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Last Updated on July 27, 2021 by Tyler Clark
I’ve been dying to write this article forever!
I lived some of these books and had their passages being quoted directly to me from millionaires. It was pretty cool to see it all in action.
Below are the top 10 millionaire books that paralleled the ideals my personal training clients used to become wealthy. I also included a few stories.
In some cases, these books were really special to my clients. They were genuine financial bibles for them and they used them not only make money, but also to become a success in life.
Some of these books had really changed their lives.
The books are in no particular order and there’s a bonus book as #11.
Millionaire Book #1: Rich Dad Poor Dad
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! is written by Robert T. Kiyosaki.
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki was one of the first millionaire books I read.
I enjoyed the book a great deal because I could compare and contrast it’s passages with what I was seeing at work.
This book was kind of surreal to read because I was from a middle class family and I was training all these wealthy folks.
I had one regular dad and a whole bunch of rich dads!
I noticed that most of the wealthy individuals I was training were doing the things that Kiyosaki’s book discussed. They had people working for them in their company. They didn’t personally do the work for the product or service their company offered. This is an amazingly simple tip but that’s what you want to zero in on. Making money is not about super technical, intricate tricks and highly complex processes. Good businesses is mostly about the right choices in format and how you structure your business.
Rich Dad Poor Dad was one of the better millionaire books at explaining these types of business formats to follow.
In the book, Kiyosaki discusses the differences between how his poor dad and his rich dad approached their careers. He explains that his poor dad felt it was best to get an education and get a good and steady job. He later finds out his rich dad had a very different approach. His rich dad taught Robert all the benefits of having a business including tax breaks, potential for leverage and how to grow beyond trading dollars for hours.
The book is full of excellent insights regarding business and can really help anyone who wants to learn how to set up their careers so they can make more money. The book is a clear and simple read making it a great place to start when you’re picking millionaire books.
Amazon: Rich Dad Poor Dad
Millionaire Book #2: Good to Great
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins is a slightly more involved millionaire book with more of a focus on the keys to good management. Collins began an in-depth study of management and uncovered a variety of useful findings.
Collins and his team were “shocked” at the level of leadership that was required for success. They also found that companies who made dramatic shifts risked failing.
This book was instrumental for one of the millionaires I trained. He felt that it taught him how to improve his company in many ways. Though I haven’t read the book, he stands by it to this day.
Amazon: Good to Great
Millionaire Book #3: The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy, written by Thomas J. Stanley is an interesting entry for this list. I’ve read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has all kinds of great advice discussing how wealthy people don’t waste money on expensive cars or giant houses. It also touches on how smart business people run quality and efficient businesses without being wasteful.
The book outlines 7 common traits that show up again and again among wealthy individuals. I’ll save them for when you read the book.
The reason this book is an interesting entry for this list is because it outlines a slightly different millionaire model compared to what I saw. The type of millionaire I saw was frugal to an extent and I often found they didn’t all live in mansions but, it was as if they’d made more money than Stanley’s millionaire next door.
Maybe that’s not the case and it’s tough to compare.
I would venture to guess that at some point, many of the millionaires I trained were just like the millionaires in Stanley’s book. Over time, their businesses may just have grown bigger to where it wasn’t necessary to shop for a used car anymore.
I would highly recommend starting with The Millionaire Next Door in this list. It’s an excellent, foundational money book.
Amazon: The Millionaire Next Door
Millionaire Book #4: Think and Grow Rich
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill could be considered the heavy hitter millionaire book of all time in my mind. It’s conceptual passages and deep mental tuning tips are the advanced matrix one of the millionaires I trained used to become very wealthy.
He would often quote from it during our sessions. With a giant smile while jogging on the treadmill, I’d hear: “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve!”-Napoleon Hill. We’d go on to discuss business at length across many industries over the years during our sessions.
Think and Grow Rich is a motivational masterpiece that helps you identify how to support your passion and go for your dreams. I believe that anyone wanting more from their career and their life will benefit greatly from this book.
Hill is also very adamant that there is a secret to getting rich within the book. A secret that he alludes to “hundreds” of times in its passages.
He was a genuine source when it came to the wealthy so I would take his secret to heart when you uncover it in this great book.
Amazon: Think and Grow Rich
Millionaire Book #5: The E Myth Revisited
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It written by Michael E. Gerber. This is a millionaire book you have to read if you’re a small business owner and you feel stuck in your business. It’s a fun read in general and rings completely true today as the day it was written.
If you’re thinking about opening your own gym or your bakery or your hair salon, buy this book today!
During first few chapters, Gerber walks you through the traps small business owners can fall prey to. I found it invaluable to read about how people got chained to their businesses. These people once thought their business would be their dream job and now they were in business jail with no way out!
I’d like to have gone back to see if my clients got caught by similar traps before they made it. I knew other people that were stuck in these situations. They’re tough to get out of to say the least.
Gerber spends the rest of the book explaining options to break free of these common bad business situations.
The E Myth is an awesome book for anyone who’s thinking about becoming self employed or starting a small business.
Amazon: The E myth Revisited
Millionaire Book #6: Peter Lynch: Beating The Street
Peter Lynch, Beating the Street by Peter Lynch is the second book that Peter Lynch wrote. Peter is one of the funniest people during interviews on TV and online. If you ever have along drive ahead of you and want to learn about investing and have a few laughs, I highly suggest his books. Get them on audible.
