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I have been reading and listening to a number of book, podcasts and audiobooks lately and thought that I would share these in case other people would like to explore and learn form them.

Ryan Holiday

I have recently been reading books and listening to audio books by media strategist Ryan Holiday. From his biography: “Ryan Holiday is a media strategist and prominent writer on strategy and business. After dropping out of college at nineteen to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians. He served as director of marketing at American Apparel for many years, where his campaigns have been used as case studies by Twitter, YouTube, and Google and written about in AdAge, the New York Times, and Fast Company.”

What I like about his books are his ability to make complex topics easy to understand while at the same time being extremely entertaining. Ryan is only 27 but I expect that he will be looked at as one of the leading figures in the world of PR and marketing, if he isn’t already.

Ryan is avid book reader and also sends out regular emails in which he describes what he has been reading.

Paul Flynn from Smart Passive Income

I have also been listening to podcasts my Paul Flynn at Smart Passive Income. This is a great resource for people starting or working on projects that they want to earn an income. This whole business is a great example of being the best at what you do. In Paul Flynn’s case it is teaching people to generate a passive income. Paul has also created businesses which generate additional income to prove that he can do what he is teaching others to do and posts creative content such as his monthly income reports.

Startup by Gimlet Media

Another great podcast that I have been listening to is Startup by Gimlet Media. This is an amazing insight into the world of startups and features Gimlet Media’s interviews with investors when they were trying to generate investment, the stress of the whole startup process and organising tasks and people.

Bootstrapped Web

Bootstrapped Web is another podcast that I have found very entertaining and educational. The hosts, Brian Casel and Jordan Cal, are very knowledgeable on entrepreneurship and great at finding smart guests with a variety of experience.

A particularly good episode is number 69 titled Liam Martin on Building a Distributed Team and Lessons Learned Scaling which is brilliant insight into starting and growing businesses and the challenges that come along with it. Liam seems like an extremely smart man with a wealth of experience for his age and talks extremely well.

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

Carl Jeffrey recommended this book, Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, to me and I have listened to the audiobook version. The title is an obvious guide to the content and it is written in a very clear manner and covers pretty much every technique available for getting customers today. One of its main features is the insightful interviews with leading figures in traction such as Rand Fishkin of Moz, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Eric Ries author of The Lean Startup and Sandi MacPherson founder of Quibb. I have listened to this audiobook twice and came away with lots of ideas. It is one of those books that I feel like I can go to again and again as source of inspiration for making sure that I am taking my business down the correct route.

Tropical MBA

I found Tropical MBA this week and they have great articles as well as a superb podcast. Tropical MBA appears to be based around building a lifestyle business.

All of these books and podcasts clearly show that to be at the top of your industry you really need to be excellent written and verbal communication which also help in so many other ways in our lives.

What have you been reading or listening to?