Torlando’s 15 Book Reading List from 2016

This year was filled with a lot of re-reading of books that influenced me in years passed. Although it wasn’t the typical list of 30+ that I usually blow through I think it was a much more qualitative experience as I was able to internalize ideas that I had only sort of skimmed the surface the first time around.

In particular the works of Robert Kiyosaki has the most profound influence on me and will be added to my list of perennials.

How to win friends and influence people — Carnegie

This book is what I would consider to be my first non-religious perennial. How to win friends is one of the most influential books in how I deal with people. You can become the room’s most interesting person by saying almost nothing. For every angry email I write and delete before sending, for every argument I win by not having, I have this book to thank.

Debaters may criticize the ethos of the book by belief that it is a moral imperative to use argument to create change, but after this year’s election I think the old adage that “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still” won out. We saw very little change created by the most eloquently vitriolic opposition to the rise of Donald Trump and found nothing but men with ear plugs and resolve.

Read the first few chapters of this book and you will understand Donald J. Trump and his voters.

Contagious — Berger

I re-read Contagious mostly because I remembered liking it but couldn’t remember what it’s core philosophy was about. A second time through and I’m still a little foggy on it. I’d like to think that because of the popularity of the book that I’ve adopted behaviors through osmosis by reading the book and that I’m practicing contagious behavior without realizing it. The biggest take away from the book is how little of online activity starts online. The data shows real world interactions lead to searching out the online home.

In our business, we found that while online lead sources dominated, word of mouth and real world direct marketing took its claim as a valuable contributor to our society.

This is important in small business especially. Your website isn’t the center of the universe. It’s not even the sun. (This idea borrowed from Brandscaping, another book on my list). Instead, creating something that is contagious is about creating something that is real world remarkable. That is worthy of remark.

Grow to Greatness — Hess

I first read this book ahead of our growth phase. Now that we are in the thick of our growth phase re-reading it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Growth is hard. Growth is dangerous. More dangerous than decline. You can comeback from decline. You have nowhere to go but up during a valley. But when growth is mishandled you don’t just stumble down a hill, you run full steam ahead off a cliff.

If you value case studies, which are good for relating and internalizing, then I recommend this book. You’ll gain insight from other people’s failures and successes as you grow.

Convert Every Click — Rabhan

Convert is another decent re-read, although once you get in you can sort of start skimming through just to be reminded about the main points, which are to track A/B test everything.

This mindset served me well in my experiments with selling services online. Buyers still aren’t sure about buying a person’s time. There is something slippery about it that leads to a lot of cart abandonment. But that’s why you test. Make little changes, note what works, note what doesn’t work and make new changes based on the data. Where this might be a single analysts job at a larger company, for smaller companies this is often easier said than done. At the end of the day, “when in doubt, get it out” but as you get into grooves track what’s easy to track and extract more data as you go.

Youtility — Baer

I didn’t get to read Jay Baer’s new book “Hug Your Haters” but I thought re-reading his hit book “Youtility” would still serve me well. A couple years ago this book served as the basis for our content strategy. The idea is simple. Be useful, be part of the conversation and not part of the interruptions and conversions go up.

One of the case studies that resonated with me most was included in the introduction written by a swimming pool installer. The study indicated that conversions went up the more pages of content people read. And we are talking about hundreds of pages of content, especially for high ticket items like services.

Rich Dad’s Cash Flow Quadrant — Kiyosaki

Here’s where re-reading starts to have its biggest impact in my mind. Robert Kiyosaki did more for me in 2016 than any other author.

If you haven’t read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, start there, read it twice, then read Cash Flow Quadrant, read that twice then read Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing as a perennial.

Robert is old, he’s experienced and he knows how the rich view the world and it’s completely different than how 90% of the population understand things. It’s a mindset so engrained in our culture and education system that when my mind finally jumped over the canyon that separates the poor from the wealthy it felt like Neo fighting Agent Smith one handed.

Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing — Kiyosaki

When I started Guide to Investing my course was reset. I started focusing on a new path through the existing vehicle. Where the purpose of the Cash Flow Quadrant was to show people that being an employee or self-employed wouldn’t lead to financial independence and to convince you to strive for being a business owner or investor, Guide to Investing assumes you’ve accepted that truth and gives you the “what now”.

The book is very digestible but it’s also dense. If you are a person who is currently trying to get a better job, thinking about an advanced degree or you’re striving to climb the corporate ladder this series will take you down an unconventional path. Robert doesn’t believe in conventional education or conventional career paths. Instead, he shows you the path toward investing through building businesses that buy assets that buy other assets. He paints a different picture of retirement as one where you are not living off of savings, rather you are living off of passive income. It’s very cool.

Speed of Trust — Covey

A few books on my list, I’m still working on. This is one of them that I started earlier this month. Written by Stephen M.R. Covey, son of Stephen R. Covey, so far it’s pretty good.

The premise is that gaining trust as fast as possible speeds up everything, reduces costs and increases profits. The quintessential example is airports. Since 9/11, airport security has added 2–4 hours per traveler to get through the airport to their flight. The root of this is distrust. Because of potential threats and the inability to trust other humans on a flight, it takes longer to get through flights, requires more TSA, more advanced security equipment and longer costs of service.

The government is another example of where the break down of trust is a quagmire. There is no trust and no cooperation in our government which is terrible news for being the world’s largest and most monopolistic corporation. How can anything possibly get done when the left hand doesn’t trust the right? Why should we even bother?

