Dan Martell - These 11 Books Reveal the Secrets of the Rich

00:00:00.000 I read over 111 business biographies and these 11 will make you rich.

00:00:06.600 I grew up as a 16-year-old lost, broken drug addict.

00:00:11.520 By 27, I made my first million dollars and today I fly around on my own private jet

00:00:15.620 and I have a fleet of supercars and have a beautiful family

00:00:18.200 and none of that would happen if I didn't read books.

00:00:20.380 My life was built by books.

00:00:22.540 When kids come up to me in my McLaren or my Ferrari and they ask me,

00:00:25.480 what do you do?

00:00:26.120 I tell them I read books, specifically biographies

00:00:28.860 because that's where I'm going to learn

00:00:30.760 from people that have been there before

00:00:32.180 that have built some of the most impressive companies

00:00:34.420 in the world and understand that I'm not alone

00:00:36.360 and I'm normal.

00:00:37.220 Like I'm just like them in many ways,

00:00:39.020 maybe at different eras in time,

00:00:40.820 but it helps me feel not crazy.

00:00:43.120 And that's why, you know,

00:00:44.180 I went through all 111 biographies that I've ever read

00:00:47.300 and I've distilled it down into the 11

00:00:49.520 that I think are the best.

00:00:51.020 The ones that are really going to resonate with you,

00:00:52.800 where you're at starting off as an entrepreneur

00:00:54.400 that'll really inspire you to think bigger,

00:00:56.500 to feel normal and hopefully take action.

00:00:58.580 So the first book is Open by Andre Agassi.

00:01:01.520 It's written so well, like the writing style.

00:01:04.400 And I know what you're thinking.

00:01:05.420 He's a tennis player.

00:01:06.300 What does it have to do with business?

00:01:08.020 Let me tell you, this book is about performance

00:01:12.600 and mindset and growth.

00:01:15.100 Most business problems are personal problems.

00:01:17.660 They just show up at our work.

00:01:19.260 This book taught me more about how to succeed in business

00:01:22.780 than pretty much every other one on the list.

00:01:24.960 Now, here's a cool fun fact.

00:01:25.980 the ghost writer who worked with him also wrote another book on this list that i think is the best

00:01:32.220 biography ever written in the history of man once i tell you what that one is later in this video

00:01:37.020 be sure to come back and read this one because you will not be able to put it down what i loved

00:01:41.660 about it is it talks about the importance of honesty and authenticity in both sports and in

00:01:46.300 life like being yourself which a lot of people they're always wearing masks not for the most part

00:01:50.860 who they really are here's a guy that was groomed from birth to become a world-class champion from

00:01:57.100 his dad he's a bit demanding of a man and he struggled on court off court he had won eight

00:02:01.980 grand slams i mean he is the most decorated tennis player in the history so being able to get behind

00:02:07.500 the scenes and understand the impact from his family his mentors his coaches and personal

00:02:11.900 professional development and how all that came together for him to show how he embraced the

00:02:16.220 change the adaptability he had to learn in order to succeed if you want to read a book that's all

00:02:20.380 all about pursuing excellence and never giving up on your goals, read this. My dad for a long time

00:02:24.900 didn't believe in me. I would have loved somebody that saw my potential and pushed me to be the

00:02:29.000 best, but it was actually the opposite. But what happened is that even in that scenario, I ended up

00:02:34.080 wanting to step up and prove my dad that I can do it. You know, my story is a little different

00:02:38.420 where I grew up in, because I got in so much trouble as a kid, if I was just sober, he would

00:02:42.100 have been happy. He didn't really believe I would do anything with my life. So even though it was

00:02:45.800 the opposite, it was kind of his way of pushing me. And here's what I've learned from that experience

00:02:50.040 that might help you is that either way can work.

00:02:52.240 But the cool part is,

00:02:53.020 is nobody else has to change for you to win.

00:02:55.440 That's a big idea.

00:02:56.280 Number two is Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson,

00:02:59.680 the biography.

