Two of the main qualities shared by all successful self-made entrepreneurs are a voracious appetite for books and a life-long dedication to learning, and it’s these qualities that I believe form the basis of their success.
My late teens / early 20s would have been very different if someone had sat me down at 16 and said “Here are 4 books: How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey, and Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. If you read these, you’ll have all the tools and inspiration you need to ensure that you never have to work a normal, boring job.” Reading those books was like crawling down the rabbit hole; these people existed in a world so different from mine, and it was a world of their own making. As Steve Jobs put it,
“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact; everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”
If we can encourage young people to self-educate, we might just be able to create a society of well-rounded individuals with a diverse skill-set and the motivation to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes…
What books would you like to see as required reading in schools? Click "... Comments" below and let us know!