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Books to Build a Nine-Figure Mindset, Turn Your Brain Into a Fortress of Solitude, and More!
Matt Karamazov
August 13, 2024 ā¢ Estimated Reading Time: 22 minutes
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My publishing schedule is all out of whack recently (weāll just pretend this is Monday and youāre receiving this newsletter when youāre supposed to), but Iāve been slaving away on my breakdown of The Anthology of Balaji, and itās epic.
Iāve got 6,000 words just of notes from the book, not counting my commentary, practical applications, other books you could read that would complement itā¦
Itās going to be a really in-depth breakdown (as they all are, but this one especially) and I canāt wait to get it into your inbox!
It was supposed to go out on Wednesday, but at this rate, I may give myself until Thursday, send Fridayās newsletter on Saturday, and get back to our regularly scheduled programming on Mondayā¦
Anyway, you donāt wanna hear about all that housekeeping stuff. Letās talk about books!
In This Issue of The Reading Life, Weāve Got:
š What Iām Currently Reading
š§ Who Iām Learning From Right Now
š The Book Quote of the Day
š„ The ONLY Thing Separating Successful People from Failures
ā New Book Releases Coming Soon
š Tonightās Five Main Book Recommendations
š Earn Rewards for Referring This Newsletter
Thereās a lot to get to, so letās hit the books!
Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson: Iām about 200 pages into this biography of Musk and itās excellent. Itās the first Walter Isaacson book Iāve ever read, and I can see what the big deal is! Heās a fantastic biographer and Elonās story is like a novel unfolding in real time. Highly recommend!
No B.S. Guide to Trust-Based Marketing, by Dan Kennedy: My Dan Kennedy binge continues, with no sign of slowing down! Iām well on my way to reading every book heās ever written.
Everyone I know whoās wildly successful in business has a huge Dan Kennedy collection in their library, and Iām keeping that tradition alive. This oneās about creating trust in an understandably untrusting world, and like every other Dan Kennedy book, this oneās phenomenal.
Retirement Money Secrets, by Steve Selengut: Steveās been an investor for 44 years(!) and this book details his investment strategy that works whether the market is going up or down. Iām almost finished reading this one right now, and Iām really enjoying it!
Sam Ocean: Samās a full-stack YouTube growth partner helping info brands launch offers, build massive audiences, & scale revenue on YouTube, but apart from all that, heās just one of those guys who make the creator economy worth being a part of. Just by being him heās helped me so much, and if YouTube is on your radar at all this year, youāve just gotta follow him.
Hrabren Bankov: Harryās another guy whoās been a tremendously positive influence on me (and my Instagram growth) this year, and his carousel posts are always top-notch. I draw a ton of inspiration from him daily, and again, heās just one of the āgood guysā of social media that you just have to follow.
Daniel Iles: In terms of justā¦content marketing knowledge and creator business expertise - Danielās one of the all-time best, or at least well on his way to becoming one of the all-time best. What heās done with his own business and his personal brand is just incredible, and Iāve been drawing a ton of inspiration from him as well.
āYour vision must align with who you want to be. Your choices must align with your vision. Your effort must align with the size of your vision. Your behavior must align with your values and principles.ā
There are many things separating successful people from unsuccessful people, but virtually every single one of them falls under this one category.
In my latest video, I explain how you can avoid making one of the biggest mistakes you could possibly make on your journey to success, as well as go a bit deeper into what exactly separates failures from successful people.
By the end of this video, you'll have a high-level overview of one of THE MOST important ideas in ALL of personal development (and I don't say that lightly), as well as a variety of practical suggestions for how you can put this success philosophy into action.
Revenge of the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell: Twenty-five years after the publication of The Tipping Point, Gladwellās returning to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time examining their dark side. Expected: Oct 1, 2024
The 5 Types of Wealth, by Sahil Bloom: Itās happening! Itās actually happening! Sahil Bloom is coming out with a book!
Iām really looking forward to this one, and itās going to be about the 5 types of wealth - Time Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth, Physical Wealth, and Financial Wealth - that will lead to a durable satisfaction and happiness you can build and maintain across the seasons of your life. Expected: Feb 4, 2025
Whatās Your Dream?, by Simon Squibb: Simonās the founder of HelpBnk.com, and he started his first business when he was homeless at 16, later selling his agency for more money than heāll ever need.
Now, heās built up a massive social media audience by giving free help to aspiring entrepreneurs and asking them, āWhatās your dream?ā This is his first book and I am HERE for it! Expected: Jan 16, 2025
Here again are my five main recommendations for tonight! They areā¦
I donāt want to keep you here all day (Iāve got reading to do), so letās get right into it!
