The 9 Best Books I Read in 2018

Hey guys, welcome back to another video. My name is Gillian Perkins and I'm so glad that you're here on my channel today. In this video I'm going to be reviewing nine of the very best books that I read in 2018. Now way back at the beginning of the year I made a goal for myself to try to read 24 books this year, two per month, and I didn't quite hit that goal but I got pretty close. At my last count I read 21 books this year and a lot of them I really enjoyed. Some of them I would even say changed my life. But there were nine of them that stood out to me as books that I would actually recommend and maybe even possibly reread in the future and those are the books I'm going to be sharing with you today. Alright, so I made myself a list here on my phone because some of these books I have here on my desk in front of me and others of them I listen to on Audible. And if you guys haven't checked out Audible before I would highly recommend that because that is something that really allows me to read a lot more books than I might otherwise be able to. I know that some people don't think that listening to books counts as reading books and I definitely used to think that myself too until I started doing it and then I realized when you listen to a book you still get all the same information. You of course are not physically reading the words on the page but you're still consuming all of the ideas in the book and you can get just as much enjoyment and learning out of that too. So, these days I listen to a whole lot of books and probably about half the books that I read this year I actually listen to, including about half the ones that I would highly recommend. So, without further ado let's get on into this list of books. The first one I do have in front of me right here and that is Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins. Now, I read this book at the very beginning of the year. I think it was the first book that I read this whole year and this one I actually read half of it and then I listened to the other half because it is not only a rather thick book, I mean I've read bigger books before but it's a rather thick book and it's just very dense and there is a ton of information. Print is relatively small and it's a little bit heavy and a little bit dry but it's such good information and I mean when I say dry I just mean for a book this long. It's not a boring book if you're interested in money and you're interested in learning more about that topic. Now, one thing that I will tell you about this book before you maybe go out and buy it for yourself is that it wasn't really exactly about what I thought it was going to be about. I thought that it was going to cover absolutely everything about money and be like money 101 but advanced, right, because it's called Money Master the Game. So I thought I was going to learn about budgeting, I was going to learn about saving, I was going to learn about investing, all sorts of different things having to do with money. In fact, that is not what this book is about at all really. It is only about investing and it is specifically about investing in stocks. Now there are some parts of the book that talk about some other things having to do with money aside from only investing in stocks but that is mostly what this book is about. It is a very good read if you're interested in learning about investing in general or specifically in stocks, I would highly recommend it. And the next book is by Jen Sincero and it's called You Are a Badass at Making Money. Now last year I read the original book, You Are a Badass, and I really liked it. It wasn't my favorite book ever but I liked it a lot. So then this year after I read Money Master the Game, I moved on and read You Are a Badass at Making Money, which was also very good. And this one I listened to so I don't have a physical copy of it here but you can find it on Audible or there certainly is a paperback or hardback version available also. Now in contrast to this book here, You Are a Badass at Making Money is much more focused on kind of the mindset of making money. This book is about all the practical how-to of investing and multiplying your wealth but that book is really about getting over the mindset issues that might be stopping you from making money at all and maybe stopping you from hitting the income levels that you want to hit. So if that's more the place where you're at, then I'd recommend that. It's also much easier and shorter read than this monster here. Alright, the next book on my list here is High Performance Habits by Brendan Burchard and you might know him from here on YouTube, he's a motivational speaker. And I was really impressed with this book. It's very similar in a way to the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So if you liked that book, you will probably like this book also. And similarly to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when I picked up this book, I was expecting something a little different than what I got. I was expecting something simpler and a little bit more cliche and instead I got something really deep and kind of technical and especially very applicable to running my business. Although even if you aren't running a business, you could still get a lot out of this book. I would highly recommend. This is maybe my favorite book I read this year. Okay, the next book on my list is this one right here. It is called Building a Story Brand and it is by Donald Miller. Now this book is definitely only applicable to entrepreneurs or people who are running their own business or managing a business in some way. It is all about developing your brand's message to be clear and compelling. And Donald Miller has a framework that he teaches to create a message for your business, a marketing message that really is the foundation of your entire company. So it's not just what you're telling other people, but it's also what you are living out in your business. It's a little hard to explain without giving away the entire book, but basically there are these seven different parts of the message and he walks you through how to craft all of them for your business to make a message that really clearly communicates what your business does and compels people to want to learn more if they're the right fit for your business. Okay, the next two books here are books that I read. First of all, All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. Now I've heard of this book for several years, but I finally got around to reading it this year and I'm so glad I did because just like everything by Seth Godin, it was amazing. Seth Godin, if you don't know, he is a marketer and he's also a blogger and a public speaker and a whole bunch of other things and he is an absolute genius and everything he writes is absolute genius and it's also all really short. He's been blogging every day for at least 10 years. I know it's been longer than that, but I don't know exactly how long and each of his blog posts is normally really short, just several paragraphs long, sometimes even just one paragraph long, but the amazing thing about them is that they are all so profound. I don't know how one person can come up with so many profound things to say, but long story short, all of his books also are rather short. They're normally around 100 or 200 pages long, but they have a lot of value inside of them. So I read this book called All Marketers Are Liars or All Marketers Tell Stories and it just gave me a lot of insights into the concepts of marketing, kind of the deeper issues, I would say, of what fuels a marketing message. It very much goes along with this brand here, Building a Story brand, although they touch on completely different sides of the issue of marketing messages. But if you are working in marketing or you are marketing your own business or you're an entrepreneur, I would definitely recommend it. Okay, so the next book on my list is also a book that I listened to on Audible and it is The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Now I started reading a few of Ryan Holiday's books this year and I never read any of them before, but I was really pleasantly surprised by his very friendly conversational writing style and also all of the good, interesting thoughts that he has to share on several different topics. He talks both about business