YOUTUBE 📚 THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 📚 PATREON

📚Hey, good evening!

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

There are 2,335 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 "Five Books"

• The book quote of the week

• My personal news, and the best of what I'm reading and sharing right now

• Two online creator friends of mine you need to know about

• Three of my favorite newsletters that I always open

• A new book alert: featuring a book by one of the most iconic entrepreneurs of our time (at least he will be)

• The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

• The Call to Adventure and why you can’t afford to ignore it

• Optimizing yourself like an Olympic athlete, the best business books, and helping to build humanity’s future

• Why “achieving” failure is the key to success

• Why budgets are for broke people - and what you should do instead

• My top 5 book recommendations this week

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

1. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson

2. The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

3. The Ten Pillars of Wealth, by Alex Becker

4. The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Mister Rogers, by Maxwell King

5. The Power of One More, by Ed Mylett

In one sentence…

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a compendium of the brilliant investor Naval Ravikant’s thoughts and insights on lasting happiness and building fantastic wealth.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a Christian allegory (but it’s able to be read by anyone, regardless of their faith), about an international spy network and the infiltrator who’s sent to expose the mastermind they call “Sunday.”

The Ten Pillars of Wealth is a complete breakdown of ten rules for building a massively profitable business, by 8-figure software engineer Alex Becker.

The Good Neighbor is one of the most transformational biographies I’ve ever read, and it’s about Mister Rogers, a wonderful childhood educator who blessed broadcast television with his presence for decades.

The Power of One More is a great personal development book about raising your standards in life, and about the importance of doing “one more” than the world expects of you.

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.

Full Breakdown of This Book

1) My hernia surgery went great! I haven’t been back to the gym yet, but I’ll get there soon, and when I do, I plan to slowly regain that physique I’ve worked so goddamn hard for! Coming back stronger and fitter than ever :)

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2) An online business owner I greatly respect, Josh Specter, just published this great little article about 10 habits that helped him go from reading 0 books a year to reading 20 books a year!

There’s a bonus tip in there that might be one of the best videos you watch today…

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3) A few great books that I'm reading right now are Master Successful Personal Habits, by Zig Ziglar, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, and Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes!

I'm also listening to  Living Untethered, by Michael A. Singer on Audible. It’s read by him, which is usually what I look for in an audiobook! I don’t know, it just adds a little something to have the author narrate his own book.

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 .

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up right here for free!

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), and so here are a few great people you should know about:

1) First up is Sarah Larson, who I just started following recently on Twitter. I still refuse to call it “X,” but maybe that will change.

Anyway, I just love Sarah’s posts, and she helps fortify their minds against fear. She tweets about neuro-hacks, psychology, and mindfulness, and she’s going to be a creator to watch if she keeps this up!

You see, three years ago, she was:

*Chronically anxious

*In shallow friendships

*Wasting her creativity

*Not present for her kids

But now, she’s:

*Self-assured

*Reading voraciously

*Consciously parenting

*Connecting authentically

She’s doing so well! Like I said, I love her thoughtful posts, the fact that she’s a big reader, and her AI art is killer too, if you’re into that! I just started following her, but I definitely recommend checking her out!

2) Next up is another new Twitter friend of mine (I’ve been meeting a lot of really cool people on Twitter lately!) by the name of Alecia Repp. She is…powerful, let me just say that!

She helps her clients develop what she calls premium energy, which is another way of saying she gets them to step up, claim what’s rightfully theirs, and charge a lot more for their services.

Alecia got me thinking bigger recently when she suggested that $10k is not high-ticket.

Excuse me, what?

That’s a lot of money…right? I mean, isn’t it?

If $10k isn’t high-ticket, what is?

I know this much: She once took a client from earning $60k per year in his coaching practice to earning $120k per year…all in six months! She’s a genius. There’s no other explanation!

Anyway, I’m thinking much bigger lately (partly because of her, partly because of some other influences, and partly because I’ve always thought bigger), and her brand of thinking is the kind we need a lot more of around here.

I’m glad I found Alecia, and you find her here too.

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!

