7 Books I Wish I Had Read Earlier

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So I thought I'd bring you guys to my favorite bookstore in the world.

This is a place I used to spend a lot of time in the early days of my career.

I thought I'd bring you guys here to share seven books that have been very useful for me in my life

in my career.

All the way from learning how to make money, how to keep money, how to invest money,

how to build different mental models for my life, how to deal with stressful situations,

how to deal with growing up and going into different seasons of your life.

When I was living in London, I used to come here every Sunday

and just actually sit on that couch over there and read for hours and hours and hours,

and pick up two or three used books.

And I can tell you, Jenny had it on her heart.

That changed my life.

So with that being said, after hundreds of books that I've read here are

seven that I think should be very useful for you.

All right, so starting off with book number one, How to Give Rich by Felix Dennis,

I put this book off for so long.

I actually only read this book maybe two or three years ago, actually because of the title.

Like I saw the title and I was like, okay, cool, nice, another money-making book.

Like, you know, there's nothing in here that I just always going to be very surface level

long story short.

And I thought it was going to be a very tactical self-help businessy book.

But a lot of it was actually just genuine life lessons.

And a lot of it was reflections at the end of someone's life, which I really appreciate.

Like, I'll be honest, I know a lot of people that write books and I know that they write books

just for the sake of saying that they've written a book and I know that in the book,

it's 300 pages of what they could have said literally in five pages.

And one of the things that I love so much about this book, like, genuinely I cannot speak

more highly of this book, is he gives advice on how to do very well financially in life.

I think Felix Dennis amassed a net worth of $500 million or something like that.

And that was, you know, 15, 20 years ago.

But he starts it off in a very interesting way.

He starts it off by basically addressing straight out like, okay, why would a person in my

position write a book like this? And he's like, I'm sipping a five or a $10,000 dollar ball of

one on my private island. And I just don't care anymore. And I really appreciate that.

Because I read a lot of people's books and I get it, you know, you're still in your career,

you're still like living your life. And there's a lot of things that you don't want to say,

maybe that aren't politically correct or maybe you might consider yourself getting cancelled for it.

And he just does not give a s**t like. I think you talk about one season of his life where he spent

literally a hundred million dollars on booze, high end escorts, travels, like just all this crazy

stuff. And I just appreciated the honesty more than anything. And I know that, you know, in life,

if you end up doing well for yourself, there are temptations at every corner. And he's someone

who fell into those temptations and came out the other side and was like, hey, this was worth it.

This was not worth it. And in a world where a lot of books that they make in today's day and

age are very vanilla and very watered down. I mean, there was some hard, hard hitting business

concepts in here. Some very good stuff on team ownership, some very good stuff on why a lot of

times it's best to be second or third in a company and still get compensated very well for it.

A lot of information on raising capital, a lot of information on when to grow your company,

how to sign, how to hire a great talent, like just some really hard hitting business stuff mixed

in with just like some crazy personal life anecdotes. So I cannot speak more highly of this book.

As I said, it was the titles threw me off for many years. I just never go around to reading it. And

when I did, yeah, I kind of kicked myself because even in my early days, I feel like a lot of

stuff as I was building my first company, this would have been very, very useful to me. So I guess

this is the perfect encapsulation of never judge a book by its cover.

All right, coming up to second book. I mean, listen, what can I say about this? This is a classic.

I've probably bought a hundred plus of these and given them to friends, I have different hard

cover versions of them. This is just a great coffee table book. Just pick up throughout the day.

Any time the day and you'll always take a different life lesson from, of course, Marcus Aurelius,

one of the greatest minds in history, in my opinion. And it's crazy that this was written thousands

of years ago and yet I feel like a lot of it is still so applicable, even still to this day.

And especially for me in my position where I've gone on to do okay for myself in life,

I think it's very important to keep your feet on the ground. It's very important to stay humble.

It's very important to not bask and soak in the highs of life and also not be too

down in the dumps when things don't go your way. So yeah, I just appreciate books that are

timeless. I appreciate books that pretty much anyone in life could read and still take

something away from it. And as I said, you can literally come back.

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I picked up this must have been 2016. I picked up a hard cover version of this and I remember

at the time I was like with my first ever girlfriend just sitting in this like a beautiful warm

sunny, lended day, not like today. And I was just reading out loud passages of

meditation. So I feel like I don't need to say much about Marcus Aurelius or this book.

It kind of speaks for itself. I feel like as the years go by, for me, this book becomes even more

and more impactful and meaningful. So this has to be a part of any book collection in my humble opinion.

