In the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking about self-help books, and questioning their benefit.

Are they as beneficial as they seem?

Was it a good use of my time to read so many of them?

I eventually got to the conclusion that they were over-rated.

But that’s not the topic of today’s article.

For this article’s topic, questioning self-help books lead me to question something I though was even more unquestionable.

Books.

Yes, books all at once.

So I decided to go along with it, and here is a spoiler for you…

Books in general are not as over-rated as self-help books.

But they do have some cons that we usually don’t bother with.

And that’s what I will be exploring this time, I will go over the cons (why do we always start with the pros? I will switch it up this time), the pros and then share some tips that have helped me maximize the pros and minimize the cons in the books I read.

Speaking of which, check out my article on self-help books if you haven’t already, it should give you a good perspective coming into this one.

Enough with the intro, let’s get into it…

What’s Wrong with Books?

We grew up with the idea that…

Books make us smart.

Smart people read.

After all, books expand our vocabulary, improve our writing skills and build our way of thinking…

However, we could use similar arguments to justify movies/tv shows and social media:

They open our eyes to other cultures, they kept us connected during the pandemic, they entertain us and they allow us to express our ideas and thoughts freely.

But we all know that movies and tv shows are not as innocent as that, right?

They set unrealistic standards, affect our mental health, promote dangerous trends (e.g. #milkcratechallenge, Home Alone movies👀), are a place for hate and trolling, waste our time and make us unproductive.

So the benefits of social media and movies/tv shows are only one side of the story…

So why don’t we think the same way about books??

On a side note, the points I will be making in this article are not necessarily to blame on books or on authors, but it’s to argue that “reading books everywhere all the time isn’t as good as society makes it seem”.

Inconvenient #1:

Books Can Be a Waste of Time.

How much value would you get from books if…

The reading level is lower than yours.

or

It’s all the same idea stretched out into a whole book.

or

The story is purely for entertainment, with informal language and improper grammar.

You get very little out of it, because in the first example, you don’t get to expand your vocabulary, in the second example, it doesn’t really help you build your way of thinking 🧠, and the third example, it’s neither.

So you end up spending hours on something that doesn’t add any value to you as a person.

Thus, in this case, reading would be more of something you would do purely for the purpose of entertainment…

And spending too much time on that is not recommended.

Moving on…

Inconvenient #2:

Books can promote dangerous trends.

Reading books that portray a certain way of life, or that keep referring to certain habits and practices can quickly turn into promoting them and setting them as standards that are often unrealistic 🙄…

But why books exactly 👀? Because an author has 10+ hours of rephrasing and arguments to do their thing. An article or short video, barely a few seconds to a few minutes, nothing close to hours, although they can be just as dangerous.

And this applies to fiction on a first glance, as in the happy endings 🤩 and miraculous reunions 🥱, or the very depressing ones with the main character dying ⚰ and the nothing-work-out view on the world. For example, high school drama is SO exaggerated in books when in reality, it’s not as bad as that. Another example would be relationships, it simply doesn’t happen that way 😑.

Novels single-handedly have the power to pass down ideas and philosophies into readers.

But it might as well apply to biographies, philosophies, memoirs and other genres… They can victimize the offender 🔪, and justify the darkest crimes ☠ as well as promote fake and misleading information 📰.

Books in the past have inspired entire movements (political revolutions, feminist movement…) that have changed the course of history to the better or the worse…

Inconvenient #3:

Books are old-fashioned.

I am not trying to trigger an old-fashioned debate right here but…

In a world where everyone is busy doing things, the content we’re looking for.

Short videos 📹, images 📷🖼, webtoons and articles 📃is what everyone is shifting towards.

People’s average attention spans and patience are shrinking by the day. The world does not have time for long, detailed description and very thorough character development.

And that’s where we are in 2022. I can only image how things will get in a few years.

So a quick word for the millennials — I get that you grew up with books, but you just need to understand that our generation and the generations to come are a different story: we have access to resources you never had, and we’re going to USE them.

Inconvenient #4:

Books can affect your mental health.