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$100M Leads, by Alex Hormozi

How crazy is this: Alex Hormozi grew his social media audience by 5,000,000 people in less than 24 months, and in his latest book, he teaches you exactly how to do it too.

Seriously, all the entrepreneurs who came of age listening to Alex Hormozi have no excuse to stay poor.

His first book, $100M Offers changed everything for me and my business, and when I attended Hormozi’s live book launch event (replay here), I just knew that this latest book was going to be something special too.

Alex’s company, Acquisition.com, does more than $100,000,000 in top-line revenue (and it’s probably more by now), and, as faithful followers will know, he has nothing to sell you (or at least he didn’t before the books came out, but even they’re just $10).

He makes his money building profitable companies, and he basically gives his knowledge away for free on YouTube.

What a future we are LIVING IN right now!

Anyway, I highly recommend reading both books, but here’s what Amazon has to say about $100M Leads:

You can get 2x, 10x, or 100x more leads than you currently are without changing anything about what you sell…

This book contains the playbooks that took me from sleeping on my gym floor to owning a portfolio of companies that generate $200,000,000 per year in under a decade. Wanna know the biggest difference between those two time periods? How many leads I was getting.

The problem is - most business owners don’t know how to get leads.

I wrote this book to solve your LEADS problem.

Today, our companies generate 20,000+ new leads per day across sixteen different industries. And, they do it using the eight “never-go-hungry” playbooks inside. Once you see them, you can’t unsee them. They’re so powerful, they work without your permission.

Inside you will find…

…The easiest way to get another five customers tomorrow

…The hook-retain-reward system to transforms content into leads

…The 6-part ad framework that gets more people - especially strangers - to want what you sell

…The one question that immediately turns any stranger (no matter how cold) into a hot lead

…The 7 direct referral methods responsible for 30% of my sales

…The affiliate playbook that gets hundreds of other businesses to advertise your stuff for free

…The agency agreement that gets them to teach you their lead-getting secrets at no cost

…The how-to-get-people-off-the-streets-and-getting-you-leads in under 2 weeks framework

…and everything else that got our companies boatloads of leads…fast.

And the best part is…you can use these playbooks to get more leads within an hour of reading this book. You just have to know where to look…and the first place is inside.

If you want to get more leads for your business...then ADD TO CART, use its contents, and see for yourself.

​ You Can Find the Book  ​ Here on Amazon 

 A Brief Summary of Your Next Five Moves:

Your Next Five Moves completely overwhelmed my expectations going into it and provided me with a wealth of business and leadership knowledge in just a few hours that I'll be able to use and profit from for the rest of my natural life.

Such is the power of reading!

Your Next Fives Moves is a high-level, high-impact playbook for how you can maximize your effectiveness in five areas: gaining self-knowledge, mastering the ability to reason, developing and building the right team, learning strategy to scale, and deploying power plays that will help you negotiate more effectively and take down some of the biggest competitors in your industry. This book will show you how to do it all.

The overarching theme of this book is the absolute necessity of thinking several moves ahead if you want to succeed in business, especially if you want to make a bigger impact than just earning a comfortable living. There’s nothing wrong with having a goal like that – something I love Patrick for emphasizing – but if you do decide to set bigger goals for yourself, you need to develop a work ethic to match.

Your discipline has to be as unshakable as your dreams are large, or you’re just not going to get there.

Moreover, we all need to understand that the most important person you’ll ever study will be yourself. Yet, most people are so concerned with other people and what they’re doing that they never take the time and make the effort to gain invaluable self-knowledge. In this book, Patrick Bet-David clearly and lucidly lays out why this is a tragic misstep that you need to avoid at all costs.

He also argues - again, rightly - that what separates average business owners from exceptional leaders and entrepreneurial visionaries is the ability to anticipate future events and plan effectively well before they actually happen. By thinking, planning, and strategizing at least five moves ahead.

Your competition isn't doing this.

Your meager competition isn't doing this, I should say. The competitors you should be worried about absolutely are thinking several moves ahead, and if you want to play at the same level as them you need to elevate the quality and substance of everything that you're doing in your business.