So next book is Way of the Superior Man by David Data. There's a lot of things I could say about

a modern masculinity. Of course, as a person that didn't grow up without a father,

you know, it's something that you have to learn, you know, what it means to be a man. And

you know, I think that there's two very extreme versions in today's day and age. There's the

hyper masculine red pill like that whole world. And then on the flip side, there's a definitely

quite an effort to shame masculinity and quite an effort to make men too feminine. And you know,

I guess it's ashamed to be in their masculine. So I think for me, this is, you know, it was a very

good rudder for, you know, how to go about masculinity and thinking about manhood and what it means

to be a man. And you know, we all have our own different version. And I think, you know, when I

think about what is a man, I don't think you're traditional. As I said, like, put your foot down and

shout and be loud. And you know, this person that's so out of touch with themselves and not like

unaware of their psyche and unaware of their emotions. But then on the flip side, I also don't

think it's someone that gets paralyzed by their emotions and spends every single day and every

single minute thinking, you know, so in their head and so in their feelings quite frankly. So this

is just an incredible book. I read it first time when I was, I must have been 15, 14 or 15,

some of that. So I was quite fortunate to have read it quite early. I'll be honest, I haven't

read it in a long time. So I probably should go back to it and see what is said in here. Just

some very interesting concepts, concepts about spirituality, the dance between the feminine and

masculine. This is a very interesting book as well. I've actually given this to every single

girlfriend that I've had. And it's actually helped them understand me a little bit better.

So I think as a couple, it's actually quite an interesting book to read together. And actually

strengthen your relationship. So especially for those who may be in a similar situation to me,

which is no father in their life, I know it's not a easy thing to contend with. Good news is

you're a blank canvas. You know, you, there's no influences, which can be very dangerous because

you have to find your old influences and you have to set your own direction. And I think that

this book is a very good starting point to make that happen.

Moving on, Onassis, an extravagant life. Now, there are very few people that I would say that I

look up to in life that he is one of them. Now, this is a biography about Onassis's life. I like

imperfect people. I like people that live life to the fullest. And I like people that are imperfect.

And I think this is why I struggle with a lot of modern books. They're just trying to be too

perfect. And they're trying to be too, look at me. I have everything in order in my life or

you know, it's just very surface level stuff. So this biography is you read it through. You know,

you see this, I was going to say, man, you see this boy that has to become a man very early on

his life. You see this boy who grew up in a good financial situation that turned very bad,

very quickly. And he had to become a man in the house. And I guess I relate to that as well,

being in a position where I was born in Russia in a place called Dagestan,

first four years of my life, definitely not being in any good financial position,

a single mom, three jobs. And then eventually my mom marrying my stepdad, moving to London,

and things were good until I was 11 or 12 and they split. And then things not being good after that.

And I think I kind of relate to his situation where he's just like, all of a sudden just thrown

straight into the thick of things. And he has to go from boy to man very, very quickly. And his

career from there and on is fascinating. Once again, it's filled with not only a lot of business

success, but a lot of debauchery. As I said, for me personally, I just can't. I don't know if I can

read a biography about someone that's just like too perfect, if that makes sense. I don't know if I can

find it interesting. Yeah, when it's just all about their career success or their life success,

like I like a person where, you know, 70% of time you like them or you love them 10% of time,

you like hate them 10% of time, you're confused by them. Like I like, you know, when people are

multifaceted. And I feel like this book encapsulates Onassis as a person. Of course, you know, never had

the pleasure of meeting him. He died in the 70s. But he's just a very brilliantly flawed character.

And I love brilliantly flawed characters. So yeah, Onassis is one of the few people that anything

about him, whether any article, any book and like anything that's ever been published about him,

I've read it. I've consumed it. I just find his life so fascinating, so interesting. And I think

this is probably a bit of a less popular book. And I feel like this is probably a book you've never

been suggested to read before. But I highly, highly, highly recommend you do because I feel like there's

just so many learning lessons that you can take from it. Onassis reminds me a lot. Actually,

I feel excited. It's the first book I recommend it. Like I love both of these books because they're

just brilliantly flawed. Like you can tell that they're incredible individuals, but also with some

very, you know, some sides that are holding them back or some vices. And it's great because both

books are from beginning to end of their life. So you kind of see the whole arc, you know, where

things went well and where things definitely did not go well. So yeah, highly, highly recommend this

book. Books or anything when it comes to do with identity or anything to do with success,

quite frankly, because your success is directly related to your self image, your sense of self-worth.

