What are my favorite books about money or business success? Here are just a few of the ones that are at the top of my list. Check it out!
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My Favorite Books On Money & Business
Welcome again. Check out our website, MoneyRipples.com. We’ve got some old blogs on there. I haven’t written for a couple of years, but there’s always good information there. Also, keep checking out our show. Keep sharing because this show is about you guys and how to help you grow and prosper, how to create more cashflow, freedom and prosperity right now. You guys can create that ripple effect through your life and throughout generations beyond you. That’s the ripple effect I want to create too. Thank you for being a part of it. I love that I’ve got people from us and Canada, Australia, and across the world that are reading right now. Thank you so much for being a part of this and being a part of this journey.
I know in the last episode, it was just me when I talked about that not always being right, knowing that you don’t know the truth. I want to do a show that’s short because that was a longer one for me. I went 30 minutes. Can you believe that? That’s huge. You’re thinking, “I’ve been trying to binge and that was a long one.” You’re right. I hope it was good for you. I’m going to do a shorter one now because this one doesn’t require a whole lot, but I want to give you some resources because I often get asked by people like, “What are books that influenced and shaped the way that you think about money or about business?”
The truth is there’s a lot of books I’ve read, hundreds that have read or listened to. My preferred medium for reading is Audible, using audiobooks and things like that. I don’t even buy the CDs as much anymore, although I do have those. I’ve started go more to Audible where it’s in a cloud. I don’t have to carry it all around with me, especially when I’m moving houses and things like that.
Here are some great books that have influenced me, my top influential books in my life that have been awesome, especially when it comes to money or business. The first one I’m going to talk about is the one that I know everybody talks about, which is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This one is a classic. The reason it’s a classic is because it gets into a lot of the things that are kind of metaphysical. It does get into the physical as well as the metaphysical. There are a lot of good points in there. A lot of good stuff.
Everything comes back to relationships and people around you. If you want to make money, you have to be at a place where you can go and be influential. Click To TweetI’ll tell you the book that I liked a little bit better, especially if maybe you’ve been reading this stuff for a while and you’re thinking, “I need something a little bit more,” for me, The Master Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill was a better book because that’s where I felt like the rubber starts to hit the road. Especially as learning the kind of constants I teach you guys and a couple with what I was learning in those books, it made a lot more sense. I like the master key to riches by Napoleon Hill better, partly because it was twenty years later.
It had some case studies. It had people that applied Think and Grow Rich principles. I liked that. Granted, there is a lot of philosophy in there. If you’re listening to this book, this is probably not the book you would want to listen to. This is the kind of book you’d want to read. When he starts saying, “here are the seventeen principles for blank,” that’s where listening, you get lost. I recommend reading it, underlining it and that kind of thing. Getting the physical book of the master key to riches is a very good thing. I want to start with that classic. I know you’ve heard it before, so I think that’s a good one.
Here’s one that’s a bonus that I think is great. Taken more from a Jewish perspective around money, it’s called Thou Shall Prosper. This one’s by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. That one’s a great book. I learned some great principles in that one. For me, at this phase, when I read it, it reinforced a lot of things, but there were a lot of a-ha moments I had to. That was one of my favorite books right there about money. If you’re Jewish, even better. You might even understand it even a deeper level than I did. It’s a fantastic book.
Another one and I hope every one of you has read this already, but if you haven’t, this one is a must-read right now. It’s Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It’s one of those great books because it focuses on the perspective around money that just isn’t happening. The thing that I love and a lot of my perspective come from that on the cashflow aspect is focusing on cashflow, creating cashflow.
Your money will grow as much as you grow. Click To TweetGranted, he had to slay a lot of sacred cows there when he went through it because he had to address it. There are books that were good. He’s got a whole series. This is the basic, the start. If you’re challenged, for example, about mutual funds, you’re saying, “why are mutual funds so bad?” This would include 401(k)s and IRAs. You need to read the book Who Took My Money? also by Robert Kiyosaki. Who Took My Money? is an absolute great one. That was one, even when I was selling mutual funds, I couldn’t deny the truth of it.
It was that good. It got me to say, “Okay, there’s a bunch of holes in this thing.” I’ve probably blown up more holes than even that book did in this show, but great stuff in that. That one I listened to an audiobook. It is only about three hours long. It’s a pretty quick read. By the way, that was three hours long at normal speed. If you have Audible, you know what I’m talking about. You can speed up those books and go faster. A lot of times, I’ll listen to books at one and a half speed or something like that. Great books there.
Here’s one you may or may not have heard of that I love. This one came up before Think and Grow Rich. This one came out before the movie the secret came out. Not only did it come out before then, it came out nearly a century before the secret came out. This one came from the early 1900s. It’s called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. This one is so good because if you go to this kind of book, like when you hear about the Law of Attraction and stuff like that, some people have popularized it in the sense of almost Hollywoodized it. It made the Law of Attraction seem stupid.
