When I was a child I had a hard time learning in the classroom and reading was difficult. It was mostly a focus issue for me and I would easily become distracted. I was diagnosed with ADD and given medication to help focus and enrolled in special programs to help. Looking back, I can see I had the symptoms of being dyslexic.

Through further analysis I found a lot of this has to do with a lack of interest in what I was learning and reading. When I got to college, I studied Computer Graphic Design and was toward the top of my class and would end up finishing all of my projects within the first few weeks of each course.

We have all heard the whole “you won’t always have a calculator with you” argument for learning certain math problem solving but we now all have the most powerful calculator in our pocket at all times, our smartphones, or even on the computer in front of us most of the day. I have always questioned what I was being taught, the importance it will have in the future, and if it was valuable for me to spend my time studying that certain thing if it will be easily looked up in the future and not necessary to have memorized it.

As the internet took off, my early career went beyond Computer Graphic Design, that I received my bachelor’s degree in, and into web design. There are countless complex things that nobody could really memorize fully when coding/developing/engineering a website and this is just an example of something I daily use the internet for help on. We all do it! It is the fundamentals that matter.

We all tend to learn best when studying subjects we care about. This carries into our adult life.

As you might have learned, I am all about maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of every moment of my day and I don’t have hours to sit and focus on reading books every day. Audiobooks have been a life-changer for me!

What is great about audiobooks, especially for dyslexic folks like me, are they allow you to passively listen to the book and learn while your hands and eyes are doing something else like working on a computer, exercising, or driving.

Well… not quite since some things really take your full focus, but you get the idea of the potential. I went through about one hundred nonfiction books, and even more podcasts, in the last year and they all were audio.

The topics I tend to care most about are:

• Self-education
• Maximizing time/efficiency/effectiveness
• Communication with others
• Biohacking/Sleep/Longevity
• Personal Finance
• Real Estate Investing
• Entrepreneurship
• Mental health

Here are some of my most recommended and also why…

Top Book Recommendations

Rich Dad Poor Dad

By: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Just about everyone has heard of this book, but not much about this book, and the title might make you think twice before reading it. This is not just another book about getting rich or getting rich quick. This book teaches the fundamentals behind financial literacy, self-education, and ensuring your financial stability at every stage in life.

How to Win Friends & Influence People

By: Dale Carnegie

This is a pretty old book, now over 60 years old, but it holds up to today very well! This book has helped me a ton with learning how to effectively communicate with others, empathize with others’ feels about a situation, and provide influence for my own point of view. This helps you become more likable, shows ways to turn people toward your way of thinking, and helps turn situations around without bringing on resentment.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

By: Stephen R. Covey

I love this book so much since it provides 7 Habits to help in everyday thinking that promote fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity. These principles give us the security to adapt to change and find the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.  A key takeaway is to not promote a compromise (1+1 = 1.5 or 2) but to promote finding a synergy (1+1 = 3+) that has an outcome that is favorable for all. I have found that it is so important to fully listen to someone’s perspective, and to recite my own understanding of it, before providing my own perspective so that we can all fully understand each other to form a better solution than the one of our own.

The 4-Hour Workweek

By: Timothy Ferriss

This book was instrumental in helping me realize the 90 Days Per Month way of life! Many people have heard of this book but perhaps don’t know much about it. I have since then read a lot of other books Tim Ferriss has written, recommending them all, and also have followed the fantastic podcast he created where he hosts world-class people of all sorts. This book blueprint for helping you forget the old concepts of retirement, maximize your efficiency and effectiveness with little time, by living more and working less.

The Obstacle Is the Way

By: Ryan Holiday

I love this book because it shows how we can turn adversity into advantage. It shows how obstacles can turn into opportunities, even when in impossible situations, and I have seen this a ton in my own life. I have used this book to help me see situations where I wanted to quit as an opportunity to push on which ultimately brought me to success.

Ego Is the Enemy

By: Ryan Holiday

I learned that fighting my ego helped me achieve higher goals above my desires for recognition. My previous mentality, outside of the 90 Years Per Month methodology, played into the typical societal one-job, 9-5 approach where I limited myself. I worked hard to climb the corporate ladder and hit that plateau in my career as a digital product designer and was trying hard to reach recognition along the way to look extra important so I could keep climbing. That was not fulfilling. Reaching outside of that, tapping into some of my other passions, and allowing myself to work outside of the 9am to 5pm work schedule brought so much more fulfillment, happiness, and success beyond what any ultra fancy and prestigious job title brought.

