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Five Books on Building Million-Dollar Habits, Slow Productivity, Selling Your Knowledge for Millions, and More!
Matt Karamazov
August 29, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 25 minutes
YOUTUBE đź“š THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE đź“š PATREON
Good evening! As per the usual, I’ve got dozens of fantastic book recommendations in this email (taken from the 1,308 I’ve read and taken notes on since 2014), but first I want to introduce you to my friend Eric Stone.
Eric’s a former Regional VP of Enterprise (the rental car company), now CEO of Clear Path Ventures, and a big-time reader and book lover, so naturally we got along great when we connected recently over Zoom.
I’ve just started reading his book, so I don’t have too much to say about it yet, other than that I’ve been extremely impressed with everything I’ve seen from Eric so far, and I’m a big supporter of his philanthropic efforts, which include sitting on the boards of multiple community-focused nonprofits.
And I like the book cover too! Check it out if you’re a leader of a team and want to inspire high-performance and drive growth and profits, without sacrificing culture, morale, or belonging.
In This Issue of The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
📖 What I’m Currently Reading
🧠Who I’m Learning From Right Now
đź“ś The Book Quote of the Day
🎥 The Easiest Way to Read 30+ More Books This Year
âś… New Book Releases Coming Soon
📚 Tonight’s Five Main Book Recommendations
🏅 Earn Rewards for Referring This Newsletter
There’s a lot to get to, so let’s hit the books!
Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes: I’ve been reading this one for months, and I’m enjoying it too much to finish it. It’s a classic novel, more than 400 years old, and what’s incredible (one of the things that’s incredible about this book) is that the jokes are still funny after all this time!
Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson: This is the second bio of Elon that I’ve read and it’s fantastic so far. A lot has happened since I read the Ashlee Vance biography in 2015, and this one reads like a novel, not the story of an actual dude’s life. Wild.
Plagued by Fire, by Paul Hendrickson: Another biography, this time of Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect. Brilliant architect, I should say, and I’m sure he’d agree with that assessment! Good thing he used concrete instead of humility, or none of his buildings would be standing today. Amazingly well-written biography, and I actually like Frank. Complicated man, though.
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Andrew Warner: What do the top startup founders know that you don’t?
That’s the question that each episode of Mixergy attempts to answer, and Andrew’s done more than 2,000 interviews trying to get to the bottom of it.
His story is longer (and more interesting) than I have space for here, but more recently, I watched a webinar he gave on how to build a $1M-dollar newsletter, and I came away with a ton of ideas for growing this one.
Chuck Doublet: I had a great conversation over Zoom the other day with my friend Chuck, and I want to introduce him to you too. He’s a black belt who helps “turn men into warriors, leaders, and teachers,” and he’s also a big-time reader, which is how we connected in the first place.
He’s one of the most positive, genuinely helpful, and wise people over on X, and you might like his newsletter too.
Dan Martell: One of the better time management books I’ve read in recent memory is Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time, and I came away with pages and pages of notes that have helped save me hours each week.
He also has three SaaS exits to his name and runs a $100M holding company, so I guess he knows a thing or two about a thing or two when it comes to business as well. Great guy - worth following for sure.
“Your potential is really up to you. It doesn't matter what others might think. It doesn't matter where you came from. It doesn't even matter what you might have believed about yourself at a previous time in your life. It's about what lies within you and whether you can bring it out."
It's actually simple to read at least 30 more books this year, and every year. In this video, I break down the simple math behind it, but there’s more to it than just “spending more time reading” (although that’s definitely part of it).
This way of thinking gets crazier and crazier as I explain this idea further, showing you how your minutes aren’t actually minutes...they're books.
If you got value out of this short video, please consider subscribing to my channel and sharing the video with a friend. Cheers!
Revenge of the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell: Twenty-five years after the publication of The Tipping Point, Gladwell’s 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: It’s happening! It’s actually happening! Sahil Bloom is coming out with a book!
I’m really looking forward to this one, and it’s 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
What’s Your Dream?, by Simon Squibb: Simon’s 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 he’ll ever need.
Now, he’s built up a massive social media audience by giving free help to aspiring entrepreneurs and asking them, “What’s your dream?” This is his first book and I am HERE for it! Expected: Jan 16, 2025
Below are my complete notes, summaries, and breakdowns of 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!
“You might think you’re the most empathetic person in the world, but if your whole team says you have no empathy, then you have no empathy. If no one sees your empathetic nature, it doesn’t exist.
So how do you know what others see in you? How can you tell if they think you’re a good person - the type of person they want to engage with? You need to ask.”
This is a short, easy read with some terrific advice on how to adapt to change, increase your confidence, overcome challenges, and cultivate a more positive, optimistic attitude. And hey, we could all use more of that!
Attitude is Your Superpower reads more like a conversation with a mentor, like a talk you’d have with Eduardo if you stopped by his office one afternoon for advice, and he really liked you and wanted the best for you. That’s just the sense I get from this one! It’s coming from a great place, and you’ll probably feel a lot better, more capable, more relaxed and all that after reading it.
One of the more important things to understand here is that attitude is less about what you say and do, and more about how other people perceive what you say and do.
You may think you have a great attitude, but if other people don’t think you have a great attitude…then you don’t have a great attitude!
The book is full of all these important reminders of things we’d better never forget, and you really do have to pay attention to these “invisible” things if you want to build a spectacular career for yourself.
But just as in heavier books like Man’s Search for Meaning, you keep coming back to the idea that there are no drawbacks whatsoever to proactively developing a great attitude and doing so is always under your direct control.
“You are where you are and what you are because of yourself. Everything you are today – or ever will be in the future – is up to you. Your life today is the sum total of your choices, decisions, and actions up to this point.
