Creative Company / Inspiration Updated as I go

Where I
got all of it.

Almost nothing here is mine. I am assembling other people’s thinking into something that hopefully is. This is the room those ideas came out of.

Giovanni Paolo Panini, Roma Antica, 1757. A gallery hung wall to wall with paintings of Roman ruins.
Giovanni Paolo Panini, Roma Antica, 1757 to 1760. A room full of pictures of things other people made, which is the honest picture of how anybody thinks. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain.

Books I have actually read

Not books I own, or books I have heard summarized. If it is on this list I read it or listened to it, and I will happily argue about it.

Making things

  • The Creative Act Rick Rubin

    Attention as the artist’s core discipline. Read it more than once.

  • The War of Art Steven Pressfield

    Resistance, named and personified. The best gift you can give a student is a name for what is happening to them.

  • Turning Pro Steven Pressfield
  • The Artist’s Journey Steven Pressfield
  • The Creative Habit Twyla Tharp

    Creativity as a habit you build from daily ritual. The box per project.

  • The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron
  • Mastery Robert Greene
  • Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Steal Like an Artist Austin Kleon
  • Show Your Work! Austin Kleon
  • Make Your Own Rules Andrew Huang

    The working creator’s practice and economics in the platform era, from someone who built it with no label.

  • Make Art Make Money Elizabeth Hyde Stevens
  • Art Money Success Maria Brophy
  • Unemployable Elli Milan
  • The Practice Seth Godin
  • Ideaflow Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn

Story

  • Story Robert McKee
  • Storyworthy Matthew Dicks
  • Stories Sell Matthew Dicks

Marketing and selling

  • $100M Offers Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Leads Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Money Models Alex Hormozi
  • Gym Launch Secrets Alex Hormozi
  • Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath

    Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories. Read it a long time ago and due a refresher.

  • Influence Robert Cialdini
  • Pre-Suasion Robert Cialdini
  • Expert Secrets Russell Brunson
  • Dotcom Secrets Russell Brunson
  • Traffic Secrets Russell Brunson
  • This Is Marketing Seth Godin
  • Tribes Seth Godin
  • Contagious Jonah Berger
  • Invisible Influence Jonah Berger
  • The Catalyst Jonah Berger
  • The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell
  • Hooked Nir Eyal
  • Scientific Advertising Claude Hopkins
  • The Adweek Copywriting Handbook Joseph Sugarman
  • Magnetic Marketing Dan S. Kennedy
  • No B.S. Direct Marketing Dan S. Kennedy
  • No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent Dan S. Kennedy
  • Sell Like Crazy Sabri Suby
  • The Ultimate Sales Machine Chet Holmes
  • Gap Selling Keenan
  • Never Split the Difference Chris Voss
  • Primal Branding Patrick Hanlon
  • Quantum Marketing Raja Rajamannar
  • Play Bigger Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead and Kevin Maney
  • The YouTube Formula Derral Eves
  • Confessions of the Pricing Man Hermann Simon

Building a company

  • Traction Gino Wickman

    EOS. The weekly scorecard, the Level 10 meeting, quarterly rocks. We run the company on it.

  • Rocket Fuel Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
  • Scaling Up Verne Harnish
  • The E-Myth Revisited Michael E. Gerber
  • Good to Great Jim Collins
  • Good Strategy Bad Strategy Richard Rumelt
  • Competitive Strategy Michael E. Porter
  • Zero to One Peter Thiel
  • The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  • Predictable Success Les McKeown
  • The Science of Scaling Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson
  • Buy Back Your Time Dan Martell
  • Never Enough Andrew Wilkinson
  • Your Next Five Moves Patrick Bet-David
  • The Unfair Advantage Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba
  • The 80/20 Principle Richard Koch

    Plus several of his others.

