Over the past few weeks, I’ve been compiling my ultimate list of books for creative entrepreneurs. 

Tonight I published it! You can view it here 🥳

The list includes 24 books as it is right now. These are the books that made the biggest impact on my life and business as a creative entrepreneur.

In this article, I will share what inspired me to create this list and how it came to be.

Follow the white rabbit 🐇

Tom Bilyeu is the co-founder of billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition, though I got to know him via his podcast Impact Theory. In his podcast, he aims to unlock people’s full potential. The way he does this is by enabling people change their mindset.

What does that mean exactly? Changing your mindset? Tom compares it to the 1999 movie The Matrix, where all of humanity is trapped in a computer simulation without them knowing it’s not the real world.

“To me, the brain IS the Matrix. And just like once you wake up in the Matrix you can bend it to your will, the brain will bend to your will and allow you to do things you never thought possible. But first you have to believe.” — Tom Bilyeu

One of the ways to help people ‘believe’, Tom created a reading list with books that can help you level up your mindset and escape the Matrix. 

Over the years, I found myself coming back to this reading list again and again. I loved that someone went through the trouble of making a selection of books and even putting them in order.

Because that’s what Tom did. He recommends you to read the books in a certain order.

Given that there are so many books out there and I feel easily overwhelmed when trying to pick my next book, this was amazing! I could just pick the next book on the list, rather than getting tempted to procrastinate because I couldn’t decide on what to read.

It gave me a ton of value, which is why I got the thought of creating my own.

From mindset to creative entrepreneurs 🧠🌈

While I loved reading the books on Tom’s list, I couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t written by people I could identify with exactly. They were often written by scholars, marines or a more ‘logical’ type of entrepreneur.

I missed creative entrepreneurs in there. People I could truly resonate with.

It wasn’t until I read books like Steal Like an Artist, Big Magic and Anything You Want that I started to believe that such books were actually out there.

And to be honest, the impact of these books felt much bigger than nearly any book I read before, because for the first time: I felt understood. These people felt a lot like me, with similar problems and values.

Given how much impact Tom’s reading list had made on me, I could only imagine the kind of impact a reading list for creative entrepreneurs could make on people like me.

That why I created it.

How the reading list is built up 📚

To create my own reading list, I first compiled all my favourite and most impactful books. I then deleted books from this list until I felt like it was a balanced whole, without too much repetition or the same authors.

I then started grouping books around similar subjects and creating an order of what I’d like to read first. The reading list is roughly structured as follows:

📘 An introduction to creativity and entrepreneurship
📘 Crafting a happy and fulfilling life
📘 Overcoming inner resistance and external obstacles
📘 Building a great business
📘 Creating a financial system that works for you
📘 Getting the word out about your business

After structuring the list, I found some awesome 3D book mockups on Covervault.com. I created the mockups, then the web page, then the descriptions per book and finally I added in the affiliate links.

It takes a lot of effort to create all of this content for free, so I’m going to test whether Amazon and Bol.com affiliate links can help to monetise some of the content on this site. 

I wondered if I should mention that I get a small fee if people buy from the web page, but I couldn’t think of an elegant way to do so yet — one that doesn’t distract from the list too much. If you have any ideas on this, I’d love to hear them because I always appreciate it when other people are transparent about these things. 

As with everything I do, this book list is an experiment and it will probably evolve with the help of your feedback and suggestions over time. For now though, I think it’s a great start and I actually feel proud to have such a list on my site. And that’s pretty rare for me.

I hope it will help you as much as Tom Bilyeu’s list helped me 💪