AJV (00:01): Hello and Happy New Year. We are in 2025. I don’t know exactly when you are listening to this, but this is being recorded in Q1 of 2025. And a part of what I wanted to do to help start the new year is share my top personal five most influential books that I read in 2024. And I did a full bulk recap episode, if you wanna go listen to this on the influential personal Brand podcast. But this is gonna be like a five minute Cliff notes version of what was the book, who was the author, and what was my favorite quote from the book, right? I did like a full 40 minute solo episode on why these books and why they were selected as the most influential books that I read in 2024. But today, what we’re gonna do to help start the new year, is to give you five of what I think are some of the most powerful books that you can read this year. AJV (01:06): And I’m gonna share the book, the author, and the most significant and impactful quote that I pulled out of the book after finishing it. So this will be short and sweet, but if you’re looking for a good new read or a good old read to put on your queue for 2025, then this is a very awesome list of five. I feel like life changing, business changing books that should be on every person’s read list. And if you’ve read them before, like I had for some of these, they need to be on your reread list. So here we go. First one, what got you Here won’t get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. And here was the pullout quote that I picked. No one changes by learning things they change by doing the things they’ve learned. And I feel like if we just take it up a level this entire book is about how to be better, how to be better as a person how to be better as a communicator as a leader. AJV (02:11): But it’s how to be better. And realizing that many of us find success by accident . Many of us got to where we are just by pure grit effort. And at some point there’s gotta be a, an elevation, a level up of realizing, hey, the systems and processes that got me here have to change to go to the next place. My availability schedule what I say yes to and what I say no to has to change. But then there’s also some more inherent things such as like the way that I lead, the way that I communicate the way that I, I would say in, in my opinion, the way that I learn and develop people around me. Like at some point it’s got to change if you want to go to that next level. So that was my first pick, is just this over this overhaul of this is a book about being better, being better as a company, an organization, a leader, and just a person. AJV (03:12): So that was pick number one. Pick number two was Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden. I know it’s a bias pick, but I had not read this book in 10 years, and I was so reminded of why this is a timeless should read every few years book for me and for you, right? So take the Terrace by Rory Vaden. This is not one of his pullout quotes that he would ever share, but this is what I took from this book. And this particular read, frustration happens in the absence of perspective, frustration happens in the absence of perspective. Now, this entire book is learning what makes you successful in life, right? It’s, it’s all about the things that you can do to be successful in life. And one of the things that I find is that perspective is one of the most important things that you need to be successful in life. AJV (04:07): It’s a perspective of do I have enough or is it never enough? Is it a perspective of my glass is half full or my glass is half empty, right? This is, this is a great reread for me about remembering that I get frustrated when I forget to look at how far I’ve come. I forget to be grateful for the people around me and for the gifts in my life. And if I can focus on the good, then the frustration seems to dissipate. And so that was why it was my pick is this, it’s an overall mindset. Reshift re not that re reset book a reshift of making sure that I start this new year. That you start this new year with a glass half full mentality because there is so much good. Yes, there’s hard, but there’s so much good. So that was a perspective shift book of why I recommended this one. AJV (05:04): The third one was a personal pick. It’s a Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. And my pullout quote from this book was, A good Marriage is not something you find, but something you work for, right? A lot of the books that I read are business or professional. But every so often, probably every couple months, I pick a really deeply personal one. And sacred Marriage is single handedly the best book on marriage I’ve ever read. I think every single person who is married or who’s about to be married, it should be a prerequisite for your relationship. But this was just a great reminder. To me it’s like great marriages, good marriages don’t just happen. They happen to have two people who are willing to work for it. And yes, it is work, and that’s okay. We don’t have to be afraid of hard work in any area of our life. AJV (05:55): Great rewards come from hard work. Like, think about it, it’s like, do you feel the best after you just had like a, I think about this all the time. Like, I feel so good after like a really hard workout, right? And it’s like, it’s like this hurt. So good feeling of like, man, like I could do that. Like, my goodness. Like look what I accomplished. The same thing happens in, in any victory, right? The harder it is, the sweeter it becomes. And I think marriage is a lot like that. Fourth book is the Go-Giver by Bob Berg, and here was my pullout quote, greatness is tied to service and anyone can be great because anyone can serve. And I love the Go-Giver because it is a book about the heart of service. It’s about how many people can you help versus how much money can you make. AJV (06:49): And the more people you can help, the more people you can impact, the more income you will have. But it’s a byproduct of loving people, well, serving people well and focusing on people not dollars, right? And so that was my, I guess, business motivation. I love it because it’s in that very story like setting. And I just, I think those are simple, easy reads that illustrate really important parts. And this particular book is a very easy audio read, 90 minutes. But one of those that it’s a complete shift of are you focused on people or are you focused on yourself? And highly recommend it. It’s one of those two that it is so short and it is so good. It could be a every year read. And then my last pick for 2024, these were, these were my five highlights of 2024 I’m recommending to you was Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera. AJV (07:46): And my pullout quote from him is one that I have said probably 1000 times since I read this book, which is, nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it, right? I hear so often in personal and professional settings like, well, I’ve just never done that before. Well, great, go learn how to do it. I actually had this conversation this morning with a team member and they’re like, well, you’re just gonna have to walk me through it. I’ve never done it before. And I’m like, well, guess what? I’ve never done it either. So we’re just gonna have to figure it out. And that’s the truth about so many things in business. Nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it right. It’s the first time for so many people that are successful. It’s like, you know, it’s like you’ve never been a seven figure entrepreneur before until you’ve done it. It’s like you don’t know what to do. Or like, you know, it’s like nobody knows what they’re doing until they’ve done it. And that’s okay. That’s called learning. That’s called growth. But this whole idea of like, you have to know what you’re doing to go and do it. Like, if you really think about it, it’s like, how would you know what you’re doing until you actually did it? Like it, it actually doesn’t even make sense if you just sit there and have like a AJV (08:54): Very philosophical conversation of, of course you don’t know how to do it. You’ve never done it before and you won’t know how to do it until you go do it. You can only read so much and watch so much and shadow so much and listen so much. There’s only so much of that that you can actually learn. The best and fastest way to learn anything is to go and do it. It’s to stop the studying and just go do the thing. Now that’s different if you know, like you’re a brain surgeon, and I’m not saying that for everything, but in general business, it’s like, just go do it. You learn by doing it. Don’t be afraid to just put it out there and learn as you go. And I think that was, oh my gosh, probably the most repeated thing that I’ve said this year is like, well, nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it. AJV (09:34): Of course, you don’t know what you’re doing. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it. Right? And then I’m also gonna share a bonus quote from Will from this book, unreasonable Hospitality, because I think it’s gonna be like, one of my personal mantras in my family is make it cool to care. It’s cool to care like that should be on a t-shirt will you need bumper stickers and t-shirts. Make it cool to care, care about people, care about your team, care about your colleagues, care about your clients. Care about the stranger on the street. Care about the person who’s having a hard day care about the person who can’t pay for their coffee in front of you. Like care about people. Like if we just did that, like if it was our job to make caring, cool, think about how things would be different. Like think about how your business would be different. AJV (10:22): Like what if you said every single day, it’s like, how can I care for someone today? How many people can I care for today? And how can I make it the cool thing to do so that everyone that comes after me does it too? Right? Coolness is contagious. And if we can make caring, cool, then that makes caring contagious, right? So make it cool to care. Those are my five books, five authors, five pullout quotes from my favorite books that I read in 2024. Grab these, check them out and put ’em on your list for 2025.