Books Recommended by Yaro Starak

Rich Dad Poor Dad teaches you how to identify where you should be spending your time and investing based on your strengths and your passions not just because, for example, your parents are buying property, so you get into property, which is something I did and I didn’t really care about it so I didn’t really do super well with it.

I love really detailed biographies, the thick ones, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger one and also Steve Jobs, the one done a few years ago was nice and solid really goes into the details, I love those. They’ve always been really impactful, whether it’s an entrepreneur or an athlete or a well-known celebrity or expert or historical figure, those biographies have had a big impact on me as well and just enjoyable to listen to.

“The E-Myth” was big for me in my early days by Michael Gerber because it showed me how you can build a business that runs without you. That was one my main important criteria back then and still today, really – it was to find a way not just to create a business that’s a job, I didn’t want a job in the first place. I didn’t want a business that would become a job either, so I needed to make sure I’d build something that would ultimately function (at least) almost completely without me or as close as I could get to it. So, “The E-Myth” really helped ram home those kind of ideas.

Richard Branson, another guy with his second bio came out just recently, sort of like the part II of his life, the next 20 years. I grabbed that because his bio… I should actually go back and answer your first and second question about biggest impact and “Losing My Virginity” by Richard Branson was a huge one back in the late 90s for me, more about big thinking. The guy is crazy and I would never even consider replicating his lifestyle or life choices, but in terms of big thinking business, he doesn’t go small, he goes big with everything he does so I love to read his stories. And he can get into multiple industries, he can get into planes, he can get into health clubs, he can get into music, he gets into space. He doesn’t do anything by ___________ so I really enjoyed his second (part II) biography which I think is called “Finding My Virginity”. Great audiobook! Richard read it out too so a lot of fun.

Then I got into sci-fi and I’ve always sort of loved the space-opera genre probably more than anything else so Isaac Asimov has been huge, I actually only read that in the last 5, 10 years, his entire Foundation series. I went through those from start to finish and they were quite amazing, so easy to read but also big ideas in there. So they were huge in terms of leaving a mark.

I know about Ray Dalio because he was mentioned in Tony Robbins’ book “Money Master the Game”, the book I went through a couple of years ago, another finance book, a great one. And Tony really gave a lot of props to Ray Dalio so when his book came out and all these other people made me aware of it, I downloaded the audiobook as well, so that’s by far the most common way.

I love really detailed biographies, the thick ones, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger one and also Steve Jobs, the one done a few years ago was nice and solid really goes into the details, I love those. They’ve always been really impactful, whether it’s an entrepreneur or an athlete or a well-known celebrity or expert or historical figure, those biographies have had a big impact on me as well and just enjoyable to listen to.

Richard Branson, another guy with his second bio came out just recently, sort of like the part II of his life, the next 20 years. I grabbed that because his bio… I should actually go back and answer your first and second question about biggest impact and “Losing My Virginity” by Richard Branson was a huge one back in the late 90s for me, more about big thinking. The guy is crazy and I would never even consider replicating his lifestyle or life choices, but in terms of big thinking business, he doesn’t go small, he goes big with everything he does so I love to read his stories. And he can get into multiple industries, he can get into planes, he can get into health clubs, he can get into music, he gets into space. He doesn’t do anything by ___________ so I really enjoyed his second (part II) biography which I think is called “Finding My Virginity”. Great audiobook! Richard read it out too so a lot of fun.

Other books that came along that were important to me, one of the really important ones was “Living the 80/20 Way”, by Richard Koch that became a really important foundation principle long before guys like Tim Ferriss started to make it mainstream as well, so that book had a huge impact, I wrote an article on my blog about it in the first year of my blog and it’s something that’s been part of my life in all my businesses since then so that’s a huge one.

What I love about it: it was written as two books, so on the left side of the pages was a story and on the right side was the kind of “how to steps” that you can learn from the story, so you could kind of read it both at the same time or read one that the other.

You get the narrative and you get the how-to, so that was clever, sort of a smart way to make a book, but why I found it so powerful it was a book that I actually saw someone reading on the streets once. They were sitting in the coffee shop and they had the book and I went up to them and asked hey, I’m reading this book too and I’m curious (this person was a bit older than me, probably in their 30s while I was in my 20s) and I asked, I just talked to them about 5 minutes and I asked about the book and asked :so, are you actually a millionaire now?” and they said “Actually, I am” and I wasn’t, I was still struggling to make money at the time.