_____3x4_____3 Books in 12
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4 Minute Summaries of 3 of the
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Welcome to Four Minute Books!
Money: Master The Game in 1 Sentence
Money: Master The Game in 4 Minutes
The 4-Hour Workweek in 1 Sentence
The 4-Hour Workweek in 4 Minutes
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People in 1Sentence
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People in 4Minutes
Which freakin' book should I read next?
Table of Contents
The fact that you're reading this book right now tells me two things:
1. You are ambitious. Wherever it is you want to go in this life, you're not
there yet, and you're commited to learn and grow until you get there -
otherwise you wouldn't have downloaded this book.
2. You think books are a gateway to that learning and growth. You know
that learning from the world's best minds and books is the way to master
the skills you need and grow into the person you have to become to achieve
that dream, whatever it may be.
If these two things weren't true, you wouldn't have downloaded
this book. That means we already have 2 things in common :)
My name is Niklas Goeke and I'm the creator of Four Minute
Books. It's designed to do one thing:
Making you smarter in 4 minutes or less.
That's why in 2016, I've written and published over 250 book summaries.
This book contains the top 1% of those. Combined, all 3 of them have been
read by 15,000+ people (and counting).
They're the top picks in entrepreneurship, finance and personal growth:
1. Money: Master The Game by Tony Robbins.
2. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
3. The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
After reading these, you will...
Welcome to Four MinuteBooks!
Know exactly how much money you need to never have to work again
(it’s not $1,000,000).
Be able to allocate all of your money to 3 distinct goals & purposes.
Finally understand the difference between being effective and efficient.
Never make the mistake of building a business ,that falls flat on its face,
ever again.
Make decisions today that are aligned with your long-term goals.
Feel empowered to say no to the things that don’t really help you achieve
your most important goals.
...and a lot more.
I believe that everyone should be able to learn from the world’s best books
for free, and I hope that this gift will open up a whole new world to you. Let
it be the first of many.
Happy reading!
-Nik
Money: Master TheGame in 1 Sentence
Money: Master The Game holds 7 simple steps to
financial freedom, based on the advice of the
world's best billionaire investors, interviewed by
Tony Robbins.
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS SUMMARY ON FOUR
MINUTE BOOKS
Tony Robbins didn't think he'd write another book after Awaken The Giant
Within (1991). And for over 20 years, he didn't.
But after the financial crisis in 2008, he knew he had to use his access to
the top 1% of people in the financial industry to help others manage their
finances better. 4 years of research and hundreds of interviews later, he's
distilled all of it into 700 pages of paper.
The result? A book that sold 1 million copies in its first year. Here are the 3
biggest lessons from it:
1. Never underestimate the exponential power of compounding interest.
2. Pick one of five financial goals to show yourself that financial freedom is
within reach.
3. Diversify your investments by using a 3-bucket system.
Time to get the financial education no one gave you in school. Let's go!
Money: Master The Gamein 4 Minutes
Lesson 1: Never underestimate theexponential power of compounding interest.
If you've paid attention in math in high school (yeah, right, who ever does?),
the this might feel like I'm preaching to the choir, but you'd be shocked at
how many people really don't understand this.
It's because exponential growth is so big, it's hard to grasp for the human
mind. The best way to astonish yourself is to look at examples of this, like
the folding a piece of paper to the moon story or how 10 early years of
investing are worth more than 35 years of late investing.
This book presents another great example of this.
When Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, he left behind $1,000 for both the
cities of Boston and Philadelphia, which they had to invest and not touch for
100 years. Then they could withdraw a portion of it and had to let it sit for
another 100 years.
After the first 100 years, Philadelphia withdrew $500,000 to build the
Franklin Institute, a museum. The final balance for the bank account in
1990, another 100 years later, was $2 million.
Boston did an even better job at investing and has turned $1,000 into a
glorious $4.5 million.
Insane?
Yes! So please, please NEVER underestimate the power of compounding
interest.
Lesson 2: Show yourself you can reachfinancial freedom by picking one of fivegoals.
If I asked you what's the perfect amount of money for you to make, 9 out of
10 times you'd say: "a million dollars."
Why a million dollars? We are drawn to this figure like flies to the light. But
it's just an arbitrary number.
Here's one that's much more important: $51,000. Why?
Because it's the average annual spending of an American adult.
If you can make $51,000 from investments, you never have to work again.
That's all it takes. A million is 20 times as much.
Doesn't that make you feel at ease? This makes it a lot easier to reach your
financial goals.
How far you want to go is up to you, and setting specific goals will help you
be realistic about what you can achieve in which period of time.
