READING LIST | THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE | PATREON

📚Hey, good evening!

First off, let's welcome all the new people who joined us since last time!

There are 1,950 of us in total now.

Thank you (yes, you!) for trusting me to bring you the absolute best book recommendations I can each and every week!

As always, these are long emails full of great books and tons of cool surprises.

But I never expect that everyone will be interested in every single thing I publish.

So, feel free to jump around and dive into whatever does interest you!

Today we've got...

• An introduction to today's "5 Books"

• The best of what I'm reading and sharing right now

• Two fantastic online creators you need to know about

• A new book alert from the same author of another book that I can’t stop recommending

• The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

• A look at the real cost of that new car you’re thinking of buying

• My Monthly Reading Recap on YouTube

• Why our ordinary state of consciousness is like trying to view a beautiful museum in the dark

• “The Velvet Rope Economy” and the growing split between the “Have-Nots” and the “Have-Yachts”

• My top 5 book recommendations this week

• A special gift for reading all the way to the end

1. The Unfair Advantage, by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba

2. Out of Your Mind, by Alan Watts

3. The Everyday Hero Manifesto, by Robin Sharma

4. Sell or Be Sold, by Grant Cardone

5. Don’t Panic, by Neil Gaiman

In a single sentence…

The Unfair Advantage is all about finding your edge, that competitive advantage you have that’s unique to you, no matter where you’re starting from or how behind you feel.

Out of Your Mind is a philosophy book by one of my greatest intellectual influences, Alan Watts, where he discusses the fundamental nature of reality and our unique, inalienable place within it.

The Everyday Hero Manifesto is a phenomenal leadership book by one of the most thoughtful, innovative, and inspiring individuals writing today.

Sell or Be Sold is an incredibly illuminating book about sales success, by a corporate leader whose name is synonymous with success itself.

Don’t Panic is a hilarious book about the publication of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a cult classic and one of my favorite books of all time.

Here in this email are summaries of each book, along with a sample of my best notes, and if you want my complete set of notes on these books, you can find them on my  Patreon .

Pro Learning Tip:

 Getting a membership to Medium is one of the best investments I've ever made in my continuing education. The quality of the writing on Medium is superb, and some of the smartest, most interesting thinkers publish there regularly.

1) Patrons! I’ll be updating some more of my book notes in the next few days and then I’ll be uploading them to Patreon. 

I’m still working on updating my earliest notes (from books #150-800 or so, when my book notes started to become much more clear and more organized!), but I’ll get there! I plan to be finished updating ALL of them by the end of 2023.

We’re now at 11 Patreon supporters getting my complete book notes each and every month (plus a few other things), and I’m so grateful that you’ve stuck with me all this time! You’re the real ones!

2) I reached 4,000 followers on Twitter last week! As far as meaningless vanity metrics go, I think that’s a pretty sweet achievement! Follow me there if you want even more book recommendations and quotes than I share in this newsletter. Happy to have you!

3) A few great books that I'm reading right now are Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey,,  Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen , and  Life Force, by Tony Robbins .

I'm also listening to  Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter, by 50 Cent, on Audible. It’s read by him, and I’m getting a ton out of it. He’s a wicked-smart businessman and a super valuable mentor. I also loved the book he co-wrote with Robert Greene, The 50th Law!

Nowadays, I listen to about 3-4 audiobooks a month, and I always listen to them on Audible. No other audiobook service even compares. You can also get a 30-day free trial  right here .

You know I love to support new and old friends of mine who are doing awesome things (or simply amazing people I've stumbled upon around the internet), so here are a few people you should know about:

1) First up is Todd Brison, who sometimes teams up with Tim Denning for some epic masterclasses on writing, and standing out in this extra-crowded place we call the Internet.

He’s on Twitter, obviously (that’s where the action is!), and reverse-engineers great writing over at What Makes Great Writing? 

Todd also has excellent taste in books, as evidenced by the fact that his first recommendation on this page is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Book #5 in this email is what you want to read if you’re a Douglas Adams fan, by the way.

Follow Todd on Twitter when you’re ready to write well, not just post stuff, and subscribe to What Makes Great Writing? if you want to make more progress as a writer than you ever could on your own. Todd’s the real deal!

2) The second person I want to introduce you to is someone I don’t know personally, but man…I love what Caleb Duplain is doing online.

He basically makes videos telling people to get OFF social media, and he’s racked up more than 170,000 followers doing it.

His videos are thoughtful and extremely well produced, and they put forth an important message about being more intentional with the way we spend time online and who we allow to take up real estate in our minds.

Definitely follow Caleb on Instagram (his videos are a great “Pause” between all the flashing and yelling and attention-hooking of social media as usual), and he’s also got a successful media company called, well, Duplain Media. 

Caleb’s the antidote to “busyness” and “hustle,” and I’m extremely glad I found him!

