Category: Book Reviews

I read “The Millionaire Next Door” a number of years ago. I thought the book was incredibly enlightening, and I fully understood why the book was so popular.

It reaffirmed many of my suspicions about the wealthy, and believe it is a book worthwhile of the time for any person hoping to see success in life.

I read this book again last week after being shared the review from Adam Kirdzik. I think it is helpful to re-read books, and while I try to read about 20 books a year that are new, I often reread other books as well. There are a number of books I’ve probably read over a dozen times.

After I read the book, I was jazzed up, and was doing some ancillary research online. I like to do research on books I read and get further engaged with the content than simply reading what is on the page.

In doing so, I found a semi-sequel called “The Millionaire Mind”. I call it a semi-sequel because its not officially a sequel, but it came out afterwards on the same topic, references the original book, but was by only one of the two researchers who created the first book.

Still excited about the Millionaire Next Door and ready to engage more, I picked up the book and went at it. Its a nice concise book, and I got through the whole thing in a single sitting in a single evening.

I enjoyed the book, and it gets substantially high reviews on amazon and elsewhere. The problem occurred however when I actually started thinking about what I read. Despite several reverences to the Millionaire Next Door, some of the information Stanley presented was in direct conflict with the research in the Millionaire Next Door.

While I love direct research which presents new insights instead of simply regurgitating the same public statistics everyone else is looking at, there seems like there is direct conflict between the two research studies with no explanation or clarity regarding why the conflict exists.

The clearest is that in the first book, the authors suggest that the Millionaire is living in the same neighborhoods as less affluent middle class individuals, and yet the second book suggests that they decided to do their entire survey on only the wealthier neighborhoods where millionaires resided.

Then they drew their conclusions based only on these wealthier neighborhoods that they chose to study. This introduces what we know in statistics as “Selection Bias”. If you choose only red haired millionaires as part of your survey, then all millionaires will be reported as having red hair. This is not representative of the actual market.

Some statistics really seemed concerning, like the idea that about 75% of those surveyed in these neighborhoods actually were millionaires, which completely and utterly conflicts with the statements alluded to in the millionaire next door. In fact the title of the book supports this inconsistency.

Once this single inconsistency is called into question, then we have to question everything that is read. Stanley states things like the average house value and why those wealthy people choose the houses they live in, but earlier in the book fully acknowledges that he only chose certain neighborhoods based on other research showing they had high concentrations of wealthy individuals. Then Stanley’s findings state things such as the value of those houses which he had control in selecting?

If one of the data analysts who works on my team submitted research like this to me, I’d take it as a teaching moment and have them head back to the drawing board on the conclusions they are making, and I’m surprised someone with Stanley’s credentials is falling into this pitfall.

All in all, I found it a good read given how quick it is. Anyone reading it however should be strongly advised that the research is more anecdotal than a real representative sample. It is original research, and it is enlightening in many cases, but when you are reading it keep in mind that it is not fully objective, and the results presented cannot be interpreted as fact.

Just because it isn’t fact doesn’t mean it can’t still over value in understanding the lives and behaviors of the wealthy. Take each stat with a grain of salt, but go ahead and pick the book up off the shelf and give it a quick read.

You can buy it from Amazon below:

After trying for over a month to get through the “12 Rules for Life”, I needed a quick book to get me back on track. The book is a lot shorter, with only 274 pages, and I was extra interested because the author self-published the thing on CreateSpace (Through Amazon).

OK, I’ll give this crazy sucker a shot.

In summary form, I bought “Choose Yourself!” at like 2 AM on 7/11, and had the entire book read by 2 am on 7/12.

Now honestly, I don’t know if I would have had the same reading response had I not just tried to get through the other book. I’m going to be straight forward about a few things: It really wasn’t written that well, I disagree with a lot of James Altucher’s thoughts and beliefs, I think there were parts that were just simply wrong, and there’s a lot of reasons I could see someone saying it wasn’t so hot.. It also could be a bit crude at times and I generally only like “G” rated books, but I’d put this at PG-13.