Extreme Ownership

By: Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

Jocko and Leif are two retired US Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. In this book, they demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield into business and your everyday life. I learned a ton from this book and other writings and podcast episodes of theirs.

The Power of Broke

By: Daymond John

Desperation breeds innovation! This is a fantastic book that shows that when you are up against a wall you will find a way to push on to succeed. I like this book a lot since it shows that you don’t need millions of dollars in startup funding to make things happen. If you put your mind to it and work hard then you can accomplish just about anything. Not only have I put this to practice in my own life but I have seen my father do this with all he has accomplished. My own father’s story is part of what ignited my own fire to not rely on others as much as to hustle hard myself. I also recommend Daymond’s Rise and Grind book.

Start with Why

By: Simon Sinek

Simon started this movement in 2009 that helps people become a lot more inspired with their work and to also have an impact in the lives of their colleges and customers. This book helps you find out how some people and companies are more innovative and successful than others. It also helps you find your “Why” you do things, find your what your purpose is.

Zero to One

By: Peter Thiel

It is easy to copy what someone else is doing and this book shows you how to build successful companies that create new things. It walks you through that very starting point of “0” to when you have your first established success at “1.” This book shows how you can go beyond and crush your competition and truly monopolize your market.

Principles

By: Ray Dalio

Ray is one of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors. He has built over the past 40 years a system that provides very unique results through balancing life and business. These principles provide a ton of wisdom anyone can apply to their own lives and business.

Be Obsessed or Be Average

By: Grant Cardone

BOBA! This is great book that will ignite a fire to push yourself further and dream bigger than ever. Grant’s The 10X Rule already established this but this book pushed things even further and provides you with tons of insight how to automatically just multiply every goal by ten and find the steps to make it happen. By being obsessed with your goal, you can break away from mediocrity, and can harness the power to achieve just about anything by setting crazy goals, feeding your inner hustle, and shut down your doubters. Grant is also a very successful real estate investor with a lot of credibility behind his story.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

By: Mark Manson

Please excuse the book title but it does say what this is all about. This provides a counter-intuitive approach to living a good and fulfilling life by letting go of caring what others think by not letting that get in the way of you living the best life possible. A lot of what Mark says makes great sense but we need someone like him to bring his perspective on this.

Crush It!

By: Gary Vaynerchuk

I put some of these things to practice in my own life where I took an interest of mine and turned it into a business or side hustle. Gary shows you how to cash in on your passion and why now is the time to do it. He is fantastic on the loads of free content he provides on social media and I highly recommend his other books, such as Crushing It! and The Thank You Economy.

Unshakeable

By: Tony Robbins

A lot of people love Tony and a lot of people haven’t truly experienced from him. I am somewhere in the middle where I have never been to one of his events but I love his books and have seen how he has left a great mark in peoples lives. This book is Your Financial Freedom Playbook loaded with hours of great advice from interviewing 50 of the world’s greatest financial minds.

The E-Myth Revisited

By: Michael E. Gerber

This fantastic book shows Why Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. It crushes myths around starting and running your own business with a guide to succeed. It makes the very good distinction between working IN your business and working ON your business, something many struggle with that can ultimately have them fail. To grow, you need to hire and delegate so you can work ON that next phase instead of focusing on answering the phone and doing busy work.

Lifespan

By: David A. Sinclair PhD

Health is super important and there are tons of things the average doctor won’t know about or tell you that could increase your lifespan. David is one of the best on human longevity. This book will provide a road map for taking charge of the destiny of your own health and see your future of possibly living to be over 100 years young through very easy rules to follow.

Why We Sleep

By: Matthew Walker

Sleep is extremely underrated. We don’t only need enough sleep but quality sleep. Matthew explains how we can harness the transformative power of sleep to change our lives for the better. I have seen in my own life drastic increases in efficiency and effectiveness just through focusing on increasing quality sleep. I do use the Oura ring to track my sleep and love using the Ooler as a sort of mattress temperature control to allow my body to drop to a good temperature to promote optimal sleep and also to get warmed up nice and toasty for when I wake up. Your night of sleep can make or break your day and how are you going to live 90 days per month with poor quality sleep?