Good novels are usually very intense, with a lot of action and plot twists. And when reading them, the reader is dying to know what would happen. That usually comes with authors who write well enough that they are able to immerse the reader in the story to the point where the reader feels all the heavy emotions the main character feels: the loss, the joy, the sadness, the excitement, the fright and everything in between.

And it might not apply for everyone, but a lot of people can find themselves shaking from the intensity while reading, and when not reading, their mind is constantly occupied thinking about what would happen next.

And while a little intensity occasionally does no harm and helps spice things up, it’s not very sustainable in long term as reading too many of those novels can negatively impact one’s mental health.

And non-fiction readers, if you thought you got away in this part, you celebrated too early…

Because the same thing can happen when reading about controversial topics (such as political conflicts), memoirs, and philosophy.

You’ll find all kinds of controversial facts…

And all kind of arguments…

And what you thought was unquestionable will be challenged. ❓

Which can lead to the reader feeling lost, and confused. 😵

With a good number of existential crises. 😩

And while those can be good to help you reflect on your beliefs and values and help you see the bigger picture, too many of them can impact your mental health, because as humans, we need a good balance of confidence of self-doubt…

But if the feeling of being lost and confused is ongoing, it can lead to constant self-doubt, therefore leading to imbalance between confidence and self-doubt, resulting in a negative impact on mental health.

Inconvenient #5:

Books can enhance your personal bias.

Whether you are a fan of fiction or non-fiction, no matter how much you try to find unbiased works, you can’t go against this fundamental fact:

There is no unbiased work.

Of course, some works are less biased than others, but nevertheless, authors can’t help but transmit some of their bias into their writing ✍, consciously or subconsciously.

And while the bias might not be the main idea of the books, it’s still present among the details that no one pays much attention to. But that’s the real issue:

We do not realize the bias in the material we read, but somehow, our brain subconsciously picks up those little bits, and over times, it builds up to become strong enough to be problematic.

But this shouldn’t be surprising because reading content from the same perspective for 10+ hours and reading multiple books by the same author can only lead to such results.

Feeling like you finally got the excuse to quit books? Hold on for a sec…

Pros of Books:

Pro #1:

Books train your patience and determination muscle.

Probably a cheesy pro to start with, but I find it important.

An article takes less than an hour to read, and you get going.

A book of average length takes 10+ hours to read.

Which one takes more determination to get to the end??

Not saying you should do it continuously, but our generation hates commitments and love things that take almost no time, when in reality, we need a balance of the two. So taking the time to concentrate and read a book all the way to the end is also a skill you can work on.

Pro #2:

Books help your get the ideas from the roots.

How many articles do you read per day?

Personally, I read so many (20+ 🙄) that I stopped realizing the huge number of articles I get through a day 🤭.

As for the ideas I read about in articles, they all get pushed to the back of my mind in the middle of the information I pick up here and there.

But books are a different stories…

The long hours ⏳ you spend on a book help you build up a deep and well-developed awareness about the topic you read about, from the same perspective, so there is very little contradiction in the ideas. They also allow you to fully understand the author’s perspective, with a lesser chance of misunderstanding their arguments out of context.

Pro #3:

Books are not as temporary as other forms of content.

Generally, the value in books is not closely related to the time ⌛⌚ they were written in. You can read a books written by a philosopher or thinks centuries ago and still gain value from them because there is wisdom in there.

This can be attribute to the fact that books take months and sometimes years to actually get published, so authors are forced to take that into consideration.

On the other hand, modern forms of content such as articles and short videos come out soon after they are produced and are meant for quick direct information, and are usually useless after a few years.

Pro #4:

Information from books is generally highly credible.

What’s one of the worst things that can happen to a publisher??

Books with questionable credibility of sources is one of them.

Therefore, editors and publishers make sure that their books are credible to avoid harm to their reputation.

And that’s extremely valuable in the middle of the misinformation crisis 📰.

So the next time you need to do deep research on a topic, keep in mind that books should be your go to 😋.

Pro #5:

Books are the only available formats in some topics/genres.

Articles with multi-media were not a thing a century ago.

Videos did not exist before 1888. 📽🎥📹

So if you’re looking into authors before that, or **history **before that from the perspective of someone who lived the events, I am afraid that you won’t have many options besides books.