But on the other hand it was real, refreshing, light hearted. This is the most “personal” writing style I’ve ever experienced. After just one book, I feel like me and the author are friends. I’d say hi to him on the street- I even thought about sending him an email, just because I feel like I know the guy (creepy eh?) Just that factor alone should intrigue some of you enough to read it. It made me think, question my own thoughts, and ultimately I believe it made my life a better place. Any book that improves my life has to get at least a few positive remarks, eh?

If you don’t know James Altucher, the author, he’s a little quirky. His voice is not like a voice you expect to hear reading a storing, and his style is lighthearted and fairly easy to read, although the editing leaves a tiny bit to be desired when a few sections stop you up. In general though its worth the time it takes to read it.

Like many books, James hits a few points that I believe many other experts are pointing out right now such as the idea that the middle class dream is kind of dead, and that if you want to be successful today you have to grab life by the horns and make something of it. I fully agree with this. He then really illustrates the argument that no one is in control of your future but YOU, and the biggest challenge you will face is exactly that- letting someone else control you. I think this is a big deal and something so many of us miss. We expect someone else to bring us happiness and success when the truth is, its in our control- only us. If we aren’t willing to take control of our own lives, then we have no chance of success. We can’t let ourselves be at the mercy of others.

The second thing he does is talks about the importance of the “daily practice”. Honestly the first time or two I read it I thought “oh sooo zen of you- hippie!”. Really, I rolled my eyes and thought of how painful this book was going to be. But by the end I wanted to pat him on the back and say “yes. Yes.”. In a way, this was the perfect book to correct for the “12 rules of life”, not just because he offers 4 rules for life instead, and 4 is easier than 12, but because I think he’s right about the 4 rules. I could mention those 4 “rules” or habits, but then I know what you’d do. 1/2 of you would say “duh” and brush the book off, and the other 4 would say “Hippie” and brush the book off, and I think only James himself can talk about those 4 areas in a way that makes you think “Yes. your right, and I’m going to do it”.

I think he’s right, I think my life is better after reading this book, I think it had an impact on me, and I think I’m going to recommend it as long as you can get past some of the shortcomings.

In this case, I actually urge you to read the paper version and not the audio book. The audiobook oddly doesn’t follow the written book precisely, and its almost more of an audio podcast ABOUT the book than it is the book in audio form.

So if this book is of interest to you, go ahead and check it out on Amazon. Its less than 10 bucks, so what do you have to lose?

Even I sometimes get compelled to try odd books that don’t fit into my normal listening choices, so when I came across “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”, I thought this was an odd book worthy of my time.

I bought the book on April 17th, 2018 after falling on Amazon’s charts as #1 most read, with a high 4 1/2 stars with 3011 reviews. Sounds like a no brainer eh?

Many of you probably already figured out what I think of this book. You see, I’m the type of person that when I pick up a book, I can’t stop reading it. I often read a book in just a couple of days, eager to soak it all in… but despite the great reviews and the seemingly clear love for this book, its now near the end of July and I have only made it half through. I find myself forcing myself to work through it “just because” I bought it, and finally I came to the realization that if I have to poke and prod myself to read the book over the course of months, I should probably just shelve it and move on to something different.

Now I’m not fully critical.. The first day I was ready to hang up the book but I made myself go through it. Then I got to some of the later chapters… like about “Treating Yourself like someone you are responsible for” and “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them” that were somewhat engaging, but then I’d move on to another section that was just bland as bland could be. I enjoy learning about apes or chimpanzees and psychological experiments. I don’t like excessive verbosity and simple concepts expressed as profundity. One of my favorite thoughts was the alpha-conversation, because while its not politically correct, it is something I think about frequently. Take your kids for example- in theory we want our kids to be loving and kind, but we subconsciously know that playing an alpha role will probably improve their lives significantly. So what is a parent to do? That thought process was the most valuable take away I had.

And this is what makes it challenging. I actually LIKE many of the arguments the author makes. I think he’s right at many times. I think his 12 rules are suitable. I think the take-away from the book is good.

But when its all said and done, I’d rather read it as a blog post. Or on quora. or in a summary form. There’s simply no value in reading 409 pages on it. The language is unnecessarily complex, and I get that some people love using every single term in the thesaurus, but in this case there’s no value in it. It felt kind of like when one of my students writes a paper and goes through the whole thing looking for every word they can find where they can right click and select “Thesaurus” to find a more complicated word to use just to make themselves sound smarter. In fact it reads somewhat elitist, like what I expect from those journals no one but other college professors actually read… And therefore I urge you to read it like us professors DO read those journals, focusing on the executive summary or abstract, and picking through the rest as you see fit.