The book’s early chapters focus on individual integrity as the first step toward organizations building trust. The larger a corporation the more sluggish and distrustful it gets because the internal competition eludes cooperation. In my opinion, this is a strong case for keeping businesses small and increasing the connectivity between small business in a holacratic system. That’s not really a point of the book. The only reason I go there is a personal indulgence as it’s helpful for me to let author ideas take my own thoughts to different places.

Brandscaping — Davis

Another book in progress, it was a recommendation from Al Doan. Brandscaping is an advertising book with a very good strategy to offer. The idea is finding brands whose current customer’s next step is your business and forming an alliance to leverage each other’s customer base. In my company we talk about building relationships with complimentary providers. For example, a paint store retail customer’s next call is a painter. We work with a fiberglass door company who doesn’t deal with coating their doors. We formed an alliance so that when a customer of theirs buys a fiberglass door, the next call they make is us to stain the door.

Reading the book has helped me to think about how I can maximize nearly every marketing effort by pairing up with someone who has my customer. Can you connect with one person who will open you up to 500 people versus trying to reach 500 people individually? What if you connected with 500 people who opened you up to 500 people each? Or 1 person who’s connected to 500 people who have 500. And so on. It’s a much more efficient and targeted method of advertising.

The Sales Acceleration Formula — Roberge

This year we added sales consultants so I picked up this book by former Hubspot Chief Revenue Officer who now serves as a Hubspot advisor. I bought it because the book seemed geared toward helping build a sales system and team and it is definitely good.

Roberge is an engineer and was put in charge of the Hubspot sales program. Kind of an interesting choice to put an engineer in a sales management role and not, you know, a sales person. But it paid off because he took an engineers approach to developing a sales team which meant a lot of testing and implementing programming to automate or prompt the most effective sales strategies.

Where other sales books I’ve read give examples of sales rockstars who put down on a sticky note to call so and so on such and so date. Very outside of the box right? Or you could just build a software that notified your sales reps of when to follow up, what goals to hit and a method to track the results and change how sales is done across multiple industries. No bid deal.

Through the pages you learn from someone else’s experience on what works, what doesn’t work and so on. But you are never lead to believe that it’s a good idea to take the advice at face value. Instead, you’re given the formula to track and test your own methods and results.

March 1 & 2 — Lewis, Aydin, Powell

March 3 came out this year with probably one of the most significant book releases of any category all year. It’s my Maus and has given me the courage to face my own complex feelings about race and to stop pretending like I’m able to blend in. I’ve become much more outspoken in the face of exposed movements by the alt-right and I don’t know that I would have gotten there without reading the history contained in this prolific graphic biography.

Sen. John Lewis is a true inspiration and my friend Nate Powell and Bloomington local proves the great worth of art. This book could not have come at a more poniente time in history. You will be a more compassionate human by reading this series.

Prophecy — Crowther

Ok, this is an unknown book. You will not see it on any modern list. It was written in 1962 as a BYU religious studies masters thesis and its insane. Insanely GOOD! Hello. I mean, to a Mormon it would be good. To anyone else it might seem crazy.

The book compiles prophecies from Old and New Testament Prophets and LDS prophets from the early to mid 19th century.

In it you read about the origin of the white horse prophecy, the constitution hanging by a thread prophecy, the prophecy about the civil war and future civil wars. It all seemed pretty far off, if not impossible until the conclusion of the republican primaries this year. Then it was like, oh, maybe, no, please no.

The thing about prophecies when you are a religious person is that there is a thin line between tin foil hats and a drawer full of extra tin foil just in case. But when you read things like Joseph Smith predicting two major parties called the Democrats and Republicans going to war against each other when the only two parties that existed in his day were the Democrats and the Whigs, you start to keep an eye out for what words are being said by the far left and far right.

Honestly the book is too out there to try to explain in a couple short paragraphs how I’m equal parts prepare to grow my company into one that can compete in an augmented reality market place vs. prepare for the electric grid to shut down but I think we’ve all seen enough distopian movies to imagine the same future forecasted from the 19th century.

Urge — Mourey

I’ll be straight forward. I did not care for this book. It might have been written for a college business class or something so there is decent content but the author tries to be funny. And when I’m trying to learn about consumer psychology I don’t want funny. I want interesting and factual.

I did learn that marketing is not the same as advertising and most people say marketing when they mean advertising. Marketing is very big umbrella that includes advertising but it’s a little more all encompassing than how most people use it. For consumer psychology I would recommend a book called Influence which I plan to re-read soon.

Retire Inspired — Hogan

The last book on my list is Retire Inspired by Chris Hogan. Hogan is in the Dave Ramsey camp. I’ve heard him speak. He’s entertaining. His book is good. I would recommend it for people who are employees or self-employed and not headed the direction of the Rich Dad camp. The Ramsey audience is for normal folks meant to help them get out of debt, live frugally and play it safe. The Rich Dad camp is not safe. It’s risky and that’s just not the Ramsey way.

What I like about Hogan’s book is that his main message is retirement isn’t an age, it’s a number. Meaning, a number that you need in a secure place or coming in every month to enable you to retire. Reading what I have about where different generations are at in terms of retirement I can tell you that Millennials and the next generation have a huge burden ahead of them and there is virtually nothing the collective can do about it. The Baby Boomers and Gen X are leaving this country in a pretty jacked up state and they expect us or the government to take care of it. It’s actually pretty infuriating how true that is.

But nonetheless retire inpired is a good place to start for those generations and people who are going to go the “safe” route of having a job and saving for retirement and all that. The whole financial peace curriculum is ideal for that.

Phew…That was a lot.

Okay, I’m done. That was a fun time. I’m not sure what direction I’ll go in 2017 with reading. Maybe a little more fiction. Maybe a little bit more about innovation or communication. Not sure. Any suggestions?