Do you know someone I should know?

I’m always looking to connect with accomplished, inspirational, and good-hearted people who share the same interests that I do…especially books!

So if you have a favorite author, influencer, creator, etc. that you think I might love to meet (and maybe feature here), let me know! You can just hit reply to this email anytime and tell me about them. Thanks!

I’ve recommended Housel’s previous book, The Psychology of Money so often that I should be listed as the co-author or something.

Seriously, what an amazing book. And it may come as no surprise that I’ve featured it at the Stairway to Wisdom.

But on November 7th, 2023, he’s coming out with a new book, and I think this one’s going to be a banger! Here’s the Amazon description:

From Morgan Housel, bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, stories about what people have always done, and will always do

Everyone wants to see the future. Few are good at it. From business to economics, politics to social trends, we’re just not very good at predicting what happens next.

According to Morgan Housel, this is because we focus too much on what we think will change and not enough on what we know will stay the same.

If you traveled in time to 500 years ago or 500 years from now, you would be astounded at how much technology and medicine has changed. The geopolitical order would make no sense to you. The language and dialect may be completely foreign. But you’d notice people falling for greed and fear just like they do in our current world.

You’d see people persuaded by risk, jealousy, and tribal affiliations in ways that are familiar to you.

You’d see overconfidence and short-sightedness that reminds you of people's behavior today.

You’d find people seeking the secret to a happy life and trying to find certainty when none exists in ways that are so relatable.

When transported to an unfamiliar world, you’d spend a few minutes watching people behave and say, “Ah. I’ve seen this before. Same as ever.”

History is filled with surprises no one could have seen coming. But if we learn to see what doesn’t change, we can be more confident in our choices, no matter what the future brings.

I’m incredibly excited about this one, and you know that I’m going to try and snag a review copy before it comes out. You can pre-order it now though!

​ You Can Find the Book  ​ Here on Amazon 

 A Brief Summary of Million Dollar Habits:

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, and 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.

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.

Successful people have ‘success habits’, and unsuccessful people do not. That's the reality. Yes, we absolutely start off in different places in life, but we can make one hell of a lot of progress, starting from the very day when we decide to consciously direct the course of our own lives by taking full and complete responsibility for the habits we perform on a daily basis.

All habits are learned as the result of practice and repetition, and you can learn any habit that you believe is either necessary or desirable. As Brian Tracy says, just as your good habits are responsible for most of your success and happiness today, your bad habits are responsible for most of your problems and frustrations. The key is to realize that you have learned your bad habits and that they can be unlearned as well.

These habits are easy to do, but they're also easy not to do. That's why we have to be intentional about building great habits and removing negative ones. It's rarely going to happen by accident. Taking responsibility is like placing both hands on the steering wheel of your own life, and that's where successful habit formation begins.

The Real Cost of That New Car:

The following quote will be featured in an upcoming book breakdown of The Simple Path to Wealth, by JL Collins, one of the, well, simplest personal finance books I've ever read.

What he's talking about here is called opportunity cost, which is a concept that's incredibly important to understand.

As will become clear, what you're really paying for that new car (or really, anything that you buy) is not just the cost of the item itself, but the amount of money that that money could have earned for you, had you invested it in the stock market instead.

On average, index funds (a particular type of investment, and one that's typically "safer" than trying to pick individual stocks) return about 8% per year. That means for every $100 you invest, you'll typically earn about $108 by the end of the year.

But hey, here's JL with what that means when you ignore his advice and go out to buy that new car instead:

Further Reading: The Simple Path to Wealth, by JL Collins

Note: This is a sample from my other newsletter, Stairway to Wisdom. Along with the book breakdowns, you get a premium weekly newsletter packed with insights and ideas like this one. Get your 14-day free trial here .

📚 He Went from Being Homeless and Living in His Car to Getting His Ph.D. | Plus 5 More GREAT Books to Read 

Here in my Monthly Reading Recap, I talk about the 6 books I read in March of 2023, including the INCREDIBLE life story of Eric Thomas, one of my favorite inspirational leaders.

We've also got the story of A.J. Jacobs, who decided to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from A-Z, a novel by one of the most famous poets of the Beat generation, and a REAL self-improvement book that delivers some harsh truths guaranteed to make many people uncomfortable...but that might just set you free.

Enjoy! 

[ Watch Time: 14 Mins ]

4 Books You’ll LOVE If You’ve Read Super Consciousness, by Colin Wilson

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Individuals tend to have much greater control over their internal and external circumstances than they believe and, within reason, you can change your moment-by-moment perception of reality by working to strengthen your consciousness.