  • The 80/20 Manager Richard Koch
  • The Star Principle Richard Koch
  • Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It Richard Koch
  • Be Obsessed or Be Average Grant Cardone
  • The 10X Rule Grant Cardone
  • The 10X Mentor Grant Cardone
  • Co-Intelligence Ethan Mollick
  • We Are as Gods Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Leading people

  • Extreme Ownership Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
  • Leadership Strategy and Tactics Jocko Willink
  • Start with Why Simon Sinek
  • Find Your Why Simon Sinek, David Mead and Peter Docker
  • Leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek
  • The Infinite Game Simon Sinek
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni
  • The Advantage Patrick Lencioni
  • The Ideal Team Player Patrick Lencioni
  • Radical Candor Kim Scott
  • Trillion Dollar Coach Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle
  • The New One Minute Manager Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R. Covey
  • The 8th Habit Stephen R. Covey
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie
  • Supercommunicators Charles Duhigg

How to think, learn and work

  • The Art of Learning Josh Waitzkin

    Making smaller circles, investment in loss, numbers to leave numbers. Loved it.

  • Ultralearning Scott H. Young

    Nine principles for aggressive self-directed skill acquisition. Directness and drill are the load-bearing pair. Loved it.

  • Essentialism Greg McKeown

    The disciplined pursuit of less.

  • Effortless Greg McKeown
  • Principles Ray Dalio

    Decision-making as a written, testable system.

  • The Great Mental Models, Volumes 1 to 3 Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien

    The series. A latticework instead of one favorite hammer.

  • Clear Thinking Shane Parrish
  • Elite Minds Stan Beecham

    Performance psychology.

  • The 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss

    The one that starts most people down this road.

  • The 4-Hour Body Tim Ferriss
  • The 4-Hour Chef Tim Ferriss
  • Tools of Titans Tim Ferriss
  • Tribe of Mentors Tim Ferriss
  • Atomic Habits James Clear
  • The 12 Week Year Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington
  • Getting Things Done David Allen
  • Building a Second Brain Tiago Forte
  • The PARA Method Tiago Forte
  • Indistractable Nir Eyal
  • Feel-Good Productivity Ali Abdaal
  • Work Clean Dan Charnas
  • The Miracle Morning Hal Elrod
  • Discipline Equals Freedom Jocko Willink
  • Discipline Is Destiny Ryan Holiday
  • The Obstacle Is the Way Ryan Holiday
  • A Whole New Mind Daniel H. Pink
  • The Magic of Thinking Big David J. Schwartz
  • The Magic Ladder to Success Napoleon Hill
  • Awaken the Giant Within Tony Robbins
  • Unlimited Power Tony Robbins
  • Unleash the Power Within Tony Robbins
  • Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor E. Frankl
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson
  • The Comfort Crisis Michael Easter
  • Excellent Advice for Living Kevin Kelly
  • Power vs. Force David R. Hawkins
  • Same as Ever Morgan Housel
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Eric Jorgenson
  • The Reboot with Joe Joe Cross

Money

  • MONEY Master the Game Tony Robbins
  • Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert T. Kiyosaki
  • The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel

Lives

  • Shoe Dog Phil Knight
  • Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson
  • Elon Musk Ashlee Vance

Faith and family

  • Wild at Heart John Eldredge
  • The Power That Changes the World Bill Johnson
  • Loving Our Kids on Purpose Danny Silk
  • The Intentional Father Jon Tyson
  • Supernatural Childbirth Jackie Mize
  • Prayers and Promises for Supernatural Childbirth Jackie Mize
  • Pain-Free Childbirth Nissa Andrews

Fiction

  • The Wheel of Time Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
  • Mistborn Brandon Sanderson
  • Dune Frank Herbert
  • The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Harry Potter J.K. Rowling
  • The Inheritance Cycle Christopher Paolini
  • Ranger’s Apprentice John Flanagan
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rick Riordan
  • The Hunger Games Trilogy Suzanne Collins
  • It Ends with Us Colleen Hoover

On the desk right now

  • The Anatomy of Genres John Truby

    Every genre is built on a major activity of life and carries its own moral vision.

  • Breakthrough Advertising Eugene Schwartz
  • High Output Management Andrew S. Grove
  • How to Write Clearly Tom Albrighton
  • The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene
  • The Laws of Human Nature Robert Greene
  • The Great Mental Models, Volume 4 Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien
  • The Hero of Ages Brandon Sanderson
  • Promises from God for Every Man

Next

  • Art & Fear David Bayles and Ted Orland

    Why artists quit. The canonical book on it.

