Tag Archive for: entrepreneur

If you want to lead, you better read.

I didn’t always take that so seriously, but it’s true, you won’t meet successful people who aren’t readers.

Books can be your mentors — when you can’t meet or learn from someone directly in-person in real life, you can learn from them through books! Books can even be a window into the wisdom of the past, and you can learn from the greatest teachers who’ve ever lived — even if they’re not around anymore (you can even get inside the mind of one of history’s greatest emperors below!)

There are no secrets. They’re all just buried away in books.

Here are my “Most-Important Books” — or MIBs. These are the top 10 books I’ve read that have impacted me and influenced my life in a significant way for one reason or another, and that I recommend to anyone following a similar path. From what I’ve studied so far, if you read only 10 books after college, read these:

  1. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki
  2. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
  3. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  4. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi
  5. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
  6. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term Travel by Rolf Potts
  7. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
  8. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
  9. I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
  10. The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization by Ron Davison

If you’re just getting started, I believe reading these few wisdom-packed tomes from 1-10 in this order would be the most intuitive mindset change from beginner to advanced, and have the greatest impact on you.

Runners Up

  1. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
  2. Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter
  3. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – David Allen
  4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change – Stephen Covey
  5. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
  6. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (learn from the master stoic and one of Rome’s five Good Emperors)
  7. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
  8. The Brand You 50: Or : Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! by Tom Peters (or one of his other books on personal branding)
  9. The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire by David Deida (for the gentlemen in the audience, at least)
  10. Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss

My Reading List for the rest of 2016:

  1. The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships by Neil Strauss
  2. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
  3. Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers by Karen Berman & Joe Knight
  4. Mastery by Robert Green
  5. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
  6. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco
  7. The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies by Chet Holmes
  8. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan
  9. MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins
  10. The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5 by Taylor Pearson

More recommended reads from the DNA Faculty & community:

Derek Sivers, who I first met in Singapore in 2011, is a fascinating person who I really look up to — a hugely successful writer, entrepreneur, programmer, and ex-musician who founded CD Baby, and in 2008 sold it for $22 million.

Derek is hugely passionate about learning and teaching, he’s a frequent TED speaker, and writes extensively at Sivers.org. He’s also the author of Anything You Want and the Wood Egg startup guide series.

Below is my 2014 mentor call with him just for members, perhaps the best guest we’ve ever had! Watch to learn how Derek transitioned from overworked running a huge multimillion dollar business with 85 employees to resetting his operating system, how he then sold his $22 million dollar enterprise without paying anything in taxes, and his philosophies on how to have FUN doing business:

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In this call, Derek joins us from his home in New Zealand and we discuss:

You can learn much more about Derek on his site, read his latest articles, and watch his great videos from the Anything You Want book and Uncommon Sense series.

Discuss this in the Forums ›

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A few weeks ago, my old blogging buddy Ron Davison sent me a copy of his new book The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization, which examines the pattern of progress from an agricultural economy to an industrial one, then from industrial to an information economy, and predicts what the next generation will see with the rise of an entrepreneurship economy. If you feel the same entrepreneurial rumble around you right now as I do, we’re only just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Already in the first few pages it had me absolutely spellbound, so I wanted to share. Ron’s thesis revolves around how the evolution of society has always depended upon invention… but he points out how we tend to think of invention solely as a technological act… when in fact there is another, equally important form of invention that almost invisibly shapes society: social invention.

I’ll quote extensively from Ron’s first few chapters, as he’s much more eloquent and academic about this important claim than I could ever be (emphases are mine):

“Money is only money because we agree it is money. As soon as we all agree that Confederate currency no longer has any value, it no longer has any value. When we agree that information on magnetic strips affixed to plastic has value, it has value. Whether someone is a slave, employee or part-owner of an enterprise is not inherent in any physical reality or dependent on any brute facts, but is—instead—true only as an institutional fact [i.e., a social invention –Cody].

[…] “A technological invention results in a product that can be seen independent of any agreement about it. While its use might require some instruction, instruction that might be something akin to declaration or agreement, its existence does not. A steam engine translates heat into motion and even if it requires an operator to do this, its existence falls more into the category of brute fact than institutional fact. By contrast, a home loan is a [social invention]. Without a contract specifying terms and even who owes what to whom, the loan makes no sense. Further, the loan assumes a whole other set of [social inventions], from money to banks to a real estate market to determine the value of the home for which the loan exists.”