The way Colin Wilson conceptualizes it in his book, Super Consciousness, is that life is like a vast museum just full of beautiful artwork that we could perceive, but it’s as if we’re trying to see in the dark. [ Read Time: 11 Mins ]

The “Velvet Rope Economy” is Dividing Humanity Between the Have-Nots and the Have-Yachts

In the near future, society will be divided between the have-nots and the have-yachts. Between the people who have just enough, and the people who have more than they could ever need or spend.

Even though we are lifting people out of extreme poverty at an unprecedented rate, the very wealthiest people in the world are also adding to their riches at an unprecedented rate, and the theory is that this is going to continue to cause big, potentially harmful changes in the economic landscape going forward.

With that in mind, Nelson Schwartz’s book, The Velvet Rope Economy, is about the increasing split between the segment of consumers that are willing and able to pay for extra privileges and accommodations, and those who will have to take what they can get in this two-tier system. [ Read Time: 8 Mins ]

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Leverage is one of the most important concepts for a person to understand – not just in business, but in life as a whole. Leverage is the ability to use what you have to your greatest advantage, to take your unique strengths and opportunities and use them in such a way as to put yourself in the best possible position to win.

That’s basically what this potential business classic is about, and it’s essential reading as far as I’m concerned. There’s a wealth of knowledge and expert advice in here about startups, entrepreneurship, and the benefits of learning and striving with all you’ve got, even if the subject is too huge to be fully covered in a single book.

Now, obviously, the subject matter is controversial and there are excellent points to be made about fairness, leveling the playing field, and all of that. The authors would agree. But their nuanced, genuinely helpful, and understanding approach is going to be insanely valuable for anyone who either has their own business or is thinking of starting one, whether they want to build it up into some giant, international company, or they just want to never worry about money ever again.

Unfair advantages come in many forms, as they explain in Part II of this book. They even put forth their “MILES” framework to explain many of them, which consists of Money, Intelligence and Insight, Location and Luck, Education and Expertise, and Status.

They also touch on a few others, like time (a huge one, in my opinion, and one that I would have loved to read a deeper investigation into), genetics – even the love that people receive as a child. All of these and more come together to form You, and underneath it all is your Mindset, which supports the total MILES framework.

The bottom line is that no one, anywhere, ever in the history of the universe, will have your unique combination of interests and skills, advantages and disadvantages, experiences, and worldview. Your situation is completely and totally unique, and even if you think you want someone else’s life, most of that other person’s real life is forever hidden from you. If you knew their full story, you might not even want their life. It’s a total package, and you have to do the best you can with what you’ve been given.

This book is an excellent manual about how to do that, and yes, reading is a massive competitive advantage as well. The ability to read, to learn from the best books and the wisest people who have ever lived? Even the inclination and the desire to pick up these great books in the first place? You’d better believe that those are unfair advantages as well.

Again, leverage is what you need to have in order to win, and leverage is what you’ll get once you start identifying your competitive advantages, capitalizing on them, finding people with different unfair advantages that complement yours, and start getting after it.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: 

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Alan Watts is one of my biggest intellectual influences of all time, and I’m well on my way to reading everything he’s ever written about the fundamental nature of existence, Zen, the art of living, and going with the flow of life instead of resisting it and fighting back against it.

The dream of life can be a pleasant dream, and a lot of our suffering is self-inflicted because we ignore the true nature of reality. Just as you can’t have a front without a back, or shapes with solids, life can’t exist without death, and happiness wouldn’t exist if we didn’t also know sadness. This is the interplay of life, the dance of Maya, and it’s been going on forever and ever and ever.

We didn’t come into the world – we came out of it. You are something that the universe is “doing,” in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. You are not separate from life – from the billions and billions of people who have lived, died, and will live in the future, from the stars and the galaxies, from the oceans and the mountains. You – the real You – are all of it, intimately connected with everything that exists, and life can be a marvelous adventure if we relax, ease into existence, and affirm our lives and the lives of everyone else as fundamentally important to its total functioning.

This, unsurprisingly, is a radical idea, and it seems crazy to some people, but it’s been recognized for thousands of years as reflecting our true human situation. Sometimes, to become sane you have to go “out of your mind,” and escape what you thought you knew about reality and the structure of being.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM OUT OF YOUR MIND: 

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This book was an audio listen for me, and that’s why there aren’t half a dozen pages of notes from it – Robin Sharma’s books are always packed with great stuff. There’s plenty in here that I would – and did - apply to my own life immediately instead of writing it down here, but I’ve added some notes here that I’ve found especially valuable.

The rest of the book is about achieving world-class performance and really showing up for yourself in your own life and work. It’s got a ton of helpful frameworks and ideas that can help you level up different areas of your personal and professional life, but Sharma also teaches that one part of your life will always influence the other, for better or for worse.

One of the things I admire most about him is his dedication to bringing forth his full potential and achieving every last bit of sustainable success that he possibly can, all while never forgetting whom he’s working so hard for.

