Hey Contrarians,

Our team’s read a lot of books about making money. Want to know the truth?

50% were a humongous waste of time and 25% felt just plain wrong.

But the top 1%… That’s where the life-changing stuff was. The interesting ideas and challenging perspectives we keep coming back to. The tools that can pay dividends as you work to make money, build it up, keep it, and enjoy it.

So today we wanted to break down lessons and frameworks from 15 of these books, rapid fire.

The goal: get you to read one of them before the year ends.

Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

✔️ Make it → How to change your mindset around money

✔️ Built it → How to understand the language of money

✔️ Keep it → How to keep your money

✔️ Enjoy it → How to spend it without being a rich, miserable f***

Make it → How to change your mindset around money

1. Mindset

This whole segment is primarily about mindset, so let’s start with a book by that name.

• Why read? → Quickly learn why you want to hire, marry, and work with those who have a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed one (and how to spot them). A growth mindset is the belief that your intelligence, skills, and capabilities are not fixed. No matter what your base ability is, your drive to learn, remain positive, and be resilient is what churns out results.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: did I make my best effort? If so, you may be outscored but you will never lose.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Listen

2. Principles

You have to establish the principles by which you live your life. You need that backbone. They can change as you grow, but you can’t navigate life purposefully without them.

• Why read? → You’ll steal a billionaire investor’s homework — and lots of it. This is so rare in finance, an industry incentivized to keep its secrets secret. You’ll also walk away with your own principles to help navigate decisions.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Great questions are a much better indicator of future success than great answers.”
  
  
• Wild story → At Dalio’s firm, Bridgewater, every employee has a “baseball card” — viewable by any other employee — where they are given performance ratings across numerous categories.
  
  
• Framework to steal → 5 steps to accomplishing anything: Set goals, identify problems standing in the way, diagnose the root causes of those problems, design plans to get around them, and implement the solutions.
  
  
• Listen or read? → It’s long but worth a read

3. Choose Yourself and Side Hustle Bible

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary in these books, but they offer practical tactics that can lead to pretty darn awesome results.

• Why read? → If you don’t choose yourself, you’ll likely die miserable. You’ll also learn tactics for generating ideas.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen. You will resent people. You will do a bad job. You’ll have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on. You will make less money. And yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying ‘I did it again.’”
  
  
• Framework → Idea generation is like weightlifting. You need to train that muscle. Write down at least 10 ideas every day. Get in the reps.
  
  
• Listen or read? → Listen

4. Economic Facts & Fallacies

If you want to be richer than 9 out of 10 people you can’t do what 9 out of 10 people do. You have to be a contrarian, and this is a FANTASTIC book to understand what it means to think like one in today’s world.

• Why read? → This book will help you understand how to sort through truths and fallacies across economic issues.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Read

5. Rich Dad Poor Dad

We’ve disagreed with Robert on a few things (video here). But this one’s a classic, and great for anyone making real money for the first time.

• Why read? → This book is like money-making 101, giving you frameworks for debt, liabilities, assets, and cash flow.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Rich people acquire assets. The poor and the middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Read

6. Zero to One

This is a popular one in Silicon Valley, but its lessons are gold for anyone building anywhere.

• Why read? → This book teaches you ways to think for yourself, take big swings, and why the two are important.
  
  
• Favorite quotes → “The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.” Also, “The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Listen

Build it → How to understand the language of money

7. The 48 Laws of Power

This will mess with your mind. In a great way. It’s got all the truths about power (and thus money) that no one openly shares but you should know.

• Why read? → The powerful operate within the bounds of these laws. It will help you identify where you could have more power over your own life.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Attention is the most important commodity of the 21st century. If you want to influence people, don’t change people’s minds, shift their attention.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → It’s a little complex, but it’s a read

8. $100M Offers

Lots of folks say this book completely changed their views on pricing and copywriting. It may not be a groundbreaker for everyone, but it’s super practical and threaded together flawlessly.

