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Books for Aspiring Cult Leaders, the Science of Money, a Book of Mentors, and More...
Matt Karamazov
July 25, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 24 minutes
YOUTUBE đź“š THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE đź“š PATREON
Today’s newsletter looks a little bit different, but only because I’m trying to pack in as much “wisdom per word” as I possibly can.
You can tell me if I succeeded or not…
In This Issue We’ve Got:
📖 What I’m Reading Now
🧠Who I’m Learning From
đź“ś Book Quote of the Day
🎥 My Latest YouTube Video
đź“š Five Books You Might Like
🏅 Newsletter Referral Program
That referral program is new, by the way (and I’m always open to suggestions on how to make it better), but I’ve already got some pretty sweet rewards set up that you can find out about on this page here.
Then, at the bottom of this email, you’ll find your customized referral link you can send to people to get them to sign up to The Reading Life.
The first reward level is 1 Referral, and at that level you get all my book notes from the nearly 1,300 books I’ve read since 2014.
At 5 Referrals, I donate $5 to First Book, a literacy charity that does fantastic work helping kids learn to read, as well as ensuring they have access to equal education opportunities.
More details on the new referral program right here.
But right now, let’s hit the books!
Play a Bigger Game, by Markus Kaulius: This is a book I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and it just came out a few weeks ago. It’s about 7 “universal principles” you can use to experience true fulfillment and win at life.
Retirement Money Secrets, by Steve Selengut: Steve’s been an investor for 44 years(!) and this book details his investment strategy that works whether the market is going up or down. I just started this one, but I’m really enjoying it!
The Wealth Money Can’t Buy, by Robin Sharma: At this point, I’ll read basically anything that Robin Sharma puts out. This is almost a daily reader of sorts, with short lessons on how to build the 8 types of wealth.
The Winner Effect, by Ian H. Robertson: A book I’ve been meaning to get into for a long, long time. The short, three-word summary is “winners keep winning.” The neurobiology behind that statement is fascinating, and the book is a wild ride.
The YouTube Formula, by Derral Eves: This guy has advised more than 25 YouTube channels that have gone on to reach 1,000,000 subscribers, and as a businessperson who’s taking YouTube a LOT more seriously this year, I just had to read this one. It’s fantastic so far!
Austin Coldiron: Austin’s generated more than six figures through Skool communities, and I’ve been learning from him about how to develop mine. I’ve only been on one call with the guy, but he’s damn good at what he does, and he helped a mutual friend make a LOT of money.
Taylin Simmonds: Taylin’s taught me an incredible amount when it comes to blowing up my personal brand online, and I’m a member of his Microcreators community. I’m actually giving a talk to the group about networking tomorrow! Wonderful group to be a part of, and Taylin’s the real deal.
Ted Carr: Ted’s another guy who’s taught me an incredible amount about how to be successful on Skool (and business in general). He runs a fantastic community geared toward helping people crack the mythical $10K/month mark and joining it was one of the best decisions I’ve made all year.
“Truth is a thing that is living from moment to moment - to be discovered, not believed in, not quoted, not formulated. But to see that truth, your mind and your heart must be extremely pliable, alert."
Reading 200 books a year is NOT impossible, but honestly, it’s just a number. It doesn’t really mean anything, and it’s certainly not a race.
My goal for 2024 is (was?) to read 200 books, but with expanding my business, growing my community, and really just…having a life, it’s going to be tough to reach that (admittedly arbitrary) number by the end of the year.
I did, however, recently finish my 46th book of the year, and the 1,296th book ever since I started counting way back in 2014.
This is my video review of Book #45, Crypto Confidential, by Nat Eliason, as well as Dude, Where's My Car-tharsis?, by Phil Stark (the screenwriter of the Ashton Kutcher movie, Dude, Where's My Car?).
I also bought a bunch of new books recently, and so I'll tell you what I picked up, as well as offer a few bonus book recommendations at the end of the video. Enjoy!
And now, here are my five main recommendations for tonight! They are…
I don’t want to keep you here all day (I’ve got reading to do), so let’s get right into it!
The Cult Commandments:
#1: Thou Shalt Develop a Polarizing Message
#2: Thou Shalt Pick an Enemy
#3: Thou Shalt Be Different. And Celebrate It.
#4: Thou Shalt Bang Thy Drum Over and Over and Over
#5: Thou Shalt Target Outliers and Misfits
#6: Thou Shalt Build Belonging
#7: Thou Shalt Give Thy Followers Plentiful Opportunities to Demonstrate Belonging
“I love the leader!” If you got that Simpsons reference, we just instantly became friends, that’s all there is to it. Okay, so, How to Start a Cult. It’s one of the most compulsively readable (and enjoyable) business books I’ve read in a long time, and it’s about building belonging, not just a business.
Think: devotees, not simply “customers.”
A long time ago, Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about; today, I would add that the only thing worse than someone hating your brand is them feeling nothing at all towards it.
This is a book that teaches you how to be polarizing, but in a way that attracts the right people to your brand, repels the wrong people, and lets everyone know what they’re signing up for.
