Top 3 Business Books - Episode 10
Carl Moore:
Hey, I'm Carl Moore. Welcome to Meaningful Capitalism. Really excited to be here today, to share with you some of the resources that we've used along the way.
Brant Greathouse:
And I'm Brant Greathouse, and today we've got three books each, that we want to share with you that, I think, have got some good nuggets.
Carl Moore:
All right, so are you going to start at number one, or are you going to start at number three?
Brant Greathouse:
I think we ought to start at number three.
Carl Moore:
Okay, Go for it.
Brant Greathouse:
Work our way up.
Carl Moore:
What's your number three book?
Brant Greathouse:
So for me, I thought, I've read hundreds of books, I don't know how many, and I also don't know how many other book lists that people have done in different podcasts, sharing this type of a thing.
But I thought, do I want to pick some that nobody else would pick or do I want to pick some that everybody's familiar with? And I went with some things that were, kind of, nostalgic to me. Some things that were early on transformational, that I really pulled away, specific things that have, I can pinpoint how it's impacted my journey over the last number of years.
And so that's what you're going to see with my three. The first one that I would say, which is my number three, is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Carl Moore:
And why is that?
Brant Greathouse:
There's each of the seven habits are going to be particularly valuable and different things, but I'm going to tell you about habit number three.
Habit number three is, begin with the end in mind, and what that requires, is for somebody to be present, future thinking, in the way that they think. Not always dwelling on the past, not always dwelling only in the present, not only dwelling in the future, but being present, future thinking.
And what I love about the exercise that the book draws out of that, is that it doesn't just say, "Hey, think about your goal and then work your way backwards." It says, "Think about the end of your life."
Carl Moore:
That's different.
Brant Greathouse:
It's very different, because when you think about the end of your life, what do you want people to be talking about, when they think about you, at the end of your life?
Carl Moore:
So have you done that exercise where you write your own eulogy?
Brant Greathouse:
Absolutely.
Carl Moore:
So, I got to do that a few weeks ago, and it was very empowering, actually.
Brant Greathouse:
Oh, it's incredible, and I would recommend to everybody that they ought to take some time. That's one of those types of things that would get put on the back burner. You have to make time to do this, but if you're going to take that habit number three, seriously and begin with the end in mind, so that everything in your life is pointing towards that trajectory, it takes some thinking time, it takes some diligence, writing it down, journaling it, processing it, or white-boarding it out, whatever your process is.
But what's powerful is, it actually has a mechanism that allows everything that you're doing to be heading in that same trajectory, and that in itself, all that momentum and all that energy, has the ability to push you towards greatness, in what you're doing, because it's unified towards one purpose.
Carl Moore:
Yeah.
Brant Greathouse:
Well, what about you?
Carl Moore:
So, my book number three, and I know we're talking about business books, but if you look at people over time, if you look all the way back to the beginning of humanity, we've passed on stories, because stories infiltrate our soul, in a way that, I can't tell you how many facts I learned in high school that don't stick with me, but teachers and stories and places that we were at when things happened just resonate with us, and so for me, book number three is a book called Endurance, and actually they just found that ship at the bottom of the ocean, and so, if you haven't read that book, you should absolutely read it or listen to it. It's on Audible.
But these guys set out on one journey and their journey was interrupted by a series of events, and it became not necessarily about accomplishing what they originally set out to, but overcoming the odds and just pushing through where most people, I believe, would've given up and just gone down with the ship.
These guys did something, that for me, just directly relates to business. You're on your way and something sideswipes you. The winds come from the wrong direction. You anticipate and look out, and there are just things that happen in life that you just can't predict.
And so, it's been just so powerful to me to say, "Hey, just persevere. Keep going. Wake up every day. Mercies are new every morning. You can do something today that you didn't get to do yesterday, and whatever happened yesterday does not affect your reality today. Keep going."
Brant Greathouse:
I love that.
Carl Moore:
And that is exactly what I've gained from that book, and on hard days I'm like, "Well, my life wasn't as hard as those guys days, so I got to get out of bed and it's time to make something happen."
Brant Greathouse:
Come on now. That's good. That's good. I like that one.
Carl Moore:
Okay, so give me your book number two.
Brant Greathouse:
All right. So for me, number two, I'm going to say is, and I had a really hard time thinking of this one, but the lesson that comes from book number two was really what I was going after.
There's a book by Grant Cardone called 10X, and 10X was particularly valuable to me, because it taught me how to think bigger than what I normally would and go after something greater than what I would normally consider reasonable.
And since reading that book, I've just internalized a belief system, that we ought to pursue things that are bigger than what other people think is reasonable, because who are they to say what's reasonable or not? Nobody in history who's done anything great, started off just doing something with no great vision. They all had something which was such a powerful and motivating vision, that pushed them beyond all unimaginable hurdles.
