This is an oldie but goodie. It was recommended to me by a stellar investor with an excellent multi-decade track record. I had asked him which 2–3 books he’d most recommend for a novice investor (as a friend had asked me), and this was at the top of his list. I gave it a listen and loved it. Some of the references are dated, and stock picking can be a high-risk business, but it’s still an excellent reminder of some powerful fundamentals. On top of that, Peter’s thick Boston accent and disdain for “smart money” combine to make for very enjoyable listening. Here’s the description: “America’s most successful money manager tells how average investors can beat the pros by using what they know. According to Lynch, investment opportunities are everywhere. From the supermarket to the workplace, we encounter products and services all day long. By paying attention to the best ones, we can find companies in which to invest before the professional analysts discover them. When investors get in early, they can find the ‘tenbaggers,’ the stocks that appreciate tenfold from the initial investment. A few tenbaggers will turn an average stock portfolio into a star performer…. Lynch is the former manager of the $9 billion Fidelity Magellan Fund, where he earned investors a $190,000 return on a $10,000 investment.

There’s a really good book called, that I enjoy anyway, called What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, which looks at sort of the psychological dynamics of making and losing money and what happens when you personalize this or attribute to talents what should not be attributed to talent, or lack thereof, but what I realized, for instance, when we were talking earlier how I realized I was not well suited for the public markets, personally, if I’m the one doing the managing of that, is I realized exactly that, but a small loss, the magnitude of that negative emotion was exponentially larger than even if I made five times that amount positively. via Ep 63: Hedge Funds, Investing, and Optimizing Lifestyle (Mark Hart, Raoul Pal) The newest book in The Tim Ferriss Book Club (all five books here) is a fast read entitled What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars. It packs a wallop. This book came into my life through N.N. Taleb, who has made several fortunes by exploiting the hubris of Wall Street. Given how vociferously he attacks most books on investing, it caught my attention that he openly praises this little book. My first dinner with Nassim was in September of 2008. It was memorable for many reasons. We were introduced by the incredible Seth Roberts (may he rest in peace), and we sat down just as Lehman Brothers was collapsing, which Taleb had — in simple terms — brilliantly shorted. We proceeded to drinking nearly all of the Prosecco in the restaurant, while talking about life, business, and investing. Lehman Brothers would end up the largest bankruptcy filing in US history, involving $600+ billion in assets… The next day, I had a massive hangover and a hunger to study Nassim. Step one was simple: reading more of what he read. I grabbed a copy of What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, and I’ve since read it many, many times. For less than $20, this tool has helped me avoid multiple catastrophes, and I can directly credit its influence to roughly 1/2 of my net worth (!). The ROI has been incredible. The book — winner of a 2014 Axiom Business Book award gold medal — begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Jim Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle and land a key spot with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It then describes the circumstances leading up to 7-figure losses, and the essential lessons he learned from it. The theme that emerges: there are 1,000,000+ ways to make money in the markets (and many of the “experts” contradict one another), but all losses appear to stem from the same few causes.  So why not study these causes to help improve your odds of making and keeping money? Even if you don’t view yourself as an “investor,” this book can help you make better decisions in life. Also, the stories, similar in flavor to Liar’s Poker, are hilarious and range from high-stakes baccarat to Arabian horse fiascos.  For entertainment value alone, this book is worth the time. I hope you enjoy — and benefit from — the lessons and laughs as much as I have.

Read Up on Various Approaches to Investing. Below books and articles I recommend. - Buffet: Making of an American Capitalism (unauthorized biography)- - Buffet’s Annual Letters Paperback - More Money than God (on Hedge Funds) - Michael Lewis: Liar’s Poker and Flash Boys - You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Joel Greenblot - Event based investing - Intermediate/advanced investors - MONEY, Master the Game (Tony Robbins) - Daniel Solin: The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read - Buy and hold/Index approach - What I learned Losing a Million Dollars: Learn of psychological and cognitive biases - Problems arise when you address failure to bad luck and success to skill - Your risk tolerance is generally much lower than what you think (5-10% loss/quarter) - Black Swan - Antifragile - Venture Deals: Startup Deal Structure - The 80/20 Principle: Richard Koch, Less is More Anthology - 4 hour workweek - Rethinking Investing Blog Posts by Tim If you expect you can compete with pro’s with unlimited resources, you’re wrong. Just like you wouldn’t compete in a sport or anything else against the best and most resourced.

The title may not deliver but it is a smart investment book, at the very least.

A great book.

