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These books will make you money. These books will help you get done. These will make you a better entrepreneur. And this one book will help you protect your wealth once you have it. These are the 13 books that helped me transform my life and build a $100 million business empire. And I'm going to share with you why you should read them and at what stage of life you should be implementing them.
Starting with *Think and Grow Rich* by Napoleon Hill. When should you read this? ASAP, literally. I give away this book to every teen in my life. Why? It is so important. It creates the foundation of how to think, the blueprint for achieving anything, starting with your desire, how to dream big, believe you can do it, and program your subconscious, or what he calls your autosuggestions, to be able to achieve anything you want.
The second book is *The Psychology of Money* by Morgan Housel. This one you got to read pretty much between 20 and 25. It helps you build the foundation for money. Most of you have bad money scripts, money beliefs that's going to hold you back and sabotage your success. So you build your self-awareness in the financial decisions you make. You build consistent, smart choices over flashy risk. And most importantly, you build your money philosophy.
Which brings us to *The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind* by T. Harv Eker. You should read it between 20 and 25 because your parents have probably a broken rule and philosophy of money that you'll have to reprogram. In the book, you'll learn how to identify your limiting beliefs around your money, build new wealth-attracting habits, and most importantly, rewrite your money stories. What's crazy about that book is that when I bought the first copy, it came with two tickets to a wealth seminar, a weekend seminar on money that me and my brother went to. And not only did we go and learn and absorb, we ended up joining his program, and for the next three years, reprogrammed our minds as two brother duos traveling the world learning all about business and mindset. It was awesome.
Which brings us to *Rich Dad Poor Dad* by Robert Kiyosaki. Again, 20 to 25, you got to read this. It'll help you think like an owner, not just an entrepreneur, and avoid dumb financial risks when you're young. What I loved about this is it taught me how to think about the difference between an asset and a liability, massively build multiple types of income, and the best part in the quadrant is how to think like an investor rather than an employee. If you don't learn to think like an investor, then you'll always be just a high-paid employee. Understanding how to become a business owner and more importantly, an investor, so that your money works for you—that's how you become rich.
Those four books will change your money mindset, but these next four books will make you insanely productive. Which brings us to *Atomic Habits* by James Clear. You want to read this between 20 and 25 or later. It'll help you build your habit foundation. The most important stuff I've learned from this is the tiny habits that will lead to massive wins, that 1% better every day compounds. You'll also learn how standards can make your success inevitable. That's why I created these five daily non-negotiables in my coaching program because I want people to win by default, not by hard work. You'll also learn how to make habits stick by connecting them to other things. The quote you hear all the time from James is: You don't rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. Get this book to level up.
Which brings us to *BuyBack Your Time* by—you know who—now I'm joking. This is a bonus one, but I wanted to throw it in because these lessons changed my life. It's everything. I mean, the big idea is you don't hire people to grow your business; you hire people to buy back your time. You do the first, you get a prison; you do the second, you get freedom. You should read this between 20 and 30 or as soon as you have a growing business. You'll learn the value of your time and how to measure it. You'll master the art of delegation, and most importantly, you'll build a business you don't grow to hate.
Which brings us to *Getting Things Done* by David Allen. GTD, baby. See, your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. You got to read this between the ages of 20 or 25 because this is my go-to recommendation to help my teams not feel overwhelmed. It's going to clear the mental clutter. You probably have too many things going on, and you don't know how to process them. You don't know how to organize it. You probably never had to deal with so much overload. It'll help you understand that—get it out of your brain, dump it, then schedule your time to process. This methodology has been used by all the top CEOs in the world to be more productive.
Which brings us to *The One Thing* by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. You want to read this between 20 and 30 or when you have multiple opportunities presenting themselves to you. You want to read this to really build the muscle of focusing on one thing. FOCUS stands for Follow One Course Until Successful. Most people can't do it. It's why big businesses are literally just that—that person deciding to prioritize ruthlessly. Start small to build that muscle and grow from there. One of the big takeaways for me was using the focusing question. It states this: What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? Understanding that question and using it quite a bit will help you prioritize. Simple scales, complex fails. You want to focus.
So these books will help you get done, but the philosophies in these next four books will put you in the top 1% of entrepreneurs. Which brings us to *The E-Myth Revisited* by Michael Gerber. This is the OG book teaching you how to work on the business, not in the business. You want to read this between the ages of 25 to 30 or when you have a growing business. It'll teach you how to build a business that works for you, that you don't work for. It'll teach you the concept of a franchise prototype so that you use documentation to build systems so you can scale the business and most importantly, go from self-employed to actually a business owner.
Which brings us to *Zero to One* by Peter Thiel. This book is what I use to build the foundation of Martel Ventures, which is my AI-first Venture Studio. You need to read this between the ages of 30 to 35 when you want to scale to a larger business. If you're trying to build a massive empire, that's the book. It'll teach you how to create a new market—what he called a blue ocean—instead of competing in one, a red ocean. It'll help you find your competitive advantage to create a moat around your business, teach you how to focus on product, not sales, because if your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, guess what? It's just not good enough. This book is considered the Bible in Silicon Valley and is the innovation book for you.
Which brings us to *Traction* by Gino Wickman. Every business that's properly run has executed the EOS system. One of my favorite quotes in this book is that people need to hear the vision seven times before they really hear it for the first time. You want to read this between the ages of 30 and 35 or when you want to scale larger businesses. The EOS system is the most approachable business operating system ever created. It's used by most big companies. What it does is it helps you create a clear vision that gets everybody pulling on the rope in the same direction. It'll teach you how to create a simple system for accountability and honestly get all projects in your business aligned with that priority so that you can be successful. The reason why that book works is that it's simple. All the fat out of any other management system is cut away, and all you're left with is the few rhythms, the meetings, the structure that you need to actually scale a business. This one will get you going and not overcomplicate your life.
Which brings us to *Good to Great* by Jim Collins. Good is the enemy of great. You want to read this between the ages of 30 and 35 or when you want to scale a larger business. There's a difference between bad leaders and great leaders. Jim calls them Level 5 leaders, and they have the determination and humility to go after something massive and know they probably don't know how to do it. And the way they win, great leaders is they get the right people on the bus. They become obsessed over culture because culture is what people do when no one's watching, not what you say it is. Culture is not ping-pong tables, free dry cleaning, or snacks at the office. It's what people do when nobody is watching. That book will give you the framework for building a world-class culture.
These books will help you become a top 1% entrepreneur, but this book will help you protect your wealth once you get it. Which brings us to the final book, *Entrusted* by Andrew Howell and David York. One thing you'll hear me say often is: If you have nice things and you don't share them with other people, what's the point? You're kind of a ding-dong. You want to read this between the ages of 35 to 40 or once you've amassed at least a net worth over a million dollars. What I love about this book helps you understand how to deal with new wealth. These folks have 10,000 hours helping wealthy families not lose it, protect it, understand what it means to transfer it to your family, how to create a system for family legacy, and most importantly, how to build wealth for a greater purpose. What I've learned is wealthy people want to have impact, and it's going to be through their team and through their family. And that book will help you make sure you don't lose it and how to properly give it to other people to support you and to create a legacy it's going to last way past your time here on Earth.
These books are all incredible reads. They're entertaining; they're full of incredible insights and information. But don't just read them; decide to study them, decide to take action, default to doing something, because information without implementation is just wasting your time. But if you want to learn the seven income skills of the top 1%, click the video, and I'll see you on the other side.