“The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life” By Steven Bartlett Review

A galvanizing playbook for success from Steven Bartlett, one of the world’s most exciting entrepreneurs and the host of the No. 1 podcast The Diary of a CEO. At the very heart of all the success and failure I’ve been exposed to – both my own entrepreneurial journey and through the thousands of interviews I’ve conducted on my chart-topping podcast – are a set of principles that ensure excellence.

I need to admit here that I had pretty low expectations for this book, since before reading this book I thought it was one of those way to overhyped books. But now that I have read this book I gotta admit that this book is one of the better business / self help books I have read in my time.

This book gives us a lot of amazing fantastic information and strategy which I have learned a few things from, despite the fact that I have read and reviewed a handful of business / self-help books. Which really shows that this book doesn’t re-phrase the same stuff other business / self-help books do say which I have come across from a few times from in my time on this website. 

The writing style of the book is very good, because its very clear from the writing style that the author of this book have put a lot of research and time into this book which only made me like this book more than I already did. But also the writing style in this book is very good because it was like the author of this book knew exactly what words to use to completely grab my attention and not let it go until the very end of this book. 

The language of this book is very simple and easy to understand. Which makes this book a very good read for anyone no matter the age, educational level or background. I have come across some very heavy business books where they used a lot of masters degree in finance terms and strategies I had no idea about since I have no degree in business or finance. But this book is the completely opposite of that, which really made me give this book some extra points for doing.

I really liked the aspect of this book where this book doesn’t use the time to make pointless examples or waste time on stuff that didn’t matter which I have seen other business and self-help books do. 

This book actually offers us a lot of value and good insight into becoming successful which really is a huge part of why I rating this book so high as I did. Because I ave come across a lot of business / self-help book which only re-phrase the same stuff over and over again which I already talked about above. 

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“The Psychology of Money” By Morgan Housel Review

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money–investing, personal finance, and business decisions–is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

I need to admit here that this book is one of the better business / finance books I have read so far in my life. 

This book gives us a lot of good lessons and tips about how to use our money and not impulse buy stuff we don’t really need. At the same time this book gives us some lessons about investing in stocks, funds and bonds. 

I feel like its important for me to mention that this book wont tell you how to become rich overnight because this book focuses more on building wealth the stable and longterm way like saving money from each paycheck or investing some of the money you have today or from each paycheck into stable investments like funds, bonds and companies which have somehow stable growth in their stocks. This book aims more towards using the resources we have today like getting paycheck from our jobs or even switching jobs if our current jobs makes us miserable. 

But at the same time this book doesn’t only talk about wealth, it also talks about happiness and that with time our goals and happiness might change which is perfectly fine. And we shouldn’t keep the same goals we had as teenager when we are in our 30s just because we made a decision we are no longer happy with over a decade later. 

This book has 20 goals which we can use in our own lives, but those 20 goals we do get in this book are very common sense and easy to do in our day-to-day life if we really put our minds to it. Which really shows how easy and simple approach this book has to actually growing our personal wealth and become “rich” which is very different from person to person. 

This book makes a big point that “becoming rich” is very different from person to person. One person might think about being “rich” as having a mansion or multiple Ferraris or Lamborghinis, while the second person might think about being “rich” as owning their own apartment and having a decent car which gets them from point A to point B and didn’t cost much, and a third person might be somewhere in-between person one and person two. So this book makes a pretty big point about defining for ourselves how we define being “rich” as.

I gotta admit that this book is way better than the “Rich dad, Poor Dad” book by Robert Kiyosaki which I have made some negative opinions about after I have reviewed that book a few years ago. But back to the review of this book. 

The writing style in this book is very good and easygoing. There author of this book uses simple and everyday language so that we who don’t have a bachelor in economics or finance can understand the things this book talks about and take as much as possible out off this book. Which made me like this book so much better, since over the time I have been writing reviews on this website I have come across some finance / business books which used very advanced languages which only people with bachelor in economics or finance would understand and I don’t have neither, so I have more of a dummy when it comes to terms and advanced concepts in economics and finance.

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“The Side Hustle: How to Turn Your Spare Time into $1000 a Month or More” By Nick Loper Review

Make Money and Live Completely Updated and Revised! Important The reviews dated before 2019 are for a previous version of the book that was not nearly as strong as the current edition. I took that feedback, bulldozed most of the content, and rebuilt it from the ground up. The Side Hustle is for people who want or need to earn some extra money outside of their day jobs. Maybe you need a few extra dollars to make ends meet. Maybe you want to pay off debt. Maybe you want to save for a rainy day or for your children’s education.

