My 8th grade geography teacher used to say "leaders are readers". I was skeptical. It seemed like a clever phrase designed to trick us into reading, instead of watching another episode of The Simpson's.
It's been a few years, but I'm finally starting to understand the depths of the phase. After reading the biographies of the world’s peak performing billionaire leaders, it's clear... They read. A lot.
Here's a few examples of "Billionaire Reading Habits":
- Oprah Winfrey has one of the biggest and most popular book clubs.
- Bill Gates reads 50+ books each year and takes vacation time each year devoted to reading.
- Warren Buffet still reads 600-1000 pages each day and spends about 80% of his work day reading.
- Phil Knight was a reading fanatic and used the philosophies of great military and business leaders to build Nike into a multi-billion dollar shoe Goliath.
- Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours each day.
- Elon Musk taught himself to operate 3 multi-billion dollar companies (in different industries) through reading.
- Charlie Munger reads so much that his family refers to him as "a book with a couple of legs sticking out".
If you want to start your billionaire reading habit, below we'll outline a series of strategies that will help you to read at least 52 books a year. In part 1, we'll discuss the basics of starting a reading habit and in part 2 cover specific strategies to 2X your reading speed, improve your comprehension by 500% and build billionaire wisdom.