- I ran into an issue a couple of months ago
where my mind was super cloudy
and I couldn't think of new ideas.
Normally, to jog my memory when I'm having cloud brain,
I'll take a walk around the block,
or I'll walk from the house to a coffee shop or something,
just to get the brain going.
But it didn't matter what I tried,
nothing was working for weeks at a time,
and I realized it was because I hadn't read a book
in the last three or four weeks.
I usually transition between books and podcasts.
But podcasts, for me, don't have the same power to inspire
as a good biography or a good business book does.
So in this video,
I want to go through my five favorite books
and hopefully, one of those will help jog your memory
if you're feeling blocked or you have cloud brain.
All five of these are gonna be biographies,
instead of business books,
because a biography is, it's like a life hack.
It's living somebody else's entire life story.
So for me, what that does is helps paint the fuller picture,
so I can see how the world works.
And it's always easier to do that using somebody's life
versus having somebody spell out point by point
the lessons they learned.
First book on the list is George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones.
This tells the story of George Lucas,
who you might know from the Star Wars franchise.
But while most people look at him as an auteur,
as a director, he's actually an amazing businessman.
He funded the prequels
to Star Wars completely independently.
They were the largest independent
movies in history at the time.
So somebody who's willing to take that risk
is already worth studying, that's already interesting.
But if you also take into account that his first movie
was a '50s diner-style film,
and his next movie was Star Wars,
you'll see a guy who's willing to throw everything away
to take his artistic expression to the next level.
Lucas is also a founder of Skywalker Sound,
which is a sound effects company that revolutionized
the way almost all films use sound effects,
which you can think about
as a huge business-to-business agency.
Add in Lucas Arts and then all of the movies he did outside
of the Star Wars franchise and you've got a hustler,
you've got an entrepreneur.
Book two is I Want My MTV by Rob Tannenbaum.
The book tells the story of how MTV came together.
What I didn't realize before reading this book
is building a TV channel is also B2B sales.
It's a group of three or four people that come together
to first get a backer from one major corporation,
and then it goes through how they evolved,
what programming's gonna go on the network,
and how they built a team.
At one point, it tells the story of one of the MTV founders
going after Mick Jagger, who's from the Rolling Stones,
and getting Mick Jagger to say, "I want my MTV."
And from there he was able to show that video
to other pop stars at the time and recruit them all
into this video marketing campaign that he ran.
- I want my MTV.
- [Announcer] MTV, Music Television.
- And that's what drove
a lot of the initial watchers to MTV.
Super interesting, super scrappy business hustle,
right there.
The next one is Dean & Me by Jerry Lewis.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were two members
of the group Martin and Lewis,
which was the biggest comedy duo in the world
from about 1945 to 1955.
Dean Martin eventually ended up in the Rat Pack
with Frank Sinatra, but this story is written
from the point of view of Jerry Lewis,
who some might see as the sidekick of the group.
It talks about how they put a group together
that became the most famous in the world.
It goes through how they navigated the mob,
it goes through a positioning switch.
At one point they were just wearing normal clothes on stage,
and they made the decision to only go up wearing tuxedos.
And as soon as they started wearing tuxes on stage,
that's when it became a real act,
and the amount of money they were making skyrocketed.
Number four is Those Guys Have All The Fun,
by James Andrew Miller.
This is the backstory of how ESPN came together.
Similar to the MTV book,
in terms of it being an oral history,
they interviewed a bunch of people from the past
and outlined how this network came together.
But the story is different.
ESPN was funded outside the TV business.
This guy did B2B selling to find an independent company
that wanted to fund his show.
So normally they do oil, but the guy's son had
enough money to fund ESPN, and the founders of ESPN
found this guy and got funded that way.
ESPN opened their offices not in New York, and not in L.A.,
but out in Bristol, Connecticut.
It goes through some of the issues you might deal with
having a team that doesn't necessarily
live in the location that you're in.
Most of the talent they wanted was based in New York,
and based in L.A., because they're in broadcast,
they're in TV, and the book covers deal making that
needed to take place to bring people up to Bristol.
The last book recommendation is Total Recall,
by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I did a video in the past about how you can have
unlimited careers in your life,
and one of the major inspirations
behind that is Arnold Schwarzenegger,
who went from greatest body builder in the world,
to real estate mogul, he owned a lot of buildings in L.A.,
to movie star, to Governor, and now,
he's basically doing whatever he wants.
Little known fact about Arnold Schwarzenegger,
he was a millionaire before he became an actor,
just from his real estate.
The biggest inspiration here is,
you don't have to be one thing
just because you start as that one thing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger could've burned out,
like the dozens of other body builders out there,
but he didn't, he owned his career,
and he won in the end,
and he did everything that he wanted to do.
If you grab one of those books,
let me know what you think down in the comments.
I'd love to know your thoughts,
or if you've read one of them let me know.
Thanks for watching the video,
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