5 Surprising Books That Changed My Life

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Jason Hartman (0:33)

Welcome, Real Estate Investors. It's great to see everybody today.

Today, we have got a great show for you. Recently, I shared some of my favorite books with Mr. Zuber, and today, we're going to flip that, and he's going to share some of his favorite books. So, Michael, welcome. Fire away.

Michael Zuber (0:52)

Thank you, buddy. Yeah, I appreciate that. So we're back in Vegas, where my main library is of books I've read.

Jason Hartman (0:59)

Where your bookshelf is.

Michael Zuber (1:02)

Yeah, my bookshelf, well, my several bookshelves, because I've bought a lot of books over the years and keep the ones that I enjoy. And I have for you today five that kind of mean different things to me. It's a wide smorgasbord of things, and I'll tell you the story of each one.

But I appreciate the opportunity, because I don't think I've ever done this before.

This is the first one, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller. And yeah, while 90% of the book is very blocking and tackling to me, it was the stories in the back where he had a picture of a real estate investor, and it told their full story.

Joe, Virginia Beats, eight years, 30 deals, just all of these different stories. And it was really what got me through the first five years of Suck, because I personally didn't know any real estate investors. I certainly didn't know any real estate investors with years or decades of experience. I didn't know anybody that doing more than one deal a year. And this book was a godsend. And again, the book's okay. It's very 101 if you're starting out. But those final, I don't know what it is, 30 pages, 15 stories were life-saving to me. Because I just needed to believe it was possible, right? I got the math, I had the spreadsheets. It made sense intuitively, but I didn't know anybody, Jason. I didn't have a network. I didn't have family. I didn't know anybody who had more than one house. So this book was a life saver and frankly, was the inspiration for my second and more valuable book, Fifteen Conversations With Real Estate Millionaires, because what this last act was depth. It was really two pages max of every investor story. So instead, I wrote a book that had 15 full chapters of investor stories called Fifteen Conversations With Real Estate Millionaires. But without this book, I'm not sure One Rental At A Time exists. I consumed, I wore out those last 20 pages.

SPEAKER_1 (3:04)

I read them probably 200 days.

Jason Hartman (3:07)

Yeah, so the stories showing that real, regular people did all this stuff that you wanted to do is what just brought it to reality for you, right? Yeah, that's awesome.

Michael Zuber (3:19)

It just gave me a level of comfort. Like, oh, you know, the classic, if they can do it, I could do it. You know, when you're the only, like, when you're trying to smash the four-minute mile and people are telling you it's impossible, nobody does it, and then suddenly somebody does, and then in the next, like, 90 days, 12 other people do it, it was kind of that for me. So we'll do this one next, a little bit out of order. But, you know, Grant Cardone has written lots of books. Most people talk about 10x. This is the one that probably meant the most to me, be obsessed or be average. And it was because what spoke to me about this was I've always been unbalanced. I've always been all in or zero. I'm not much for diversification. I'm not much for soft commitments.

If I'm in, I'm in, and if I'm not, I'm not. And this book made me, frankly, made me feel normal, right? It made me feel like, okay, your obsession with whatever it was is okay. And, you know, if you stay at it long enough, and it's something that can get you to build wealth, you can really build something. So, you know, for all his warts and whatnot, you may or may not like him.

This book gave me permission to be comfortable in my own skin.

Jason Hartman (4:36)

Right.

Michael Zuber (4:38)