This is one of my favorite topics. I am a total bookworm, I cannot get enough of it. I’m reading books on everything.

Law, obviously.

Management.

Leadership.

Wealth.

Strategy.

Finance.

Marketing. All of it.

Those are the things I’m interested in.

But you know, there’s a lot of free information out there that can really make you a ton of money, set your family up right, and really get you in a good frame of mind too.

Because this life should not be about punching a clock. It should not be about taking vacations. Every day you wake up you should be excited to do what you’re doing and hopefully some of these books can help you do that.

These are my five favorite books when it comes to creating wealth, when it comes to happiness, when it comes to mindset (which means approaching life in a way that maximizes your enjoyment), because that’s what this is all about.

That’s why this is the #RichLifeLawyer Show, because I want to talk about ways that you can lead a rich life both financially, personally, spiritually, with your relationships, all kinds of different ways.

I want your life to be the best that it can be. I’m trying to help you get there, and I’m trying to help myself get there too.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is a book from the 30’s I think, or the 40’s maybe. And what Napoleon Hill did was he went out and talked to all of the most successful people in business, in industry, and all these kinds of stuff, and put it all together into these lessons.

It’s a classic book. There’s a lot of really great information in there and a lot of really great ideas on how to approach money and how to think about money and how you can change life. That’s why it’s called Think and Grow Rich.

The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

The Slight Edge is a book that literally changed my life. The premise is that everyday we make these little decisions and these micro-decisions that we make are really moving us toward the person that we want to be or they’re moving us away from the person that we want to be.

An easy way to think about this is with your diet. Think about how easy it is to just tell yourself, “Look, it’s just one cheeseburger from Wendy’s, I’m just gonna grab a quick snack it’s no big deal.”

What happens though is those, all those little decisions add up over time and they can either send you on a trajectory up or they can send you on a trajectory down.

And it’s critical to be aware of that, be cognizant of that, and then make the decision that keep you on that upward trajectory. That means sometimes doing the little things that aren’t exactly fun but you know will pay off huge in the long run.

Money, Master the Game by Tony Robbins

Money Master the Game is a technical book all about making your money grow.

It’s all about investing, it’s all about building wealth, generating wealth and what it really does is break down a lot of myths and a lot of untruths related to the financial industry and the way that people think they can grow money.

One example is that if you have mutual funds and you’re using a broker to do that, there’s the good chance that you are losing half of your gains, half of the wealth you’re generating, to fees.

Imagine your mutual fund makes 6 percent a year, that’s what it makes, three percent of that is going to the guy that’s running your fund, and you don’t have to do that.

And the reason that is a problem is, over time that equates to hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dollars for you and your family that you’re just giving to someone else.

This is a huge book, I have listened to the audio book a couple of times. I’m sort of working through the actual book myself slowly to try to really absorb all these lessons.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Rich Dad Poor Dad is a really great book. I read this book when I was nineteen or twenty and it was a game changer.

This is book, again, changed the way that I viewed money, changed the way that I viewed my role in the world and it surrounds the idea that you can take the skills that you have, the value that you have and you can generate a lot of income potentially for yourself over and above what you’re doing at work.

The idea of Rich Dad Poor Dad is to understand that there is an alternative to the time for money situation. You know, you work x hours, you get x money.

The alternative is to provide x value, you get x money and that x value can be done in a really short amount of time and still generate a lot of wealth (this is also called passive income).

The Go Giver by Bob Burg

Book number five is a great book. It summarizes my life philosophy.

It’s called The Go-Giver.

The premise of The Go Giver is simply that you should give as much as you can to as many people as you can, without expecting an exact repayment.

It’s kind of the idea that karma or the world will bring that back to you.

It’s a big part of the way I do business. I refer our clients, and friends, and network to a lot of our other friends, and a lot of our other network, and I would say you know 99.9% of the time we don’t receive any money from that, we don’t receive any sort of kickback from that or anything. It’s just purely our way of enhancing the value of our clients, enhancing the value of our network, and the idea is simply that by doing that, by providing our most valuable lessons and information that will come back to us overtime.

And it really has.

It’s a concept that can get lost sometimes on us you know, because we’re so worried about everything being even, and we’re giving, and we’re not getting, but you know, it’s just important to consider this other way of approaching things.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

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Christopher Small is a Kirkland estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.