Sure there was such a thing as essays, but it’s either very hard to find, or or did not survive because it’s not the easiest job in the world to preserve a loose piece of paper, unless it’s part of a collection grouped in a “book” or something of that sort.

Bonus Pro:

Books are a good break from mindless scrolling and jumping between articles.

In the spirit of being optimistic, let’s slip in an additional advantage of books, it never hurts 😇.

But back to the main point, short videos and articles are amazing formats, but they do include a lot of mindless scrolling, you start reading an article about healthy sleep habits and you end up in an article about Tom Holland’s funny moments (How many of you are guilty of that??).

Reading books on the other hand, especially for physical books, is a great way to take a break from the nasty internet — because as much as we love the world wide web, we do sometimes need a break from it 😏.

How to go about it?

In the introduction, I promised that I will be sharing some tips that helped me maximize the pros of books and minimize their cons. I compiled them in 5 suggestions

Tip #1:

Learn about the author before reading a book.

Earlier in this article, I talked about how books can promote negative ideas and enhance your personal bias, this tip is specifically to get you around those two points.

Perhaps one of the best ways to know what to expect in the book would be to learn about the author, here are the top 7 things to look into ⏬:

• Causes the author supports (and political leanings)

• **Trauma **or any notable incidents growing up

• Author’s social media activity

• Author’s controversies

• Other works by the author (not read them, just check the titles and maybe synopses, to get a general idea of what the author writes about)

• Professional criticism of their work (i.e. full book reviews)

• Reader reviews (e.g. on Goodreads): positive and negative — negative reviews give a good idea of any biases or flaws in the author’s and book’s ideology.

Now for this, you need to use your own judgement. If you think a book’s topic is a bit too off, don’t bother with it.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge it by its author.

That’s an original quote of mine by the way 😉.

Tip #2:

Take bestsellers with a grain of salt.

Bestseller books can be some of the least valuable books out there.

I would agree that some books that make it to the top are as good as they seem, but the truth is that a book read by those masses are your warning sign of herd mentality 🐑🐏.

More often than not, such books are shallow and include a lot of sweet talk 🍬that makes you feel like growing.

Seemingly wise and motivational quotes, heartwarming stories, and a portray of everyone’s “dream lifestyle”…

That’s simply not what you’re looking for.

If you want to get somewhere that other people see out of reach, you need to take a path that a normal person wouldn’t take — or very little people would. Therefore, in order to achieve unconventional results, you need to follow an unconventional path, and therefore read “unconventional books”.

unconventional results = unconventional path = unconventional books.

However, it’s probably not as easy as I just described because we feel pressured by everyone around us to read bestsellers in the middle of all the hype to be able to have a normal conversation, next tip is for you.

Tip #3:

Check out video reviews or read summaries.

If there is a book that you want to know what it’s about but don’t want to spend hours to go through it, you can read summaries or watch review videos, they are usually very well-done and will give you a decent over view in the span of a few minutes.

A similar way to do it is “diagonally reading” the book — scanning the book to get the general idea of it, and if you think it would be valuable with it, than you can continue along with it.

Tip #4:

Older books have things new ones lack.

If you’re looking for books that will help you grow your thinking but not sure about where to look for, a good place to start is older books 📚.

I might be biased, but if a book survived for centuries, there is a high chance that it was preserved because its ideas do not get outdated as time changes, and people found it valuable enough to preserve its content for the later generations.

Also a special recommendation would be memoirs, biographies and autobiographies by historically important personalities— they have some wisdom in their words.

Tip #5:

Maximize your value out of books.

You need to work smarter, not harder.

You can read a million books in your life time and get nothing out of them.

OR

You can read a hundred books in your life time and get a LOT out of them.

Here are 5 ways to maximize your values out of books:

→ Take organized notes and takeaways that you can go back to later.

→ Write down action items and** implement** them in your life.

→ **Reflect **on what you read and challenge your own ideas.

