Everyone’s heard the adage that if you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people. Well, I don’t know about you, but there aren’t that many people out there who are as successful as I want to be. There just aren’t that many Bill Gates’ or Donald Trumps’ out there. Luckily, reading books about success is the next best thing to being surrounding by billionaires. So, here’s a list of books that I’ve used to feed my mind.
1.Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
If you haven’t heard of Napoleon Hill, he was an ambitious young writer during the turn of the 19th Century who spent the better part of a lifetime studying the techniques that the richest and most successful people used to achieve great things. It was the first book to ask, “What makes a winner?”.
I included a link to the audio book because that’s what I’ve listened to at least 20 times over the past several years driving in my car. If you want to supercharge your mind with the techniques used by such tycoons as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, you absolutely must make this book a part of your library. No, better yet, buy the audio book, keep it in your car, and listen to it every chance you get.
This is one of the most important books of all time and should be a mental staple for anyone and everyone looking to succeed. If you’re not the audio book type, you can get the text version of Think and Grow Rich.
2. Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill
Can you tell I like Napoleon Hill? I’m so into his books because there are amazing bits of knowledge in every chapter; and although he wrote these 3/4 of a century ago, their content is still applicable today.
If you’re only going read one Napoleon Hill book, it should be Think and Grow Rich. His Laws of Success is similar in many ways, but it’s presented from a slightly different angle. Trust me, if you can, read both of them for a fuller understanding of Hill’s philosophy.
3. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
This book presents a, surprisingly, unique way of looking at wealth and wealth creation. Do you own a rental property that produces negative cash flow each month? A lot of real estate investors do (you better not let me catch you doing this if you’re one of my clients ;-).This book, among other things, teaches the difference between good debt and bad debt, and how good debt should be used to pay for bad debt. Kiyosaki tells a story of the time he found a sleek Porsche that he had to have. Instead of just taking out a loan and buying the Porsche, he took out a loan, bought a rental property that produced positive monthly cash flow, and made the payment on the Porsche with the proceeds from the rental. If we all followed what’s taught in this book from the time we’re young, we’d all be rich.
The Rich Dad Poor Dad series spawned a boat-load of spin off titles, some written by Kiyosaki, some by others. I’ve read quite a few of them and I recommend them all. I bought my 16-year-old sister Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens and, based on the amount of time she spent talking about it – that’s right, a 16-year-old teenager was talking about a book – it must have had quite an impact; although I didn’t read it myself.
These are easily my top three finance/investing-related books. I’ll post a long list of my favorites in the future.
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