I don't believe in life you get what you deserve. I think you get what you think you deserve because

what you think you deserve will dictate your actions and then your actions paired with luck or

God's grace or whatever you want to refer to it as that leads to your results. And I think there's

a lot, a lot of people that deserve a lot in life, but unfortunately they don't think that they

deserve a lot of life. And because they don't think they deserve a lot in life, that is what they

attract, whether you want to approach it from a spiritual perspective or whether you want to

approach it from like a actual nitty gritty hay, if you don't think you deserve something, well then

just your micro expressions, your micro actions, or even if everything's going well in your life,

if you don't think you deserve something, well you're just going to f*** up and I'm sure we all

have those people in our lives where it seems like you could just hand something to them on a platter,

but those still find a way to mess it up. It's because they just don't think that they're deserving

of it. It's a very interesting book because he was actually a plastic surgeon. And what he found

is, you know, sometimes people get plastic surgery and then their sense of self-worth would change

from it, like genuinely like the physical change in their life actually led to a different way

that they viewed themselves. But more times than not, they would have, you know, their get their

plastic surgery, but they still would feel the same. And that's because yeah, sure, maybe they

changed their external, but that had no bearing and that didn't do anything for their internal

sense of self-worth. So, you know, that's a very interesting position to be in where you can see like

day-to-day people have this idea of themselves or they have this, you know, low self-esteem and it's

like, okay, cool. Well, if we fix the problem that we think is causing the low self-esteem, okay,

maybe you think that your nose is too big or maybe you think that one ear is more crooked than

the other or maybe you think that you've got xyz. Okay, let's fix it. Okay, once we fix it,

what happens? Nothing. Well, it's not an external issue. Clearly, that's your own sense of

self-worth. You know, and I've just seen it time and time again, even at our business consultant.com,

we work with big enterprise businesses in our space and we also work with people who are in the

earlier stages of their career. And it's very interesting because I find that there's literally no

difference between these two sides of the market, which is the people at the top of their game and

the people in the earlier stages. I actually find a lot of time, they're both equally as competent.

I find that a lot of times they both know what to do. It's just the sense of self-worths from

the people earlier on in their career. You know, the self-sabotage that they bring upon themselves

is the only differentiating factor between the people that aren't able to launch pad their career

and aren't able to move forward in life and the people that are. So I genuinely believe that

if I had one competitive advantage in life, it's that I started reading books like this when I was

14 years old. So when the time presented itself and I was able to build my first business,

like the first proper one, not like the odd side hustles I've been doing up until that point,

but the real first business where I hired my first employee. So I've hired officially hired my

first videographer. He is coming in from America in two weeks. I've hired him full time, so um,

basically just to help with the workload. I think I just, I've done so much of the internal work

that, you know, it was a drag, it was tough, like especially back then when I started 10 years ago,

there wasn't the information that there is today, but I didn't, I didn't have the same negative

self-talk that I see a lot of people go through these days. So, you know, if you ever wonder what are

some of the influences or the books that brought me to this point, uh, this is definitely one of the

top ones. Now moving on, this is the, I don't want to say, maybe the big brother or the grandfather

of, you know, psycho cybernetics. Well, actually, this was published at a later date, but my point is

this is a lot to read and it's a lot to digest and it's a lot to take in. So psycho cybernetics,

for me, is a little bit more digestible and it's more tactical. This is like very metaphysical.

So reality Transurfing is, once again, for me, it's, it's one of the best ways to understand

what happens in life and build mental models around it and also not get drawn into certain emotions.

For example, you know, the book talks a lot about pendulums in your life, and I think that a lot

of people go through life and they have stuff happen to them and they assign, uh, meaning or

associations or emotions to things and they simply can't step outside themselves. They can't

look at their life from a third person perspective unemotionally. And I think if you feel like you

need that in your life, this is probably the best book that you can read. Now my best recommendation is

start off with this. Okay. That's why I wanted to mention this book first and then move on to

reality Transurfing after this book is a heavy read. It's probably a book you're going to have to

come back and read multiple times in your life and uh, funny enough, one of the coolest things about

books actually is you can read them in different seasons and different chapters of your life and

each time you read it or you come back to it, it has a totally different meaning or definition.

It's like reading the book again and I think a lot of that is even your particular activation system

so like your selective focus. When I was reading this book right at the beginning of my career,

there's certain parts and there's certain chapters of the book they're like, you know, I remember

so vividly and then when I read the book five years later when you know, I done okay for myself

then I found that those parts were less impactful and maybe there was another chapter that I

kind of overlooked or I didn't skin through but I, yeah, I was just kind of an autopilot because it

just didn't apply to me in my life. So one thing I want to mention is all the books here are books

that are a certain length and should be a certain length and what I mean by that is I'm not going

to name specifics because I know a lot of these authors as well and they're great people and the

game is just the game in the publishing world and you're going to have a book that could be 10 or 20

or 30 pages long and you have to draw it out for 300 pages and you know, that's just the name of the

game with your publisher. So of course I won't get into specific examples but 99% of books is in

any sort of knowledge-based books, self-development book, business book like genuinely they could have

just said it in 10 or 20 or 30 pages and then the rest of it just filler but all of the books that

I'm mentioning here today are not that they are not fillers, they are end-to-end books and they

are books that you can come back to again and again in your life and they genuinely will have

different meaning and I think that's no more true than a reality Transurfing specifically.