But then again I’m the guy frustrated at the author who spends 20 pages describing the color of the coat a character is wearing. He’s wearing a coat- That is all that matters to me. I don’t care if its airy and grey like the tone of charcoal blowing in the wind.

I did like how the author mixes in the bible- while objectively not supporting it, and adolf hitler. These types of integrations give it some level of power, but there are so many conflicting statements and misrepresentations, I couldn’t tell you what is truth and what isn’t… which is probably part of the author’s intent. I can’t even tell you what this guy believes, and thats tough. I’d rather deal with someone I disagree with, than someone where I can’t figure out where they stand.

But I don’t have time for that. Give me fact, or give me opinion, but don’t give me arbitrary statements presented as fact. I don’t have time for that. Speaking of which, I’d recommend avoiding this book, but go ahead and read the 10 rules in summary form. Its probably worth half an hour of your thought. I can however assure you it is not worth 409 pages of thought. There’s too many other great things you could be doing instead.

So this one is “me vs the world”. Amazon reviews say this thing is amazing. Its a best seller right now, and many people seem to love it.

If I failed to talk you out of it, here’s where you can go to get it yourself!

Millionaire Behavior
(Guest Post by Adam Kirdzik)

In the pursuit to become wealthy and financially independent, education plays a key role. Education can take many different forms, from schooling to participating in a new industry to just reading a book. I recently read The Millionaire Next Door by Tom Stanley and William Danko, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Stanley and Danko offer a more scientific approach to the ‘get wealthy’ discussion by writing a book around their 20-year study of the characteristics and behaviors of America’s wealthy and non-wealthy. Even though the book was published over 20 years ago, the advice derived from the results of their study still hold true.

The authors provide hope to us all by using anecdotes of moderate earners who, through frugal living and wise decision making, ended up as millionaires, despite never earning a large sum of money or becoming corporation owners. Although a large proportion of millionaires are business owners, the message is still clear: there is more than one path to success. Conversely, the book contains a warning to those who are more fortunate to begin with: a high income does not guarantee wealth if you refuse to follow the rules of responsible spending and saving habits.

The key takeaways from this book that really resonated with me can be summarized in the following four points:

Be Efficient
This applies to your time, energy, and money. The affluent population spends a larger amount of time planning so that they may be prepared to use their resources efficiently when needed. If your money is being used inefficiently, it will only delay the results you are striving to achieve. Being prepared, planning your actions and investments, and taking control of how you use your limited resources are all things that most wealthy individuals realize to be important. Take the time to find the most efficient use of your money based on your own goals and risk tolerances.

Track Your Cash Flows
A big emphasis is put on the ability to answer the question: How much did you spend on food last month? The point the authors are demonstrating is that wealthy people know where their money is going. I am a strong believer in tracking cash inflows and outflows, and it is something I have done for years now. Making a habit of this sort of tracking has helped me reflect on where my money went, and then decide if it was a worthwhile purchase. Creating a sense of accountability, even if it’s just to yourself, is a quick way to cut out the frivolous spending. The first step towards improvement is understanding your current status. Management greats, such as Peter Drucker, have stated the importance that measurement plays in the ability to manage – if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Don’t Try to Act Rich
Status symbols only exist to those who can’t afford them. Whenever you have the opportunity to purchase something beyond the bare essentials of what you need, ask yourself these questions: Are you trying to impress someone? Are you buying this item because you truly want it, or because you believe someone in your position is ‘supposed’ to have it? Is this the best use of your money? Buying nice things is not out of the question, but you must first fulfill your savings obligations and you must buy it for your own reasons, not to impress other people or satisfy some arbitrary social standard. Many high income professionals spend all their money on luxuries in anticipation of receiving large paychecks, because that’s how someone in their position is ‘supposed’ to live. These are the people who only appear wealthy, but don’t actually have any wealth built up. They rely solely on their paychecks to sustain their lifestyle, instead of working towards financial independence. This can be a stressful position, due to the complete dependence on one source of income. The act of continuously ‘trading up’ to nicer, better things can be extremely dangerous to your bottom line. Instead, be careful and deliberate with your purchases and then stick with them for the long haul.

