This is an absolute essential book. Everything that you do,

whether it's on email, face-to-face, or phone, relates

to communication with people, and that's what this book does.

Don't talk about yourself. Ask other people about

them, and you will find that all of a sudden, you're in a conversation, you've

now moved to a higher level. My best months would have been maybe $3,000 for

the month. That's when the one and only Grant Cardone changed my

life. He talks about the 10X rule. quintessential entrepreneurial

book that you must read. It goes without saying and it's... I'm

Matthew Fraser and this is Amazon Ecom

Secrets. I'll be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from

millions in debt to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If

you're ready to escape the nine-to-five and live life on your terms,

let me show you the way. Hey guys, welcome to Amazon Ecom

Secrets. My name is Matthew Fraser, and in today's episode,

I'm going to talk about my top five books that have

changed my life as an entrepreneur, and

I dare say will also change your life as well.

Everybody who's in the entrepreneurial space has to get knowledge. This

is the background of why you need to read books. You've got to get the knowledge.

And each book that I'm going to show today has given me a

different piece within the landscape of not just

business, but how to be a better person, how to

communicate, how to think differently about money.

and getting yourself and your family to the next level. Depending

on our environment, we're born with certain knowledge, and

we receive certain amounts of knowledge from our immediate

family and friends. And generally, they're

going to have similar beliefs to you. So that's why you

get tunnel vision. Most

people have self-limiting beliefs. It's hard to break

out of the cycle of the situation that you're in

because you just don't know. And that's why knowledge

is power. And I always talk about that. Knowledge is power. So this book

is this one here, How to Win Friends and Influence

People by Dale Carnegie. This is

an absolute essential book. actually is

nothing about business per se. It's not about the numbers. It's

not about how to make more profit. It's about how to

communicate better with people, because no matter

what you do in life, whether it's doing deals, talking

to someone at a car dealership, you're trying to buy a new car, you're going to have to

talk to the used car salesman. If you're going to Mies and

trying to do it, I don't know, get some new shirts or something, you have to communicate. But

more importantly, And how it relates to entrepreneurship is

you're going to have to talk to people who

are manufacturers, who are brand owners, who

are other people in your space like creative people.

people who do AI, which is the big one right now, everything

that you do, whether it's on email, face-to-face, or

phone, relates to communication with people, and that's

what this book does. Now, I'm just gonna give you one

thing in this book that I remember that I have taken with

me for life, and that is how you present

yourself in a room. right? You want to go in

with confidence. You want to use eye contact. And

one of the really number one things that I learned was that don't

talk about yourself. Ask other

people about them. And you will find that all

of a sudden, You're in a conversation, you've now moved to

a higher level, particularly if you're someone who struggles with how

to talk to people. You might have some self-doubt walking into a room,

particularly if it's full of high flyers or who you think are high flyers.

Ask questions of the other people, break the ice, and

that's how you can win friends and influence people. An

absolute read. Next book on the list. Now, this is a

fascinating one because only recently I was talking to one of my mentoring

clients and just out of the blue she said to me,

oh, I've just discovered this particular book. And

I said, what do you mean? I said, I've never read it before.

And I was blown away. And the book I'm talking about, which is the quintessential entrepreneurial

book that you must read. It goes without

saying. And it's, I don't even know how old it is now. It must be 20 or

30 years old or something. Make sure you read this one.

And it is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert

Kiyosaki. This is the ultimate. And

it talks about Essentially, the

fundamental part of this book is how to move from being an employee into

the world of being self-employed and an investor. For

many people, they just simply don't know either how to do this or

even that this is even possible. And so when my client came to

me, she said, oh, look, I've just discovered this book. It's called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I've

never even read it before. And my client is early

40s, OK? He's not like 17. And I

was blown away. I could not believe it.

I just assumed, this is my beliefs growing

up, was that because I read this book when

I was probably about 21-ish, when

I read this book back then, I just assumed then through my

entrepreneurial journey that everyone read this book. And

I just never knew that, I mean, you shouldn't even

know about it. And that's why I'm doing this episode. And

that was the inspiration for this episode. I thought, geez, if she doesn't even

know about this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, then

what else does she not know about? And how can I help get

the message out there of what are some very quintessential

books that you must read if you're in this self-employed slash entrepreneurial

space? Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The number one

takeaway for me, I remember when I read this book many,

many years ago, was more about moving

away from being the employee and moving into the self-employed

and investor quadrants within the book. And I think,

you know, it was kind of, it sort of mapped it out though, right? Because as

a kid, I always knew that I wanted to be in

business. Actually, I remember being 14 years

old and telling some family friends at the time, it was actually my girlfriend's

parents, And anyway, I'm not in

contact with my ex-girlfriend at the time, but my parents are in contact

with her parents. And when I run into them, they always remind

me, Matthew, I remember when you were 14, you

always used to say that you wanted to own a block of units. And

I'm always blown away. I'm like, really? I was thinking that at 14? And

obviously, the reason why I was thinking that, because I was obviously a pretty smart guy, is