You need to combine devastating offense with awesome defense and then you have to move forward with sickening consistency and unrelenting passion.

This is how you separate yourself. This is how you enter the highest echelons of business and show the world that you deserve to be there.

When the rest of the people you're competing against are mired in today's problems and dealing with the challenges threatening their existence right now, you'll be living, thinking, planning, and acting in a larger, brighter, more distant future that they will just never be able to get to.

This book will help you outwork, out-improve, out-strategize, and outlast your competition, and it’s written by someone who’s actually done the work himself; he’s done exactly what he’s telling his readers to do, and that kind of accountability and authenticity is something you hold onto for dear life once you’ve found it in a person.

None of this is going to happen by accident, just like Patrick Bet-David didn't just "stumble" into his massive success. It was intentional, it was planned, and by utilizing the strategies he lays out in this book, it became damn near inevitable.

The Call to Adventure:

Milan Kundera said that we live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. Life is fired at us point-blank, and we feel that this is true, so we tend to fall into comfortable, "safe" patterns of living because the uncertainty of life is, by definition, unsafe.

What Paul Millerd calls the default path is the "safest" route through life. It might get you to the end of your life without any major turbulence - less danger, less social disapproval, less financial insecurity, etc. - but it's no way to live. Not for a significant number of us, anyway.

The default path is synonymous with the "script" that society tries to convince us is the only way in which we can allow our lives to play out. It's just "what's done" by respectable people, and it involves such relatively uncontroversial things as pleasing your teachers and your parents all the way through school, jamming your days and evenings with extracurriculars and resume stuffers that look good on a university application, making it into that prestigious college and getting your $200,000 degree (that you'll be paying for until you're 40), getting an "okay" job, putting your head down for the next 40 years, and then dying with that gold watch they slap on you in honor of all your years of "faithful service."

Before I go on, I should clear something up: There's nothing necessarily "wrong" with the default path. Not everyone who travels along that road is a mindless sheep, forfeiting their existence for the false freedom of a 2-day weekend and a 401K. For some perfectly fulfilling, profitable careers, you need to go to college. I went to university for philosophy, and I don't regret it one bit. In fact, I'm using my degree right now as I'm writing this breakdown!

But there's more to life than internal memos, meetings, and team-building exercises. Such things may populate the "real world" you've been living in until now, but you don't have to live in it. You can embrace the pathless path and live consciously, and intentionally, like an actor who has read further ahead in the script than the other players and who's ready to give the greatest performance of their life.

The writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell has done a great deal to shape my thinking about the pathless path as well. The default path may have worked for Paul Millerd's parents (and mine too), but we're living in the future now, and 'we must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us,' as Campbell has written. He also said the following:

Joseph Campbell is also largely responsible for moving the concept of the "hero's journey" into the public consciousness. Famously, George Lucas read Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces more than 100 times, and you can see elements of the hero's journey all throughout Star Wars - and throughout virtually every other great story ever told.

The Hero starts off in what's called the Ordinary World, where he lives relatively unconsciously in a world he never made. In Star Wars, this would be Luke Skywalker living a normal life on his home planet. For the rest of us, it's the default path where we're told to quiet down, conform, and not make any sudden moves.

But then comes the Call to Adventure - usually in the form of a crisis - that shocks the hero into full wakefulness and makes him conscious of the existence of the Extraordinary World, beyond the confines of his original existence. I won't rehash the entire plot of Star Wars, but all the elements of the hero's journey are present there, as they are in our own lives as well.

Right now, most people are living in the Ordinary World. The default path is the water that they're swimming in, and they can't see a better way to live, because everyone around them is swimming in the same water.

Suddenly, however, a Mentor appears and shows us the way to the brighter, more vivid, more meaningful life that's available to us if we would only break free from the Ordinary World and step out into the Extraordinary World. For Luke Skywalker, that Mentor was Obi-Wan Kenobi, but in The Pathless Path, it's Paul Millerd.