Offensive vs Defensive Saving
There are two ways to increase the amount of money available to put towards investing – increasing your cash inflows or decreasing your cash outflows. The first method, offensive saving, suggests choosing the right job/opportunity to increase the income you are generating. This path typically means career advancement and specialization to improve upon your value as an employee, or owning your own business. The second method, defensive saving, suggests cutting expenses and living below your means to provide extra savings by keeping more of your money from being spent. While defensive saving has a limit, I believe both of these strategies to be important in the journey towards financial freedom and wealth.

In addition to abiding by the points outlined above, I choose to grow my wealth mostly through investments in the stock market. You can visit my website, adamkirdzik.com, to read more of my posts regarding investment strategy and wealth building information.

Developing good habits and behaviors does not guarantee success and wealth on its own, but it does set you on the right path. I view the characteristics and behaviors studied in The Millionaire Next Door as a foundation to building wealth. It is very difficult, although still possible, to build upon a poor foundation. However, a good foundation makes financial freedom and wealth much more attainable. Once the foundation is set, you will be in a good position to then put forth the extra effort needed to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves and become truly wealthy.

Adam Kirdzik
adam@adamkirdzik.com
adamkirdzik.com

“The Leader In You” is an interesting book. Namely, its near impossible to easily search for information about the book, as searches get overpowered by discussions about “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Its also important to note that its not actually written by Dale Carnegie. Instead it is a modern adaptation of Carnegie’s original work, Written by Stuart R. Levin & Michael A. Crom of Dale Carnegie & associates, a company dedicated to providing corporate training.

For those who have read the original piece, this may not be incredibly enlightening. There is a good amount of idea rehashing, but with a more modern spin. Despite the fact that “more modern” means 28 years ago, its still surprisingly relevant, which speaks to the timelessness of Dale Carnegie’s original ideas and work. It truly is one of the timeless classics that should be read by every current and aspiring leader.

Using examples from Charles Schwab to Roosevelt, the book goes through a number of sections including discussing how to influence others, how to be a better leader, communication and active listening, how motivation works, and how to be enthusiastic. It uses wonderful relatable examples that will be meaningful to many readers. Overall I will say its “valuable”- however, I must also say that I do disagree with a few pieces of the book. Just because I don’t agree on the author’s take on “balance”… or some of the tactics for management and leadership, I can agree with the vast majority of what I read, and therefore I can recommend it!

I don’t talk about “price” in most reviews because I pick up a lot of books through the library, but its impossible to ignore the fact that you can pick this up on amazon for as cheap as 25 cents plus shipping and handling, or via audiobook/kindle for less than 7 dollars. Couple the low price with the classic ideals, solid relevance to leadership and growth, and the fact that it is a relatively quick read, and its a no brainer to pick it up and give it a read if you haven’t done so already. Its a great book to keep on the side for when you’ve got free time, although other books may take more pressing priority.

Interested in reading “The Leader In You” yourself? If so, pick up a copy at Amazon:

Most books I read don’t lead to a recommendation. Some do… but how does Superforcasting fare, and what can we take away from this work?

I’ll be honest, I only picked up this book for two reasons:
1. My primary job is to build prediction algorithms, and I realized its been a while since I read something that really increased my knowledge in this area.
2. Amazon was giving me a 2-for-1 special, and one of the other books on the list was one I was already wanting to read, so this one came along for the ride.

While this book was not recommended to me, nor did it “speak” to me when I saw it, I begrudgingly eventually got around to picking it up. I really had to force myself to begin, but once my other books were done, I had nothing else lined up, so this was as good of a pick as any other.

There’s three real ways to get original research into your head- conduct original research yourself, read Journals, or read books that take someones research and present it in a more readable fashion. If its an area that you absolutely live for, original research and Journals are a great way to go… but if its outside of your core competency and day to day lives, I prefer getting into the books.

The thing about forecasting is that we all do it, and we all need to do it better. Whether its buying a real estate property, where we have to forecast growth and rents… to forecasting economic changes, stock shifts, or one of many other things- forecasting is part of our day-to-day basis. Understanding what you do wrong and what you can do better is helpful. Despite doing it every day, we often fail to think about thinking. This means that despite forecasting, we rarely step back and think about how we forecast.

