The 8 Books Found on EVERY CEO's Bookshelf

YOUTUBE  📚 THE READING LIFE  📚  PATREON

Read on The Competitive Advantage.com | Read Time: ~4 Minutes

📚 Hey, good morning! Time to win.

EVERY CEO I've ever met with has had these 8 books on their bookshelf behind them:

Here’s they all are, summarized in a single sentence:

📚 Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne:

Absolutely essential book about avoiding competition ("red oceans”) by setting up shop in a niche of one that you can completely DOMINATE.

📚 Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini:

Foundational book on the theory and practice of influence, and how you can use 6 specific psychological principles to convince people to do anything.

📚 Good to Great, by Jim Collins:

An extensively researched, meticulously detailed long-term study of why certain companies blow up and others fade into obscurity.

📚 The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen:

Runaway classic on disruptive innovation and staying ahead of the curve, while still retaining their market leadership.

📚 Managing Oneself, by Peter F. Drucker:

Legendary management expert Peter Drucker on taking responsibility for your own success and becoming the Chief Executive Officer of your own career.

📚 Getting Things Done, by David Allen:

Absolute classic productivity book that will teach you how to set up a flawless, stress-free system for elite efficiency.

📚 Zero to One, by Peter Thiel:

Billionaire Peter Thiel on learning to think for yourself, identify untapped opportunities in unexpected places, and building the future.

📚 On Mental Toughness, by Harvard Business Review:

Ten of the best articles ever written for the Harvard Business Review on building mental toughness and resilience.

Full Disclosure: I haven’t read all of these 8 books.

I’ve hit 5/8 and I have On Mental Toughness on my phone right now, ready to be read in a couple weeks or so.

I haven’t read The Innovator’s Dilemma (gasp!) and I can tell you what Blue Ocean Strategy is ABOUT, and the general thesis, but I haven’t read it cover to cover yet.

But I’m also working on a Medium article titled:

100 Wildly Popular Self-Helps Books That I’ve Read — Summarized in 1 Sentence Each

It’s not quite ready yet, but here’s my Medium profile so you can follow me and get notified when that comes out. I’ll probably post a link to it here in this newsletter, though, because it will be a pretty valuable resource.

I’ll let you in on my next YouTube video too.

It has to do with one KILLER passage from Choose Your Enemies Wisely, a book I’m reading now by Iran’s answer to Jordan Peterson, Patrick Bet-David.

Here’s the thumbnail for the upcoming video:

Intrigued? Perhaps? Maybe just a little bit?

I’m actually fairly pleased with how this video turned out (filmed with my new studio light setup) and I’ll share it with you guys tomorrow.

And of course, here’s my YouTube channel if you want to subscribe and get notified that way when the video comes out.

As always, at the bottom of this email I’ll lay out everything I did today to move closer to my Ultimate Vision. This is to keep me accountable and to show you that I’m working as hard as I’m encouraging you to work…

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Woke Up: 10:00AM

Sleep Quality: 79%

Pages Read: 91

Workout: OFF

Work Completed:

Outlined Next 5 Medium Articles

Reached Out to 10 Authors

Worked on Current Author Campaigns

Posted to Instagram Stories

Posted 2x on Instagram

Posted 5x on Twitter

Posted 4x on Threads

Posted 3x on Facebook

Posted 1x on LinkedIn

Posted 1x in YouTube Community Tab

Posted 1x to YouTube Shorts

Worked on New Sales Page for Skool Community

Responded to Comments Inside Skool Community

Worked on Editing Next YouTube Video

Worked on Next Book Breakdown

Organized My Workflow for Tomorrow

I got a ton of work done today and it still doesn’t feel like enough. That’s either because I’m being too hard on myself (I don’t like that explanation) or because I didn’t prioritize well enough.

The second option seems closer to the truth, because there were a few things I SHOULD have done today, and doing those would have given me that sense of accomplishment I was looking for.

And it would have helped me be more on top of things.

That’ll be the work - or part of the work - that’s cut out for me tomorrow.

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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