Listening to it, I just kept getting pulled back to the idea that here was a human being doing everything he possibly could to make his one and only life significant, and that he was doing it for all the right reasons. If you’ve never read or listened to anything by Robin Sharma before, I highly recommend changing that!

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE EVERYDAY HERO MANIFESTO: 

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One of Grant Cardone’s biggest goals is to be mentioned by name everywhere people are talking about sales and selling. He wants the name “Cardone” to be synonymous with sales, and ubiquitous in the marketplace, and that’s the kind of energy that animates this entire book.

I first heard of Grant Cardone when I picked up his book, The 10X Rule, which completely redefined what I thought about hard work, and clarified for me exactly the kind of work ethic and effort that would be required to hit my goals. That book shaped my beliefs about commitment and discipline and achievement, and it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

This book, Sell or Be Sold, could absolutely be life-changing for the right person, and if you’re in sales (hint: we’re all in sales), then I believe it’s pretty much required reading.

He hammers fear and rejection and resistance and all that in the book, of course, but he also gives you this sense - based in reality, I believe - that the competition out there is just so average. No one’s really trying to become great. Everyone is just kind of competing to be average and to just make a little bit more money than last quarter.

However, Cardone teaches that if you commit to competing at a much higher level, to taking more action and reaching much higher, then that’s when the possibility of limitless success opens up for you. I’ve bought into that belief system (more or less), and yes, it’s improved my life for the better.

This is a hard-hitting book from a high-achieving, heavyweight sales machine, and again, if you’re in sales, you pretty much have to read it. Or at least read my notes from the book. At the very least. Because here you’ve got a world-class salesperson - mega-successful, mega-talented, mega-everything - and he’s just spilling all his sales secrets onto the page where you can pick them up basically for free. That’s a pretty sweet deal!

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM SELL OR BE SOLD: 

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You know a book’s become wildly successful when there are books written about not only that famous book but also about the publishing of that famous book. Not only that but this history of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written in the 80s by Neil Gaiman, who is now a famous author himself!

It really was one of the funniest and breeziest reads of the year for me, and it’s written in that same irreverent, comical, and generous style as the original Adams book. If you haven’t read Hitchhiker’s yet, I highly, highly recommend it, even if you don’t consider yourself a science fiction fan. The first page and a half of that book had me laughing so hard I was wiping tears from my face for about six minutes, maybe longer.

Example: “And then one Thursday, two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…” Wow! Just amazingly funny and a totally different way of seeing; seeing from above, basically, how the world and our affairs and ideas and concerns look from the vantage point of the stars and galaxies.

You can tell that Gaiman himself was and is a great fan of Adams and his work (obviously) and if you’re “in on it,” then this is a really, really fun read. Douglas Adams died suddenly in 2001, but he left this massive, humanistic, all-encompassing legacy that went well beyond selling 15 million copies of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 

It’s evident from the book that he loved the Earth, everyone spinning on it and everything spinning around it, and Gaiman’s book tells that story beautifully.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM DON’T PANIC:

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You made it to the end! Congratulations!

You're now among the rarest of the rare.

I mean, that was a lot of books!

But I hope you found something here that looked interesting!

Personally, I’m obsessed with sharing the magic of books and reading, and so I love it when one or more of my book recommendations “hits.”

Also, if you know someone who might love this newsletter, you can just send them this link!

Or click here to share via Twitter. Thanks!

And if someone forwarded you this email, you can sign up on this page right here. 

I also want to thank you for reading this newsletter all the way through to the end and to thank you for real, I’m going to give you a 1-month free trial to the Stairway to Wisdom.

That’s twice the free trial period that most people get, because people who finish what they start - and have the patience to do a lot of reading - are usually the ones who love the Stairway to Wisdom the most.

Enjoy!

And remember, you can just hit "reply" to this email to ask me a question or offer a book recommendation of your own. I may take a while to respond, but I read every one!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you apply the wisdom found in the greatest books ever written to your life:

1. I’m going to be leaving some casual spots open for personal mentoring, alongside what I do for my monthly clients, and the first choice always goes to the people on my email list. Simply reply to this email if this is something you're interested in working with me on, and I'll let you know more about it, answer all your questions, etc. Areas I can help you with include reading more books and remembering more of what you read, growing your business, getting into better shape, and building mental toughness and resilience. You’ll work 1-1 with me, and together we’ll be lining up big breakthroughs for you every single month.

2. I've released 50 complete, in-depth book breakdowns on the Stairway to Wisdom that respects both your time AND your intelligence and will help you become the person you've always known you were capable of being. Read them for free here.​

3. Join my free Substack publication, The Competitive Advantage, where I teach high-level, high-impact self-discipline tactics and strategies to help you progress toward your goals. You'll also join a supportive community of other winners all moving forward together in the direction of where we want to be in life. Join here.