The same is true about those we trust and follow. Do we follow someone because they are a great forecaster? Or do we follow someone because they are a great pundit- unyielding in their story, and a great storyteller? This is what this book will help you think about. This book will convince you to begin embracing the teachings of Enrico Fermi, but as you near the end you’ll begin realizing that what the author is fighting for is out of your scope and only has a 2.7% chance of happening in the next 5 years (have forecasters scored and evaluated in such a way).

Somehow, this book was a New York Times Best Seller. I think most readers will be bored as all get out honestly. To me this book was very much like an academic journal or an academic textbook. At times it was painful reading, but you KNEW it was good for you, so you made yourself do it anyway.

And ultimately this was my take-away. It was definitely worth the read. You will learn from it. It will improve what you do, but there’s a good chance you won’t love every minute of it. There are times you will want to put the book down, and times you won’t want to pick it back up… but you will grudgingly do so because you know its good for you. You’ll also have to put aside the authors core argument about changing the way the world forecasts, because its out of scope for most readers. You probably won’t be forecasting world events, but rather you’ll be forecasting company sales, or real estate investments. That doesn’t mean the conversation can’t be beneficial though.

In fact this reminded me NOT to make precise forecasts any time someones going to be keeping score, and that is completely against the goals of the author!

So if you are ready to learn something new that a lot of other books don’t cover, and want to get better at something all of us have to do to be successful (after all, stocks- real estate- even CDs are all based on forecasting what is around the corner, right?) – Go pick this one up!

I didn’t really want to pick up the book, “The Power of Habit- Why we do what we do in life and business”, by Charles Duhigg, but it was recommended by a colleague at work, and recommended by Google’s reps, so I figured “I’m short on book options so I’ll pick it up”.

It doesn’t SOUND like a good book… the cover doesn’t LOOK like a good book. It sounds pretty lame, but on the contrary, you should pick it up!

The book dives into habits, and discusses what habits really are, and how much of our lives are truly dictated by habits. Most of what we do on a day to day basis really is habit. Then it gets into both how they impact us, and how they impact our organizations.

Whether your looking at it from a personal perspective or you are looking at it from the standpoint of your organization, it applies. Every one of us is influenced by habits. Many of us are influencing OTHER people’s habits too, and therefore it is challenging to find someone who this doesn’t apply to.

One chapter in particular, Chapter 7 in the book and chapter 8 in the Audiobook, really stood out to me. This is because it is an area that I focus most of my day-to-day professional energy. Using data to frankly predict and understand what people are doing better than they do. To some people this chapter may be “enlightening”, as they don’t realize how the data is used around them and how companies are using it. To me personally, its not a surprise at all, as I’m one of the people doing this, and I’m well past the “surprise” stage, and frankly am doing cutting edge things that are beyond the scope of this book.

But this helped jump into some case studies that other companies are engaging in, and it talks about what they discovered about implementing this type of analytics, which is something many of us in this industry deal with on a regular basis.

The book is broken into four sections:
Part 1: Individuals
Part 2: Organizations
Part 3: Society
Appendix: What to do about it.

The chapters jump around quite a bit, so reading them out of order won’t cause you too much headache once you get past Part 1, which lays the groundwork for the rest. In addition, you can skip the appendix if your not trying to change your own habits.

Some people will find part 1 and part 3 most interesting, more of the corporate folks will find 1 and 2 more interesting, but get through part 1 and feel your way around a bit…. or just dive in and take it all in. You will be better off understanding how habits work, and how much they control our day to day lives.

Procter & Gamble’s Febreeze was going to be a failure, until they found out how to fit it into habits.
Target was able to predict whose going to have a baby when, even when mothers didn’t tell them, creeping them out until they changed their approach.

Hard to say this type of content isn’t relevant, and I’m skipping over the “obvious” take away from the book, which is how to identify a habit, identify the triggers and rewards, and then create a new habit to replace it. I’m guessing most people got that plot line by simply reading the title, but it is indeed in there. When I read other reviews on the book, this is actually the part they “focus” on, but to me this part isn’t the most important part- the application of this information is, and its the application of this knowledge to your life and organizations that can make a big difference to yourself and others… in fact it even changed the way I am approaching marketing MillionaireWho (which I wasn’t even going to market at all, until I really thought about how I need to get inside people’s day to day habits if I want to help improve their lives!)

