Highly Recommended Books for Entrepreneurs

Okay. Hello. Hello. Good evening. We are having Leadership Stack tonight. So we have questions from the discord channel. We have some questions now from Erika.

What do you want people to learn from reading your books?

Well, I want them to learn that it’s not the end of the line if you fail in college. I failed 28 units. I wrote that in my book. I got kicked out of the house. I thought I was good for nothing. I had very long hair. My beard and my mustache has outgrown and I looked like a hippie during college. So it was really bad.

Hopefully, people will find hope in my words, as I wrote in the book that it’s not the end of life when you fail a lot. You know, there’s still tomorrow, yesterday ended last night. Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games. And work hard, have faith in God, and have guts to take opportunities in life. Prepare yourself for opportunities because when opportunities come and you’re unprepared, there’s no way you can grab that. You have to prepare yourself first so that when opportunity comes, you’re ready to just grab, hold on to it and take it.

So different people learn different things from what I hear from my book’s readers. But yeah, those are the things that I hope people will get from my book. Hope. Hoping that you have a good future. Don’t call it quits, work hard, definitely a hundred percent. That’s something rare in our day and age. People would say, just work smart, don’t work hard. You have to have both. And working hard is the harder thing to do than work smart nowadays because you have the internet, you can always work smart.

What inspired you to write your books?

Well, for CEO at 22, I have a bucket list and in my bucket list is to write a book before I die. So that’s checked already with CEO at 22. Another thing in my bucket list is if God takes me home early, I want my kids to know who I am. That’s another reason why I wrote my books.  And consequentially, the CEO at 22 is out there to inspire people who failed a lot and who are failing in life to tell them that it’s not the end and you can start early. Don’t let the world fool you into thinking that you could waste your younger years in nonsense. Because those younger years matter a lot, if you want a good future. So yeah.

For 50x Your Business, it’s all about encouraging people who have a good business running for them, going for them, good momentum, is to encourage them on to growing it. Because a lot of people I know are satisfied with just a small startup business and that’s it. What they don’t realize is other companies out there that they’re competing with are trying to get their market share. They’re trying to kill them. Your business is being killed by outside competition. That’s the truth.  If you don’t grow, they’re going to eat you up because they want your piece of the pie.

So I wrote 50x Your Business so that other people who have a good business going on for them would be able to scale it up and would be able to succeed. That’s really it. And I share everything that we did in SEO Hacker there and how we are doing things here. So I just want to pay it forward.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Discipline, practice, and be consistent. That’s the discipline we have in SEO. That’s what makes our SEO accurate and really good, it’s because we’re consistent in what we do, we’re disciplined, and we want quality output every time, all the time. And in writing, it’s the same. It’s the same.

When I wrote CEO at 22 and 50x Your Business, I made sure that I would write 800 to 2,000 words a day every day. And I finished them in three months, both books I finished in three months. It just took more time to edit because books really take a lot of time to edit, have it laid out and have it designed, ask for testimonials, ask for proofreaders, ask for people to give the foreword, and that takes a lot of time.

So the writing should be done in three months. Otherwise the story’s going to be here and there. It’s not going to make a lot of sense. It’s going to be dirty.  So my advice is write in a way that you’re disciplined and you write consistently. That’s huge when it comes to writing.

From Erika. What are the best business books for you?

I usually recommend Good to Great by Jim Collins. Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of the books that have really opened up my mind on how to take a good business and make it a great one, because good businesses are everywhere. In fact, I would say almost every business you see is a good business. Bad businesses just go down and shut down in a couple of months and that’s it. So you don’t usually notice them. You don’t see a lot of them. But good businesses are everywhere. How can you turn your good business into a great business? Now, that for me is a worthy read and so Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of the most recommended books that I will tell you.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is another good book. That talks about virality. That talks about word of mouth. That is a really good book if you want to make sure that your business has some word of mouth marketing going for you, how you can do it and to realize how much word of mouth really does for your business, and how powerful it is for your business. That’s another good book.

If you want to improve yourself, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I could not recommend that enough, that’s a really, really good book. For leadership, I’d recommend The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. I’ve read that three times. It’s a really good book, really good stuff. Especially if you’re the founder and CEO of a business, you will need that. Because who you are inside is how you’re going to lead outside.

So yeah, I hope that helps. Those are some books I’ve personally read. And if you are able to get one of them and start reading them, that will do you a lot of good.

Follow up question. What are the must read books for entrepreneurs?

Yeah, so I mentioned some of them actually already. Must read books for entrepreneurs, I would say those same books. Built to Last, there you go, by Jim Collins is another book. Built to Last. It’s a white book. If you want to know how to do your mission, vision statement, purpose statement well, first time around, although when I read that book, I didn’t do the mission, vision and core values that well. I made one, but I had to revise it soon after because it didn’t work.

But that book helped me to realize how to do it better. So now our core values are something that we really practice. We hire by them. We fire by them. We promote by them. We penalize by them, by the core values and it works now. So that book has helped me a lot in how to create the best core values that we can so that we can have a culture that really works that’s about growth, that’s about family, that has the least amount of politics, and it makes for a really wonderful, wonderful place to work in. So yeah, that is Built to Last by Jim Collins.

From Erika. Are there any good books for startup business owners?

Yeah, the books that I recommended earlier, that’s going to work for you a hundred percent. Other than that, I don’t think I’ve read a lot. Maybe Richest Man in Babylon. Richest Man in Babylon would be, I forgot the book writer. Was it George Clason? I forgot, but that one will help you realize how important cash flow is. So that might be a good book for you to start with.

What are some books that can help me create a better business strategy?

I haven’t read the book on business strategy. I’m sorry I can’t help you there. All my strategies in business are the result of taking a step back from the business and looking at my business and thinking what’s going to be the next step or how are we going to be able to compete better, and asking questions from potential mentors. That’s where I got my business strategies. Plus by nature and by strengths, I’m a very strategic person, so I didn’t really invest in business strategy books. So I can’t help you there. I’m not going to recommend a book I haven’t read yet.

Can you recommend books to read to become a better negotiator?

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. That’s a very basic fundamental book because you’re going to want to know how to be likeable, how to communicate well, and how to really connect with people as well. Another book is by John Maxwell. What’s the title of the book? It’s about communication and connecting. I forgot the title, but I think it goes by Everyone Communicates, Few connect, something like that. The title of the book is something like that. So that’s recommended.

Another one is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. That’s a really good book for negotiation. That’s advanced negotiation. You wouldn’t want to start with that unless you’ve read How to Win Friends and Influence People. So start with Dale Carnegie, then John Maxwell, then Chris’ Voss. That’d be a really good way to learn more about negotiating.