  • Peak Anders Ericsson

    Deliberate practice, from the man whose research the 10,000-hour rule misquotes.

  • Toward a Psychology of Being Abraham Maslow

    Being-values and peak experiences. I have read about it, not read it.

Who I go to, by problem

A different claim from the shelf above. These are the people I reach for when a specific question comes up, and what each of them specifically owns. Where the best disagree I would rather name the disagreement than average it.

Selling to a human

  • Neil Rackham SPIN Selling

    35,000 recorded sales calls. Closing pressure works in small sales and backfires as the decision gets bigger, and the best performers meet fewer objections because better questions stop them forming.

  • Chris Voss Never Split the Difference

    Tactical empathy. Labeling, mirroring, and chasing "that’s right" instead of "yes."

  • Keenan Gap Selling

    The size of the gap you have actually diagnosed sets the urgency. Pain alone moves nobody. Impact does.

  • Zig Ziglar

    The five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. Diagnose which one is live before answering any of them.

Copy and persuasion

  • Eugene Schwartz Breakthrough Advertising

    Five states of awareness and five stages of market sophistication. The sophistication half is the one nobody quotes and the one that matters in a crowded market.

  • Robert Cialdini Influence

    Reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity, and unity. The most rigorously sourced voice in the whole field.

  • David Ogilvy Ogilvy on Advertising

    Five times as many people read the headline as the body, so when you have written the headline you have spent eighty cents of your dollar.

  • Blair Warren The One Sentence Persuasion Course

    Confirm their suspicions. The hook on my first essay here is his move.

  • Russell Brunson Expert Secrets

    The value ladder and the epiphany bridge. Rereading it is what started this site.

Making things, and not quitting

  • Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist

    Steal from many rather than one, transform rather than copy, and credit what you took. This page exists because of him.

  • Ira Glass

    The taste gap. Your taste arrives before your ability, that gap is why beginners quit, and only volume closes it.

  • Julia Cameron The Artist’s Way

    Morning pages and the artist date.

  • Robert Greene Mastery

    Life’s task, apprenticeship, creative-active, mastery. The arc almost no art program names out loud.

How people actually learn

  • Anders Ericsson Peak

    Deliberate practice at the edge of ability, on defined sub-skills, with immediate feedback.

  • Brown, Roediger and McDaniel Make It Stick

    Retrieval beats rereading and spacing beats cramming, and all of it feels worse while you do it, which is why students avoid exactly what works.

  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow

    He named it and built the research program behind it.

  • Albert Bandura

    Self-efficacy. Belief in your own capability drives what you attempt and how long you last.

The business of art specifically

  • Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber Art/Work

    A Chelsea gallery director and an arts lawyer. The strongest authorship in the genre.

  • Olav Velthuis Talking Prices

    Why art prices behave the way they do. Galleries avoid visible price cuts, and dealers separate the front space where you discuss the art from the back space where you discuss money.

  • Hans Abbing Why Are Artists Poor?

    The structural economics. Useful for keeping base rates honest rather than for comfort.

  • Kevin Kelly 1,000 True Fans

    The 2008 essay underneath every creator-economy argument since.

Deciding and measuring

  • Annie Duke Thinking in Bets

    Resulting: judging a decision by how it happened to turn out. The single most expensive habit in advertising.

  • Eliyahu Goldratt The Goal

    Throughput is set by one binding constraint, so improving anything else changes nothing.

  • Philip Tetlock Superforecasting

    Start from base rates, update often and in small increments, and keep score.

  • Charlie Munger

    A latticework of models from several disciplines, because a person with one model bends every problem to fit it.

Who I follow

People whose stuff I keep going back to, wherever it lives.

  • Naval Ravikant Podcast, X, The Almanack

    The four kinds of luck reached me through him. The Almanack is wonderful.

  • Matthew Dicks Storyworthy, live storytelling

    Homework for Life. Five minutes at the end of the day finding the one story-worthy moment. I have kept it for years.

  • Alex Hormozi YouTube, the $100M playbooks

    The hooks playbook is the most useful free document in marketing. His register is not mine and the structure transfers anyway.

  • Marc Andreessen pmarchive, essays

    The 2007 essay that carried James Austin’s four kinds of luck out of medical research and into business.