8 Life-Changing Books for Entrepreneurs & Investors
In this video, I talk about 8 books that have had a big impact on how I view business, life, and investing.
Life-Changing Books
In this video, I’m going to talk about 8 books that have had the biggest impact on my mindset, my business, and my investing goals.
If you don’t like reading, you can probably find the audio version of a lot of these books, if not all of them. You can also find a lot of these at libraries or even in digital format for free using sites like Hoopla and Libby. I’ll put a link to all of the books in the description below the video if you want to check them out.
1. rich dad Poor dad
You’ve probably heard of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyoaski and for a good reason. If you want to take better control of your career and your finances, it’s probably best to start with your overall mindset and approach to money.
This book is a quick read – you can probably finish it in a few hours, but it’s super helpful even if it is a little outdated. The main takeaways he gives are these:
The poor and middle-class work for their money whereas the rich have their money work for them
It doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t actually keep it
The rich acquire assets where the poor and middle class acquire liabilities that may be disguised as assets
Rich Dad Poor Dad really helped me start thinking about cash flow, investing, and assets over liabilities. One thing I always think about from this book is the mindset switch from “I can’t afford that” to “How can I afford that?” This gets me thinking more creatively for possibilities instead of just shutting my brain off.
Now, I’m not really a big fan of Robert Kiyosaki as a person, so I’d recommend borrowing this book from the library or buying used, but that’s just me.
2. The E-Myth Revisited
If you are interested in business, especially running your own small business, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber is a must-read.
The main thing you should take away from this book is that most small business owners work in their business instead of on their business.
He breaks down how everyone that starts a small business is three people in one: a technician, a manager, and an entrepreneur. The technician is the doer who works in the business, the manager tries to create order in the business, and the entrepreneur thrives on change, living in the future. He then says the typical small business owner is only 10% entrepreneur, 20% manager, and 70% technician.
So a big part of this book is helping you realize how your time can be better spent and how you can get your business to work without relying on you doing every single thing.
It’s a great read for business nerds, so definitely check it out.
3. IRA Wealth: Revolutionary IRA Strategies for Real Estate Investment
This book by Patrick Rice and Jennifer Dirks is pretty cool. It got me thinking about retirement in an entirely different light. Did you know you could buy real estate inside of an IRA retirement account? Well, I did, but I wanted to learn more, so I picked up this book years ago.
Giving you an alternative to stock market investing, this is an eye-opening read and really helps you think about ways to maximize returns for retirement. Instead of just parking your IRA in index funds, you can choose to self-direct your IRA and invest in real estate like apartment buildings. The authors mention they’ve found they’re able to get 20% returns with minimal risk.
The strategies mentioned in this book can be limiting if you don’t already have a sizable retirement account, so when I first bought this book in 2014 or so, it wasn’t necessarily actionable for me, but it did help me think of saving for retirement in a new way.
4. The Four Hour Work Week
It’s highly likely you’ve heard of this book by Tim Ferriss or even listened to his podcast. I don’t know what happened to my copy of the book, but it should be easily found in most libraries. The Four Hour Work Week is outdated in a lot of aspects, but the underlying themes are the most important takeaways, and those are still as relevant as ever.
I read this book in 2013 or so, around the same time I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. This is when I was working as a video editor and making a modest amount of money, but I was never that interested in just being an employee somewhere for the next forty years. I always wanted to have my own business, and I wanted to be able to make more money that I could then use to invest.
In the book, Tim talks about how he started a company selling supplements. He was working long days, seven days a week making over $100,000 a year or something – BUT he was miserable. When I read that, I thought, “I don’t know, if I was making that much with a business, I think I’d be pretty happy.”
His point was despite the money, it wasn’t the lifestyle he wanted. And to me, that’s what Four Hour Work Week is: a book on lifestyle design.
And that’s the number one takeaway from this book. Start with what you’d like to earn and work backwards. Would you rather have 100 customers paying you $10 or would you rather have 10 customers paying you $100.
He also focuses on how you can outsource specific tasks to free up your time. Regardless, it’s a great book for thinking about how to design your life to get the most out of it.
5. The ABCs of Real Estate Investing
The ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy is a great book for anyone who wants to get into real estate investing. This book is all about how to find properties, evaluate its worth, negotiate the deal based off the numbers, and then increase profit with value add opportunities.
If you don’t understand all of the numbers involved with rental properties and how you can use them to determine a good purchase price, this book will help you wrap your head around everything and see the potential in different properties.
Ken also has a really good YouTube channel focused on more real estate investing topics, which is definitely worth checking out as well.
6. The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley and William Danko is a really great book analyzing the habits and behaviors of millionaires and how it differs from public perceptions.
After spending over 20 years studying how millionaires became wealthy, they’ve developed some interesting conclusions.
Most self-made millionaires come from modest backgrounds and just saved and invested their earnings and controlled their spending. They prioritized financial independence over social status.
70% of millionaires never paid more than $29,200 for a new vehicle and only 5% ever paid more than $57,500.
This book is filled with fascinating stats and insight into how the majority of millionaires actually live and what they spend their money on.
7. Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down
Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down is written by Brandon Turner, the host of The Bigger Pockets Podcast, which is one of my all-time favorites. I like this book a lot because it gives you creative ways to structure real estate deals if you don’t have a lot of cash.
When I’ve had various ideas for an investment property, I’ve referred to this book many times and it’s just a really good way to expand your thinking beyond traditional mortgages.
If real estate investing is something you’ve always been interested in but never thought you could do because you didn’t have enough cash, you may find other ways you can still make it happen.
8. Will it Fly?
Will It Fly? By Pat Flynn is a book focused on how to test out business ideas and make sure you’re set up for success. You may know Pat from his blog Smart Passive Income, or his podcast, or even his SwitchPod.
I actually listened to the audio book while I was delivering groceries for Instacart not that many years ago. Some takeaways here are: first, match your lifestyle with your business. Similarly to the Four Hour Work Week, you want to make sure that your business will work well with who you are as a person and what your goals are with your lifestyle. Also, validate your business financially before spending all of the time and money to build it.
All-in-all, this books is a good way to help you turn your hobby into a business, so I definitely recommend you give it a go. I remember listening to it, and my brain just started coming up with all sorts of different business ideas and how I may be able to implement them.
Honorable Mentions
There’s a few other books I’ve read that I know a lot of people love, so while they aren’t my absolute favorite, you may get some value out of them.
With Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the author researched more than forty millionaires and found out what they knew and how they thought. It’s definitely more of a mindset book and was originally published in 1937, but it still holds up pretty well 84 years later.
The Richest Man in Babylon is another book highly recommended by many people. This focuses more on parables, but I was honestly bored by it and I’m not sure if I ever even finished it.
The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is another one I see recommended a lot and I got it on Audible, but I found it super repetitive and I got the gist of it after like two chapters. BUT maybe you will enjoy it more than I did.
Final Thoughts
So those are 8 of my favorite books that have had a big impact on my mindset regarding finances, lifestyle, and investing. If you’ve read a book that had a big impact on you, let me know in the comments section of the video! I think Rachel has some Audible credits I could steal from her.
All the books are linked below and I also linked a couple of apps where you may be able to find the ebooks for free with just a library card.
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