"we should ask him what books he reads."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael,

and today I'm going to share

the seven books every entrepreneur must read.

These are seven books that have had

a tremendous impact on my life,

how I think about business,

and I hope they have the same impact on you.

Now, I used to have a ton of books.

I used to have walls and walls of books,

and when I saw something interesting,

I would pick it up and buy it.

Somebody told me they'd get it.

I would buy.

And I found I had all of these books

just sitting on the shelves, collecting dust,

and I was accumulating more books than I could read.

And I had great intentions to read them,

but I never got around to them

and it created stress.

It created stress looking at all these books

and knowing I got to read all of these things.

So, I decided one day I would get rid of them all,

and I donated them to a local library

and I pared it down.

I got to my core list of books

that I read and I reread

and have given me so much value.

And today, I wanted to share them with you,

and hopefully it transforms the way you think

and transforms your business as well.

Okay, well, that was awkward.

(clears throat) Test, one, two, one, two.

At number seven is The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborne,

and this is a book about delighting your customers.

It tells the story about a postman named Fred,

who goes over and above to always delight his customers,

so the people on his route,

and you think about being a postman,

it could be a boring job.

You're doing the same thing over and over

and over and over again, every single day,

but Fred finds a way to get to know his customers,

to watch over their houses when he knows they're not home

or on vacation,

to always look for ways to delight and surprise them.

And so, if you have a business where you personally are

involved in dealing with customers,

which will be most people,

or if you have people on your team

who are responsible for dealing with customers,

give them this book.

It's a short read.

Look at that.

Look how thin that is.

It's like not even 100 pages.

How many pages?

100 pages.

Just over 100 pages.

Super fast read.

It'll change your mindset on how to work with customers.

Pick it up.

At number six is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg

and John David Mann.

This is an awesome book, another quick read.

It is, what, 125 pages.

Pretty easy to sift through.

You could probably get through in one sitting as well,

and this book is all about giving

and helps change your mindset from being a taker

and saying here are my goals

and I got to go out and take what I can

to realizing that to accomplish your goals,

you have to give to other people,

help others do what they're trying to do,

help others accomplish their goals.

And in turn, they're going to come back and help you,

and often the path to reaching your goal

is totally unexpected.

And it's going to come as a result of helping other people.

So, it totally changed my mindset

of what I needed to do in business

and not just go and try to reach

and take my goals,

but to help others along the path.

It's an inspiring story.

You can't help but feel great after reading it.

You can't help but feel changed after reading it.

You want to go out and make the world a better place.

It's an uplifting, positive, awesome story.

Coming in at number six, go check it out, The Go-Giver.

Coming in at number five is Donald Trump,

The Art of the Deal.

This is one of my favorite books

because it helps you think big.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of entrepreneurs

is you're stuck in your current bubble.

The environment that you create for yourself

is holding you back where you are.

How do you bust through?

How do you think bigger?

How do you go out and do something

that's going to change the world,

where nobody in your family has ever done that before,

when none of your friends have that kind of ambition?

So, how do you surround yourself with those kind of people?

You read books like this.

Now, this is one of the first,

I think it's the first non-fiction book that I ever read.

I remember I was driving to New York with my family.

I don't know how old I was at the time,

maybe teenager,

driving to New York City, crossing the bridge,

and I was reading Donald Trump, Art of the Deal,

and it just inspired me to want to do more,

to think outside my comfort zone.

And this is something that you need to do

as an entrepreneur.

If you want to accomplish big things,

if you want to achieve big goals,

you have to believe,

you got to believe that you can do it.

And so, how do you get that confidence

when you've never done it,

nobody in your family's done it,

nobody in your social networks have done it?

You can surround yourself with people like Donald Trump.

Read this book.

You will be inspired.

You will be ready to take action.

You'll be ready to go out and conquer big dreams.

It'll give you that extra motivational boost,

and you can apply it to your business.

Check it out, number five,

Donald Trump, Art of the Deal.

Coming in at number four is Think and Grow Rich

by Napoleon Hill.

This book is awesome.

It says at the top,

"This book could be worth a million dollars to you."

It's super helpful,

and the main thought behind this is

that thoughts are things.

There's a lot of believe in this book,

that whatever you have in your mind,

whatever impact you want to create in the world,

whatever business you want to start,

it's all possible.

It's all possible if you believe in yourself,

and it gives you the steps to do it.

And it outlines the story of Andrew Carnegie,

who was, at the time, the richest person in America,

and his lessons for success for people who are coming up,

how he did it himself, his advice for other people.

It'll help build your confidence.

It'll help you believe in yourself.

It'll help you make you ready to go out

and do something positive in the world.

It'll give you the confidence and courage

to start or to continue,

the faith, the motivation, the inspiration to keep going

when you may be up against the wall,

you're not seeing any progress.

It's beautifully written,

great advice in here.

As I was opening the book before doing this video,

I had the old book smell coming out at me

and giving me a little bit of a headache.

So, I got to brush out the book a little,

air it out.

It's an old book but awesome.

Definitely recommend reading it.

I know entrepreneurs who read this every year

as an annual ritual,

and every year they take something new from it.

So, definitely go check it out.

Coming in at number four, Think and Grow Rich,

Napoleon Hill.

Coming in at number three, Keep Any Promise by Karim Ismail.

This is an awesome book, and it's divided into two sections.

Now, Karim, he came from a successful business,

but he was overworked.

It was causing problems in his family life.

It was causing problems in his health,

and he totally changed around everything that he did

and replanned his life.

And he gives you the blueprint for how to do it.

Now, it's divided into two sections.

The first are stories of people

and how they've changed their life.

And the second are exercises that you can do

to start changing your business and your life.

I got to be honest.

I'm going to be honest, this is real talk.

Coming straight from Evan Carmichael

is what this channel's all about.

The real talk is the stories in the book,

I found just okay.

I didn't find that inspiring.

I found the problems that they were overcoming

weren't that huge,

and I felt like I wasn't on the same level

with the people who were in the book.

And I want to be inspired by people who are doing more,

looking at Donald Trump and looking at Andrew Carnegie,

people who are doing a lot more.

That's who I want to be inspired by.

So, the stories were just okay for me.

But the exercises,

the exercises are life-changing.

That's why it's coming in at number three.

If you sit down and you do the exercises

and you follow them,

the ones that Karim have laid out,

it will change your life.

The huge value here, they show the exercises in the book,

but the big value is here in the workbook.

And I hope Karim still offers this as part of the deal.

If you look here, it says download

the life blueprint workbook, $149 value for free.

That's the money.

That, if you go through that,

do those exercises, follow through on them,

I guarantee you it'll change your business life.

It'll change your personal life.

It had a massive impact on me,

and that's why I recommend it as the number three book.

Even if you've never heard of it,

it's the secret gem for entrepreneurs.

So, go check it out.

Keep Any Promise by Karim Ismail.

Coming in at number two is Radicals and Visionaries

by Thaddeus Wawro,

and the subtitle is Entrepreneurs Who Revolutionized

the 20th Century.

This is such an awesome book.

What it does is basically, he tells you the stories

of a whole bunch of different entrepreneurs,

and each story is only, what, four pages long,

five pages long.

So, I can open it up and, so here,

the story of Jeff Bezos.

There's a picture.

There's a quick quote of him.

There's his story.

There's this little tidbits that come out,

more tidbits, story, and then you're done.

So, in like four pages, you have the history of Jeff Bezos

and how he got started.

And it does that over and over and over again

for lots of famous entrepreneurs that you would recognize.