You can create your own future by changing your behaviors. You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.”
Habits can actually be exciting if you start thinking about them in the right way. Most people, and most books, make habits boring, but they certainly don't have to be.
Instead of thinking about all the routine, the deprivation, the mundane repetition of basic actions, think about the freedom and the success that will come into your life as a result of embracing the habits of the world's most successful people. That's what Brian Tracy's book will help you do.
All these simple, seemingly inconsequential things you're going to be doing day to day may seem like they're not having much of an effect, but then the power of compounding takes over, and you start to reap the inevitable results of your great habits, until eventually you're going to wish you started ten years ago.
Don't think about the act of sitting in place for hours on end over the course of several months; think instead of the calm, clarity, and focus that your meditation habit will bring into your life.
Don't think about the deprivation of saving 10% of your income and how you won't be able to afford to buy that 5th drink at the bar on Saturday; think instead about all the money that your money will make in the future, and how, instead of needing that drink now to be happy, your happiness will come from both living in the moment and looking forward to a richer future.
I'm sure you could come up with numerous additional examples yourself, but the main thrust of Tracy's argument here is that there is a direct link between the habits you choose to adopt and the results that you achieve in every single area of your life.
Even more importantly, you have direct control over the habits that you choose to adopt, and you have direct control - or at least a ton of influence - over the future course of your life.
Your past doesn't have to define your present or your future. You can make different choices today, and those choices will directly influence every single one of your tomorrows.
“No matter where I work, the same truth keeps emerging. Neutral thinking is the key to unlocking a set of behaviors that can turn also-rans into champions and champions into legends."
It Takes What It Takes is a masterclass in accurately assessing the nature of reality in front of you and building an effective strategy to help you deal with it, no matter what.
No. Matter. What.
The author, the late Trevor Moawad, was a top mental conditioning coach ("the world's best brain trainer") who worked with superstars in the NFL, elite professionals at Harvard Business School, Fortune 500 companies, the military - basically anywhere you see ambitious strivers and world-class competitors pursuing their potential, you would have found Trevor Moawad, helping them manage their negativity and achieve any goal they set for themselves.
His life's work was to motivate the motivated. Not by pumping them up with fake positivity or silly affirmations; not by wishing and hoping for performance improvements, and not by instilling a blind faith in positive thinking.
Instead, he helped these elite individuals return to reality, face the very real obstacles in their path, and come up with a plan for what to do in the very next moment, which is the only time when any of us have any real power.
Importantly, he wouldn't let them get too high or too low. Negative thinking works negatively 100% of the time, naturally, and just because you're thinking negatively doesn't mean you're being realistic. But positive thinking often has very little to do with reality either, and it's in navigating between those two extremes where we can find that next gear.
Just like in bowling, where beginners often have those bumpers on either side of the lane to prevent the ball from ending up in the gutter, neutral thinking can help you stay centered and stay on the path taking you where you want to go.
“It’s a marvel of long-form reporting and one of the more beloved entries in McPhee’s long bibliography. It couldn’t have existed, however, without McPhee’s willingness to put everything else on hold, and just lie on his back, gazing upward toward the sky, thinking hard about how to create something wonderful.”
Cal Newport’s concept of “deep work” has seeped into public consciousness ever since the publication of his book of the same name, and likewise, Slow Productivity advocates for a more intentional, “slower” type of productivity centered around doing less, but better.
The norm in most modern workplaces, however, is a kind of frenetic, always-on, “extreme productivity” that prioritizes looking productive, seeming to get a lot accomplished, but rarely produces anything of real substance or worth.
Oh, and also doing all of the above sickeningly fast, with no regard for employees’ mental health, or even physical health, to say nothing of “spiritual health,” whatever that means for you.
Personally, I’m often found squarely in the extreme productivity camp. I work all the time, flat-out, with no intention of “taking it slow.” But even I try to do it in a humane, sustainable way, not sacrificing sleep and all human contact just to satisfy some boss or company that will never care about me the way I care about my own well-being.
I push myself extremely hard to achieve ambitious, hard, clearly-defined goals, but I absolutely see the merits of Newport’s approach, and I do incorporate elements of it in my own life.
Slow Productivity is also much more practical than one might think, and I’d say that most people who criticize his approach and are so quick to say, “Well that could never work in my job,” haven’t actually read the book!
I was actually extremely impressed with some of his suggestions, and I can see them working for most everybody to help them regain their sanity, reclaim their schedules, and rethink their priorities.
“Knowing who you’re selling to, and more specifically, the exact right person for your product or service, is the difference between making $25,000 a year and $25 million a year.
That’s not just a figure I’ve plucked from thin air, by the way - I personally know three people who make over $25 million per year in total sales volume, and their businesses are built on this level of spectacular depth and detail.”
This book contains everything you need to know about scaling a coaching and/or e-learning business to more than $10,000,000 in revenue.
I know, I know, bold claim! But I know and (briefly) worked with William personally, and he’s the real deal. Ten million is what he sold his own company for, the book itself is phenomenal, and he literally holds nothing back. It’s all here.
We’re living through the greatest wealth transfer in human history, and it’s the people who develop high-value skills - and the ability to market them effectively - who will be the big winners in the new economy. Whether that’s through paid ads, organic content, or a combination of the two, now’s the time!
How To: $10M is perfect for anyone with an information product, coaching service, or agency offer, and I used it specifically to scale up my coaching practice (and associated community). It’s basically an exact, step-by-step blueprint, and because I followed it, I got results. That’s basically all there is to it!
Stop overcomplicating online business. Just get Will’s book, follow the steps, and capture some of this exploding wealth for yourself.
Forward this to a friend you think would love this book!
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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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