Think and Grow Rich

By: Napoleon Hill

This is a fantastic book that provides a formula of principles through 17 success stories from the early 20th century’s greats. These are secrets that have helped great leaders rise to the top and achieve amazing goals by dreaming with a deadline. This helps you take your dream and make it happen through specific actions. Many people re-read this book annually.

The Richest Man in Babylon

By: George S. Clason

This is one of the only fictional books I recommend to people and there is so much to learn from it. This book provides financial advice through a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon and offer an understanding and solution to a lifetime of financial problems. It teaches the secrets to acquiring money, keeping that money, and then earning even more money.

Other Real Estate Investment and Finance Books

ABCs of Real Estate Investing

By: Ken McElroy

This book is great since it gives you a fantastic understanding of the fundamentals of real estate investing and how to get started. Ken McElroy is a true pro at this.

Loopholes of Real Estate

By: Garrett Sutton

The government provides more information on how to save on taxes than they do on actually paying taxes. Investing in real estate helps the government by providing affordable housing for residents who pay them taxes. This is why real estate investment provides the investor, also who is the one risking the most, with the best tax incentives. These are 100% legal rules, or loopholes, the government provides and wants you to take advantage of. Garrett Sutton is a pro when it comes to this since he practices real estate law.

Tax-Free Wealth

By: Tom Wheelwright

Those who don’t help the government end up paying the most taxes. This book, like Loopholes of Real Estate, goes deep into real estate tax incentives as well as incentives for business owners. For the business owner, they receive incentives since they help the government by providing jobs for taxpayers who aren’t helping the government in this way. The more jobs that are provided, the more people there are to pay taxes. Like it or not, this is how the government designed it and without these incentives then business owners wouldn’t have the ability to provide as many jobs, ultimately earning the government less tax income annually.

Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant

By: Robert T. Kiyosaki

This book goes beyond Rich Dad Poor Dad and gets into the four types of income earners and the benefits and taxability of each. It truly points out how the regular employee won’t get ahead as much as the self-employed. The self-employed won’t have as much freedom and tax benefits as the business owner. The business owner won’t have their money work as much for them, and while they sleep, as much as the investor. Each of these four quadrants really paints a picture of where you are, or if you are dabbling in each of these, and helps you chart a path for the future.

Long-Distance Real Estate Investing

By: David M Greene

Real estate investment is my main strategy to take care of me later in life during what most call retirement. I live in California and properties are more expensive to purchase and, though they do appreciate in value, it is harder to get the monthly cashflow you would like. Many states outside of California provide much better investment opportunities and this book shows you some fantastic ways to make investing anywhere make sense. Most people are afraid that there will be issues since they can’t just drive there quickly but you really don’t want to do that anyway. You hire a solid property manager to take care of everything for you. I have purchased property without even visiting and have almost zero contact with my property manager, and zero with the tenants, since the manager handles everything for me. This helps me rest easily with zero stress. Future posts will come on this topic.

Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat

By: David M Greene

BRRRR is the name of the game! This is a fantastic strategy of buying a property for below market value, adding value by doing a rehab (what flippers do), then renting the property out (not what flippers do) for higher monthly cashflow than you could have before fixing it up, and then refinancing the property for the now higher appraised value since you had fixed it up, and repeating the process. In a lot of cases, you can easily refinance and take your initial down payment amount back out and all tax free, to use it again on the next property. For a single family home, you can easily do things like turn a basement into another bedroom and bathroom, which is my favorite thing to do. I have gotten 30% more rent out of doing just that. More blog posts to come on this.

Start Your Own Corporation

By: Garrett Sutton

Real estate investing is a business and you really should start your own corporation to properly manage your assets, reduce liability, and better take advantage of tax incentives. This book really shows you how to properly start, structure, and run your own corporation (though Garrett also wrote another book on running your corporation). This gets rid of so many headaches and anxiety while keeping you safe from litigation and allowing you to fully take advantage of tax incentives that will help you provide for your tenants and employees much better services.