that I wanted to have multiple income streams. I didn't want to have just

one income from one unit. I wanted to have, you know, 8-10 different

income streams coming from this one investment property. So

at an early age, I was already thinking along those lines. I

remember also being the guy who was, you know, obviously I was

doing the standard things like mowing lawns up and down the street. But I also

remember I was heavily into BMX racing. And I remember having kids,

this is probably, you know, in my teenage years. coming over

to my house and I would do deals with them. I'd say, you know, we could trade

your handlebars for my gooseneck and, you know, a bit of cash and just

deal making all around. So I obviously had this

kind of business mindset back

then. And I remember also when I was doing the mowing, I created

a very, very basic spreadsheet and mark down all

the jobs I was doing, saving up this money to

ultimately buy my ultimate BMX bike. And for those guys

who were into BMX racing, my ultimate bike back then was a Robinson. It

was like a total dream bike, which I now actually have, and

went back and bought one. So that's some

of the takeaways from Rich Dad Poor Dad. If

you have not read this book, go back to the beginning, solidify

the foundational knowledge of entrepreneurialism and

get this book. Let's fast forward to about 2018. Now,

let's paint the picture of where I was in this space, because by

painting the context of where I was in my life, it does make more sense, particularly

why these books were so impactful at the time. So

2017 was the year that I signed up with the Amazon training program.

The years before that, I was in the hole by

about a million dollars. My restaurant business was just crumbling

around me. I didn't know where to turn and I was just

looking for some sort of salvation, some sort of sign

of, you know, what am I going to do next? How am I going to get out of this shithole? And

at the time, I came across a guy called Gary

V. Now this was, I came across him on social media and

I started absorbing the information that he was giving and

ultimately I went in search for more. I went down some rabbit holes

and I found this book. This book, which was a huge impact

on me at the time, and I'll tell you in a moment why, but it's called Crushing It.

And it talks about how great entrepreneurs build their business

and influence and how you can too. And

essentially, it's about how you can position yourself

using social media to garner attention and

or garner intention to help your business. This

is such a good book. I went back and read all of his other books, by the way,

and he's got a new one coming out soon too. But at the

time, I remember I wasn't on social media.

Well, I wasn't big on social media. I certainly wasn't doing anything like I

do now and what a lot of people do now, which

is basically documenting everything that you do. I certainly don't document what

I'm eating. So Gary Vee says,

look, You need to be on social media. If you're in business or

you want to be self-branded, create a personal brand,

or for any reason really, you need to be on social media

to get attention. And I was scratching my head and I thought, jeez,

I'm not doing that. And Gary Vee, he

must know something. This guy's an expert in this field. So

like what I normally do, I listen to experts, and

I'm a very, very good student, and I like to implement. So

I literally picked up my mobile phone and just started talking

on camera and documenting it at the time just on

Facebook. So this is like 2017 era.

And at this time, he also said, hey,

look, if you don't know what to talk about, just document

your journey. So remember, I just signed up with this Amazon training

program and so I literally just started documenting everything

I was doing regarding learning the Amazon selling

process. And if you go back actually, I

haven't removed any of them. You could literally go back to my Facebook account

to 2017, 18, 19, and

you will find the very, very early videos of

me when I was just like perhaps where you

are now. You know, you're sort of trying to figure things out in this Amazon

e-com space and wondering, is this for me? Am I blowing my

money? You know, am I going to see a return on this? Is this going to be what

gets me out of the shithole? Am I going to become a multi-millionaire? I've

had all these questions myself and I

just started documenting every day, you know, the sales or

the, I guess the training I was doing, what I was learning from the

training, how to deal with Chinese manufacturers. I remember when

some products or samples would arrive from China, I

would do an unboxing. Oh wow, look at this, look at this. I can't

remember what the time, you know, like this knife that I was getting from

China. And what I also ended

up doing though, was as I signed up sort of around that

time, this healthcare product and

I signed the exclusive distribution on this healthcare product and

I was documenting the sales of this product and

Honestly, you should go back and watch them. They're so they're so good. I

was so excited about One day I woke up. I was like, oh

my god I've just made three sales and I

was so excited. And then I'd be like refreshing the

Amazon seller app, like two or three hours later, oh

my God, I've just done like six sales. And

it went from like six sales one day, and I'm marking this down, that's a record,

I'm talking about this on camera. And then the next day be like, Oh

my God, I've just done like nine sales. I've just done a record. Oh

my God. And then you start getting, getting at your, um, your

calculator and you think, Oh my God, if I could just do like nine sales a day and