He’s the one that helped create this whole concept before Napoleon Hill. Napoleon hill talks about that concept, but Wallace Wattles is the one that was addressing it. Especially if you’ve ever had issues with wanting to have money, about whether you should be rich or not, this one’s such a good one to address the mindset around why it’s even good to be rich, why you want to financially prosper, why it’s such an important thing. That’s a wonderful book that I love. The Science of Getting Rich, I think for everyone, is a great book, but it’s so good. This is one I’ve listened to many times and I still listen to.
The next one. This is probably one of my favorites, if not the favorite. It’s probably in the top three. It’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This one seems different because this is not so much a money book, but I’ll tell you this has everything to do with prospering in life, whether it be money or anything else. It comes back to relationships and the people that are around you because if you want to make more money, you’ve got to be at a place where you can go and be influential.
That’s the thing. My biggest thing is that I want to create an impact in the world. I want to create a difference. The only way you can do that is by being influential in people’s lives. How to Win Friends and Influence People is a great book to be able to say, “Here’s how you can be lasting and memorable in people’s minds.” Here’s how you can build those relationships and create good relationships with people say, “I like this, this person. I like this guy or this woman.” That’s a wonderful book.
This was the first self-help book I read when I went to business. I don’t think it could have been a better book to read now because this is, again, one I’ve read many times over and over because there are so many good principles and strategies of helping you be able to do that. Granted, there are lots of other books they talk about. There are books around business that I’ve loved. There are so many good ones.
I remember there’s a great book called How To Be Like Walt. That was a great business book that I loved. How To Build A Business That Warren Buffett Would Buy was a pretty decent book as well. Other books like Influence by Robert Cialdini was a good one too, or Covert Persuasion. Persuasion is very important. Covert Persuasion is a great one, especially with strategies, how you can be influential and help people move towards action. There are so many good books.
Malcolm Gladwell’s got good books. There are great ones. Seth Godin’s always got great books. Malcolm Gladwell has The Tipping Point, Seth Godin has books like Linchpin that I love. That’s a great book as well, but he’s got lots of good books. There’s also a book I read that was called the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I love that one. The Big Leap was awesome. That one’s a fantastic book to help you break through upper limits.
There are so many good books out there, but those are just a few of mine. I wanted to share those with you guys, give you a nice little reading list to go on. Whether you buy the book, the actual physical book or you’re going and getting the audiobooks or you’re listening on Audible, these are fantastic books that I’ve listened to and read and love.
By the way, as a little bonus, another great money book is called Killing Sacred Cows by my old friend, Garrett Gunderson, a guy I helped create a company with back in the past before I launched money ripples. Killing Sacred Cows has got some good financial concepts in there about financial myths you shouldn’t buy into. That’s another good book as well. It’s pretty long. It’s a little bit wordier than I like. I don’t like very wordy books. That’s why even Daniel Lapin’s book Thou Shall Prosper was pretty tough for me to get through. It was a big book, but there are great concepts in that one too.
I hope you take this to heart. I hope you enjoy this. You grow and your money will grow as much as you grow your own knowledge and your understanding and wisdom. My challenge to you is to grow that wisdom by learning more, getting other perspectives and getting those voices of people in your head. Especially if you’re the type of person that you feel like you’re not surrounded by people that are abundant-minded or that think bigger, think better. The best way to do that is through books and podcasts.
Get these voices in your head. Pick out the truths that worked for you, of course, but start to adopt the way of thinking. That’s the biggest thing I do when I read books. It’s not about the books themselves, but I try to figure out how they are thinking. Where are they coming from? Is it from a place of energy or being? I don’t say that from a woo-woo standpoint so much, but more from the standpoint of what kind of confidence or certainty do they have in those principles.
That certainty is everything. When you start to test these principles and make them work in your life and you don’t come at them with an attitude of doubt, but you come at them with an attitude of openness, like what I mentioned in that previous episode. Be open-minded and be willing to question truth. You’ll start to realize, “There’s a bigger place that I need to get to.” It gets in your mind first and it shows up in your tangible world second. It’s not immediate, but it does happen over time. I challenge you to start adopting some of these philosophies and these teachings and these kinds of things to help you grow and help you hit new levels you’ve never hit before. I hope you make a great, prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
Important Links
- Think and Grow Rich
- The Master Key to Riches
- Thou Shall Prosper
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- Who Took My Money?
- The Science of Getting Rich
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- How to Be Like Walt
- How to Build A Business That Warren Buffett Would Buy
- Influence
- Covert Persuasion
- The Tipping Point
- Linchpin
- The Big Leap
- Killing Sacred Cows