Lynch has a matter of fact style and much like Warren Buffett, he doesn’t get caught up in the hype of a new exciting stock. Instead, he promotes concepts such as sticking with what you know and investing in companies and industries that you can easily understand. He also touches on how buying companies that your kids love can be profitable.
It’s kind of interesting to me that all these millionaires who are so smart do the simplest things. I always have friends asking me what genius things my clients have done to get wealthy and my answers are often more straightforward than they expect. This is very much how Lynch approached investing while he ran Magellan, a mutual fund that he grew from $18 million to over $4 billion over 12 years as discussed by Wikipedia.
Both Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett (who we’ll talk about later) are great at what they do and have similar investing strategies to the people I’ve trained. As much as we want to find that holy grail, it’s often sitting right in front of us. Just pick up one of their books and you’ll see what I mean.
Amazon: Beating The Street
Millionaire Book #7: Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant
Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom by Robert T. Kiyosaki. This is my second pick from the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. You know when you go to a new site and you download their free Ebook and then you decide to go back and take the full course? That’s what Cashflow Quadrant offers readers. It’s more of a blueprint full of applicable information and more details based on the teachings of the original Rich Dad Poor Dad book.
The book teaches us that there are four main cashflow quadrants including Employees, Self-Employed, Business Owner and Investor.
I found the book very informative being from the Self-Employed quadrant. I’ve since made some changes! Though most of us have been an employee at some point or another, fewer have had large amounts of work as a self employed individual or perhaps a business owner.
The book will show you all the benefits and drawbacks of being in each quadrant. Further, it helps you figure out how to move from one quadrant to another and how things are set up in each quadrant.
It’s a great read for anybody interested in business and entrepreneurship or for someone getting ready to make a change in their career.
Amazon: Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant
Millionaire Book #8: UnshakableÂ
Unshakeable, Your Financial Freedom Playbook by Tony Robbins. I’ve always liked Tony Robbins books. They have great energy and they pump you up.
Unshakable talks about how market crashes are short in comparison to long uptrends and that the uptrends tend to win out over time. I think that parallels what you go through as a business owner. You’ll have set backs and even a few bad corrections but in the long term, there are good probabilities for success if you invest properly in yourself or your business.
The book offers an excellent macro-economic perspective on investing. But that’s not my favorite part of the book.
Unshakable has a co-star of sorts.Â
I didn’t know this but apparently famous investor Paul Tudor Jones is a client of Tony Robbins. Jones is a sharp, determined and hardcore investor. He’s also right a heck of a lot and has crazy foresight. This is one of the few books Jones opens up a bit about his business.
I did have a client similar to Paul. He even looked a bit like Paul. They’re both very successful investors. Hopefully you don’t have to look like Paul to be successful with his ideas, the book should be enough right?
Amazon: Unshakable
Millionaire Book # 9: The Warren Buffett Way: 3rd Edition
The Warren Buffett Way, 3rd Edition by Robert Hagstrom, Stephen Hoye, et al. is the best Buffett Book in my mind by far. It’s also very informative and incredibly insightful.
I have to admit, I didn’t really train anybody like Buffett. I lot of the people I trained were more on the business side of things. Buffett got into buying businesses eventually and my clients invested a great deal so they all crossed paths. That being said, the approach to the craft was very similar.
I love it when people offer information that is resounding. When they say it, it’s so foundational that you know it’s correct and sound. I had clients that did this sort of thing. They’d say some really deep stuff. It was awesome. I always enjoyed hearing these powerful thoughts and messages. Buffett is like that. When I read his books, I see a lot of similarities in how he speaks and states his thoughts on investing. I think he and my clients would’ve had some fun dinners together.
Buffett’s investing style has to work well in part because he’s completely immune to the noise too. He has total trust in himself. You want this in any endeavor and he and my clients had that. They had that solid foundation that wasn’t easily shaken. I think that type of trust in what he’s doing keeps him on track over the long term.
There are no quick moves. Everything is in effect built to last. Probably a good way to protect your money whether investing or running a business?
Amazon: The Warren Buffett Way: 3rd edition
Millionaire Book #10: The 4 Hour Work Week
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss, Ray Porter, et al. is one of the relatively new millionaire books.
Ferriss explains how outsourcing your tasks to virtual assistants can save you huge amounts of time. He also discusses that the title of the book was picked from google searches that were done to see what title received the most clicks.
Ferriss was doing two very intelligent things here. First, he was leveraging his time by getting others to help him with his work. In today’s rapidly expanding business world, I don’t know if it’s possible not to do some of this in your business.
The second great business move he made was to figure out what the customer wanted. This is as key today as it ever was and ever will be. Want to figure out a great title, ask people what they want and what they’re interested in.
Amazon: The 4 Hour Work Week
Bonus Millionaire Book #11: Secrets of The Millionaire Mind
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker is one of the few millionaire books that talks about the mind of wealthy people. I can tell you that they really do think differently about many things. Any insight you can get into their thinking and how they employ it is worth it.
I was shocked when my clients would explain things they’d done in business. First off, I never would’ve thought of it, second, I just didn’t think that way.
Eker gives a great contrast in how regular people think and how they can change to think more like millionaires.
A great read to close out with that will get you thinking.
Amazon: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
Final Thoughts
I would say Think and Grow Rich is the most interesting book of the bunch. I have a client that still keeps a copy of it in his nightstand. It’s just such an encompassing read that anyone who wants to know anything about millionaires should read it.
Very cool.
Best Of Wealth,
Tyler.
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