Now, obviously, the Extraordinary World is not a safe place. You will run into Enemies; you will experience Trials; you may even face your own All is Lost Moment when the extreme challenges and difficulties of your new life make you long to return to the comforts of the Ordinary World.

This is normal. It's also one of the only guarantees you will ever receive along the pathless path. Literally by definition, the route is uncertain, your chances of success variable, and subject to the vicissitudes of fortune. But is the purpose of your one and only life just to coast by? Just to arrive at the moment of your death completely unscathed? Or is the purpose of your life to be fully alive?

The default path will almost always be there for you to return to if you wish (more on this later), but right now, today, the pathless path is calling. Our destination is uncertain, and even our direction can change dramatically, but we make the path by walking. And as Nietzsche advised, do not ask whither it leads; go along it.

Further Reading: The Stairway to Wisdom

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 right here .

Optimizing Yourself Like an Olympic Athlete, Winning in Business, and Solving the Future (📚+ BOOKS!) 

You know you made it when people start reaching out asking to STUDY YOU!

In all seriousness, I'm not THAT far into the process of building and scaling my business to the level where it fully funds my dream lifestyle, but I'm definitely making progress, and in this video, Dan Heiser interviews me as part of his research for his doctoral program where he has to do an oral history with an entrepreneur.

I guess Alex Hormozi didn't return his calls.

Anyway, I was only too glad to sit down with Dan and talk about the realities of running a business in the age of AI, best practices for succeeding online, my strategy for generating life-changing wealth, honesty and integrity in business, and a lot more.

We even talk a little bit about humanity's future in space and how I want to be a part of it. So yea, we cover quite a bit of ground!

I hope it's helpful/interesting for you and if you'd like me to clarify anything or expand on something, etc., just leave me a comment below and I'll be sure to answer it. Cheers!

Enjoy the Video! 

[ Watch Time: 1 Hour ]

It Sounds Totally Backward, But ACHIEVING Failure is the Key to Success in Life

Even though I had just achieved muscular failure performing the squat (that’s when you physically, LITERALLY CANNOT perform another rep, not when “you” want to stop), I still had to do the same thing with the linear leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, and seated calf raises, before moving on to decline sit-ups and a final half-hour of walking cardio.

Yea, Wednesdays suck.

But I’m standing there with my legs on fire and I’m thinking:

This mindset wasn’t an accident, and I’m also not just referring to what it does for me in the gym.

This is my daily, 16-hours-a-day attitude, and it’s a major reason why I’ve moved so far ahead in life and why most people will never catch up to me.

Adopting it will set YOU apart as well if that’s something you want for yourself.

[ Read Time: 5 Mins ]

Budgets Are for Broke People. Do This Instead.

After going through years of checking your credit card balance before buying $25 worth of groceries, you never forget the first time you’re able to toss over your card without even looking at the register.

Or footing the bill for a $400 dinner and not even thinking twice.

Or [Insert your own definition of “Rich Life” here].

This is my reality today, and budgeting helped me get here, but the day I decided to stop using a budget was the first day of my journey to real wealth. [Read Time: 5 Mins ]

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Being rich and happy are learnable skills. As in certain propositions in physics, starting conditions are very important, but one of the greatest lessons you'll learn from reading books like this one is that where you start off doesn't have to be where you end up. 

If there's a skill you lack, you can learn it; if there's a big scary problem looming over you, you can overcome it; if you want more out of life, you can have it.

But, there are traps along the way. These traps can take the form of pessimism and self-defeating behaviors; or the creeping expansion of desire; bad advice from well-meaning people; and a lot more that The Almanack of Naval Ravikant can help you avoid.

Naval is the founder of AngelList, a website that allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge, and he's had over 70 successful exits himself, after investing in companies like Uber and Twitter before almost anyone else.

He's become somewhat of an entrepreneurship/start-up culture icon, and this book is a collection of his greatest wisdom distilled from a decade of podcast appearances and thousands of tweets. After a lifetime of study and application of philosophy, economics, and wealth creation, Naval has proven the impact of his principles, and they're all laid out here in this book.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT: 

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I knew next to nothing about Chesterton going into this book, and it ended up being one of my favorite books of all time.