00:03:00.500 The original one I read a long time ago

00:03:02.440 and I reread this one recently.

00:03:04.200 For me, Richard Branson is kind of the guy.

00:03:06.460 He's the billionaire every other billionaire wants to be like.

00:03:08.860 I had the privilege of spending a week with him

00:03:10.680 in Verbier, Switzerland.

00:03:12.140 And he truly is somebody that integrates both work and life

00:03:17.060 in a way that's playful, fun, and super creative.

00:03:20.040 In this book, you're going to learn his crazy stories about how he embraced risk-taking and

00:03:24.620 honestly became an entrepreneur at the age of 16 years old. How to focus on building a brand.

00:03:29.920 Virgin is one of the top brands in the world and a company culture rather than just making profits.

00:03:34.740 Turns out you do that, you make more profit and then really disrupt traditional industries by

00:03:38.740 challenging the status quo. Every business has been doing things that way. Why? Because it's

00:03:43.300 always been done that way. When you take a fresh perspective and you look at it and you say,

00:03:46.280 why don't we try this? Why don't we do this? This is what you're going to learn in this book.

00:03:49.740 is how to prioritize innovation and customer satisfaction.

00:03:52.720 At the end of the day,

00:03:53.340 customer decides if they're gonna spend money.

00:03:55.320 And if you can find innovative ways to be competitive,

00:03:57.920 that's where the opportunity lies.

00:03:59.300 He started his first business, a magazine at 16 years old

00:04:02.800 and it was called Student.

00:04:03.980 He's always had a passion for creating content

00:04:06.220 and publishing and creating art essentially.

00:04:08.980 And that's why he went from that to the record company

00:04:11.420 to all the other companies.

00:04:13.360 Virgin has over 400 businesses

00:04:15.380 under the Virgin group of businesses with two CEOs.

00:04:18.260 You wanna talk about scale?

00:04:19.740 read the book. Number three is The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horwitz. What I love

00:04:25.500 about Ben, I'm a tech guy, software guy. He's my peeps. I mean, what's crazy is I was reading his

00:04:30.500 blog for almost a decade before he ever wrote the book. And what's neat is he starts every blog post

00:04:35.120 with a rap leer. If you saw a picture of Ben Horwitz, you would laugh because this guy does

00:04:40.140 not look like a rap fan and he couldn't be more. It's actually quite awesome. In his book, he goes

00:04:45.540 through some crazy stories. You got to understand, sometimes we think we're having a bad day until

00:04:50.340 you read a book like this and you realize that can't be real. Somebody has to create a movie

00:04:55.460 around the stories in this book. And what I love is that he just teaches through these crazy stories

00:05:01.200 leadership and what's required to make tough decisions when you're facing essentially headwinds

00:05:05.780 straight on, you know, how to embrace uncertainty and be prepared to pivot when necessary. When I

00:05:10.620 was building my company Sphere, there was a point where I was like, I really need to choose. I have

00:05:14.660 three viable businesses or business units. And I had to make the uncomfortable decision to shut

00:05:18.980 one down to essentially double down on the other two because doing all three at our size at that

00:05:22.900 time wasn't the right move. I got inspired by this book. A couple of years ago, my company

00:05:27.580 unfortunately had to essentially transition over a third of the staff, which was a crazy cultural

00:05:33.860 reset. Man, you just feel like the worst person in the world. And I know I did, but having read

00:05:38.880 Ben's book, I don't love what I got to do right now, but it is the right decision to continue

00:05:43.580 playing the game, being in the game to finally win.

00:05:46.540 See, if you understood how many people

00:05:47.980 you admire in business,

00:05:49.120 that the reason why you know who they are

00:05:50.720 because they didn't give up,

00:05:52.080 it would give you so much more hope for the future

00:05:54.380 and staying power that is actually the reason

00:05:56.600 why most people win is because they just have more grit.

00:05:59.260 Number four is Trailblazer, the Mark Benioff biography.