• Why read? → This is a must-read for anyone struggling with product-market fit or if you want to learn how to sell.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “The degree of pain will be proportional to the price you will be able to charge.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Read

9. Never Split The Difference

Much of life is a series of negotiations. This book teaches you how to approach them.

• Why read? → To bend your counterparty’s reality. A tad manipulative? Yes. Extremely useful? Yes.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”
  
  
• Framework → When somebody asks you something, pause for a few seconds. This will leave the counterparty feeling uncomfortable so they will jump in and fill the silence. This will lead to a decrease in their position and an increase in yours.
  
  
• Listen or read? → Definitely read. Maybe even highlight lines or take some notes.

10. The One Thing

Lots of busy people in our community recommend this one.

• Why read? → It’s helpful for anyone who feels overwhelmed with too many tasks and helps you think through finding the 20% of tasks that drive 80% of the results.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “You can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.”
  
  
• Framework → Goal-setting to the now. Break down your long-term goals into what you can be doing right now to achieve them. Someday → 5 years → 1 year → monthly → weekly → daily → right now.
  
  
• Listen or read? → Either way, you’ll come back to this one again and again

11. The Long and the Short of It

The subtitle says it all. It’s a guide to “finance and investment for normally intelligent people who aren’t in the industry.”

• Why read? → You aren’t an idiot, but you might be an idiot at finance. It’s not an easy read, but it presents a well-written and comprehensive guide on investing strategies and frameworks.
  
  
• Favorite quote → “Three simple rules — pay less, diversify more, and be contrarian — will serve almost everyone well.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Read (there’s a great glossary of financial terms at the end)

Keep it → How to keep your money

12. Good to Great

Is this the greatest book ever? No. But the concepts are valuable for managers, CEOs, and other leaders in understanding how when you blend “a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get a magical alchemy resulting in superior performance.”

• Why read? → To help you understand “how good companies, mediocre companies, and even bad companies can achieve enduring greatness.”
  
  
• Favorite quote → First line of the book: “Good is the enemy of great.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Listen on 1.5x speed

13. Only the Paranoid Survive

If one thing is guaranteed, it’s change. This book outlines how Intel’s former leader helped the computing biz anticipate, address, and adapt to change.

• Why read? → It offers relatable and important insights into challenges leaders face from someone who led a globally important brand.
  
  
• Favorite quote → A micro-quote with a macro impact: “Strategic change doesn’t just start a the top. It starts with your calendar.”
  
  
• Listen or read? → Listen

Enjoy it → How to spend your money without being a rich, miserable f***

14. Your Money or Your Life

You might like the ideas in this book, or you might hate ‘em. But we’ll be damned if this book doesn’t at least make you think about how to be more intentional with your money.

• Why read? → A great read for refocusing your money mindset, learning how to spend money according to values, and for those into the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement.
  
  
• Listen or read? → Read

15. Adventure Capitalist

This is a travel diary. But it’s also much more than that. The author made it big on Wall Street, peace’d out to travel the world, and tells the tale with a focus on local investment opportunities.

• Why read? → If your dream is to make a ton of money while adventuring & traveling the world, this is the book for you. It will help you see the world through a lens of curiosity and exploration.
  
  
• Listen or read? → This one’s a good listen

Here’s the deal…

A gym only works if you show up and lift the weights. 3 sets of 10 reps across 10 exercises and suddenly you’ve got a workout under your belt. Do that every day for a month, and you’ll start seeing results.

Books are no different. You get a set of pages in each day, and in a few week’s time you can see the progress you’ve made.

Our goal is to push some of you to get that mental gym membership today — to start reading one of these books today. Not once 2024 starts, no, but well before 2023 ends.

If you’re one of the few who decide to pick one up, let us know. We’d love to hear which you chose.

✔️ What’d you think of this week’s newsletter? Hit reply to let us know!

✔️ Check out our Contrarian Community. Learn how to buy your first (or next) business with our expert guidance, support, and accountability.

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