Reading list: 5 books I’ve read and loved this year (and what’s next on my reading list)

I've learned that most of the very successful people I've met spend a *lot* of time reading. But I think it's more about the art of reading itself, rather than the actual “strategies” or “tactics” in the books. In today's episode, I'm sharing the books that I've loved reading this year and what's next on my reading list.

– How reading can impact your business, even if you're not reading business books.
– The 5 books I've read about money, ideas, risk, leadership and change and how they've helped me.
– The 3 books I've tagged to read next and how they may help you too.

 

 
Today, I'm sharing with you a couple of the books that I've read and loved this year that have had a bit of an impact on my business, as well as a couple of the ones that are coming up next on my reading list. Most of the successful people that I have come across in business spend a lot of time reading books and what I've noticed is I don't think it's so much about the actual strategies or the tactics that the books tell you about. 

It's more about the actual art of reading. It's the ideas that come up when you're in that meditative state of reading. It's the new perspectives and new ways of seeing the world that you might not have otherwise considered but now you're seeing it through the author's perspective and this is why I'm not a fan of those book summaries, right?

Now this year I haven't actually read a lot of purely business books. I haven't read a lot of the tactical stuff because I feel like I don't get that much out of them anymore. It's a lot of people just regurgitating the same stuff that we've heard over and over again. But the books that I have read that aren't business-related have had a really big impact on my business.

 

Non-business-related books that I recommend.

Now, these are five of them that I highly recommend getting onto your reading list because I enjoyed them so much. 

 

#1: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. 

This was a really easy read. I got through about 80% of this book on a four-hour plane flight and the book dives deep into why we make the decisions that we make when it comes to money. Making money, saving money, spending money, investing money and I actually really love this quote from the book that I think will give you a great idea of why this book is relevant. 

So the quote is, every decision people make with money is justified by taking the information they have at the moment and plugging it into their unique mental model of how the world works.

Those people can be misinformed, they can have incomplete information, they can be bad at math, they can be persuaded by rotten marketing, and they can have no idea what they are doing. They can misjudge the consequences of their actions. And this book looks at the reasoning behind why we make the decisions that we make. It's so fascinating, especially if you're somebody who thinks your relationship with money could be better, and maybe you feel a little bit of shame about the decisions that you've made around money. This book will shift that big time.

 

#2: Find Your Red Thread by Tamsyn Webster. 

Now, I saw Tamsyn speak at Social Media Marketing World in 2022, and after I watched her keynote, I downloaded her book and then I didn't read it until this year. It sat there in my Kindle library for way too long and the key idea behind Tamsyn's book is that the best way to make your ideas easier is to build the stories that people will tell themselves about your idea. 

So if you are trying to sell someone on any idea, whether that's something in your marketing, whether it's your offer, whether it's something in your sales processes, it's so much easier to build a story around it and to build the story that your people, your audience are going to tell themselves about it because if you just tell somebody, this is what it is, this is the way it is, you're wrong, this idea is right, they're probably going to not pay attention or they are going to be coming up with a million reasons why you're wrong and they are right. 

So instead, Tamsyn shares a really actionable framework. This is probably the closest book to a business book in this list and she shares this framework around how to build the story that people are going to tell themselves around your idea.

 

#3: QF by Richard de Crepingie.

It is definitely not a business book but I really probably have not pronounced that well. it's one of the best leadership books that I've ever read and it's about Qantas Flight 32 which in 2010, had an engine explode shortly after takeoff out of Singapore's Changi airport. After the engine exploded, all of the things started going wrong, right? All of the different systems in the plane started going wrong.

The author was the captain of the flight and basically, they had to go into crisis management mode and land this plane safely with 469 people on board. It's such a great leadership book because it looks at how the captain, the author managed to keep his team from panicking and also managed to keep the flight attendants and all of the passengers from panicking when they could literally look out of the window and see that there were holes in the wing. 

It's also really just fascinating and weirdly it's made me feel a lot safer flying. I don't know why, but it just has made me realise that planes don't just fall out of the sky.

 

#4: Against All Odds by Craig Challen and Dr. Richard Harris.

So these are the two Aussies who helped to rescue the kids who were trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand a couple of years ago. This is such a great book about leadership and about risk.

So even though it's not a business book, it was really interesting to look at how they both displayed leadership skills and how they weighed up the risk of sedating and diving these kids out of the flooded cave versus the inevitability that the kids were going to die if they didn't get rescued. 

I'm also currently reading Dr. Richard Harris's next book, his most recent book called The Art of Risk, which is very relevant to anyone who has started their own business because starting a business is a huge risk. Entrepreneurship is such a risk. Most of the time it requires some kind of risk. There's never a guarantee that anything is going to work out the way you want it to and we always have to weigh up that risk versus the reward. And I think in business it's more true than anywhere else. There's always going to be the risk that your new idea for an offer Isn't going to sell, but then the potential upside is that it does sell and you help a bunch of people and it becomes really profitable.

So there's always the risk versus that reward and I think any books where we're looking at risks that people have taken, can be such a great reminder that risk is a very normal part of life and it's a very normal required part of success.

 

#5: The Catalyst, How to Change Anyone's Mind by Jonah Berger.

If you are a coach, course creator, or marketer, you are in the business of behaviour change. And helping someone to change their behaviour is really challenging because humans are wired to keep doing the same things over and over again because it keeps us safe. If we can predict how something is going to turn out, then we are going to stay alive because we know, oh, we've done this before, it's worked out and it's safe. Our brains are wired to keep us safe. 

Now, this book walks you through Jonah's framework for removing the barriers and the roadblocks to change and creating the catalyst for someone to change and this actually might be the most useful marketing book that I've read this year, even though it's not technically a marketing book or even a business book, it's really useful because so much of marketing, sales, and then obviously working with my students in my courses.

So much of that requires taking them along this journey of change. And like I said, if you're a coach, a course creator, a marketer, or any kind of digital product creator, you are in the business of behavior change, you will find this book really useful. 

 

Books that are coming up next on my reading list.

 

#1: 4, 000 Weeks time and how to use it by Oliver Berkman. 

I actually listened to Oliver on the Imperfects podcast recently, and it was such an interesting episode and such an interesting interview about how we manage our time. And I want to read this book because I'm so guilty of saying yes to everything and thinking that I have endless time to get all of the things done when in reality I need to be a little bit more selective with what I say yes to and a little bit more intentional with the time that I do have.

 

#2: Alchemy, The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland.

This book is a book about ideas, about being less logical, and about thinking outside of the box. And I'm excited to read this one because I am such an ideas person. I love reading about ideas, where they come from, and what we do with them.

And I don't know, I'm interested to hear just a different perspective on ideas that work and don't work.

 

#3: Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer.

Most of us spend way too much time trying to change and control the things that we can't actually change or control when it would be so much easier to just accept these things and stop wasting our energy trying to change or control them and instead focus on the things that we actually can control.

 

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