I'm making 20 bucks profit, you know, times by 365, you know, wow, I'm

going to make like $20,000 in the first year. And

this is the time I thought this was amazing. And

then as it obviously progressed, I've gone from like 10 sales a

day, 15 sales a day, and just kind of went up and up and up.

And ultimately, if you haven't listened to my story, the

sales, because you probably want to know where the hell the sales go, Ultimately,

they end up going to like 800, I think my top month

was 800 odd thousand US dollars

in a single month on just Amazon

USA. That's not including the UK, not including Australia, not

including Shopify. It was just Amazon. So incredible

to sort of look back and see This

is the scale of where I've just, it's just starting from

the very basics, you know, when I was so excited, and I always say to people, your

very first sale is the best sale. Honestly, once

you get to sort of doing a million dollars a month and stuff, you're like, oh yeah, it

just becomes like, you know, it's a million dollars a month, two million dollars

a month. But it's your very first sale, because that's

the time where it locks into place that, wow, This

is possible, right? You've now gone from finding the product in

China, potentially, or signing up an exclusive distribution deal, you've shipped it

all the way into Amazon, and your first sale comes through. Like, wow,

that's amazing. Now you're just thinking about, how can I make more

of these sales? And so why was

reading this book so important? I haven't even told you

yet why it was so important. Because yes, Gary says

to be on social media, document your journey. Why? Why

do that? What, just to tell other people about your

sales? No, it's not actually about that. Although it's

good to look back though and sort of see your journey and see where you

started. something magical happened. Gary Vee

says, document your journey, be on social media for

eyeballs. And I had no idea why

I was going to be on social media. What was the outcome? But

I didn't stop and think about it. I didn't overanalyze it and think, oh, I

don't want to be on social media because I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I just said, oh, Gary Vee must

know what he's talking about. I'm just going to do it. This is before the healthcare

product launched. What ended up happening? was as

I was documenting the product before, that was actually my knife, my kitchen

knife, chef knife product, as I was documenting that journey, a

gentleman reached out to me, literally from seeing a

video that I posted on Facebook, and

guess who that was? It was the owner of the healthcare

product. Are you listening to this? So here I am,

just average old dude, Plugging

away, just doing these crappy selfie videos on

Facebook, a guy who owns a healthcare product

business reaches out to me and he says, hey

Matthew. I see you're selling on Amazon. I'm

really hoping that we could meet because I have a healthcare product that

I would like to be sold. I'd like to sell it on Amazon." That

is a pivotal moment because what

some people would have done is, oh, geez, I don't know about healthcare products

and, you know, I'm not really that big on Amazon. And what if

you think some I'm dumb, and I don't know what I'm talking about,

and I haven't made millions of dollars yet. So he's

going to see straight through me, and it's all going to end in disaster. I'm

just going to say no thanks and probably move on. That's a big no-no.

Now, I obviously didn't do that. I said, yeah, let's meet up.

Let's meet up. Let's talk. Because probably if you go back to

the first book that I spoke about, which was How to Win Friends

and Influence People, I can talk to this guy. I

don't need to know about medical products. What I know though

is that I know more than him about Amazon because

by that stage, I'd already started selling one product and I was in the midst of

designing my second product, which was the ChefKnife product. So

I knew more than him. That's all you need to know. You know more than him and

he needs to talk to me to sell his product. So I meet up with him. He

shows me this healthcare product and to cut a long story short, I

signed an exclusive distribution agreement and I then go on to

sell to date now over $45 million

of sales across the globe on that brand alone.

And if you are now, if

you're dropping the phone or just like going, holy shit, yeah, that's exactly right.

That is thanks to Gary V. Yeah, I

love this guy. Yeah, thank you, Gary V. 45 million. Good

work. So crushing it. Go get it.

Now I'm going to talk about the next guy who's been so

influential in my life, and that is none other

than the man himself, Grant Cardone. Baby,

I love this guy. Now, let's take you back.

