9 Business Books That Changed My Life

Transcription of the Video

Hey guys, David Dutton here from WhoIsDavidDutton.com and I get asked a lot what books have influenced my life and where did I learn how to market. I have learned from a ton of different people, so I can’t just put everybody in this video, but I was looking around my bookshelf and I picked out about I think nine different books that really had a major impact on me and if you know me at all you know how I value my time. I’m really funny about that, so for me to sit down and read a book and then also say this is really good you might want to read it two or three more times it has to be a really good book, so I’m just going to go through these books and also I kind of put them in an order of when they impacted my life and I’ll tell you a little story about them.

All right, Tom Hopkins,How To Master The Art Of Selling, it is a staple if want to sale. You may not think of yourself as a sales person, but if you are getting a job or you have a job or applying for a job you are selling yourself, so everybody has a product they are selling and Tom Hopkins, How to Master the Art of Selling is a great book. This is actually the original copy that I got when I was 20 years-old, the very first business book I ever bought and I will never sell this for sentimental value because I made a lot of money that year at 20 years-old and that is what just made me who I am today.

Now about a year or two after I bought How to Master the Art of Selling I came across a guy named Jay Conrad Levinson with Guerrilla Marketing and I’m sure pretty much everybody has heard about him. He talks about very specific strategies. This book has been around for a long time, really thick, but what I took out of it is the fact that you can be- if your marketing is great your selling can suck and you can market to people first and it makes them a lot more susceptible to buying from you and so that is when I just had a complete mind shift as far as how I interact. That is when I started working on my marketing and I got a lot better at that because of this book.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, there is whole series as you know. This is the only one I have ever read. It was a shift for me because it talks about creating assets in your life and limiting your liabilities. There is a lot of great stuff in here, but the big takeaway for me was build up your assets and limit your liabilities. He talked about he wanted I think it was a Porsche and instead of just going out and just financing it he built up an asset that just paid for that Porsche and if you have worked with me any length of time you know how I talk about creating projects that fund your lifestyle, so that is where I got that from.

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, a lot of people know about this book. This guy interviewed a bunch of millionaires and put the principles and secrets inside the book. I probably got the importance of mastermind groups, I probably got that out of this book and you are who you hang out with and also you are what you think about and also I got that from the Bible as well and I think of them as **** and but this was one of the staple business books that if you haven’t read you need to.

Along the same lines again I was probably 21 to 23, around this time. I’m learning about marketing and Jay Abraham is a huge marketer. You probably know who he is. Getting Everything you Can out of all You’ve Got is one of my favorite business books of all time, again really thick. I learned several things from Jay, but two big things. One is joint ventures and as you know from my other products I have made a whole entire living just hooking people up and networking with people and finding out what people want and then giving it to them. I got that from this book, Joint Ventures because it was just so game changing for me. The other thing I got out was risk reversal. That is one of the things Jay is known for. If you can take the risk out of someone doing business with you then they’re more likely to do business with you and that is where I got that, game changing. When you hear me giving really good killer money-back guarantees on my products and coaching and that type of thing that is where I get that from. If you stand behind your stuff you’re not really worried about it, people refunding because they’re going to love your stuff and most people won’t refund. He talks about 21 ways you can outthink your competition.

If my house was burning the one book besides the Bible, the one book I would pick up would be Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Awesome book and it is written by a college professor. I always butcher his last name. I’m not exactly sure how it is pronounced, but that is the cool thing about this book. It is written by a college professor who studies social psychology. He is a brilliant expert on the topic and this is almost like a textbook and the cool thing is he gives you actual case studies. He talks about the six core desires that motivate all humans. Chapter four is called “Social Proof”. The game changing thing I got out of this book was chapter four. I use a lot of his stuff in here, but the game changing moment for me was chapter four called “Social Proof” or “The Bandwagon Effect”. It is basically how people interact in groups, really, really cool. If my house was burning I would grab this book. You can get in on Amazon really cheap just like all of these books, so if you had to pick one of these I would pick this one

The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss, probably heard of it. The biggest thing that I got out of this one was about your lifestyle, doing the work you love and the lifestyle and also creating projects, a little bit kind of like Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but he was talking about break your income up into different things like if you want a Porsche create a project to pay for the Porsche and so it is not an overwhelming thought throughout the whole book, but that is what I got out of it.

All right, PyroMarketing by Greg Stielstra, The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life. Love this book. I found it by accident. I was looking for viral marketing books like four years ago and I saw this title, clicked on it and it was killer because the guy who wrote this, Greg Stielstra who is a friend of mine now, he was one of the contributors. I don’t know exactly everything he did, but he was one of the main guys behind the Purpose Driven Life campaign. It sold something like 20 something million books in like two years, something crazy. It is the fastest hard selling book in U.S. history and he was one of the main guys behind it and I thought this guy knows his stuff because that thing just killed. The cool thing about this, you can go to his website PyroMarketing.com and download the entire book for free, including the audio, really cool. If you like it email Greg and tell him I sent you over there. I’m a huge fan. I love his stuff. It turns out when I was doing some research I found out he moved his family to Franklin, Tennessee. He just lives 15 minutes up the road now and so we ended up going to lunch. This was like four years ago and he ended up signing my book, which is pretty cool and just a great guy and he knows his stuff.

Last one and this one was an interesting one to end on. Larry Winget, You’re Broke Because You Want to Be, I love this title, You’re Broke Because You Want to Be. It has been around for about 25 years in the self-help industry. I had no clue who he was, but somehow I stumbled across him last year. Read the book once, read it last week in one day on a Sunday and then I read it in two days this week. I’m not broke, but it is just a great book. I love his style. He is very blunt and very direct. He is not **** guy. You can go to his website and check it out and just really, really good stuff, so check that out and the biggest thing I got out of that is just be real with yourself. Find out if you don’t like your life then change it. That is probably the biggest thing that I got out of that.

So you guys these are just some of the books that have influenced me over the years. Place your comments below. Let me know what books have influenced and you make sure I can go check those out and you can get most of these books on Amazon.com, so all right, take care and God bless.