I need to admit here that this book is one of the worse business books I have read in my time. And of course I will explain everything in this review so if you are interested in hearing my thoughts about this book then keep reading my dear reader.

So this book is meant to be as a side hustle inspiration where it gives us ideas about side hustles we should start on our own to earn a few extra bucks each month. Which I really appreciated the idea of this book but at the same time the ideas which this book tries to give us are so overused on the internet. Because the author goes with drop shipping, affiliate marketing and overall all the other generic side hustles you have seen on the internet a dozen or more times. 

At the same time the author of this book makes starting a side hustle seem very easy and simple like even a 10 year old cold do it. But in reality its pretty harder than saying “you can do it” and overnight you are earning a lot of cash each month. Which had put me off at times because of how easy the author made starting a side hustle seem.

I gotta say that this book doesn’t bring anything new to the table for people who wants to start a side hustle. Because as I’ve said above all the side hustle ideas this book gives us are very overused and very generic. Because each of the side hustle listed in this book are what the majority of influencers do like affiliate marketing, starting a business on shopify etc.

The writing style of this book is very simple and east going. Which made this book quick to read and at times find enjoyable. 

After reading this book I gotta say that this book isn’t worth buying because all the things this book talks about can be found on the internet for free. And the reason why I have this book and read it is because at the time I got this book it was free for the kindle and thats how I got my hands on this book.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration” By Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace Review

From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. 

This book is about Pixar and how it risen up to be one of the most well known animated movies company in the world. This book talks also about all the challenges Pixar faced as well as all the issues they had like when they are creating Toy Story or the mistakes they had.

I found this book to be very interesting because it gives us all the behind the scenes information on Pixar which I personally didn’t know about. Even thou as a kid I loved their OG movies like Toy Story, Cars, Wall-E and Monster Inc. 

This book also talks about the way artists behind the Pixar movies are taught to really see things, which I found to be very interesting. Because it really shows that at times the artists behind the Pixar movies aren’t the best at what they do, even thou it looks like they are the best at what they do. 

I personally found this book to be very interesting and enjoyable. Because of how well this book is told to us.

The writing style in this book, is very simple and easygoing which I really liked. Because it felt like having a chat with the author of this book rather than reading a book.

This book also gives us plenty of anecdotes and insights in Pixar, which I really liked because we really got a glimpse of how the Pixar company works from the inside.

But I need to admit here that I found some parts of this book to be boring and uninteresting. Because there are parts of this book, where it goes on way too long in my opinion about specific things which really made me annoyed and uninterested at times. 

This book shows at times how very passionate about animation the author of this book who is also the co-founder of Pixar really is. Which really made me like him a lot because you can very easily and clearly see his big love and passionate for animation.

I Give This Book 4 / 5

“No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention” By Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer Review

There has never before been a company like Netflix. It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.

I need to admit here that I didn’t have a lot of expectations for this book because I thought that this book would be another boring Netflix origin book rather than actual pretty useful to your life. But after reading this book I think that this book is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year and we are only halfway through the year which speaks for itself how much I liked this book. 

This book was very interesting and enjoyable to read. I personally couldn’t stop reading this book until the very end of it which really doesn’t happen a lot to myself when it comes to non fiction books like this one.

This book is very insightful on how Netflix was able to grow so fast and so big as it did which I also really liked because I didn’t know a lot about it before reading this book. I only knew some very generic basics of Netflix like it opened few years before the 2000, it used to offer DVD rental service when it first opened and now it is probably the biggest streaming platform and movie production company in the world.

This book talks about a lot of things which worked for Netflix and helped it grow to be as big as it is today, but its important to know that its not a business hand-book because what might have worked for Netflix doesn’t mean it would work for other business. But at the same time it does give us the thought process of stepping out of the generic creating a business type thinking and just be creative in what tactics we use to grow the business.

There is some much good things I want to say about this book but I wont be able to,  because this book is over 400+ pages long and I will be talking for a very long time if I wanted to point out very good thing about this book which will really bore you out sooner or latter. 

The writing style in this book felt like the author knew exactly what words to use to completely grab our attention and not let it go until the very end of it.

The writing style in this book was very good, because it felt like it was having a chat with the author rather than reading a 400+ pages long book.