00:06:02.240 Now to say I'm a fan of Mark Benioff,

00:06:04.880 there's only two people in the world

00:06:06.160 I would actually stop doing what I'm doing

00:06:08.300 to go take a job working for.

00:06:09.820 One of them is Steve Jobs and the other one is Mark Benioff.

00:06:12.580 He is not only the founder of salesforce.com,

00:06:15.240 which a lot of big companies use and many other platforms,

00:06:18.100 but he's also the guy that set SaaS in motion.

00:06:21.520 When people hear software as a service or the term SaaS,

00:06:24.180 it's like a technical term.

00:06:25.760 Prior to salesforce.com,

00:06:27.060 most companies installed software on their server

00:06:30.660 in a data center.

00:06:31.940 They did not host it in what we call the cloud

00:06:34.860 and pay monthly to have logins.

00:06:37.660 Like every software product you pay subscription

00:06:40.240 every month for,

00:06:41.380 you should thank this guy for because he pioneered that whole movement that essentially allowed me to

00:06:46.940 build a career. So I'm a big fan of his work. The book goes into deep details around how to

00:06:51.480 build disruptive technology in different industries, how business models work, how to

00:06:55.840 prioritize customer success and satisfaction. He actually created the concept of what many people

00:07:00.820 call customer success, but prior to that was called revenue retention. His leadership style

00:07:05.160 of leading with vision and purpose and passion, it inspired me in all levels from my first tech

00:07:10.040 company to current day one of my favorite parts about mark is his philanthropic work and it's the

00:07:15.420 one one one it's one percent of your profit one percent of your resources and one percent of your

00:07:19.260 time committed to projects and people that you care about to want to help and i just think that

00:07:24.480 idea if every company in the world got behind the one percent idea it would just make all these

00:07:28.440 resources available and he's just somebody that i think is worth studying and this book gives you

00:07:33.500 the inside behind the scenes aspect of every part of his life number five is founders at work by

00:07:39.080 jessica livingston now let me tell you why this book is special i read it early in my tech career

00:07:44.520 and why i fell in love with it is jessica had the opportunity to interview founders from paypal

00:07:50.280 gmail 37signals and really unpacked their early days of founding and what it looked like and how

00:07:56.840 it felt she compiled all these cool stories from all these founders and put it in a book so in many

00:08:02.040 ways it's like multiple biographies it provides insights into building successful products and

00:08:07.560 scaling startups and honestly other valuable lessons on leadership hiring and just company

00:08:11.880 culture. One of the biggest pivots I remember was building this company Clarity and I was adamant

00:08:16.940 and I had to suck it up when nobody used it the way I wanted them to do it and I pivoted from a 0.59

00:08:21.660 productivity app to a marketplace. This book's full of examples. They had to be honest with the lack

00:08:26.840 of traction in their product. Number six is Snowball by the man, the legend Warren Buffett,

00:08:31.760 the biography. Let me be honest with you. This is a thick one. This one was tough to read. It was

00:08:36.700 hard. The early days are interesting, but obviously once he meets Charlie, that's when

00:08:41.000 things get super fun. If you want to learn how to build long-term wealth and understand how to

00:08:46.920 think long-term, this is the book. It's a masterclass in being consistent for decades, not

00:08:52.220 days. He goes over continuous learning and how to have intellectual curiosity. And Warren talks

00:08:57.700 about this all the time. He's like, I skip to work. I enjoy working. Some of the highlights

00:09:01.820 is Buffett's principles on frugality,

00:09:04.200 his concepts are on integrity, hiring leaders,

00:09:06.840 and really simplicity in business.

00:09:08.300 That's the coolest part.

00:09:09.400 If you wanna get deeper insights

00:09:10.840 into Buffett's investment strategies

00:09:12.300 and decision-making process

00:09:13.580 and get lessons on risk management, patience,

00:09:16.740 and emotional discipline in investing,

00:09:18.660 this is the book you're gonna wanna read.

00:09:20.420 Number seven is the book Titan,

00:09:22.720 that is the biography on John D. Rockefeller.

