My love for Business Books and Why I’m Giving them all Away
TL;DR: I’m giving away 66 AWESOME business books to one lucky winner. Enter to win here.
I grew up around business books.
Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.
My mom was a hustler. For a while she literally worked three jobs (personal trainer, real estate agent, and pest exterminator) to support us.
Sometimes she bought the dream — I remember stuffing envelopes on the floor in our 1-bedroom apartment (I had the futon in the living room) to try to get ahead — but she was trying. Sometimes it worked out well.
As far back as I can remember, business, motivational, and self-help books were all around. From Zig Ziglar to Tony Robbins, from Nightingale Conant newsletters to Think and Grow Rich… these were all around me growing up.
To get away from it all — the stress of the multiple jobs, school, and nosy… I mean helpful… extended family — my mom and I would take trips to the coast. I grew up somewhere between Oregon and California and the coast was about 3 hours away.
We’d drive over — sometimes just for the day with enough time to touch the water before we had to drive back home — and we’d listen to business books on tape. No wonder she had a habit of falling asleep at the wheel.
Being a boy, I would tell my mom it was weird, though secretly I was really into it, and in hindsight those are some of my most cherished memories.
Certified Unemployable Millionaire
My mom got this hustle from her dad. He was an entrepreneur to the core. A self-made man that had tried many things, and failed at many things, and was starting to fail less when I first met him.
By the time he died — I was around 13 at the time — he had made it to the magical “Millionaire” status. An early reality check for me was that everyone in my extended family was ecstatic… after all, we all got to share in that big ol’ pie he baked for us, right?
But my mom was devastated… the man she grew up admiring and longing to be like — she told me stories of his grocery store, his clothing store, his real estate investments, and how he was even a comptroller for the railroad as it expanded commercial operations into Alaska — had died.
Whatever he might leave to us wasn’t enough to make up for his not being there. It turned out to not be anything we’d have to worry about anyway; the vultures descended and more valuable life lessons were bestowed upon me.
But that short negative end did little to tarnish the otherwise awesome story of my grandpa. While I didn’t get to learn many things directly from him, I’ll never forget his business card that read simply: “Certified Unemployable.”
It was my mom that carried on my Grandpa’s legacy and who ultimately instilled in me the drive and desire that I have. Part of that legacy, and part of that lesson, was to never stop learning.
Shocking Answer to a Simple Question
In the early part of my career, as I was bouncing around trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I worked for a guy that seemed to be super-rich. I asked him one day what his favorite business books were. He told me:
“Real business people don’t read business books… they’re too busy doing business.”
I never got over that. The ego on someone to assume they know it all. That they can’t learn anything new.
I realized he wasn’t rich. He may have had money, but he was missing something. His ego drove him to believe he knew it all. I hope he did.
Everyday, I learn something new. Most of the time what I learn is that I actually know very little. The more I learn, the more I realize there’s a lot more to know.
Surround Yourself with Greatness
A lesson found in many of the 66 books I’m giving away is that your success is the average of those you surround yourself with, so surround yourself with greatness.
Hang out with people that elevate you, not by propping you up or boosting your ego, but by motivating you, believing in you, and frankly, giving you a challenge to keep up or surpass them. It’s healthy.
But for me it’s unnatural. My natural inclination is to go the other way. I fight that fight every day.
So when I say I’m fortunate to have some really awesome people surrounding me today, I mean that.
And one of those guys recently started selling a Wordpress plugin that allows you to easily create giveaways on your site. You can use these giveaways to generate leads, build your list, there’s some social components, etc.
It looked neat — and his giveaways of book bundles by Seth Godin and Tim Ferris were cool — but I chalked it up to something that I’d never use.
Attachment and Reflection
The other day I caught myself staring at this massive wall of books in my office. I love — and love having — those books, but I realized that the last time I interacted with the pile was to add even more books to it.
So I did that thing that Buddhists do where you realize you’re attached to something for no actual reason, which means the next thought is “I need to get rid of this.”
It was in that moment that I reflected on just how much impact these books have had on my life and my career in SaaS Marketing, the “Growth Hacking” that’s all the rage, Customer Success where I’m focused now, and everything else, frankly.
Some books are life-altering; Influence: The Principles of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini is a perfect example of that.
Other books were recently mind-blowing, like Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday, or massively inspiring like Anything you Want by Derek Sivers.
Still other books are both a window into the past, like Breakthrough Advertising from the 1960s or The Robert Collier Letter Book from the 1930s, but their lessons in marketing are seemingly more relevant today than ever before.
Some books are just plain business-changing, like Nail it Then Scale it, Crossing the Chasm, Predictable Revenue, The Lean Startup, Positioning, and many, many more.
I’ve got most of these on Kindle and the others I don’t actually reference that often, so it’s time to spread the wealth and lighten my load.
They’re just sitting there collecting dust when they could help someone else as much as they’ve helped me… or hopefully even more.
And it’s time to pass them on.
The Great Giveaway Experiment
But how am I going to give these books away?
Wait. Didn’t Noah create a giveaway plugin for Wordpress? I guess I do have a need for that after all.
I’m giving away all 66 books to one lucky winner. All 66 titles… that’s over 100lbs of books. A value of $1,100 if you bought them today on Amazon.
These books cover a range of topics, including: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Pricing, Marketing, Sales, Psychology, Copywriting, and much more. I put together this Google Spreadsheet that has all the details including Amazon links if you’d like to buy it yourself.
But let me be clear, this effort is not completely altruistic. I intend to learn from this experiment in doing a “giveaway,” specifically to see how I can grow my email list and my social network.
So enter to win and you’ll get a special link to share that gives you extra entries when others sign-up using that link. More entries means more chances to win.
Never stop learning.