And 10X, the premise of it is, I would boil it down to two key in insights. It's 10X, the things on the financial side of what you're trying to accomplish and 10X, the results that are capable, that are possible, from what you're trying to accomplish.
Carl Moore:
Okay. Give me one example here. What was a thought that you thought was big that you 10X-ed, and then when you went for the 10X, where did you actually land on that scale?
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah, absolutely. So early on, I thought to myself, what I'd really like to do, is I'd like to buy enough rent houses to where the cash flow, the profits from those rent houses, was paying for my mortgage and basic cost of living.
And back then I calculated that it would take about 10 properties, 10 houses, to be able to reach that number for myself, and if you're applying the 10X rule, would then, I need to take, instead of thinking about 10 houses, I'd actually need to buy a hundred houses.
Carl Moore:
So,, you aimed to get a hundred houses as your rental income instead of just 10.
Brant Greathouse:
And I was like, "Man, if 10 would be life changing, what would a hundred houses be doing for me?" And I thought, "Man, no, it's going to take me forever to get a hundred properties," but I set out nonetheless, and I actually ended up doing twice that, twice a hundred. More than 200 properties, over a period of time, over a period of just less than, I don't know, about six, seven years. I was able to do that, but I never would've thought in the beginning that, that was reasonable to go after, if I hadn't have been thinking bigger.
Carl Moore:
Because if you're just going for 10 houses and you're think, "Well, I got to get that done in a year."
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah.
Carl Moore:
You're thinking, that's one house a month that I have to conquer, be able to create the way to keep it as cashflow, but in volume thinking, even though I know you flipped some of those houses and you didn't keep them off for cash flow, you ended up creating a process that lets you just blow past what you thought was possible.
Brant Greathouse:
Exactly.
Carl Moore:
That's Incredible.
Brant Greathouse:
Well, a quote that Tony Robbins always says is, that we often overestimate what we're capable of doing in a year, and we way underestimate what's capable in a decade.
Carl Moore:
That's great.
Brant Greathouse:
That's Good.
Carl Moore:
That's great.
Brant Greathouse:
What about you? Number two.
Carl Moore:
Okay. So, my book number two, and I want to make this disclaimer, because this book is also on your list. We set out and wrote these lists of these books separate and came to this podcast, and so, we had the opportunity to go, "Oh, that one's on both of our lists." This is that one, It's the Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Brant Greathouse:
Yes.
Carl Moore:
Man. I grew up on the poor side of town. My parents barely got by. They both had to work jobs. I mean, I never missed a meal, but at the same time, we didn't grow up at the country club. That was not something I ever experienced in life, and so, after I got married, it might have been you or one of our other friends in that friend group, handed me this book and said, "Hey, go read this." And I'm like, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad, what are we even talking about here?"
And reading those concepts opened my eyes in a way, to see the world and to see money differently. I took those principles home and I sat down with my wife and I was like, "Hey, look at this. Read this. We're going to have to start changing this and stop thinking about that and we got to change everything." And it radically changed the foundation. I mean, I actually had to do away with the foundation that I grew up on top of and rebuild something new, to be able to step into and do kind of what you're talking about with the 10X, but with my old mentality, I was always going to just go out and get a J-O-B. I was going to work for somebody else and I was going to build somebody else's kingdom, and in what that book gave me was the power to say, "Hey, here's my future is in my hands. I can go forth and I can do whatever I want to. I have that power."
Brant Greathouse:
That's good.
Carl Moore:
And it was life changing for us.
Brant Greathouse:
It is a game changer and isn't it cool? So, I actually put it as number one, because it was one of the very first books that was transformational and left me with just some gold, that I've applied to every aspect of my life, financially and in business.
My dad actually gave me that book and he said, "Hey, you need to read this book." I was in high school, I hated reading, which I didn't realize, at that time, how valuable it is, to spend time reading multiple books a year, or multiple books a month and now I read all the time, but at that time I didn't read it. He gave it to me in high school, and it wasn't until I was in college and I was forced to read a lot, and I was like, "I want to read something for pleasure," and I picked up that book that he had given me and I read it and I couldn't put it down, and I ended up reading it seven more times within the same year, because every time I read it was like light bulbs were going off all the time.
So many lessons. I would give you guys a couple of them. One of the big ones is, that he talks about in the book, how to not work for money, but to make money work for you. What do we spend most of our lives doing, is trading our time, our most valuable asset, we're trading our time for money, and he says, "No, no, no, don't trade time for money. Spend your money to make more money," and that's the concept of investing.
So, it doesn't matter if you have a day job, you always want to be investing in assets, so that those assets are going to be producing additional income, in addition to your paycheck. He says, "Always mind your own business."