Now moving on to the final book we have What Now by my best friend, Agzandre Moldovanos

and yeah what can I say about this book? I told you I love brilliantly flawed characters

and I like people that are no bulls**t and will tell you how it is and of course I have been very

involved in the making of this book. I've seen this book come to life over the space of the

last couple years not only from the contents of this book but also I guess as the publisher of this

book but I hope that you trust me when I say that I am not a bias in any sort of way. Truly this

fits in line with Onassis's biography or Felix Dennis's book and it fits in line with this idea

for me that like I just like seeing a real insight into someone's life. I don't just want to know

the good things I want to know the good the bad the ugly I wanted to know what were the things

that you dreamed for in life then when you got it it was not at all what you expected I want to know

what are the things in life that maybe you overlooked and then you got to a moment of reflection

where you're like wow I took that for granted or I didn't realize that this is truly what life is

about and also I like books that are written by people that I guess respectfully have actually lived

and what I mean by that is it just holds a different weight with Onassis or Felix Dennis or

Alexander's book when I know that someone's like actually lived it and they're speaking from

real experience and I get it there's a lot of opinions from people of oh but if I was in that

position I would do this or if I was in that position then I wouldn't think like this or if I was

in that position XYZ and it's like just respectfully you haven't been there and you haven't lived

and you haven't experienced it and that's why I just love people who have experienced all the life

has to offer and more the good the bad the ugly it and and just speak with no filter no bulls

no oh my publisher wants me to say this and just share the lessons and I think that is what this

book is about is just sharing the lessons that the author has collected over three or four years

living the craziest life possible of course the visuals in this book are better than any other book

in the world yeah there's some very interesting moments in here of course moments of luxury

moments of pain moments of reflection moments of confusion and that's shown not only through

the pictures but also the words one thing that you know initially this book was meant to start off

as just a visual and Alex and I had long conversations and I just said you know um I think it's

important that people know what's going on in your head because you have such an insight into a

world that we're very blessed to live in I think we're very blessed to have experienced so much in

life and you know as the title says all the glitters isn't gold sometimes it's not always what it

seems to be and I cannot speak more highly of this book because it fits with a theme as a set of

the onassis and the Felix Dennis book except that is at the end of someone's life what's super

cool is that this is a snapshot into four years of someone who came from nothing and then came

from nothing to having everything and having the whole world at their fingertips in the space of

three or four years but it's still living through that and it's exciting to know that there's you

know this isn't the end of the chapter you know when you finish those books you're like okay that

was a start and an end and I know everything that I could know whereas this it's what we all want

this is a real human experience of someone getting exactly what they want in life dreaming for

something and getting it and the good the bad and the ugly the comes with it and for me it's very

exciting knowing that it's not the end of the road and you know you just don't know what's going to

come up next in the book because once again going back to anastas and Felix Dennis example I would

have been so interested to have had ten books for every three years or four years in a life or

every five years like I would have loved to have like had an insight into my like what was going on

in that decade like where was your head out where was your heart out where was your soul that

and um it's cool that you get a little peek into that with this book so on there we have it those

are seven books that change my life and I have pretty high conviction that they could change yours

as well if uh you take the time to read them to take it in to mull over to reflect on some of the

writings within them as I said truly books absolutely change my life and I really don't want to

know or think about where my life would have ended if I wasn't such an avid reader in the earlier

stages of my career and I'd like to give some of you guys that gift so what I have gone ahead and

done in the pinned comments or the description there are going to be 50 codes these are all

100 dollar gift card codes this is an online bookstores wherever you are in the world you can go

ahead and redeem it I wanted to leave it right here for the end of the video for those of you guys

who made it to the end please go ahead and use one of those 100 dollar gift cards hopefully that's

helpful to some of you and also please make sure you support your local bookstores I absolutely

love bookstores especially you know the people who keep them alive because you know I'm sure as

you understand they're not particularly the most profitable or lucrative ventures so the owners

have so much labor of love that they put into it if you're ever in London I implore you please

try to take a day trip and make it out to books and bookmongers this is I said genuinely from

all my heart my favorite bookstore in the world I have so many memories from here and yeah truly one

of those places that shapes and defines where you go for the rest of your life and with all that

being said I'm gonna get back to my tea and as always I'm watching from afar I'm rooting for you