Here are 3 of the goals Tony suggests:
1. Make enough money from investments to pay for basic living costs: rent,
food, utilities, a potential mortgage, and transport.
2. Make enough money from investments to pay for basic living costs plus
fun, like travel, going to the movies, buying new clothes regularly, etc.
3. Make enough money from investments to be financially independent and
never have to work again, i.e. $51,000 per year.
For number 3 you need $640,000 invested in a way that gets you an 8%
annual return - which is just a little more than the average return of the
stock market in any given year.
You can never make a million dollars in your entire life, but still reach a
point where you never have to work again.
Lesson 3: Use Tony's 3-bucket system todiversify your investments.
Here's a very simple way to allocate all of your investment money (10% of
your income is a good portion and will get you quite far, quite fast, without
hurting your spending too much).
Tony suggests having 3 buckets.
1. A security bucket.
2. A growth bucket.
3. A dream bucket.
The security bucket contains safe investments, like bonds, which won't yield
a lot of return, but are very unlikely to make you lose money.
The growth bucket is for riskier investments, like stocks, which often beat
average returns in the long run, but are highly volatile in the short run, and
might take a while to pan out.
The dream bucket gets some of the profits you make from the other two
buckets, for example 10% of your portfolio value at the end of every year.
Making a lot of money is only meaningful when you actually use the money
to live the life you want - so without a dream bucket, what good are the
other two?
The 4-HourWorkweek in 1
Sentence
The 4-Hour Workweek is the step-by-step
blueprint to free yourself from the shackles of a
corporate job, create a business to fund the
lifestyle of your dreams, and live life like a
millionaire, without actually having to be one.
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS SUMMARY ON FOUR
MINUTE BOOKS
Was I late to the party because I read this book in 2013? Sure. About 6
years late, to be exact. But that didn't make it any less of an eye-opener to
me.
Tim Ferriss needs no introduction. He's like a digital Indiana Jones, and this
was the book that brought him to our screens. Written mostly out of
frustration, this book is Tim's documentation of how he removed himself
from his own company in order to do what he loves: learn and travel.
It's almost impossible to pull out just 3 things from this book, but I'll do it
anyway:
1. Be effective, not efficient.
2. Validate all of your business ideas.
3. Charge a premium to make your life easier.
Let's dig a bit deeper.
The 4-Hour Workweek in 4Minutes
Lesson 1: Be effective, not efficient.
If Tim's life was designed around one rule, it would be the 80/20 rule, also
called the Pareto principle. Most people measure productivity by the time
spent working, but that's a bad indicator, because we waste so much time
at work.
Tim suggests to spend your time effectively: on the 20% of things that get
you 80% of the results, and not vice versa.
A famous quote of his is this:
"Doing something unimportant well does not make it important."
So instead of focusing on doing as much as you can, as best as you can,
just focus on doing the few things that will lead to the biggest progress.
This is one of Tim's major mantras in life and something you can adopt
today, that will make every single day of your life, from here on out, slightly
better and easier.
Lesson 2: Always validate your businessideas.
This lesson really sank in when I read Noah Kagan's guest post on Tim's
blog. Before you go out and build any product or service, make sure people
will give you money for it.
Will your idea for knitted coffee cozies be a hit? I don't know, so go ask
people to buy from you! This is more of a comfort zone challenge than
anything else, and it's scary - which is a good indicator that it's important.
Two personal examples from 2015: First, a friend approached me with an
idea for a shoe business. We would solve the following problem: People
have different sized feet. They need one shoe in one size, the other in
another size.
Our idea was to go to shoe manufacturers, collect all the leftovers in
different sizes, pair them up and sell them for cheap. To validate, we asked
all of our friends and family who had this problem whether they'd pay for
odd-sized shoes.
What's more, we went into 10+ shoe stores and asked them if people
approach them with this problem.
The answer: no. No one cares, people just take the bigger pair and live with
it, it's not big enough of an issue.
Late in 2015 I wanted to create my first proper digital product. A course. So
to test the idea, I created a landing page, held a webinar, and tried to pre-
sell it. I sold 0 copies of the course, which sucked. But it wasn't a problem,
because I hadn't even built it yet.
Remember: ABV - always be validating!
Lesson 3: Charge a premium to need lessclients and make your life easier.
Once you have validated your product and are set to start production, the
next big question often is: Do I want to be high quality or the cheapest guy
around?
Answer: You want to be high quality. Always.
Imagine you want to make $4,000/month, and are selling a nutritional
supplement. If you charge $10 per bottle, you need to generate 400 sales
per month.
If you charge $40 per bottle, you only have to make 100 sales. The hardest
part of making a sale is moving people from not giving you money to
giving you money.