00:09:26.380 You know what the craziest thing about this book

00:09:28.120 when you're reading it?

00:09:28.840 Is realizing that when he was alive,

00:09:30.980 there was no email. There was really no fax machines. There was no automation. There was

00:09:35.860 no technology. He built this empire on the backside of creative communication, creative

00:09:42.500 vision casting. It was so cool to not only hear his upbringing and where he grew up and just some

00:09:47.660 of the challenges he faced, but the way he innovated even in the oil industry and really

00:09:52.220 tried to create a monopoly, whether you like that or not. I mean, it was really impressive. He was

00:09:56.460 able to do it. If you want to learn about cool concepts like vertical integration, which I think

00:10:00.360 is awesome. You know, try to increase your margin and really how to be aggressive in competition.

00:10:04.680 If you're a bit of a wallflower and it will teach you a completely different lens on how to compete

00:10:09.720 in business. So this one goes deep on the evolution of the American economy, specifically during the

00:10:14.440 late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's kind of neat. It's like going back in time. Now I know

00:10:19.440 some people, if you're like me, you're too Canadian and you don't want to get walked all over. This

00:10:23.420 guy will teach you how to respond, how to compete aggressively. And honestly, just increase what you

00:10:28.820 feel your worth because you'll never get a penny more than you think you deserve this guy felt like

00:10:32.920 he deserved all the pennies number eight is my life in work and autobiography on henry ford from

00:10:39.240 ford motor company if you want to hear some crazy scenarios of where somebody started and the

00:10:45.000 opportunities and honestly the opportunities to make somebody else rich and that person couldn't

00:10:48.960 see that opportunity so mr henry here decides to go do his own thing and not only competes but

00:10:54.320 absolutely revolutionizes the approach to manufacturing including the assembly line one

00:11:00.120 of the most innovative ideas ever to come to manufacturing i study all things manufacturing

00:11:06.280 i think it's actually a great place to look for innovation things like the theory of constraint

00:11:10.980 production flows they essentially did it like one car at a time so one person would work on it the

00:11:16.460 chassis the engine the wheels the doors all of it to his model which is i'm gonna have the chassis

00:11:22.340 roll down the production floor. And then I'll have one person that just does wheels. One person just

00:11:28.200 does electrical. One person just does engine. And because of that, then the person can specialize

00:11:32.960 and the quality goes up. The way the butchers kind of took all the meats and kind of carved the

00:11:38.580 different pieces off the cows and whatnot. He just applied that to the cars. And all of a sudden

00:11:43.180 he created efficiencies and standardizations and really revolutionized mass production.

00:11:48.060 In this book, you learn his absolute commitment

00:11:51.720 to innovation and continuous improvement.

00:11:54.120 Other things I loved about the book

00:11:55.440 was his views on labor relations

00:11:57.140 and the introductions to the $5 workday

00:11:59.480 where he just decided, I don't wanna be cheap.

00:12:02.020 I will pay people the most so that I get the best talent.

00:12:05.980 Henry Ford built the innovation

00:12:07.520 to make sure that that always worked.

00:12:09.560 And I think that is really cool.

00:12:11.360 It's how I manage my life.

00:12:12.620 It really shaped how I build software,

00:12:14.780 how I build companies, how I build people.

00:12:16.500 And I think if you wanna go to the beginning

00:12:18.660 of the beginning, the Model T and Henry Ford

00:12:21.040 is just a great place to stay.

00:12:22.420 Number nine is Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

00:12:25.680 Arguably the most popular biography by most entrepreneurs

00:12:28.880 because Steve was just such an iconic entrepreneur.

00:12:32.260 This book is awesome.

00:12:33.600 I've read pretty much every one

00:12:35.100 of Walter Isaacson's biographies

00:12:37.000 because he just has a way of digging in

00:12:39.500 and collaborating with people in their life

00:12:42.080 or if the person's passed on,

00:12:43.320 getting access to stuff that nobody else gets to.