and about marketing and also about personal development. He's particularly into stoicism, which is something that I really didn't know anything about before I started reading some of his books and then I did some research on my own. So the first book that I read by him is called The Obstacle is the Way and I think that maybe I got this book for free on Audible somehow. I don't remember how, I just know that it was on my Audible and it was sitting there for a while because I wasn't really sure that it was actually going to be very valuable, probably because I got it for free somehow. So I didn't listen to it for a long time, but then I finally got around to listening to it this year when I just had some free time and I didn't have any other books downloaded so I thought I would try that one. And I really liked it. It presented some new ideas to me that I hadn't thought about, some new ways of looking at life and some new ways of being more content and also going after your goals. So if you are interested in things like meditation or mindfulness, anything like that, or if you're interested in success or achieving your goals, either way I would really recommend this book. Also, just FYI, this book is relatively short and what I would qualify as an easy read. Okay, the next book on my list is one that a subscriber actually recommended to me. It's called One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer, Dr. Robert Maurer. And a subscriber recommended this book to me in my video about 10 books that changed my life. I asked people to comment down below and tell me any books that had changed their life and someone shared this book with me and I thought it sounded interesting so I went ahead and bought it right then and there and I loved it. I thought it was so good. It is such a simple concept that is shared and taught in this book, but the author applies it in so many ways and makes it so tangible and so easy to actually see how you could put it into practice in your life. So basically the idea is that instead of trying to make massive breakthroughs, for example going on a crash diet to lose weight, instead we want to work on taking very small actions to move us closer to our goals. So for example, we could just start by trying to eat a vegetable every day or even just eat a piece of fruit or we could eat just a little bit less of something bad for us every day or we could just walk around the block every day. Some tiny little thing that you think could never possibly lead you to where you want to go, like if you ran the numbers, if you did the math, you'd be like, okay this is never going to get me to where I want to go, but taking that one small action can be the catalyst for change that then allows you to take another small action and another small action and perhaps even a big action down the road which can eventually make a massive difference in your life. And I know that that sounds so simple and might even make it seem like you don't even need to read the book now, you understand the concept, but the book goes so much deeper than that. So I would really recommend this book to absolutely anyone. I don't have a copy of it here with me because I lent it to my dad to read because it seemed like the sort of thing he would enjoy too. Okay, the next book on my list is this one right here called Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday. And so this is another book that I read by Ryan Holiday this year. And this book obviously is about marketing, as several of these books have been. And this book is very short and quite easy to read, again. And I'd recommend it to anyone who is marketing their own company or is a marketer. And he just talks about kind of like the new age of marketing. So instead of the old school marketing principles that you might learn if you went to school for marketing, new principles that we can use in this era of social media and all sorts of things like that. So he's talking about how to get a bunch of exposure, how to turn that exposure into leads and then into sales, and how to track that along the way. So he's talking about like big picture concepts here, but definitely important things to know if you work in marketing. Okay, and now the last book here is this one called Rocket Fuel. And this is by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters. And this book isn't applicable to a very large number of people, but it is about running your own company, but not just by yourself, bringing a couple key people into your company to run it alongside you so that you can accomplish much more. And I had to include this book in today's video because I really think that these principles are having a dramatic impact on my business growth. Starting now, or actually starting a couple months ago when I read this book, it was really just exactly what I needed. Basically, what I learned in this book is that instead of just me trying to do all of the leadership type things in my business, I should be focusing on the visionary role. I should focus on coming up with the ideas for it, and perhaps doing other things that only I can do, like working with clients or creating content. But then the actual implementing of the ideas, it would be better if there was another person, kind of like a project manager, in this book they call it an integrator, who actually manages those projects and also helps my team communicate better. So instead of me talking to each member of my team individually, someone who is coming in there and integrating that whole situation so that the communication flows better and people know exactly who they're reporting to and exactly when they should be reporting on different tasks. So I know it's going to have a huge impact on my business going forward, and so I wanted to share that with you. All right, well those were the nine books that I read this year that were the best books that I would highly recommend. I read a bunch of other books that were also good, and I enjoyed many of them. There was also a few that I did not enjoy at all, including at least two that I stopped halfway through and didn't even finish because I decided they were just a waste of my time. But these nine books right here, well these five books plus the other four books I shared with you, they were fantastic and I would highly recommend them. Okay, well thank you so much for being here and for watching this video. If you have any books that you would highly recommend, please do comment down below and share them with me and with everyone else. Because last time I made a video like this, it was called 10 Books That Changed My Life, a bunch of you guys commented and you shared books with me and I thought it was so helpful and I actually read several of them. That video wasn't very long ago, so I'm still definitely working on a couple of those suggestions, but I would love to have more suggestions, more recommendations for 2019 because I plan to read, again, about 24 books over the next year. And I don't have a very long to-read list at this point, so I would love some more ideas. Before you go, make sure you hit that subscribe button down below if you haven't already because I make two videos every single week on Tuesday and Thursday all about entrepreneurship, success, and personal development and I would really love to have you here for the next one. Of course, if you like this video, hit that like button to let me know and as always, thank you so much for being here. It means so much to me and you really have made 2018 such an amazing year for me and I really have loved getting to know you guys and just this community that has developed. I know that that is such a cliche thing to say and everyone says it, but really, it's so amazing to me to have all of you together who all are interested in the same things. Interested in personal development, interested in becoming successful, and many of you interested in building your own businesses. And I have just so appreciated how supportive you all have been, not just of me, but of each other. You guys respond in the comments to each other, many of you guys are over in our Facebook group talking to each other, helping each other out, asking each other questions and answering them and that just means the world to me. So thank you so much, I really appreciate you being here and I look forward to seeing you again next time.