Recommended Reading
This list was created based on what we believe to be important… Finding true success in business and life by living the life you desire and making a positive impact on the world and those around you from your career to your personal relationships.
If you have thoughts on these or other books that you suggest, please let us know in the comments below.
Our Books:
College Exploration: The Ultimate Guide to Selecting, Applying and Succeeding in School & Life
This guide helps you get what you want out of college and life. It provides topics in focusing, assessing, targeting, applying, interviewing, deciding, budgeting and succeeding in college.
Career Exploration: Choose the Ideal Career, Secure a Position & Create Success
Career Exploration helps you find a career to love through a series of steps including focusing, assessing, targeting, networking, creating the ideal resume and cover letter, preparing for interviews, tips on negotiating and how to succeed in your career.
Our list of impactful and helpful books:
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
While not initially a huge fan of the title, the content of this book is truly outstanding! It presents the concept of being able to run a business, have an income stream, outsource tasks and have the freedom to travel and enjoy life before it passes you by. Of all the books I’ve ever found, this one was filled with more practical and useful information on how to start and run an automated business. This should be required reading for anyone thinking of running a business and enjoying their life.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
One of the best business books ever written. Jim Collins asked the question, “Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?” In this book that Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last, which he wrote with Jerry Porras, the research shows how good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. It is filled with so many great lessons and business truths.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
A great series of books that show the importance of making your money work for you instead of you working for your money. While most of these books are not step by step how to do things, they do drive home the theory and why it is so important.
The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best
This book provides insight on how real power rests in the hands of creative individuals who are changing the world one idea at a time. It reveals the secret of their success: they discovered what they do better than anyone else and rode it for all its worth. We can all learn to focus on the 20% that we can be the best in the world at doing.
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
This book dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business. It walks you through the steps in the life of a business from entrepreneurial infancy through growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective. Then, it shows how to apply the lessons to succeed.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED]
Gladwell presents how little changes can have big effects. When small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or “tipping point” is reached, and thus changing the world. It shows how ideas, products, messages and behaviors “spread just like viruses do” and this remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of “word-of-mouth epidemics.” [Per the comment below, Gladwell's latest book is Outliers: The Story of Success
A good tip for busy professionals: you can borrow many of these titles at your local library and listen to them in the car on your commute to work. There’s real power in finding direction and moving your mind while sitting idle in traffic!
Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers is really good too. The beginning had fascinating stats and examples on how Billy Gates and others were “outliers” in that they found success in part to unique circumstances available to them. The middle got a bit long talking about plane crashes, but it came back together in the end. Good book.
While a long way past college myself, I will certainly suggest your College Exploration Book to my college-bound daughter and urge other parents looking for these tools to do the same.
I was just given the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill. I read this classic about 15 years ago when I was young and optimistic and have just picked it up again. It is a quick read with amazing priciples for life. I hope you enjoy it too.
The website is really helpful, Patrick. As your audience grows, I would love to hear more about how others stay motivated and continue to feed themselves with good books and good ideas.
Keep up the good work,
Matt
The 4-Hour Workweek is an excellent book, which outlines several methods to stream recurring income easily. Definitely on the required reading list!! Some great rules and ideas on how to be more productive on your own end without reducing the productivity of others.