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The Science of Powerful Focus, How to Get Rich, and 12 More Books You May Love!
Matt Karamazov
August 16, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 25 minutes
YOUTUBE đź“š THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE đź“š PATREON
People often ask me to recommend my favorite book, and honestly, that’s not going to happen. There are just too many of them, and you may feel the same way! I mean…
Out of all the fantastic books you’ve read in your life (possibly over decades), this person before you wants you to pick just ONE?!
Actually, when it comes to fiction, certainly near the top would be either The Count of Monte Cristo or Infinite Jest for me. But for nonfiction?
I’ll tell you what I’m re-reading now: Psycho-Cybernetics, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. You’ll rarely (if ever) hear me say this, but it’s a book that should be read by basically everybody.
The main message of the book is that you can never out-perform the self-image you have of yourself.
You don’t rise to the level of your goals and aspirations, but rather fall to the level of your self-image.
Get that right - see yourself optimistically as a person of intrinsic worth and value - and you can move the world. Practice creative visualization, inside the “theater of your mind,” and you’ll access potential and capabilities you never knew existed.
Another book I’d highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend is The Anthology of Balaji, by Eric Jorgenson.
I’ve almost finished my complete breakdown of that book and that will be hitting your inbox very soon. What Psycho-Cybernetics can do for the self-image of the individual, The Anthology of Balaji could do for the “self-image” of humanity as a whole.
You’ll see what I mean when I release the breakdown!
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 ONLY Thing Separating Successful People from Failures
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!
Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson: I’m about 200 pages into this biography of Musk and it’s excellent. It’s the first Walter Isaacson book I’ve ever read, and I can see what the big deal is! He’s a fantastic biographer and Elon’s 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! I’m well on my way to reading every book he’s ever written.
Everyone I know who’s wildly successful in business has a huge Dan Kennedy collection in their library, and I’m keeping that tradition alive. This one’s about creating trust in an understandably untrusting world, and like every other Dan Kennedy book, this one’s phenomenal.
The Black Count, by Tom Reiss: Okay, so The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books of all-time, and this book is the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of the “real” Count of Monte Cristo, who was actually based on Alexandre Dumas’s father! I’ve been reading this one for a while, but I’m enjoying it too much to finish it!
Johnathan Bi: Just 1% of books contain all the most important ideas, and Johnathan has an incredible new lecture series that will take you on a tour of all of them. He’s one of the more impressive readers I’ve come across in recent memory, I love his dedication to books (he gets it), and his newsletter is excellent as well. Worth checking out!
Justin Moore: Justin is THE guy when it comes to helping creators form profitable sponsorships with brands, and he’s also got a new book coming out that I’m excited to read as well! His 4-week live cohort, Brand Deal Wizard, is starting soon too, and this will be the last time he’ll be doing it live - time to get in while you can!
Roberto Blake: Roberto’s been a massive influence on me when it comes to YouTube, and he’s really helped me out tremendously when it comes to getting serious about YouTube (while not taking myself seriously), and turning it into a lucrative profession, not just something I do for free! Here’s his channel!
“Reading can be learned only because of the brain's plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed, both physiologically and intellectually."
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, 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
Here again 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!
“By tracking your small victories, you are basically keeping up your positivity and thus your motivation, allowing you to stay focused because of your constant achievements and the positivity that this will bring to your working attitude.
With so many victories, no matter how small they are, you will be continuously inspired to keep working hard and keep earning as many victories as you can.”
Okay, so this isn’t the most riveting self-improvement book out there, but it’s extremely actionable and it could be a tremendous help in stimulating your willpower, concentration, and productivity. What it lacks in page-turn-ability, it more than makes up for in practicality - I found it helpful enough to pass on!
Hollins is a prolific writer with a number of Amazon bestsellers, and he’s known for writing self-help manuals packed with science-backed tips and advice.
In this book, it’s all about self-discipline, willpower, getting more done, jacking up your focus, etc. It’s also quite short, so it’s not like you’ll have to sludge through some giant textbook.
Just take what you need, apply it, watch your life get a bit better, come back for more, and repeat.
You don’t have to read this one front to back, although I did. Instead, you could view my notes and see if you want a more fully fleshed-out explanation of any or all of these ideas, tactics, and strategies for effortless focus, deep concentration, and high performance.
“If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough to live comfortably (say $60 or $80 million), as quickly as I could - hopefully by the time I was thirty-five years old. I would then cash out immediately and retire to write poetry and plant trees.”
From college dropout to centimillionaire publishing magnate, all the while harboring an immense love and talent for poetry and the written word, Felix Dennis certainly has the credentials to write a book like this.
But there’s also something tragic about the overall tone of How to Get Rich - tinged with regret as it is - and he actually spends a fairly large portion of the book trying to convince you not to get rich.
It can be extremely difficult, it’s uncertain, it takes a long time, it can ruin your relationships, alienate you from the people you work with, and on and on.