00:12:45.780 So you will learn about Steve's not only upbringing,

00:12:49.220 his chip on his shoulder,

00:12:50.360 his evolution between Apple to Next and back to Apple,

00:12:54.240 but most specifically,

00:12:55.700 why he had such a relentless pursuit for perfection.

00:12:59.020 In many ways, why that dedication

00:13:01.040 allowed him to create groundbreaking products,

00:13:03.560 like finding the mini hard drive

00:13:05.260 that then powered the iPod that brought us digital music.

00:13:08.580 I mean, thousand songs in our pocket.

00:13:10.300 To do the iPhone before the iPad

00:13:12.700 and decided on that sequencing

00:13:14.520 is a really fascinating concept.

00:13:16.400 But you also dig into the leadership style,

00:13:18.480 his ideas for never settling.

00:13:19.980 What I love about it is that it was very evident

00:13:21.780 that he could tell when he was talking to somebody

00:13:23.480 if they actually put the effort

00:13:25.060 into the result they were looking for.

00:13:27.040 Like, did they actually show up and do the work?

00:13:29.920 And he would challenge people.

00:13:30.940 And the truth is, is anybody that worked with Steve

00:13:33.640 ended up being way better had they not worked with them.

00:13:36.660 They'll all admit to the same thing.

00:13:38.120 If you wanna dive into understanding the ability

00:13:40.260 to anticipate and shape consumer behaviors

00:13:42.400 through innovation, design, marketing.

00:13:44.740 The story of him hiding in the bushes

00:13:46.520 outside an Apple store to spy on customers

00:13:48.880 to see how they interacted with the different products

00:13:51.320 and then use that information to go innovate

00:13:53.420 back at his HQ.

00:13:54.780 That's what made Steve special.

00:13:56.620 My first Mac changed everything.

00:13:58.280 I changed programming from Microsoft and .NET

00:14:00.720 to Ruby on Rails.

00:14:02.140 I didn't want to touch Microsoft products ever again

00:14:04.320 because I just couldn't believe

00:14:05.920 that there was a product design that just felt so great.

00:14:08.580 Number 10 is Elon Musk by our man, Walter Isaacson.

00:14:12.160 I have studied a handful of people

00:14:14.300 more than any other person in the world.

00:14:16.460 Elon's one of those people.

00:14:18.020 I've watched everything he's ever done.

00:14:19.760 The day the podcast with Joe Rogan came out,

00:14:23.600 I told my wife, I'm going to the gym,

00:14:25.740 I'm not doing anything for three and a half hours,

00:14:27.620 and I just sat there on a treadmill watching on my iPad.

00:14:30.840 Joe, dig in to the mind of Elon Musk,

00:14:33.260 because that was really the first long format interview

00:14:35.940 that he ever did.

00:14:36.880 He's done a ton since then.

00:14:38.300 And what I love about this book is that

00:14:40.200 You'll learn about his ambitious goals

00:14:42.600 to colonize Mars and space exploration

00:14:45.160 and why we should be a multi-planetary species.

00:14:48.120 What I love is his engineering line.

00:14:50.700 When I see him tackle problems

00:14:53.080 that for any normal person, they would consider risky,

00:14:56.260 his only philosophy,

00:14:57.720 as long as we're not violating the principle of physics,

00:14:59.920 he's like, we can do this.

00:15:01.060 From satellites to solar systems,

00:15:03.600 to tunnels, to electric cars, to rockets.

00:15:06.400 And what's crazy is most people don't realize this

00:15:08.300 and Walter talks about it,

00:15:09.880 is that every company he started,

00:15:12.260 if you look at them from SpaceX to Tesla

00:15:14.200 to SolarCity to Boring Company to Neuralink,

00:15:17.060 were all required to actually colonize Mars.

00:15:20.380 So some people think that he doesn't know what he's doing.

00:15:22.580 He's so far into the future

00:15:24.920 that he doesn't even bother telling people anymore

00:15:27.640 because he just is like, you know what?