→ Share your takeaways, reflections, notes and action items publicly to get feedback on them (on Medium, Twitter, LinkedIn, or if you’re that old, Facebook works just fine 😐)

→ Meet people who also read the same book and share your thoughts and ideas, BONUS if you have a debate with each of you taking a different side of the argument. Ideally someone you don’t agree with, DISAGREEMENT can provide you with very valuable insights.

BONUS TIP: Keep track of books you read in a spreadsheet with links to your notes, reflections… And look at it occasionally (every 6 months if you read more than 2+ books a month, every year if you read less than 2 books a month) and try to notice your reading patterns to identify genres/authors/topics/perspectives you can to explore.

TL;DR:

Here are some cons of books to look out for:

→ Books can be invaluable and time-wasting — i.e. for pure entertainment.

→ Books can promote dangerous trends and ways of thinking 🧠.

→ Books are old-fashioned for our generation — got to move on at some point.

→ Books can improve your mental health 🧠, but they can also make it worse — if too intense or send you into a little too many existential crises.

→ Books can enhance your personal bias.

But books still have some pros:

→ Books train your determination and patience muscles. 💪

→ Books allow you to gain full awareness of the topic you’re reading about, with little contradictions due to the consistency in perspective.

→ Books are not as temporary as other form of content, so you can still gain value from a book written centuries ago 🗝.

→ Information from books is generally highly credible, and include proper references and sourcing ✨.

→ Books are the only available formats available in some situations, so can’t complain about them.

→ Books are an opportunity for a well-needed break from the mindless scrolling. ⚡

Here are some tips to help you maximize the pros and minimize the cons out of books:

→ “You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge it by its author.” — me. Read about the author to decide if you want to read a book.

→ Don’t stick to bestsellers — they can be some of the most invaluable books out there. Take a unconventional path for unconventional results.

→ If you feel pressured into reading a book (say a bestseller) you can watch review videos or read summaries. You can also read diagonally — scanning the book through and decide if you want to actually read it or not.

→ Give older books a chance, they have things newer books lack 📚.

→ Maximize your values from your books by taking notes, implementing action items reflections and takeaways ✍, BONUS if you share them publicly to get feedback on them and meet with other people who read the same book to discuss your thoughts and ideas 🤝.

Conclusion:

Guess it’s time to wrap up 😥…

And let’s make this conclusion about you — what are your thoughts on books? What points do you agree/disagree with in this article? Did I miss any points?

Let me know in the comments, would love to read your thoughts on the topic! Or feel free to reach out to me privately on linanadamaach@gmail.com.

I hope you enjoyed my second article from my journey of “Questioning the Unquestionable”… I will be sharing more articles from it in the coming weeks, stay tuned! 🔔

P.S: If you’re tired of books already, I promise, I won’t be releasing any more articles about them — at least not in the near future 😋.

If you’ve come this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it, feel free to follow my journey on Twitter @linamaach, on LinkedIn, and subscribe to my personal newsletter to get monthly updates about what an ambitious teenager is up to!

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After meeting Nathan Latka at the 2021 SaaS North conference, I decided to check out his bestseller book, “How to be a Capitalist without any Capital”. Turns out, the book is very different from typical business books out in the market — Nathan wrote this book when he was 29 years old, after starting from a situation that so many people are in: a broke college kid looking to make money, making him in a position to provide advice for people starting in a similar situation.

What’s more about it is that the book is a perfect balance between “general principles and values you should implement in you life to become successful” and well defined steps and strategies you can follow, and is directed towards a large target audience — whether you are broke, or have a stable income and want to shift towards a chill life with a free schedule, this book is for you!

In this article, I compiled my top takeaways from the book, enjoy your read!

Enough talking already, let’s get into it…

Takeaway #1:

The world is changing

If you want to enter the world of “The New Rich” and are still reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, I would like to ask you: Who are you kidding??

It is very important to point out that the book has been read by millions of people, and logically, as a consequence, if the advice in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” was still any helpful, all those millions would be rich by now.

For example, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” came out in 1997, 2 years before the adoption of web2.

If you need a refresher on web1, web2, & web3.

Now fast forward over two decades later, we’re all way at web3. If you’re still thinking like 1997, you need to understand that as time changes, our needs and desires change, and therefore the ways to get there also change greatly, so get moving and stop trailing behind!!