So, you might be working in a day job, but you always want to have something going on, on the side, that's producing additional revenues and for me, early on, I had a day job, but I was always looking for ways to acquire assets, and he talks about the difference between assets and liabilities, and he talks about all these different things, and a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket. An asset is something that puts money into your pocket.
And I started buying assets and eventually those assets got to the point where they replaced my income from my job, from my work, and I was like, "Man, now I have my job income and I have this other income," I was making twice as much.
Carl Moore:
Which is great, right?
Brant Greathouse:
And it kept going from there. Absolutely.
Carl Moore:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brant Greathouse:
So, that was my number one because it was early on for me.
Carl Moore:
Oh yeah. That's so powerful, and my number one is a very similar number one. One last thing for this, if you don't want to have a side hustle, but your day job is making you enough money that you have cash, then you need to find a company similar to ours, that invests capital for you for these returns.
Brant Greathouse:
Yes.
Carl Moore:
And now you can have the pleasure of all of the time that you want and you can work your day job if you want to. You don't have to give that up.
Brant Greathouse:
Your money can buy time for you.
Carl Moore:
So, this is a book that I... It's my number one. This is a book that I have spent so much time reading and it's the book that I've recommended to more people than any other book, and while it does not have anything to do with business, it has everything to do with business. This is a book that should be taught in classrooms around the country. It's something you should share with your children. It's something that you should connect with, on a personal level, because it will transform your life. And I really wish there was a better name for this book because it sounds a little bit manipulative if I'm honest. In fact, I've had this book for four years before I finally read it, and it's How To Win Friends and Influence People. This book has transformed my life. It is essentially, I think it has a lot of biblical principles, how to treat other people the way you want to be treated.
The Bible says how to treat other people, how you want to be treated. This is like the how-to of that.
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah.
Carl Moore:
And it works in every aspect of life. So I first read it when I got into cold calling cells and it was like, "I got to be able to burst through this store and get people to like me. This seems like it makes sense to read in this context."
Well then I read it again in perspective to my wife, in perspective to children, in perspective to starting a business, in perspective to employees, and every time I read it, I have so many things that I do that are so selfish, and when I can get out of my own selfish way and care about other people, everything I do flourishes,
Brant Greathouse:
Don't We tend to think about us ourselves quite a bit, too much?
Carl Moore:
Yeah.
Brant Greathouse:
Everybody does.
Carl Moore:
That's all I think about. I think, "is my voice sound weird?" And anybody listening to this are like, "No, you're just Carl and that's fine." But I'm like, "Did I say that weird?"
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah.
Carl Moore:
Because we all think of ourselves, all the time. So how do we get out of that?
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah.
Carl Moore:
Okay, so here's my bonus, if you're all ready. Little drum roll.
Brant Greathouse:
Get it.
Carl Moore:
All right. So this one is not a book. My wife was like, "Hey, you want to go watch a movie?" And I said, "Sure." And she said, "It's at the drive-in." So I'd go to the drive-in, we put the top up on the back of the 4Runner and we had made a little cot, our dogs were in there with us, we had a babysitter, so we didn't have our kids with us, and she shows me The Greatest Showman, which was a musical, and I was like, "What did you get me into?"
And this goes back to my first book. The story is what brings it alive, and I remember at the end of that movie, I didn't sleep for four hours that night, as I journaled about my own story and the things that happened, and I remember I came to you and it was when our business was young, we didn't have any employees. And I said...
Brant Greathouse:
Yep.
Carl Moore:
"You know what we need to do to accomplish something this afternoon is, I need to take you to see a movie that's transformational." And I remember you and I were the only two inside of this movie theater, watching The Greatest Showman, a musical. Surely everybody thought that there was something going on between us, but there was, a big business, but ultimately a great story that drove us into something great.
Brant Greathouse:
Absolutely, and any of those stories where you're pushing beyond what's possible and having to overcome massive obstacles, and that movie is such a beautiful...
Carl Moore:
Right.
Brant Greathouse:
Beautifully done, and it shows just how somebody can rise above their circumstances. We are not a product of our circumstances. We have authority and are able to rise above our circumstances.
Carl Moore:
That's one thing I do love about being here in America. We are not bound by the place that we are born, or the color of our skin, or our gender, or our religion. We can do anything we want to.
Brant Greathouse:
That's right. I Believe that.
Carl Moore:
I just love the fact that we can do that, and most things in business, only 20% of it is knowledge. If you notice, most of my books are about the 80%, which is get out there and keep going.
Brant Greathouse:
Yeah.
Carl Moore:
Don't get held up.
Brant Greathouse:
Yes, yes.
Carl Moore:
Don't get driven into the ground to get stopped. Do something inspiring.
Brant Greathouse:
Let's go do something inspiring.
Carl Moore:
I'm Carl Moore. This is Meaningful Capitalism. Thanks for joining us.
Brant Greathouse:
Thanks guys.