He speaks from personal experience, having amassed personal wealth in the area between $600–900M (rich people know how much money they have, but wealthy people are never entirely sure), and you get the sense that he’s suffered all those losses and more.
In fact, he straight up tells you as much, and interspersed with all this great advice about running companies and amassing wealth, he keeps coming back to the question of “Do you really want to do this?”
The answer is non-obvious and shouldn’t be rushed. Read this book first and ask yourself whether you’re willing to pay the price that he paid.
All told, this is one of the very best books I read last year, and probably one of my favorites of all time. I learned a tremendous amount about growing and running a profitable business, but it’s a very special book for many other reasons as well, and one that I’ll not soon forget.
“You belong in the spotlight and you know it. But there’s no skipping the trials and tests - the demonstrations of proficiency at getting remarkable results. Which you will have because there is no other way. And with those hard-won results, you will impress the important people.
Impress important people, and they will tell everyone in their network about you, too - a network that happens to consist of numerous other important people. Your name will spread forever.”
Joshua Lisec is the multimillion-dollar ghostwriter of more than 80 books and this particular book is for underpaid experts whose paychecks don’t measure up to the actual value they provide to their clients and customers.
There could be several reasons for such a state of affairs, but one of them is probably that you are dealing with an obscurity problem: no one knows who you are! Much less how you can help them, and why you are the answer to their biggest, scariest, keep-them-awake-at-night problems that they’d pay big money to have solved.
Besides dishing out quite possibly the best marketing advice of all time (and I’m not just saying that), Joshua’s book will help you develop a genius-system with no steps skipped that will allow your clients to experience sensational, almost literally unbelievable results, such that people don’t believe they could possibly be true.
In fact, one of the counterintuitive pieces of advice you’ll find here is the value of cultivating a small army of organic haters - a loud, vocal minority of people who spread your name far and wide, unintentionally bringing you to the attention of the people most likely to hire you and pay you exorbitant sums of money for what you do (and be glad to do it).
Not everyone should read this book. For one thing, you have to genuinely be good at what you do. And not just good; you should be phenomenal at your craft. You need actual results from real clients, and if people follow your genius system, they should be able to get great results, every single time.
Once you have that, though, your task becomes one of attracting as much attention and hysteria in the market as possible, to the point at which the haters start coming out of the proverbial woodwork. You’re already good at what you do. Now you have to become so good that they call you a fake.
“Whatever the arena in contemporary life – health care, education, work, travel and leisure – on the right side of the rope is a friction-free existence where, for a price, needs are anticipated and catered to. Red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened.
On the other side of the Velvet Rope, friction is practically the defining characteristic, with middle- and working-class Americans facing an increasingly Darwinian fight for a decent seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college scholarship, or a doctor’s appointment.”
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.
Schwartz’s book 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.
He’s an economics reporter for The New York Times, and The Velvet Rope Economy is his sometimes intriguing, sometimes infuriating, but always illuminating investigation into the invisible rift that divides how poor Americans and rich Americans live.
The word "friction" also appears quite often in this book, and that's an important theme here as well. Life is senselessly difficult for those at the bottom, and there are roadblocks in every direction, barriers blocking them from getting ahead, rising above their debt, and building a real life for themselves.
I'm not "against" other people being able to afford access to an elevated existence, but I do see it as a problem that this "architecture" of inequality is more or less hidden.
In such a society, people on the "inside" lose all incentive to care about what happens to people on the "outside," and those on the outside resort to desperate, destructive means for a chance to participate in the dream. Inequality leads to resentment, resentment leads to violence, violence leads to chaos, and chaos ruins it for everybody.
While engaging with Schwartz's arguments, I didn’t feel as though I was being pressured to accept a political agenda, though; instead, it just felt like someone who cared deeply about the less fortunate was trying to get me to pay attention to something incredibly important and real.
“He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to become greater, becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary is the beginning of the end - it precedes death; to live is to achieve, to will without ceasing."
Weakness of will is the only thing stopping you from achieving everything you've ever wanted to achieve in this life.
The opportunities for great achievement and relentless goal attainment are abundant today, but it's the will to achieve that's scarce, the will to keep going that's lacking, and the will to drive forward no matter what that's going to be the difference-maker between your outstanding success and dismal failure.
Luck exists, but volume and perseverance negate luck. We create a substantial portion of our own luck by being tenacious, relentless, and irrepressible. This book, An Iron Will, is a classic from all the way back in 1901(!) that will help you become exactly that: irrepressible.
Orison Swett Marden was the pre-eminent self-help authority in the earliest parts of the 20th century, and he was also the founder of SUCCESS Magazine, a publication that's still going strong today. If you think of people like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Stephen R. Covey, Tony Robbins, and Zig Ziglar - Orison Swett Marden was the man who inspired their journeys of personal development.
In An Iron Will, Marden explores the importance of mental discipline, toughness, and perseverance to our happiness and success. The world tends to take us at our own valuation and believes in the person who believes in themselves, and regardless of what you intend to achieve, An Iron Will is how you'll arm yourself with the strength and power necessary to achieve it.
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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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