Ep. #7 - Books Every Real Estate Investor Should Read

Do you read books? If so, are they Fiction books; or do you read Business, Finance and Mindset books? You see I went for a very long time without reading any books. I was a Web Programmer, so I would often read books on Programming PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, JavaScript and other scripting languages. But once I had found what I needed to know to solve whatever coding challenge I was facing at the moment – I put the book down and did not touch it again until some other challenge arouse. I used them more as reference manuals than anything else.

So one year I was away at a business conference, sharing a room with a colleague and he was listening to a Mindset book, which I referred to as a “Self-Help” book – as I asked him “why are you listening to that!?” – Somehow I had developed a negative outlook on such books. I pretty much considered it beneath me to read or listen to such non-sense. I’ve since apologized to him for my comments, as now I try to read a different book on Mindset, Business or Finance – at least monthly. I absolutely LOVE these books, and they’ve helped me greatly to excel in Business but also to improve as a Person in general.

I had learned, as the quote says…

“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn

Or how about this…

“The more that you read, the more things you’ll know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

Welcome to Episode #7 – Books Every Real Estate Investor Should Read.

I absolutely love quotes, so here’s another for you… “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now not to suggest that I’m a man of rare intellect, but hey – If I don’t think highly of myself – who the hell will? So I remain my biggest fan!

In this episode, I’ll relate some of the books that I’ve read and feel worth you reading as well – as they benefited me greatly, so maybe the same will be true for you also.

To this end, a new page is now live on the [… and Landlord] Podcast Website at: andLandlord.com/books -and here I’ll post details about each book that I mention on the Podcast, along with a link to where you can order the book or get it on Audible.

So in Episode #2 – I mentioned the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This book is cited possible more than any other by Real Estate Investors as the book that got them interest in and into the business of Real Estate Investing. Not that its the best book ever written on the subject of Real Estate Investing… I wouldn’t even say that it is a book about Real Estate Investing necessarily. However, it sets your mind on a different track when it comes to Money, Business and Investing – and it uses Real Estate as an example of the type of thing one SHOULD invest their money in… Because its an asset that produces an income (rent from tenants), tends to appreciate in value and is highly tax favored by the government – among many other reasons.

And then in both Episodes #4 & #5 – I mentioned the second book by Robert Kiyosaki – The Cashflow Quadrant. This is my personal favorite in the Rich Dad series; however, I believe there are a few (including his latest) that I’ve yet to read. I like this book because it talks about the different ways we all get our money, divided into 4 “Cashflow Quadrants”. I’ll not go into that again here in this Episode, but listen to Episode #5 especially, for full details. But in short, this book helped to open my eyes as to the differences in being an employee, small business owner or self-employed (on the left side of the Cashflow Quadrant); versus getting income from a business and investments (on the right side). Its a great read to get you thinking along the lines of diversifying your income and creating a situation where money and systems are working for you, instead of you working for money.

The [… and Landlord] Podcast Books page at: andLandlord.com/books – will grow over time to contain many book recommendations. However, today I’d like to speak about two in particular, that you can find now on this page along with Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Cashflow Quadrant both by Robert Kiyosaki. They are “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss; and “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason.

The 4-Hour Workweek is a book about getting out of the 9 to 5 job trap… How to get out of the cubical and stop working for money to create a situation where you’re leveraging businesses, people and money – to work for YOU. It is exactly the sort of book you should read after Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Cashflow Quadrant, as these two put you in the mindset of making major changes in your financial life – but they are short on actionable advise. What to do… How to do it? Whereas The 4-Hour Workweek is packed with actionable advise that can allow you to create a plan of action, and to start making actual changes in your financial life – by changing the way you make your money.

Go to andLandlord.com/books and click through to the page on The 4-Hour Workweek. There you’ll find my comments on what this book did for me. Unfortunately, I found it a bit late along my path, but it still had a major impact on my course of actions as I worked to remove myself from being involved in almost everything that happened in my businesses. After-all, you can’t create a 4-Hour Workweek for yourself when everything depends on you.