So the book that I would recommend and I’ve said this before to at least a handful of people, my favorite book on productivity is called The Effective Executive. A terribly bland title by Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive . . . But The Effective Executive is fantastic because it focuses on being effective – doing the right things, not just doing things well – being efficient. Because you can be really good at doing things that don’t matter. The effectiveness part – so in a way, I’m not dodging the question, but I think that the vast majority of people I talk to when they say, oh my God, I’m overwhelmed by X, Y and Z. I need to hire people A, B and C to handle it. Those tasks largely shouldn’t be done in the first place. via #181: How to ‘Waste Money’ To Improve the Quality of Your Life Probably the best book or almost certainly the best book I’ve ever read on productivity, really with a focus by necessity on being effective, doing the right things, and not efficiency, doing things well because you can do a lot of unimportant or meaningless things extremely quickly and well.  That does not make them important, and it will never make them important. That’s a great one . . . So good.

This is a classic. Gerber is a masterful storyteller, and this classic of automation discusses how to use a franchise mindset, not necessarily the business model, but a franchise mindset to create scalable businesses that are based on rules and systems and not outstanding employees. If you’re stuck in your own business, this book can help you get unstuck.

This book had a huge influence on Tim Ferriss and he reckons he woudn't be where he is today without it. He also hosted Richard Koch twice on his podcast, and they were some of the most shared episodes. 80% of results are driven by 20% of effort. Ferriss claims that each of us should revisit the 80/20 principle every four weeks and apply it to both our work and personal lives to see how we can focus on maximizing our productive output.

And there are also a few books that have had very, very helpful impact on my thinking about this. One is a very short read. It’s called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. And what I like about it, get the old version not the for the internet version. The old version where they’re looking at imported beer and airlines, that’s the one that I like. And it just talks about, in simple terms, how to create new categories as opposed to trying to dominate an existing category. So it’s easier and more effective to try to create a new category, which I often do through language. So for instance, with the 4-Hour Workweek, I wrote the book that I couldn’t find. It was, basically, the book that I wanted to find. And the options, at the time, I went to the book store, and I was searching for meaning. I had all of these challenges with business, with entrepreneurship and so on. And I could either choose a book that was how to give up money and why it’s not important and how to reuse your toothpaste 17 times, or how to build a Fortune 500 company with Jack Welch. And I wanted something I between. So I wrote that and ended up using this term that may have existed before, but I hadn’t heard it, called lifestyle design. So lifestyle design, I did not trademark. I did not make any attempt to protect it because I wanted it to become part of the common vocabulary. I wanted it to become part of the vernacular, which it has. So now, that’s used by probably hundreds of thousands of people. And it’s a category. Now, since I was that first mover advantage, I am kind of forever, in a sense, the founding father of that category. via #167: Jamie Foxx Part 2 A couple of resources that I want to recommend before we get started because they helped me quite a lot are related to deal-making and negotiating . . . The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. The original edition talks about imported lite beer on airlines and whatnot. Not the version for the Internet. Blue Ocean Strategy. And both of those books really talk about creating a category of one, which just increases your leverage and negotiating ability. via #166: How Creatives Should Negotiate The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing – the original edition, not the updated for the Internet version, which was out of date by the time the book went to press, but the old version, with Amstel Lite and airline examples and so on. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing apply to anything, not just a product or service. Or I should say, it applies to a product or a service even if you happen to be a product. Does that make sense? via #103: Drunk Dialing Fans--Celebrating The 100th Podcast Episode! You don’t get remembered in the middle and you need to – that’s why I recommend; look, it’s not a perfect book, but it is a very helpful book at least for me – The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing – the old version. Like don’t get the for-internet one that’s like from the AOL era. Get the old one which is like airlines and imported beer and all of these case studies, but it really points out that if you want positioning – whether that’s for a product, for a point you’re trying to persuade people to accept or a negotiation – you have to, it’s not enough just to be better. You have to be different. No one will have a chance to realize you’re better if you don’t have their attention first. So, just thinking of positioning in that way as basically better as necessary but not sufficient I think is super-critical. via #75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook - The Tim Ferriss Show That’s an observation and a recommendation I'd like to make to folks is a very short book I recommended before called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Of course, all rules are made to be broken but these are pretty good rules for most people to at least start with. One of them is choose a market where you can be number one or number two. Ideally, number one and if you can't be number one, you need to thinly slice it a bit further. In the case of Paypal for instance, they didn't start off trying to boil the ocean, they started off trying to dominate the beanie baby eBay power-seller space. You have to define your market finely enough so that you can dominate it and just as importantly, acquire customers in a very targeted and affordable way, whereas saying "I want every mother in the US," even if you were to attempt that, which I wouldn't recommend, would require doing massive advertising spending that a start-up can’t afford nor should you be able to try to afford. via Ep 30: Tracy DiNunzio, Founder of Tradesy, on High-Velocity Growth and Tactics The two books that really helped me, or continue to help me, to think of being different, good and different, right... Necessary, but not sufficient. There are two that are on the older side, one that's relatively new—The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, really short read . . . Super short and just gives fantastic examples of how, say, Amstel Light becomes the only light imported beer. Boom, it defines and category, and owns it. The second, Blue Ocean Strategy, really interesting book. Third, which is a little tech-centric, but I still think a lot is to be gained from it, is Business Model Generation. via Episode 8: Chase Jarvis, Master Photographer I have reread this before every product launch that I have done or even in the product development phases. Talks about things like creating a category versus trying to be the best in an existing category. Very, very valuable and a very quick read. You can read this in 2 - 3 hours. This is one of the two books I recommend to all of my startup founders I work with and angel investments or an advisor. You can see I take copious notes here in all these books. I create my own index so that when I go back to reread this it takes 1/10th of the time and I can hit the points that were most valuable to me.  Tim Ferriss: "I have re-read this before every product launch that I have done."