This book gives us also a lot of insight into the “no rules rules” policy which I personality am a big fan of because the police talks about take how many vacations week as you want, spend company money, if you are productive and good at your work you can get benefits like working less hours etc.

I personally think that everyone should reading this book because you learn a lot about Netflix in this book and what tactics the executives and CEOs used to get Netflix to the position to which it is now.

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive” By Mark H. McCormack Review

Mark H. McCormack, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in American business, is widely credited as the founder of the modern-day sports marketing industry. On a handshake with Arnold Palmer and less than a thousand dollars, he started International Management Group and, over a four-decade period, built the company into a multimillion-dollar enterprise with offices in more than forty countries.

There are a lot of good business books out there in the world, but I gotta say that this book isn’t one of the good business book. But don’t get me wrong this book is a okay business book.

It for sure talks about a few interesting and somehow helpful things, but as someone who have read quite a few business books at this point I can tell you that this book repeats the same shit as the other business book say. This book was first published in 1984, so I will not be so harsh for this book due to its age and when it was written.

This book doesn’t have a lot of business strategies as much as his have business anecdotes from the author’s business carer and life. 

All the business strategies, tips and whatever else the author gives us in this book feels like those things you don’t get taught at Harvard Business School, because of all those things mentioned in this book are just common sense and things you should know about if you want to get into Harvard business school. So this book wasn’t that helpful, but rather it was using the name of IVY League school to get people buying this book.

All the business strategies, tips and whatever else you will find in this book are all the things the author have learned in his career and from being the CEO of IMG (International Management Group). To be honest I didn’t know who the author was before doing some research about him right before I started writing this review. And to be honest I got clickbaited to buying and reading this book.

There were many moments while reading this book, where I got the impression that the author of this book was in love and fully obsessed with himself because he founded and was the CEO of IMG. And I hate those kind of people who are acting like the whole universe is spinning around them because of that single thing they done decades before. 

But also the title is very misleading before the author of this book never went to Harvard Business School, like ever. He had only given few lectures at Harvard Business School. So how can I person who never went to that school know what the school teaches you and what it doesn’t teach you? Can someone explain that to me because I don’t understand it.

However this book is interesting and enjoyable to read. And at the same time it is very easy to understand. It is written in such a way that anyone and everyone can read it even if you didn’t go to IVY League school. Which really made me give this book some extra point for doing this.

The writing style is easy and simple. In a way the writing style makes it fun and quick to read because the writing style is very nicely put together. And it doesn’t use big fancy words as the IVY League schools like to do. 

However there were times where the book was repeating itself. Because it would talk about something is was basically the thing as the previous section but only one or two things differently said.

I Give This Book 3 / 5

“Way of the Wolf: Become a Master Closer with Straight Line Selling” By Jordan Belfort Review

For the first time ever, Jordan Belfort opens his playbook and gives readers access to his exclusive step-by-step system the same system he used to create massive wealth for himself, his clients, and his sales teams. Until now this revolutionary program was only available through Jordan s $1,997 online training. Now in The Way of the Wolf, Belfort is ready to unleash the power of persuasion to a whole new generation of readers, revealing how anyone can bounce back from devastating setbacks, master the art of persuasion, and build wealth. Every technique, every strategy, and every tip has been tested and proven to work in real-life situations.

I didn’t have a lot of expectations for this book before going into it which turns out to be a very good thing.

If you are looking for a good business and business psychology book, then this book isn’t a go to there. Because everything this book talked about could have been summarized into a 2-3 pages read instead of a 240 pages book.

This book makes some good points here and there but not enough of good points for this book to have 240 pages in it. However these good points we got in this book was very on point which made me give this book some extra points here and there.

The writing style and language in this book are very simple which means that everyone can read it and understand it. Because if this, I gave this book some extra points. Because some of the business books I’ve read in my time really seemed like you needed a bachelor degree in business to understand them.

In my opinion this book is mainly aimed at salesmen and saleswomen rather than any other category of people or for people who just want to learn about sales market.

This book was very repetitive at a lot of moments, because it was saying the same things over and over again which really made me feel like the author thought that the people who would read this book had a memory of a gold fish. 

The closer you get to the ending of this book, the more and more of lists, stats, objectives and scales you get which really made me give a feeling that the author himself didn’t know or care how to give us a good ending so he just decided to bombard us with stats, lists, diagrams which we would forget the moment we had put this book on the table.