Well, this book really changed my life. Yeah, this guy changed my

life, the 10x rule. And this was around the

time I remember listening to him. This

is before Gary V. This is a time when my

business, my restaurant was in the total shit. I

was driving Uber three or four

days, nights a week to try and help bring more money into

our household to help pay bills. And I

was also selling, which I probably haven't expanded on too much before, but

I was also selling cardboard boxes to try and just

bring in more cash. You're like, what do you mean cardboard boxes? Yeah, I was literally selling cardboard

boxes, ones that people would just buy to help like pack up their stuff when they're moving

house. I was selling them out of the back of the shop, I was selling them out

of the back of my car, I was selling them out of the garage. I had ads

on Gumtree, literally like selling boxes for like

$1 to maybe $4. And, you know,

I was bringing in probably my best months would have been maybe $3,000 for

the month. for the month. And

I thought that was awesome. I was like, wow, 3000 bucks. And most of

it was profit. And so that

paints the picture of where I was at at the time. And that's

when the one and only Grant Cardone came into my life.

And I just, I don't know what it was, but it was around that time too

when he also started to become quite big on social media.

So I was kind of in that space, I was looking around for people to

absorb knowledge from and who were ahead of me in the game. And

he talks about the 10x rule. And without

going into a lot of detail. Basically, it's about 10x-ing

everything. So 10x-ing your study, 10x-ing

your income, 10x-ing just the workload that you're doing. If

you think you're doing enough, you're not doing enough. Do 10x that. If you think

you're earning $100 a day and you think that's good, no, 10x that. If you think you're

earning a million dollars a year and you think that's good, no, 10x that. and

everything and you just start to think about wow I mean where I was at

I just need to do more I need to double down on things and and

study harder and and so As I'm listening to

this book, I remember even just listening to this as I was in the

restaurant, like cleaning one day. I've got my headphones in. I'm just like, Grant

Cardone, Grant Cardone, just like whatever we were saying. And just getting

this inspiration from this guy who himself didn't

come from money. He came from like nothing. And

that's what's so inspiring about his story. And not

only that, He hasn't come into money until really later

on in his life. He's not 20. I mean, he's now,

I think, in his 60s. So when I was listening to him, he would

have been definitely in his 50s and just

crushing it. And it's just been just incredible to

watch his own journey of where he's come from, certainly when I met

him around the time of 10X. to where he is now. And

so, you know, just the only difference between success

and failure is 10X. So it's like a not

giving up mentality, just keep pushing 10X everything

that you're doing. And I mean, I was so obsessed with

this guy, I went and bought the 10X hat, of course. I

bought the books, obviously. I even to this day, use

Grant Cardone's 10X diaries. I

write down my notes of what I'm doing for the day and my goals and all that sort of stuff. So

the guy has been very influential in my life and I

would highly recommend that you go and seek out Grant Cardone

to get some inspiration from him because he's definitely helped me

think bigger. than certainly where I was at and to realize

what is possible. Which leads me

to number five, but not the worst book at

all, but just number five in this journey. And that is just another

Grant Cardone book. This one is called Be

Obsessed or Be Average. And it was after

he's actually written The 10X Rule, And

this one is literally about just doubling down on everything.

And at the time as well, I remember buying

his book of quotes. And every

day, every day, I would read, just like

highlight a single quote in his 10x quotes book,

which you can buy separately. And it

was just so powerful. It's like, literally, I

mean, that's one of the quotes, be obsessed or be average. And

that's what I did. I was obsessed with everything that

I was doing. And I was doing so much study, empowering myself

to just take things to the next level, realizing what's possible

and just going and getting it. And of course, this guy has

been absolutely just instrumental in everything. So he's

got a range of books, go and get them because I would hate for you to come to

me and like, you know, like next month and say, Matt, I

didn't even know about Grant Cardone. I'd be like, what the? Go and get

off your butt and go and get some Grant Cardona to you. So guys, I hope

you've enjoyed that episode of the top five books that have made a really big impact in

my life. And I'm sure they're going to make an impact in your life too. And

hey, tell me if you've got any books that have made a huge impact in your life,

leave it in the comments below. I'd love to know what they are. All right. Thanks so

much, guys. See you next time. Take care. Thanks for tuning into Amazon

Ecom Secrets. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way

to show your support is to give a five-star review on

Apple Podcast and Spotify and make sure to

subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an episode. You

can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much. Take