I’d talk about it more, but I think in this case you should pick it up.

One of the easiest ways for me to judge if I like a book or not is to determine what I do when I get home. I primarily “read” audiobooks, and listen during my 1 hour daily commute. Books I don’t like, I’ll “forget” to restart it the next time I get in the car at worst, or just shut it off and keep listening to it next time I get in the car at best.

The really good books however, I’ll sit in the garage for a while when I get home, or I’ll sit in the parking lot for a little bit after I get to work, because I don’t want to shut it off.

The BEST books on the other hand, I plug headphones into, and find an excuse to listen to it at various times throughout the days. these books are incredibly rare.

The Power of Habit definitely falls in the “really good” book category, but not the “best”. I recommend others read it. It actually has new original information you haven’t pulled together in this way before, which is really helpful to your personal life and career. I didn’t want to go into the house when I got home, and I didn’t want to head into the office when I got to work- I wanted to keep listening. What is really impressive about this, is the book is over TEN HOURS long. There are other long audiobooks, but there’s a lot that are just a couple of hours long. This was more than 10 hours, and totally worth it.

You’ll start living with a different perspective on things! So if this intrigues you, go pick up the book… and if it doesn’t… well, your missing out!

The book:

The Audiobook:

As I’ve mentioned many times, Reading and continuing education are very important to me.

I went through a little drought where I wasn’t having much luck finding good books to read/listen to. This is pitiful in the scheme of things, because there are millions of books out there, but I grabbed a few duds and that slowed me down a bit.

I can’t say that the 10x rule ever came up on my top 10 list, but Audible was running a special with a bunch of buy-one-get-one books, and Grant Cardone’s 10x rule made the cut.

I had already read “If your not first your last”, so I was familiar with Grant Cardone. I’m not a salesman, and he is a Sales training guy, so that set me back at first, but I decided to give it a shot. After all, the “only difference between success and failure is the 10x rule!” yeah!

The book set me back initially because I knew it was a typically over-hyped semi-sales pitch to build the brand of Grant Cardone himself. Some books are awfully aggressive, ego-boosting the author the entire time. While Grant uses personal examples in the book, I won’t quite say it was a rolling advertisement. I didn’t feel offended or over-sold to.

This book is one of those books that I don’t think I “Learned” anything from. I don’t want to suggest there wasn’t valuable ideas, but there wasn’t anything “new” or “Novel”. Thats OK though, because the book was very much a pep rally, jazzing you up about doing stuff.

This is, in many circumstances, invaluable. From my experience, the reason 99% of people fail is because they don’t get off their rear end and DO SOMETHING. The 10x rule premise is precisely that- anything worth doing is 10x bigger and takes 10x longer to see success. It reminds you that its essential that you get busy being productive, and that you stop using the excuses of those around you why you shouldn’t. This is, while not novel, a very important lesson that I feel is grossly under-recognized. I give Grant some serious credit for knocking that into your head over and over again to the point that reading the book for 15 minutes makes you want to put the book down so you can go make things happen. I don’t think its possible to read the book and not increase your productivity simply because of its ability to get you excited about it.

I truly respect and appreciate Grant’s argument that being all you can be is actually a duty, and that being lazy is bad for you, your family, and our society. I firmly agree. Just imagine how great it would be if everyone took Grant’s advice!

Grant walks you through taking the “fourth degree” of action, which is MASSIVE action. No one sees tremendous success by doing what everyone else is doing, you have to do massive action- more than anyone else is willing to do. Grant also talks about the idea that time management is a myth, and while I used to look for the elusive “Time management”, I have come to the conclusion that Grant Cardone’s perspective is indeed correct. So stop behaving like everyone else and go be successful already!

In a nutshell, I can’t say that this was a revolutionary book. I don’t know if I’d run out and recommend it, unless you need to get off your rear end and make things happen. For everyone else its positive reinforcement on what you already know. Sure, if you are looking for a book to read its a fine option. I would never turn someone away from it, but its not going to be making my top 25 list anytime soon!