I Give This Book 3 / 5

“Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” By Peter Thiel Review

If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. 

To be fully honest I wanted to read this book for couple of years now, and I finally got the chance to do so. And after reading this book, I couldn’t help myself to put it as one of my favourite business books. 

This book is very enjoyable, interesting, knowledgeable and very easy to read. I read it one sitting which shows that its a really quick read. 

You will learn a lot from it. However some of the things might not go 100% with you but you will still learn at least something. 

The author gives us many good insights like “A great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. But also many more which will make you think about a think or two. 

The writing style is very simple, which means that everyone will understand it. No matter if its a 15-year-old reading this book or a 60-year-old. The language is very easy, and it also has a lot of diagrams.

This book isn’t only a “how-to start a start-up” but this book also tells us how to survive the start-up phase of your company and make it one of the biggest companies in the world.

Even if you aren’t planning to start a company or a start-up this book is still worth reading, because it gives us insight on how companies like Apple, Google and Amazon went from small companies which no one really knew to being the biggest companies in the world.

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“Why We Want You To Be Rich: Two Men, One Message” By Donald J. Trump And Robert T. Kiyosaki Review

The world is facing many challenges and one of them is financial. The entitlement mentality is epidemic, creating people who expect their countries, employers, or families to take care of them. Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, both successful businessmen, are natural teachers and have joined forces to address these challenges. They believe you cannot solve money problems with money. You can only solve money problems with financial education. Trump and Kiyosaki want to teach you to be rich.

I gotta say that this book disappointed me because I’ve had high expectations for this one.  Ive read Robert T. Kiyosaki’s books in the past and I’ve read  Donald J. Trump’s books in the past and I’ve liked theirs books so that’s why I’ve had high expectations for this one which it didn’t live up to.

To be honest here this book repeats the same things which are mentioned in “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki and “Trump: The Art of the Deal” By Donald J. Trump. This book just felt like an extended version of these two books put together without adding anything new.

This book also repeats the same things over and over again. And it seems like Robert T. Kiyosaki is trying to flex his accomplishments in this book by constantly saying how many copies of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” he had sold, that he created board game and that he got to work and meet Donald J Trump. These two things really annoyed me a lot.

The writing style here was the best thing in this book because it is interesting and enjoyable. The writing style to Robert T. Kiyosaki really shows that he is an amazing story teller if nothing more. But when it comes to the writing style to Donald J Trump then all he really did in this book was to agree with what Robert T. Kiyosaki have written in the book without actually adding anything useful expect of the fact that he was bragging about how dope his life is.

However this book will be amazing for you, if you haven’t read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki and “Trump: The Art of the Deal” By Donald J. Trump before. 

I give this book 2 / 5

“The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” By Alice Schroeder Review

Here is the book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”

It is important o mention that this book cover topics as:  1) Trade offs of various forms of success. 2) Value Investing. 3) Importance of Relationships. 4) Internal Values. 5)  Understanding your purpose and priorities. 

This book is a little bit long, but the value which you get from this book is really worth the time you’ll spend reading this book. However there are couple of parts of this book which really felt like a waist of paper because it was so uninteresting to me but that could be just me here.

The writing style here is okay for the most part but there are moments where the writing style turns into complete into a text book from high school which no one cared about and never read. 

And for me personally I was super disappointed because Ive heard so many good things about this book, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. For me this book feels more like a trivia of Warren Buffer personal life than his business life. 

This book is more about what Warren Buffet did before he got to the point where he is now. But it isn’t about what he did for business but it is more about where he bought a house, what he did when he was a kid, who he meet along the way, who he hang out with in the early stages of his career and so on. If the author would cut these things out then this book would be like 200 pages long with true value instead of over 900 pages with very little value and a lots of boring moments.

However if you consider this book a biography of Warren Buffet instead of a business book then this book is very good and I would give this book 4 stars but since it is ranked as business book means that I can’t give that rating to this book. However this book as a biography still isn’t the best biography I’ve read but it was good enough for me to give it 4 stars if it was ranked as biography

I need to give this book points for showing us that Warren Buffet is a complex character, and there is a lot to him which we don’t know about. And after reading this book I want even more to have a talk with Warren Buffet because it really shows how smart and how unique he really is. An I truly think after reading this book that I and Mr. Buffet would vibe if I ever get the chase to talk to the man. 

I give this book 3 /5