I’ve been saying that a lot recently, which is cool! But okay…so this is an existentialist novel about a secret society of anarchists and the police detective assigned to infiltrate and expose them.

The Council of this anarchist organization each takes their names from the days of the week, and the man who becomes Thursday is in for an earth-shattering, ego-shattering surprise.

I don’t even want to give any more away, because it’s just so amazing. If you’re familiar at all with the philosophy of Alan Watts and Colin Wilson, you’ll get this book right away.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY: 

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Most people aren't wealthy. They may or may not be struggling financially, but the average person will never become rich, and this is because it's literally impossible both to remain average and make above-average money at the same time.

You must elevate your financial game if you wish to become wealthy, and that process starts with embracing the mindsets and thinking patterns of the world's wealthiest people.

Now, obviously, there's a huge difference between a person's value to society and their value to humanity itself. Each and every individual's value to humanity is literally infinite - there are no "extra" people on this planet. But your value to society is what directly affects what you get paid, and the amount of wealth you can accrue in your lifetime.

If you want to be rich, you must make yourself exceptionally valuable to society.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE TEN PILLARS OF WEALTH: 

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Children can sense when they're being devalued; they can sense when an adult truly and honestly cares for them and when they don't, and they can always, always spot a fraud.

Fred Rogers, or Mister Rogers to all of his television friends, was one of the most inspiring early childhood educators ever, and he brought his message of care, affection, and unconditional love to millions of children over the course of his 50-year career in broadcasting. He was the real deal, and children could feel it.

The Good Neighbor is a biography of Fred Rogers, one with astonishing personal stories on nearly every page. Like the time when Oprah lost control of her own television show during a taping because every child in the audience was so powerfully drawn to Mister Rogers; or when the TV station held an event where children could come and meet Mister Rogers, and thousands of kids showed up, lining up for miles and blocking the street like it was a college football game or something.

However, no matter how long the line was, he would always, always get down on one knee, look each kid in the eye, and make sure they knew that they mattered. He took kids and their questions seriously, and he saw the best in them, which made it possible for them to bring out the best in themselves.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE GOOD NEIGHBOR: 

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Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by how much I got out of reading this book by the globally recognized entrepreneur, performance coach, and speaker Ed Mylett.

He’s obviously done incredibly well for himself, building up a massive social media audience of more than 3,000,000 people in just 4 years. Plus, he’s actually, you know, done stuff, as opposed to those 19-year-old “success coaches” you see sharing motivational quotes on Facebook.

Ed Mylett is the real deal.

One of the most powerful ideas in this book is the “internal thermostat,” which is basically equivalent to your standards. Your thermostat setting represents what you’re “okay with” in your life – your level of fitness, the health of your finances, the strength of your relationships, etc.

It’s a gauge of how your life is going and, just as importantly, how you expect it to go in the future. One of the biggest keys to success, says Tony Robbins, is to raise your standards. “I absolutely agree,” says Ed Mylett. They’re both right.

The overarching theme is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to go “one more” in whatever situation you find yourself in. One more uncomfortable yet necessary conversation, one more rep at the gym, one more sales call, one more attempt before you give up, one more step forward.

It’s a deceptively powerful idea. Some people will read it and think, “Is that it? I already knew that!” But then other people will take the idea of “one more,” apply it in every subsequent situation, and watch their lives transform before their very eyes.

While I think the subtitle is overselling it a bit (this book is not an “ultimate guide” to happiness and success), there are a ton of useful strategies, mindsets, and ideas on basically every page that are sure to assist you greatly in getting to wherever it is that you want to go in life.

An ultimate guide to happiness and success would be thousands of pages, but Ed’s book is an excellent first volume.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE POWER OF ONE MORE:

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Today’s Five Books on Amazon:

1. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson

2. The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

3. The Ten Pillars of Wealth, by Alex Becker

4. The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Mister Rogers, by Maxwell King

5. The Power of One More, by Ed Mylett

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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 coaching, 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 or click here 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.
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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.