4.5 Business Books to Help You Solve Your Biggest Problems

Author

Matt Karamazov
August 19, 2026

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“When a gazillion people can do what you do, you have no leverage.”

-MJ DeMarco, The Great Rat Race Escape (Amazon | My Book Notes)

The Book of the Month inside Wealth Creators for August is The Great Rat Race Escape, by MJ DeMarco. We’re taking one nonfiction book per month, and relentlessly applying it to our businesses. Join us.

🏅 Welcome Back to The Wealthy Creator!

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to load you up with book recommendations tonight.

I’m just in that kinda mood, I guess.

There are 4.5 of them because one of them isn’t “technically” a business book, but not all business problems can be solved by business books, ya know?

What I mean is that the last few weeks threw me for a proverbial LOOP, man. Like…it was ROUGH.

Both my parents went INTO and OUT OF the hospital…at separate times, on separate days. And just a cascade of shitty things like that.

I had a few members leave my private community, which always stings. I try, and I work, and I build, patiently and deliberately, something that’s going to be valuable for people, a place they’re going to feel at home, where they come to learn and be inspired…

And then sometimes it’s just not right for them! That’s totally cool, of course, but I hate to see them go.

I could go on about the things that haven’t been home runs this week, but let’s just get to the book recommendations…

The biggest help this week, at least on my NON business problems, was The Upside of Down, by my friend John Ulsh. His story…just the overwhelming AWFULNESS of it, and the courage he exhibited during his agonizing recovery…nothing I faced this week even comes close.

Those books are great sometimes because they help put your (admittedly very real) smaller problems in perspective.

So that’s one book. Here are the others that have made a bigger difference for me lately as I’ve crossed into the $10,000 per month threshold and beyond:

My own personal education NEVER stops, by the way. I’m committed to lifelong, never-ending learning and improvement, and to that end, here’s what I’ve been learning, watching, and listening to this week.

That should keep you occupied for a while! Big things coming for all of us.

And if you want a whole team of other educational entrepreneurs behind you supporting your success (including me personally), join us here.

If you want my personal help to add between $1-5K/month in monthly recurring revenue to your creator business, and grow your audience and authority exponentially at the same time, Wealth Creators is exactly where you need to be. Join here.

After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,516 books, including 62 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.

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In the last email I sent, I was talking about how August was off to such a great start! Haha. Funny how life happens. Still LOTS of month left though, and any setbacks or reversals recently just make me want to go fucking harder.

Anyway, my “Monthly Goals” and everything else is coming back next month. Taking the rest of August to recalibrate, get organized, and take one step back so I can take thousands of steps forward. I’ll keep you updated.

Thanks for being here, and we’ll talk soon!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you:

  1. Book a 1-1 strategy call with me and we’ll get you up to $5K/month in revenue by following a custom plan we’ll build together.

  2. Become a Premium Member of The Reading Life newsletter and enjoy unlimited access to 150+ Premium Book Breakdowns, my complete notes from 1,500+ books, exclusive discounts, and more.

  3. Join Wealth Creators, my private business mastermind for educational entrepreneurs who want to break through to that next level of revenue and success.