I don’t know about you, but the idea of consuming a book a week has always sounded great to me, yet it’s not something I’ve ever actually done, or even got near to doing.
I love personal development books covering topics like high performance, wealth creation and entrepreneurship, so naturally the thought of being able to consume 52 books a year of those subjects is very appealing. Just think of all the wisdom one could absorb from 52 of the top business and personal development books. Does that appeal to you too?
Well, reflecting on my learning habits over the last few years I can see a pattern emerging. Whilst I love the idea of a book a week, the reality is that I only actually read/listen to a handful of books a year! However, with the books that resonate with me, I go deep with them and really do them justice. My phone and journals are full of notes I take from the few books a year I commit to. I will listen to a book two or three times and do so with the intention and commitment of implementing key ideas into our businesses.
Here are a few books from the last few years that I’ve read/listened to twice or more, taken copious notes on, and applied to our businesses.
2019 PROFIT FIRST by Mike Michalowicz
I love the simplicity of the core concept in this book – it’s really about allocating income into a few ‘pots’ to ensure that ‘profit is a habit, not an event’. So every month you get into a habit of putting set percentage allocations from the overall monthly revenue into the following pots:
PROFIT
OWNER’s COMPENSATION
OPERATING EXPENSES
TAX
Such a simple system, but do many actually do it? We implemented this across all of our company bank accounts and keep a monthly spreadsheet tracker for it too. I can’t tell you how satisfying it’s been to see the money in each pot neatly allocated each month and know you have everything covered, especially the profit and income piece 😊
2020 – PERSONALITY ISN’T PERMANENT by Dr Benjamin Hardy
I’ve always been fascinated with psychology and this book introduced me to and validated so many concepts that resonated with me. Concepts to do with goal setting, with reframing failure, progress and confidence, and much more. One of the lasting takeaways for me was wrapping my head around the concept of your future self, and investing time to design your future self so that you can experience a better present.
I went on to read, digest and action a lot more from Benjamin Hardy and his work on the future self has helped me enormously in my goal setting and day to day implementation in our property businesses. The wisdom from the book has also equipped me to better mentor people I work with in property masterminds.
2021 – WHO NOT HOW by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy
Here’s the book summarised in 3 core lessons:
- Ask yourself “who can help me accomplish this?” instead of “how am I going to get this done?”
- Getting the right ‘Whos’ in your life will free up your time.
- You will make more money when you find Whos to complete your Hows.
This book really did start to shift my thinking in 2021 and it influenced us by either hiring more people into our team or finding additional professionals for our property power team. The key themes are carrying through strongly into this year too as most of my time in the first quarter is focused on people i.e. the ‘who’s’.
2022 – OVERSUBSCRIBED by Daniel Priestly
I am only half way through this book but I absolutely love how the author frames his points around the key concepts in the book, which is essentially all about making the supply and demand relationship work for you.
This book is industry agnostic but very quickly, property people will start to see how the concepts can be applied to their property businesses, whether that be in relation to finding JV investors, recruiting team members or marketing campaigns.
It’s still early days with this book but I’m excited about drawing out the nuggets and applying them to our businesses.
In closing, I couldn’t write an article about applying the wisdom from books and not mention the book I wrote in late 2019. The concepts and D-I-C-E model I wrote about in PREDICTABLE PROPERTY PROFITS (https://www.amazon.co.uk/PREDICTABLE-PROPERTY-PROFITS-GUESSWORK-CERTAINTY/dp/1527253732) covers our story from SA failure to success and it shares the investment and business philosophy we live by year on year.
What about you – what wisdom from books have you intentionally applied to your property business?