Takeaway #2:

Don’t focus on one thing

“If you focus on too many things, you’ll end up grasping none.”

Sounds like our dear parents giving us life advice.

What they don’t realize, is that our world is seriously changing. And you don’t necessarily need deep technical skills to navigate your life through it with the existence of freelancers, unless you find a 9–5 job good enough, then that’s another story…

I mind sound like crazy to you, but a good piece of advice from me would be the more area you cover the better. Get out there and work towards becoming a polymath. Sure, you can be the top 5% on one thing, but try to be the top 25% in at least 3 things and see how it goes 😁.

Takeaway #3:

Copy your competitors

If you want to start generating by starting a completely new business, your failure risk will be high as you’re trying to establish a whole new concept in the market, when you can use an already well-established concept to start with.

By saying “copy your competitors” I am not saying do something like clone the Amazon website, and use the same logo but change the “Amazon” to an “Amason” 😂…

By that I mean take the same general concept that your competitors have spent a long time developing and improving, and play around with some tweaks to make it more suitable to your own product and target audience.

For instance, you can apply idea to a different industry than it’s used in, for example you come across a Blockchain application in healthcare that you think you can replicate into education so you just take the idea and tweak it to make it suitable for the education industry.

Takeaway #4:

Setting goals can be a double-edged sword

Less than a week ago, we welcomed 2022. Like every year, a lot of us got out our fancy pens and notebooks in a few days and started reflecting on 2021, reflected on our ultimate life goals and wrote down our goals for 2022.

And for a lot of us, those goals will be very fluffy, unachievable, unmeasurable, or undoable over a long period of time.

The thing is that you shouldn’t be exactly doing that… Let me elaborate:

• Ultimate life-goals: Don’t put “buying a $10 Million mansion” as your ultimate life goal, because they can have the opposite effect and one of two scenarios will happen:

1. You’ll achieve the goal and go into a phase of feeling empty because you’ve done all you wanted, and nothing is left to do

2. You’ll NOT be able to achieve the goal, and will feel like the ultimate piece of failure for the rest of your life.

In both scenarios, the life-goal was more limiting than motivating.

WHY DO THAT??

It would be better to set life goals to be less like “a goal” and more of like a picture of what you want your life to look like. Or you can set goals for the next 10–20 years (because that has a psychological feeling to it that it’s *only *20 years, still all your life to live).

Nathan puts it really nicely by dividing it into different stages:

Thinking in your life: You can skip this one, not very needed, it also changes too often.

Thinking in decades: Where do you want to see yourself in 5–10 years. For this one, it’s more like “picture your life” than specific goals.

Thinking in years: What do you want to achieve in one year, be specific, what projects do you want to work on? How are you going to work on them? Where do they fall on your priorities’ list?

Thinking in months: What do you want to focus on every month? Look at your priorities list, starting from the top, what is one thing you can do to get close to that goal?

Thinking in days: Your schedule is the one to do the job here. Block your time on your calendar for different task. Don’t be unrealistic (looking at my very unrealistic calendar 👀) and think about how you can keep your daily work rhythm sustainable for you to keep the same pace. Avoid switching tasks too often as it takes some time to get your focus on something.

BE FLEXIBLE ON YOUR GOALS:

If you end up setting goals, be flexible on them. If one of your goals doesn’t matter anymore, DROP IT OUT and move on, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you just have more important things you should be working on. If things come up, extend your deadline. PRIORITIZE goals that matter most when working on your schedule.

People tend to overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can achieve in a year.

Takeaway #5:

Building Systems

If you want to achieve sustainable success, you need to stop chasing the “golden egg” and start looking for the “golden goose”. In other words, you should be working on projects that eventually at some point, will start generating income without you actively inputting your time and energy to get it going.

An example of this would be a software you build out, new users come in and you can hire freelance developers to update it every 2–3 months. The software grows by word-of-mouth and all you would have to do it sit back and wait for the cash to come in. That’s an effective system…

Keep in mind that some times, you can get lost in the process of working in projects, so it’s important to take a step back and clearly outline how the system is going to work with the following elements:

• Input

• Output

• Benefit

• Side-effects/Risks

Once you do that, start working towards it.