[A tool] I found helpful.

A couple of resources that I want to recommend before we get started because they helped me quite a lot are related to deal-making and negotiating . . . Then two on the tactics and strategies of actual deal crafting and overcoming objections. Getting Past No . . . and Secrets of Power Negotiation. It is by Dawson, who cut his teeth in real estate. And I would suggest getting the audio if you can. via #166: How Creatives Should Negotiate Capping your downside, if you can cap your downside, you can afford to do many experiments, and the upside will eventually take care of itself if you’re formulating good experiments. Those were some of the things I learned, and I think the Meta scale on top of that was negotiating. Whether it’s – there are a couple of resources that really helped me: “Secrets of Power Negotiating,” by Roger Dawson. Get the audio, if you can, Secrets of Power Negotiating. Secrets of Power Negotiating is a great book. The audio is even better.

I encourage people to think of [Rework] as an Elements of Style for building profitable businesses in a web-savvy world. Each chapter is 2-5 pages long and delivers their tactics and principles fat-free, without fluff. Just like their business models.

...for anyone who's starting over, or trying to reinvent themselves.

I highly recommend this book. It has already changed how I think about making decisions in my life and in my business, how I think about managing, how I think about managing, how I think about communications between teams.

I’ve found this book to be very compelling and actionable. The real-world stories are heart wrenching and keep the pages turning.

It’s an excellent book about licensing.

Recommended by Bill Gates, Daniel Kahneman, Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Sid Mukherjee, Tim Ferriss.

This is a menu of options for converting ideas into millions of dollars. I read this, first, when I was in high school, and I have read it six-to-twelve times since. It is like steroids for your entrepreneurial cortex.

There’s a term I do recommend, if people read Getting the Yes – BATNA: Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement, which is a really important concept to grasp.

It does have a software focus but all of it can be applied to entrepreneurs in general. It's really about creating a lean startup and testing assumptions that you might have. Is offering more options always the best decision? The answer is no. And they run through it. And they've done this. They've developed products. its really outstanding.

A couple of resources that I want to recommend before we get started because they helped me quite a lot are related to deal-making and negotiating . . . Then two on the tactics and strategies of actual deal crafting and overcoming objections. Getting Past No, which is the real life, I would say, counterpart to Getting to Yes.

It's a really good book, and what I also enjoyed is that it's entirely in Tony's voice.

Study Blue Ocean Strategy.

After 50 pages, I was able to hold my own discussing currency trading with a vice president at JP Morgan Chase. This is an incredible book that should be required reading for anyone whose future depends on understanding how the dollar is valued and manipulated. Whether you work in finance, travel internationally, or simply haven't been taught why the dollar rises or falls in relation to other currencies, read Biography of the Dollar now—or suffer the consequences.

I would say it runs the gamut from say, like a Guy Raz, so How I Built This, who is using, I don’t want to say This American Life format, but he’s doing a lot of — a ton of prep, a lot of recording, and then immaculate editing with his team and telling a story arc. So they might move things around and that is a particular game. That’s a very particular game, and he and his team are very, very good at it. I would say, this is going to seem like an easy one, but Joe Rogan has done an excellent job of becoming a category of one. He wasn’t emulating someone else, and for those wondering where you might be able to read up on how to do this, there’s a chapter called “The Law Of Category” in The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing. A lot of the other chapters are outdated, this one everyone should read.

I love this book! If you want a true manifesto, a guidebook with clear signposts, and a fun ride you'll return to again and again, you have it here in this book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did' Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek