To my friends in the Real Estate Industry,

We are indeed in challenging times, and many of us are facing downtime at home. For many of us, this also means being home with our children trying to balance homeschooling with our own careers.
This is also a good time to invest in self-improvement and making ourselves better so we can be better prepared for the future.

With this in mind, I present my top 11 books to read or listen to.
You can read these on your e-reader, order the print book from Amazon, or download the audiobooks.
Many of these can be shared or listened to with your children.

1) The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy – Everything in life the effect of small decisions compounded over time. To make radical changes in one’s life does not mean one has to make radical changes in their behavior. Rather, small simple, seemingly insignificant changes, over a period of time, can have dramatic effects on your life. This is one of my favorite books of all time and highly recommended.

2) The One Thing – Gary Keller – Gary Keller of Keller Williams fame shows how our hectic world of multi-tasking and trying to do 101 things at once can be tamed by focusing on the one thing that drives everything else. A fascinating read!

3) The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster – Darren Hardy – Regardless of if you own your own business, work as an independent contractor or work for someone else, we all run our own business of our life. Darren explains the many ups and downs of running a business and explains how the many downs lead to thrilling highs.

4) How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie – When I was a kid, I thought the expression How to Win Friends and Influence people was just a saying. I didn’t realize it was a real book until I was an adult. This should be required reading for every person before graduating from high school. How the world would be a better place if we were all taught these simple steps of simply being nice to each other.

5) 7 Levels of Communication – Michael Maher – This book is a story about a Real Estate agent who is down on his luck and in a funk. But in meeting a loan officer and then a coach, he learns how to transform his business into being a top agent without spending money on traditional advertising. It’s a must-read for anyone in real estate.

6) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** – Mark Manson – WARNING this book contains significant adult language. I would not listen to this audiobook around little kids. However, this is probably one of the most important books written in a long time. Mark Manson shows how to put so much of life into perspective. With thoughtful and practical examples, this book explains how to worry about the things you should worry about, and not worry about the things you shouldn’t worry about. Life is a set of problems and Mark explains how the goal is not to solve all the problems but find better problems you enjoy solving.

7) The Day That Turns Your Life Around (audiobook only) – Jim Rohn – This is not a book per se, but rather a collection of the best of various Jim Rohn audiobooks and speeches, from his early days until the last years of his life. Jim Rohn was a business philosopher who highly influenced many of the other authors on this list.

8) Start with Why – Simon Sinek – I admit I didn’t read this book for a long time because I thought I knew my why: To feed and support my wife and kids. But this book is not that why, but why do you choose your career? Why did you choose to do what you do? When we get asked what we do, many of us have a 30-second elevator speech about what we do, but how many of us can explain WHY we do it? This book gets down to the heart of WHY and showing you how you can transform your marketing if you can explain why you do what you do instead of what you do.

9) Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time – Rory Vaden – We can’t actually create more time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and 7 days a week. But in this book, Rory explains how, if you give your self permission, you can free up much of your time. The key really is not just having a plan or a process, but giving yourself permission to implement a plan. I admit, this book is the hardest to implement, but I refer back to it often.

10) You Are a Badass at Making Money- Jen Sincero – WARNING: This book also contains adult language. I love this book because it offers a much needed different point of view. It’s a blast of fresh air. Just imagine you had an aunt who swears too much while drinking a beer but offers you profound advice on how to be all you can be.

11) Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss – Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator who not only transformed hostage negotiation but found out many of the techniques he learned and developed in the FBI are easily applied to business and everyday life. It’s a must-read for anyone who deals in negotiations, regardless if you are an e Real Estate agent trying to close a big deal or a parent trying to negotiate bedtime with a cranky kid! WARNING: Some of the hostage situations may be too intense for very young kids to listen to.

Enjoy!