Takeaway #6:

Capitalize on your time

Your time should be at the top of your concerns.

How are you spending your time??

Where do you waste your time?

• What repetitive work that you that someone else can do for you? Delegate it.

• Look carefully at your time and how are you spending it, notice where you can save up.

• Minimize switching between tasks because that wastes energy and time to get into focus mode.

• Chase golden goose, not golden eggs. So say you’re working on a business and it doesn’t seem to be turning into a system, drop it out.

• Focus on what matters, make priorities.

• Organize your schedule by time-blocking it and stick to it.

• TO-DO LISTS CAN RUIN YOU: if a task is trailing for too long in your list, it can cause a feeling of trailing behind and a fill your brain with negative energy.

Takeaway #7:

Turn your liabilities into assets

As I mentioned in Takeaway #1, the world is changing, so forget old business books from decades ago telling you “avoid liabilities like owning a home”, because today thanks to platforms like Airbnb and Turo, you can turn those “liabilities” into assets that generate money.

The only thing that I think is important to consider for this part is, going back to Takeaway #5, your time is valuable. So think about those “income generating assets”, would they get your more than you time’s worth managing them? Would they be an efficient and ongoing system once they are built out? If the answer is yes for both question, then GO FOR IT. If not, you might want to look into something else…

Takeaway #8:

Selling pickaxes to the gold miners

This one is about being unconventional.

Notice trends, but don’t go with the flow.

Instead, think about how you can help the flow do their thing.

In the California Gold Rush, business people who sold supplies to the miners got better capital returns than the miners themselves.

Creators are making money by creating content?

Don’t become a creator, instead, think about providing supplies to the creators…

A SAAS product to help creators manage their partnerships or a platform for brands to find creators open for collaboration would be a good example.

Takeaway #9:

Investing in real estate

No matter how many new business and investing opportunities come out, investing in real estate, known as one of the most classical areas of investing, is to be the king of them all…

Real estate is getting even more profitable with less people owning homes and more people renting, preferring the freedom and privilege of mobility. I realize that’s pretty much common knowledge…

And you’re probably thinking “That’s something millionaires do, and you’re telling me to invest in property when I have $25 in my bank account”

Well, what differentiated this section of Nathan’s book was that he outlined how you get started in this area with absolutely $0 in the pocket, through some loan formulas and smart strategies to get loans and discounts…

I prefer for this article to be nothing too technical, therefore I will stop here without going deeper in the formulas as that would require an explanation of a few property concepts (Maybe another time 😏)

Takeaway #10:

Investing where people are not looking

THIS IS ALL ABOUT BEING UNCONVENTIONAL…

“The New Rich” is unfortunately not the general population, so if you do what everyone is doing, you’ll just end up like the general population — nowhere. That’s why you should stop following advice from investing content online, because that’s targeting the general population. Instead, go look into investment deals people would not normally look into. In the book, Nathan gave examples of investing in a bar, and in a random food truck (feel free to take some risks for this part, although I would suggest you don’t take it that far 😐).

Point is… be unconventional in your investing, that’s all you need to get going.

Takeaway #11:

Acquiring businesses

If you don’t have the mental energy or the time to kickstart a business (even if it’s copying), don’t give up just yet…

You can acquire a business for a couple of thousand of dollars.

Now, that’s not all, because Nathan also shared some strategies to acquire businesses without too much trouble:

1. Find a business whose owner does it as a side-hustle

2. Get to know the owner

3. Make an offer or suggest you are interested in acquiring it, even if they refuse initially, you’ll still be on their minds, and whenever they need some quick money or want to break free from the projects, they would reach out to you

He also gave some advice in terms of types of businesses to acquire, suggesting online business that are scalable and that can be paired with other products and help you grow the business over time.

Takeaway #12:

Selling businesses

At some point in your business, you might want to change things up a bit in your life and consider selling your business, good idea.

Another reason you might want to sell your business is if it’s taking away too much of your time and not building itself into an independent, income-generating system because like I mentioned in Takeaway #5, your time is one of the most valuable things in your life. And you want to work smart, not hard.

