I want to keep a list of the best and most influential books I've read. These are books packed with value and each has had a considerable impact on my life.

Here's the list for anyone interested, each is linked to a quick summary of why and how it had an impact on me.

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Table of Contents

• Currently Reading
  • Zero to Sold - Arvid Kahl
  • The Millionaire Fastlane - MJ DeMarco
• Business & Psychology
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
  • 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
  • The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
• Lifestyle Design
  • 4-Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris
  • Company of One - Paul Jarvis
• Personal Finance
  • Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki
  • Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
  • Master the Money Game - Tony Robbins
• Team Management & Culture
  • High Output Management - Andrew Grove
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
• Honorable Mentions
  • I Will Teach You To Be Rich - Ramit Sethi

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Zero to Sold

I'm currently digging into this book. I love software businesses and can't wait to hear all of the exciting stories and lessons learned from Arvid Kahl.

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The Millionaire Fastlane

I'm a big personal finance junkie, so naturally I'm going to read the book that teaches you the mindset of the ultra-successful people. So far I've been enjoying this read. It does an excellent job of distinguishing the strategies of 'get rich slowly' by saving and investing vs. the 'fastlane' approach by building companies and creating your own assets.

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How to Win Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie teaches us how to win friends, be liked, and overall improve our interactions, relationships, and outcomes when working with people.

I love this book. The title can be a little deceiving because our goal isn't to influence or manipulate people, but this book does dive deep enough to help you understand how your actions can drive certain reactions and behaviors from people.

It's a psychological, mind-blowing read that just reminds you of basic things that we don't usually always think about but have a large impact on how people perceive and think about us.

If you're interested in improving how others perceive you and value being likable, highly looked up to ,and respected - this is the book that will do it.

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen Covey is a mastermind around human psychology and how to be the most effective individual that you can be.

It covers topics such as how to interact and work with people such that everyone wins and gets what they want.

How to think about situations and approach them in a way such that you know the direction and purpose of your effort from the moment you begin putting effort into something.

Even simple things like, how to be more proactive and do and get the things you want rather than waiting for them to maybe eventually happen.

This is a great book for anyone interested in improving their personal interactions, making deals and negotiating, and overall getting outcomes in life that they want.

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The Lean Startup

This is a great book for anyone interested in building a software business.

The Lean Startup walks you through the process of creating a startup, but with an emphasis on the Lean process. That is a true scientific and methodical approach to building features and products that help people, and iterating on things by getting feedback and treating everything as an experiment.

You'll learn things like how to build an MVP that really accomplishes the goal of an MVP. How to not spend time building extra features or guessing what users need. Build the bare minimum product that delivers value and iterate from there.

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Rich Dad Poor Dad

This book is one of the most commonly recommended books in the personal finance community. It's a book I can't wait to come back to, and plan to reread many, many times.

It gets a lot of flack for not being "perfect" advise, and I don't disagree. There are a lot of comments throughout that bash on the stock market and Kiyosaki has some strong opinions about certain investments. But regardless of the specific investments he does a fantastic job of changing how you think about buying things.

In short, buying assets creates wealth and spending money on liabilities destroys it.

This book does a phenomenal job of setting you up for a massive paradigm shift. It will literally change your mindset on work and money. How you justify spending money and what you spend money on will never be the same.

This has been without a doubt the most influential book for me, and has forever changed my mindset and approach to investing and personal finance.

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4-Hour Work Week

This book has a massive cult following and rightly so. It challenges you think differently about how you currently live, work, and spend your time. Don't be surprised if you finish the book and have a sudden desire to quit your job or ask your boss for some changes to be made.

This book also is so so actionable. Tim lays out not only the systems he recommends to scale your impact like hiring virtual assistants and delegating things you do, but also gives you literal links and recommendations throughout the book so you can take action immediately.

It challenges society's expectation that the only way you can make a stable income and retire later in life is by working a 9-to-5 job, only to realize when you are older that you are too tired and don't have any time left to do the things you've always wanted to do.

I highly, highly recommend this book for everyone. Even if you love your job and don't plan on quitting, it will make sure you are educated and can think independently about your own work-life balance. You spend more than half your waking hours working for your 9-to-5, so it's critical that you don't forget about your non-work life.

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High Output Management

Andy Grove was the CEO and leader of Intel and is largely responsible for growing it into the massive company it is today.

In High Output Management, Grove dives deep into how management styles can have an impact on the output of a team. Specifically how, as a manager, you can scale your impact and ultimately have a much bigger impact on a team by enabling every member of the team to have a bigger impact.

It's a great read for anyone who is interested in management and improving their impact as a manager.

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Closing Thoughts

Please let me know if there's a book that you think should be on my list on Twitter.