And then The Richest Man In Babylon is a book that is nearly 100 years old; and even more so, it features stories (or parables) set in ancient Babylon, over 8,000 years ago! Why should you bother to read such an old book containing apparently even older stories? Because the stories teach a financial lesson that is just as valid today as they were 100 years ago or even 8,000 years ago for that matter.

Among other lessons, The Richest Man in Babylon teaches “The Seven Cures for a Lean Purse” and “The Five Laws of Gold”. Now you’ll have to get beyond references to things like “purse” and “gold” and just hear and think “wealth” and “money”. You’ll also have to get past all the thee’s and thou’s and other aspects of Biblical speak – but it only helps to take you back in time so the stories really take hold.

These stories will stick with you – for the good. I still think about the “4th Cure for an Empty Purse”, “Guard thy treasures from loss” – whenever I’m about to make a new investment property purchase, go into another area of business or start a new business partnership. I don’t want to be one of those people who amasses millions of dollars only to lose it all in a bad investment or two. This book will not only help to protect you from that sort of outcome, but it will help to build your wealth to begin with.

So remember to checkout the Website at: andLandlord.com/books – which now has these 4 books listed, and we’ll be adding more as they are mentioned on each future episode of the Podcast. And while this episode was all about books, in future episodes we’ll just mention related books and post them to this page or we might do short book segment within the Podcast.

And I don’t want to leave you in complete suspense as to what the full list of books is going to be, so I’ll just mention a few more of them now. In no particular order, some of the additional books will be…

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

The E-Myth Real Estate Investor

The E-Myth Revisited

Think and Grow Rich

Rich Dad’s Who Took My Money?

The ONE Thing

The Book on Investing In Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down

The Book on Managing Rental Properties

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor

Extreme Ownership

Never Split the Difference

Pitch Anything

Pre-Suasion

Psyched Up

Influence

And the classic…

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Now as I go through additional Podcast episodes, each of these books will be mentioned as it relates to the topic at hand, or some experience I had. Or something that I think would be beneficial to you in your journey to becoming a Landlord, or to becoming the best Landlord you can be. Real Estate Investing and being a Landlord entails many different aspects of Mindset, Business and Finance. So all of these books play a role.

You’d be surprised how a book on time management, or efficiency, can make your landlord business so much more streamlined and efficient, helping you to put in policies, procedures and systems that take burden off of you, placing it elsewhere, and freeing your time, while still doing an excellent job for your customers, which are the tenants, so that you can grow your portfolio without creating stress, bringing more people onto your team, working with more vendors, more contractors. And as you bring these people in, and your company grows, and you have more employees, it’s only going to make everything run just that much more smoothly if you’ve read a book like How to Win Friends & Influence People or Extreme Ownership. And you know that if your company isn’t working like you want it to, it’s not your employee’s fault. It’s your fault, because either you haven’t communicated to them properly, or you haven’t trained them properly, or you hired the wrong person. A book like Extreme Ownership will help you internalize those things, so that you can get the best out of yourself, so that you can, in turn, get the best out of everyone around you.

These books have an enormous impact on all aspects of your business, of your life, of your finances. As i read them myself, I’ll make them available to you, letting you know what I got from them, what it did for me. And so, I created this page at https://www.andLandlord.com/books, to be that destination where you can go to see what I’m reading, and what you might want to read and why. Now, in full disclosure, if you order a book from that page, I do get a small affiliate commission from Amazon. It’s nothing much, but every little bit helps lessen the expense of producing this podcast.

So, if you listen to the podcast, and you’re going to get the books anyway, I would certainly appreciate it if you get them from https://www.andLandlord.com/books.

So let’s end this episode on Books Every Real Estate Investor Should Read with some final quotes…

“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.” – Roald Dahl

And…

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” – Louis L’Amour