BONUS Takeaway:

Lifestyle economy can do wonders

You don’t need to be looking to quit your job to benefit from this one. Throughout the book, Nathan emphasize the concept of **living below your means **with rules such as not spending money on stuff he can’t afford every day (for hotel room budget for example)and examples such as restocking his closet when Banana Republic had 50% discounts and bringing in clothes back to get 30% off his next order. Cutting down those seemingly *insignificant *expenses (such as coffee at Tim Hortons every morning 👀) can do you wonders.

Not trying to say live a colorless life by depriving yourself from occasional treats after you pass your math test 👀, but this can help you save up to kickstart/acquire a business, or buy property (hint hint Takeaway #8).

Pause this article for 60 seconds and write down one thing in your life you can cut down your expenses on (even if it’s as small as that $.23 you spend on extra sauce at McDonalds 😉) and start doing it.

A couple of things that could’ve been improved…

It sounded too easy:

I noticed that throughout the book, Nathan made things sound too easy, effortless and most importantly riskless.

Risk in business is a reality that even the most experienced business people would agree on, and no matter how sure you are about your moves, there would always be something you miss that would later put your business at risk…

Although the author did mention risk and effort a couple of times, it still sounded way simpler and less time and energy-consuming than it is. Just saying…

Some parts were a bit too repetitive:

Repetition doesn’t bother me too much when it’s an argument being repeated, however, when it’s a story being retold or facts being restated, it can get frustrating, especially when it’s expressed like a new information rather than a reference.

To put it in a clearer way, in some sections it felt like different chapter were completely different pieces stitched together in the book, but in other sections, it felt like an actual book building up on concepts for a “successful life”.

Still…

Those couple of points do not make the book any less important of a read, the tips, advice and strategies Nathan shares in his book are just too valuable to worry about the little things I mentioned above 😎.

P.S: That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take what’s in there with a grain of salt. Also worth mentioning that not all the tactics in the book are what you are looking for, but it’s pretty diverse as you can see from the takeaways from freelancing, to real estate, to SAAS to investing to content-creating, you’ve got a bunch of things you could look into 😉.

So… What can I implement in my life out of all of this??

Saving up on my lifestyle:

As a broke teenager at the moment, the idea of having money to invest and spend on things that matter sounds AMAZING.

But being realistic with myself, at the time being, I am busy building up a solid base of skills before adventuring into the world of business (and I also do not have any money to get me started), but I’ve got to start somewhere…

So, while thinking about kickstarting a business, I will be cutting down on some of my unnecessary expenses:

• Cut off drinks (It’s getting too cold for frozen drinks 🥤, and hot drinks ☕burn my tongue anyways🥵)

• Stop ordering random items on Amazon for the sake of making an order 📦

• Stop challenging my brother for money 💲(I usually do it for challenges he is not supposed to be able to do, but somehow he ends up being able to do them)

Starting a business:

This will definitely be on my mind. Although I don’t have a particular idea, I will keep my doors open for any, and my eyes open for potential cofounders. I might consider producing NFT collections 🖼🎨(yes, with my *amazing *art skills of course)…

Investing:

I might be 14, and no one wants me messing around stocks, but that’s too outdated my friends. Nowadays, there is a place where I can be accepted despite my age, name, background, gender or anything of that sort, introducing…

DRUMROLL PLEASE 🥁🥁

The Crypto World

Although I am not too sure about going into that, but it’s always an option!

Building solid skills 🏗:

Maybe starting a business is out of reach at my stage, but meanwhile, I will be working my way up to becoming a polymath by going deep into different emerging technologies and surrounding myself with AMAZING people!

Conclusion

As of the time of writing of this article, the book is reigning over the #1 spot on my “Business Books” list 📃.

It’s just full of extremely helpful tips and advice your brain might have trouble processing all the info (so it you plan to read it, get that brain of your ready to absorb some solid material 🤩).

I could go on and on about this book, but as promised, I will stick to a quick read… Hope you enjoyed this article!!

Pssssst 🐍, the next book down the list is pretty interesting, stay tuned!! 🔔