The amount of money is very negotiable once they've made the decision to
purchase from you. I bet you can find 100 people who are willing to give
you 4x the money much faster than you can get an extra 300 people to buy
from you in the first place.
Note: You can easily do this pricing math for any potential product with
Neville Medhora's cool pricing calculator.
That's the first reason you should shoot for high quality and charge a
premium. The second reason is that the people who are willing to pay a
premium are low-hassle clients.
You will get a lot less complaints, returns and angry phone calls. Even if they
don't like it, chances are they won't bother returning it, because they don't
have to turn every cent twice before spending it.
So promise high quality and deliver!
The 7 Habits OfHighly Effective
People in 1 Sentence
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People teaches
you both personal and professional effectiveness,
by changing your view of how the world works
and giving you 7 habits, which, if adopted well,
will lead you to immense success.
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS SUMMARY ON FOUR
MINUTE BOOKS
If you hadn't at least heard about this book, I'd be shocked. It has sold over
25 million copies. That's as if the entire population of Venezuela had gotten
a copy.
I'm not sure if Stephen R. Covey had any clue about what a success this
book would be when he published it in 1990, but even several years after
his death, it's still the bible of leadership and modern management.
Here's what I learned:
1. Do the funeral test.
2. Learn how to say no.
3. Practice active listening.
Let's make Tim Ferriss proud and look at what it is that makes you highly
effective!
The 7 Habits Of HighlyEffective People in 4Minutes
Lesson 1: Do the funeral test.
This is the habit Covey calls "Begin with the end in mind."
He issues a warning that plowing away and getting a massive amount of
tasks done in a preferably short time (i.e. being efficient) is only useful when
you're plowing in the right direction.
The classic analogy here is the ladder you're climbing furiously, only to find
out it's leaned against the wrong wall when reaching the top.
Only if you're clear about your major, long-term goals can you align each
and every single one of your decisions with them.
The by far best way to become VERY clear about those goals is to do the
funeral test. I first heard about this from Tai Lopez and assume he's gotten
it from the book.
Ask yourself these 3 questions:
1. What do I want people to say about me at my funeral?
2. As what sort of person do I want to be remembered?
3. For what do I want to be remembered?
Depending on your number of relationships (family, friends, clients,
partners, customers), you can also ask yourself how many people you'd like
to be there to mourn your death.
As Steve Jobs said:
"All external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or
failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving
only what is truly important."
Truthfully answering those questions will make you realize that out-of-the-
suitcase, business class lifestyle isn't really you, or that all you ever wanted
to do was dance.
So be bold and ask them.
Lesson 2: Learn how to say no.
Knowing exactly where you want to go makes it easy to find out what's
important to you and what's not. When you know your final goal, you'll at
least have an inclination for each to-do as to how important it actually is.
You'll often find that the important things aren't urgent and vice versa. This
in some cases means that there might be things, which don't deserve to be
done at all.
Note: A great tool to learn more about the difference between urgent and
important is the Eisenhower Matrix.
That also means you're gonna have to learn how to say no. It's not easy,
especially if money's involved.
Sometimes tempting rewards will be dangled right in front of you, which is
when it's time to pull out the funeral test again to see whether those
rewards deserve to be chased.
I've tried to learn from Derek Sivers in this regard, who says it's either a hell
yeah, or a no. He's always incredibly focused on a few things, but those
things create all the meaning he needs in his life.
Lesson 3: Practice active listening.
The good thing about saying no to a lot of things is being able to spend a
lot more time actually listening to others.
Active listening is part of our "Coaching 101" on coach.me, and it is a 3-
pronged approach to communication:
1. You're listening to understand the person you're listening to, not
primarily to give advice or respond.
2. You make sure you understand by repeating back to them what they
said and mirroring their emotions.
3. You help them structure their own thought process.
This was one of the major lessons I learned during my first 6 months as a
coach: A good coach is determined much more by the quality of his
questions, than by the quality of his answers.
Covey calls this "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" and it is a
call to practice active listening and empathy.
Just like you get suspicious of your doctor when he prescribes you hefty
antibiotics after hearing you cough just once, we don't tend to trust people,
who we think don't really understand us.
So make an effort to listen to understand, instead of listening to respond. A
good way to start this practice is by simply talking less.
Which freakin' bookshould I read next?
The answer's always in a book. But picking the
right book is hard. Right now over 129 MILLION
books have been published.
I sure don't know them all, but I've written over
250 book summaries in 2016 alone.
Which book should you read when starting an
online business? What's the best book about
sleep? And which one will help you find
motivation again?
If you PayPal me $1 + your question, I'll tell you
which book is going to get you unstuck.
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