āYour 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 canāt make $100,000, you canāt make $1 million, and if you canāt make $1 million, you certainly canāt 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 youāve identified as worth solving through your products and services.ā
Youāll never be ridiculed by anyone with bigger dreams than you have. They honestly just donāt 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.
Heās 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, Brandonās your guy and this is your book.
āDepression 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.ā
This is a tragically underrated (but hopefully not for long) book by the screenwriter-turned-therapist of the Ashton Kutcher movie, Dude, Whereās My Car?, and itās a āfriendly and engaging guide to talk therapy.ā
But thereās so much more here, and even if youāve 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 Philās use of metaphor wonderfully insightful, as heāll describe depression like being caught in quicksand, addiction as being controlled by a planetās gravityā¦just on and on.
A completely different way of looking at things that helps you instantly understand, and even if youāve never struggled with those afflictions yourself, itāll 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 canāt help but feel that if you ever were to end up in therapy, youād want to have a therapist like Phil.
āThe multiple demands on an entrepreneurās 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 canāt 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. Iām you, and this is our book.ā
This book could add years to your life, and that's not an exaggeration in the slightest. It'll certainly save you thousands of hours worth of the most precious natural resource in this universe: time.
Dan Kennedy is the multimillionaire author of an entire series of books for entrepreneurs, but this one can and probably should be read by just about everyone, if for no other reason than that Dan's one of the very few people I've encountered who truly and honestly - viscerally understands the true value of time.
He understands its supreme importance, its utter irreplaceability, and also, in the case of entrepreneurship, how to turn time into wealth.
āNevertheless we ought to mix up these two things, and to pass our lives alternately in solitude and among throngs of people; for the former will make us long for the society of mankind, the latter for that of ourselves, and the one will counteract the other: solitude will cure us when we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of solitude.ā
Peace of Mind (De Tranquillitate Animi) is a dialogue written during the years 49 to 62 A.D. concerning the state of mind of Seneca's friend Serenus and how to cure him of his various mental afflictions - anxiety, fear, worry, pessimism, apathy, unhealthy desires, and despair.
Seneca is the ideal teacher because he has overcome all these incredible ordeals throughout his life and never allowed himself to be laid low permanently by pessimism or fear.
There's not a single person on earth who can be said to have had an "easy life" (we all encounter difficulties, suffer losses, get sick, and eventually have to face our own mortality), but Lucius Annaeus Seneca is uniquely qualified to teach us about how to claim tranquility of mind because he's been through it all.
Over the last two thousand years, he's been a close friend to millions, and by reading Peace of Mind and experimenting with his philosophy, he can be ours too.
āI checked the price and felt my heart lurch in my chest. It was over fifty cents. My million tokens were worth $500,000.
The transaction feed froze for a moment, and then the price spiked to more than $1.50. My hands started sweating, and my heart started racing even faster. My tokens were worth more than a million dollars? That wasnāt possible.
I messaged Leeroy and the team: āAre you SEEINGTHIS?!!ā
āYeah, donāt get too excited,ā he replied. Itās mostly bots and early speculators, itāll flatten out.ā
I didnāt want to believe him, but he was right. The other speculators and automated traders sold some of what they had bought, and the price dropped to seventy cents.
Then it lurched back over a dollar again. Then down to fifty cents. It was bouncing around like a coked-up rabbit, with my net worth fluctuating by six figures every minute.ā
This is a nonfiction book, but it reads like a novel, and itās the compulsively readable story of Natās total immersion in the scam-and-get-scammed world of crypto speculation.
Long story short, Nat started off in 2021 knowing hardly anything about crypto, but he and his wife had a new baby coming, and when he heard about all the crazy money his friends were making (gambling) in the digital wild west, he started to get a lot more curious. Before long, there was no turning backā¦
In less than a year he'd made millions of dollars writing code, had wild, is-this-even-real? adventures in selling pictures of monkeys for two hundred thousand dollars, been hacked, been scammed, been suspected of scammingā¦at this point, Natās like the Hunter S. Thompson of cryptocurrency, except, you know, without the drinking and the drugs.
But yeah, this is a ripping good read, and Natās a fantastic storyteller. Heās absolutely the main character of this story, but in the hands of a lesser writer you wouldnāt be nearly as interested - fascinated - to know what comes next. They say that crypto developers donāt sleep, but this book will keep you up too!
Forward this to a friend you think would love this book!
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OK, thatās it for nowā¦
More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!
And if youād 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 - weād 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 timeā¦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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