00:15:29.020 I'll just tell them about this

00:15:30.320 because I don't think their brains could connect.

00:15:32.140 I mean, when he talked about creating Tesla

00:15:34.300 to provide a vehicle that makes you money.

00:15:37.800 So instead of a vehicle that depreciates

00:15:39.320 and costs you money.

00:15:40.280 This is now an asset.

00:15:41.800 That's crazy.

00:15:42.840 He's playing chess

00:15:43.780 when everybody else is playing checkers.

00:15:45.520 Some of my favorite ideas

00:15:46.640 that I've learned over the years from Elon

00:15:48.040 is five rules of engineering.

00:15:49.900 One of my favorite rule of the five

00:15:51.820 is don't engineer parts that are not needed.

00:15:54.520 So remove parts.

00:15:55.480 He has this philosophy,

00:15:56.180 if you're not adding 10% of the parts back,

00:15:58.500 then you're not taking enough away.

00:15:59.880 And then my other one is just on vector leadership.

00:16:01.820 This crazy idea of vector being a force and a direction.

00:16:05.660 All we gotta do is get everybody on a team

00:16:07.800 to be pointing in the same direction

00:16:09.360 with a 10 out of 10 force.

00:16:11.040 And that's what great culture

00:16:12.460 and great leadership looks like.

00:16:13.540 And I'm just like so simple in explanation.

00:16:15.860 So if you want to dive into the behind the scenes,

00:16:18.480 his relationship with his dad,

00:16:20.280 the access that Elon gave Walter Isaacson blew my mind.

00:16:23.920 He literally said, come to every meeting,

00:16:25.960 jump on my jet, talk to my family members,

00:16:28.180 talk to my team, talk to the people I've fired,

00:16:30.220 talk to the board, talk to anybody.

00:16:31.960 There's nobody off limit.

00:16:33.140 And then write a book.

00:16:34.320 Would you allow somebody to do that?

00:16:36.080 though. That's what makes Elon, Elon, and Walter captured it perfect. Number 11 is Shoe Dog by Phil

00:16:43.500 Knight, the creator of Nike. Let me tell you this. If you read this biography, it will ruin you for

00:16:50.200 every other one that you got to read. Did Phil Knight actually write this book? It turns out he

00:16:54.700 partnered with a ghostwriter. That same ghostwriter wrote Open by Andre Agassi. It's one of those

00:16:59.980 books where as I started to read it, I realized I need to clear my schedule because I didn't want

00:17:05.100 to stop. I read it in probably three days nonstop. He was just selling other people's products,

00:17:09.640 this Japanese shoe company, and then they try to screw him over and he's like, ah, what do I do?

00:17:14.220 So he ends up manufacturing his own shoes that became Nike. And then there was all these crazy

00:17:19.000 things that had happened to him in the history of the business. Phil Knight earned his wealth.

00:17:23.820 There's a story in here about some tax stuff that happened. Personally, I would have gave up. I

00:17:28.980 would have looked at the math and I said, the math don't math. I'm good. Fold it up. Go do

00:17:32.960 something else. And Phil Knight kept building. It is so well-written, so great, so awesome.

00:17:39.640 You want to learn how to build strong teams and cultures that really know how to foster

00:17:43.320 relationships that I think are crucial to success and build the persistence and resilience. Even

00:17:48.400 when everybody else is ready to give up, you keep pushing. One of my favorite biographies,

00:17:53.900 if you had to start with one, start here, then go to open. Well, maybe not because then it'll

00:17:58.660 ruin you because once you get into like Titan or Snowball, that's going to be some tough reads

00:18:01.940 because this one you couldn't put down.

00:18:03.420 So if you wanna learn how to stay true to your vision,

00:18:05.280 build a brand, an iconic brand, this is the book for you.

00:18:08.500 Those are the 11 biographies that will make you rich.

00:18:11.180 But if you wanna learn the 15 laws of success,

00:18:13.860 click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - June 07, 2024

These 11 Books Reveal the Secrets of the Rich

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