In the current business environment, being ignored is death. But even more than that, people everywhere want to feel a part of something; they want to know that someone out there understands them and is on their side.
If you demonstrate that through your message, and create superfans who buy in wholesale to your ethos and way of doing things, you’re going to build an unbelievably strong brand full of customers - followers, in the truest sense of the term - that will act on their own to spread your message far and wide.
Aside from being extremely practical and simple to read, How to Start a Cult is just…fun. It’s irreverent, the style is friendly and easygoing, and there’s a ton of valuable stuff in here that will give your business or brand everything it needs to cut through the noise and find your people.
“Every successful business creates something of value. The world is full of opportunities to make other people’s lives better in some way, and your job as a businessperson is to identify things that people don’t have enough of, then find a way to provide them.”
The legendary entrepreneur Derek Sivers called this book a “masterpiece,” and he says it’s now the one “START HERE” book he recommends to everybody interested in business.
The Personal MBA is a wide-ranging, comprehensive overview of everything you need to know to succeed as a business owner, and there’s a reason it’s sold more than a million copies.
Not only that, but it also passes the “Investment Test” with flying colors. Ask yourself: If you were to trade 10 dollars and 10 hours of your time, and in exchange, you’d save one hour a week for the next two years, would you take that offer?
If you value your time at, say, just $10/hour (a gross underestimation, in my opinion), then after that time, you’d have saved $1,040 ($10/hour, for 104 weeks = $1,040, minus your initial investment). Yes, this book can save you a ton of time and frustration, but it goes much deeper than that, considering the exorbitant cost of business school today!
Attending one of the top three business schools (in America) will saddle you with around $150,000 worth of student debt, but you’ll also lose $100,000 or more (as an estimate) in lost salary or opportunity costs because you were in school “learning” when you could have been out in the real world earning.
At the time of this writing, there are eight different US business schools where the cost of an MBA exceeds $300,000. This book? The Personal MBA? You can get it for free from the library, for just a few dollars at a used book store or on Amazon. Total savings for you? Nearly $400,000!
The fact is that MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge. You can learn these things without drowning in debt, and this book is an excellent start.
“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.
Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'”
You can get virtually anything you want in life, just as long as you help enough other people get what they want.
That's one of the earliest lessons I learned from one of the first self-improvement books I've ever read, and Brian Tracy has been a staple of my wide reading ever since.
The truth of his principles has been proven time and time again, and in my own life, much of my success can be directly attributed to what I've learned from him.
In this book, The Science of Money, Brian breaks down some of the myths and misconceptions concerning how money works and how to bring more of it into your life, as well as provides enlightening explanations of the ideas that will help you create wealth.
Perhaps "science" is too strong a word - there's certainly a softer, more human element to wealth creation, too - but these ideas are solid. Importantly, the ideas in this book are foundational. They will help you to start your journey to riches on the right foot.
There's a ton of misinformation, bad advice, and downright lies that are propagated today when it comes to making money, but you'll find none of them here. And even if you're a little further along on your journey, you'll find that this book is an excellent refresher and one that you may want to keep close by.
“People who are content and unafraid might become harder to influence if you’ve only got fear and consumerism to do it.”
The philosophy of Stoicism has made an enormously positive impact on my life - ever since I first read the original works of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and others in my 20s - and this has got to be one of the most conversational, approachable introductions to it that I’ve ever read.
Living like a Stoic is all about being unflappable, being able to withstand everything and still coming back smiling. It’s about maintaining your inner peace no matter what, and it’s also for everybody, not just “Serious Students of Philosophy” and other people who are no fun at parties. This is a book for life.
Personally, very little in this book was “new” to me. Other than the author’s own experiences, of course. But that doesn’t even matter, because Stoic ideas are the kind of things that you can (and should) keep coming back to for the rest of your life.
You can read this book in less than a day, but if you take the time to sit with its ideas and let them inform your worldview, you’ll be able to cultivate an inner strength that lasts for many decades to come.
“I wanted to become autonomous, prepare myself for any eventuality, and protect myself from further pain. I think that’s part of what drew me to war zones and other places where people’s whole lives have been turned upside down. I wanted to learn about survival from those who were still standing.”
This was a random book app find (Everand), and when I gave it a chance I ripped right through it to the end, taking copious notes as I went along, surprised and delighted again and again by wisdom and advice from a variety of people, most of whom I had never even heard of before picking up the book. It reminded me of Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss, actually!
Getting There is a collection of interviews with thirty leaders in diverse fields (you’ve got Warren Buffett, Muhammad Yunus, Michael Bloomberg, Hans Zimmer, among others), where they share some of their lowest moments, their fantastic wins and blazing successes, as well as their unique wisdom that I’ve never found anywhere else.
There’s career advice, life advice, relationship advice, money advice, and everything in between, and almost every single interview is one that I wish would have gone on for longer.
Basically what I’m saying is that I ordered about a dozen new books while I was reading this one, because the wise and impressive interviewees kept sending me off in all these different thought-provoking directions. I’m glad I found this one!
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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
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