…Ron goes on to explain the immense importance of social invention, including all the institutions that you’ve become accustomed to in your lifetime, in shaping society — nation-states, churches, banks, corporations, money, democracy. At some point in history, each of these things was invented, agreed upon, and eventually accepted as the status quo. But these things haven’t always existed, they haven’t always been the norm, as we tend to forget.

“A set of inventions defines a culture or civilization.

We recreate civilization in each child. We call it education. Look at the huge amount of time and attention we devote to ‘civilizing’ a baby to become a member of society. The gross effort it takes to recreate society in each child should be testament to the fact that a culture is not a ‘natural’ or spontaneous state; it is, instead a social invention that takes great effort—every time. Language and manners, what we question and what we accept, social roles—all of these end products represent the teaching of parents, teachers, and even the media and are essentially conventions that work to construct meaning, to create the modern life. Rather than see them as inventions, we often see social inventions as simply ‘the way things are.’ Should you want a reminder that social inventions are just made up, however, raise a child. Mothers know that the curious, rebellious, stubborn, and lazy child will challenge social inventions. My family lives close to the Mexican border and when my daughter was protesting her car seat, she would say, ‘Mexican kids don’t wear seat belts.’ She, like every child, knew that things could be different and questioned why they were not. And of course, travel, news reports, novels, and history all remind us that our social inventions are not universal or even stable. What makes you successfully fit into your neighborhood in Manhattan would make you stand out in Afghanistan. Or even Montana. What made you fashionable in 1972 makes you look silly in 2012.”

He implores the need for social progress, for us to become more conscious about social invention. And I love how he describes our opportunity to create a new social reality:

“Perhaps teachers and parents should add this to their list of admonitions and lessons: ‘Warning: contents of this society have been known to create feelings of anomie and alienation; provoke wars, homicides, and suicides; and pollute the habitat you need for survival. Most of what we tell you should be questioned and could be improved upon. This is, really, just the best we’ve been able to do up until now and it could be that improvement will actually overturn much of what we now accept and advocate. Learn about your culture and your place in it, but don’t cling too tightly to it. What we’re teaching you probably needs to change, and soon.'”

[…] “a hypnotist, in a matter of minutes, can program you to do things you don’t normally do and to believe what is not so. […] how much more powerfully can society program you during the course of your life, given that it has so much more time and so many more persuasive tools at its disposal than does a hypnotist?”

[…] “If social invention is to become more widespread [ie: and we are to harness our inherent abilities to pave our own destinies and craft our own world –Cody], the individual will have to become more aware of how his or her life is also an invention. Up until now, it is the few who have defined society and the many that have been defined by it. A few receive the divine revelation and many receive Mass. Think about a world in which the direction is increasingly reversed, a society in which the individual is less social invention than social inventor. Or, rather, imagine a world in which more people engage in acts of social invention. If social invention becomes to this century what technological invention was to the last, we’ll witness such a change. Or, rather, we’ll create such a change.

“If daily life is an invention, the question is, whose invention is it? It is hard to underestimate the importance of inertia in defining society. Yet entrepreneurs challenge this inertia and invent something new.”

[…] “an entrepreneur is a social inventor. Their work is to create a new social invention, an organization, an institution, a new market, or a new business. Social entrepreneurs might start a new non-governmental organization (NGO) or nonprofit or charter school. I’m going to include under my broad umbrella of entrepreneurs not just business entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Henry Ford but political and religious entrepreneurs like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther.

“The next economy will popularize entrepreneurship in the same way that the Information Age popularized higher education and knowledge throughout the twentieth century. As entrepreneurship becomes more popular and diverse in its expression and application, social invention will become as normal as technological invention.”

My wish for the years ahead is to see more interesting people building interesting things — projects, businesses, organizations, art, nonprofits, social inventions…

I am excited to see this become the new norm — to see many more people wake up to the realization that they don’t have to be a wage slave or an employee, but can instead choose to be creators, artists, shapers of the world around them, entrepreneurs. If you find these ideas and trends as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Ron’s book The Fourth Economy for a much more in-depth look at the entrepreneurial revolution he predicts will sweep across the world.

I only hope we can play a small role in this huge societal shift with what we’re doing here and at inside The HERO Project, by enabling many more ambitious trailblazers to use their inherent abilities to create and shape things around them to help move the world forward.

 

You are the pioneers of the Fourth Economy. Here’s to creating an improved, more connected, whole, healed, better society through entrepreneurship!