a time. In order to develop a nine-figure mindset, you must first develop a six-figure mindset, then a seven-figure mindset, and so on.
If you can’t make $100,000, you can’t make $1 million, and if you can’t make $1 million, you certainly can’t make $10 million.
Your first $100,000 is totally controlled by how you think and what you do as a producer. Your first $1 million of income is controlled by how you think, what you do, and how many people you can inspire to come do it with you based on knowing how you made that $100,000.
Your eight-figure achievement comes through multiplying and amplifying through the teams of people you build to solve the problems you’ve identified as worth solving through your products and services.”
You’ll never be ridiculed by anyone with bigger dreams than you have. They honestly just don’t have the time to spare!
Anyone with a real, deeply-felt vision is in constant motion to achieve it, and Brandon Dawson seems to be one of those rare individuals who both has bigger dreams and wants you to achieve yours as well.
He’s also done this whole business-building thing before, having sold his last company for $151 million and building his current business to something like a half billion dollar valuation.
I always advise that people learn from someone who has actually done the thing that you want to do, and so if your goal is to grow your business to unimaginable heights, Brandon’s your guy and this is your book.
“Depression can make it difficult to accomplish the simplest tasks.
It can feel like an impossible feat to just get out of bed, similar to the way that quicksand can make something as simple as moving your arms seem impossible.
The tricky thing about quicksand is that the more you struggle, the more you sink. The harder you try to get out of it, the deeper you fall into it.
So what do the experts say you should do when you find yourself sinking into a pit of quicksand? Stop struggling and float.”
This is a tragically underrated (but hopefully not for long) book by the screenwriter-turned-therapist of the Ashton Kutcher movie, Dude, Where’s My Car?, and it’s a “friendly and engaging guide to talk therapy.”
But there’s so much more here, and even if you’ve never been to therapy or had plans of going, you could still absolutely stand to benefit from reading the book.
For one thing, I found Phil’s use of metaphor wonderfully insightful, as he’ll describe depression like being caught in quicksand, addiction as being controlled by a planet’s gravity…just on and on.
A completely different way of looking at things that helps you instantly understand, and even if you’ve never struggled with those afflictions yourself, it’ll help you better relate to people in your life who have.
In 50 chapters, he deals with all these things people end up in therapy to help them deal with, like grief, anger, relationship issues, worry - basically everything.
By the end of it you almost can’t help but feel that if you ever were to end up in therapy, you’d want to have a therapist like Phil.
“Bad reviews from bad people are good reviews.”
Joshua Lisec is the multimillion-dollar ghostwriter of more than 80 books and this particular book is for underpaid experts whose paychecks don’t measure up to the actual value they provide to their clients and customers.
There could be several reasons for such a state of affairs, but one of them is probably that you are dealing with an obscurity problem:
No one knows who you are! Much less how you can help them, and why you are the answer to their biggest, scariest, keep-them-awake-at-night problems that they’d pay big money to have solved.
Besides dishing out quite possibly the best marketing advice of all time (and I’m not just saying that), Joshua’s book will help you develop a genius-system with no steps skipped that will allow your clients to experience sensational, almost literally unbelievable results, such that people don’t believe they could possibly be true.
In fact, one of the counterintuitive pieces of advice you’ll find here is the value of cultivating a small army of organic haters - a loud, vocal minority of people who spread your name far and wide, unintentionally bringing you to the attention of the people most likely to hire you and pay you exorbitant sums of money for what you do (and be glad to do it).
Not everyone should read this book. For one thing, you have to genuinely be good at what you do. And not just good; you should be phenomenal at your craft.
You need actual results from real clients, and if people follow your genius system, they should be able to get great results, every single time.
Once you have that, though, your task becomes one of attracting as much attention and hysteria in the market as possible, to the point at which the haters start coming out of the proverbial woodwork.
You’re already good at what you do. Now you have to become so good that they call you a fake.
“The bigger the dream, the less visible the path.”
This book might actually turn out to be one of my absolute top recommendations of 2024. It’s that good. And not just “Top Business Books,” but the best out of all of them.
Dan is a solopreneur with millions of followers across social media who’s built a seven-figure personal income for himself by combining his interests in business, philosophy, self-improvement, and more into a one-man business that has positively impacted millions of lives. I’m actually still processing my notes from this one (to be released on my Patreon very soon), but so far there are pages and pages of them.
So if you’re unsatisfied, disinterested…or just…bored with what’s going on in your life right now, and you want to begin a search for what actually does mean something (and potentially find a way to profit from it along the way), The Art of Focus is one you’ll definitely want to pick up.
And you can be sure that I’ll be writing a complete breakdown of it very shortly!
“Though it is full of Balaji's ideas, this book is actually a guide to thinking for yourself. Discover your own way to build the future you want to see. You might find your next great investment, start a billion-dollar company, or found an entirely new country.
Does Balaji sometimes sound a bit like a comic book villain? Maybe. He is an eccentric genius, after all. Have a conversation with this book. Adopt the ideas that serve you and wrestle with the others. When you're done reading, put the book down and get to work.
Our future is born anew every day. Use your powers well.
Create a product. Solve a problem. Build."
What if the human story is just getting started? What if there's a future techno-utopia just waiting for the right group of smart, ambitious, optimistic thinkers to come along and help make it real? What if there was a book that laid out a grounded yet exciting roadmap to get to that bright future?
Eric Jorgenson is the author of the runaway internet classic, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, and one of my favorite books of all time. In The Anthology of Balaji, he scours the whole world wide web for the wit and wisdom of Balaji Srinivasan, one of the boldest, most original, and most technologically optimistic thinkers of our time.
This book was phenomenal, the Naval book was phenomenal, and Eric’s working on a third book in the series about Elon Musk and his ideas - I just know that’s going to be phenomenal as well.
And, after months of waiting (on me - waiting on me), I’ll finally be publishing my podcast with Eric, which will be available on my YouTube channel very soon. Hopefully this week.
“No matter what you have done or failed to do in the past, at any time you can draw a line through your previous life and decide that your future is going to be different.
You can begin thinking different thoughts, making different choices, taking different actions, and developing different habits that will lead you inevitably to the successes that are possible for you.”
In this book, personal development legend Brian Tracy teaches you how to establish winning habits that will lead inevitably to the success and fulfillment you desire, while helping you actualize the potential you may never have known you had.
I’ve been reading his books for more than 10 years - I first read The Power of Self-Confidence in 2014 - and he’s one of the first people to put me “on the path” to success. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Brian’s books, and even all these years later, I’m still learning from him.
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OK, that’s it for now…
More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!
And if you’d like me to buy you a new book every month, (and rapidly scale your personal brand while earning more money in your business), click to join us inside The Competitive Advantage - we’d love to have you!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you:
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