Joan Quinto

Hey everyone, Joan here.

Just thought I’d share what’s in my current stack of books! I also made a YouTube video on these books if you’d prefer to watch me talk and go in depth.

The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg

This book was so good! The writer shares stories he’s collected throughout the years about different scenarios on how habits are instilled in us. We may realize it or not, but a lot of decisions we make are not actually decisions, but the things we think we decide on are just our habits.

He also talks about how we can change our habits and it comes down to three things: a cue, the habit/routine, and the reward. These are the three things that keep us in the same habits and the only way to change our habits is realizing what cues are habits (for example: boredom), then we play out our habit/routine (picking up our phone to look at social media), so that we can claim our reward (instant gratification from something we see on our phones). If we can identify these things, we can look for better habits/routines to replace the unwanted ones.

The book not only talks about individuals and their habits, but also habits as a company/organization, as well as a society. Some of the stories do get pretty dark and I know I had a hard time getting through some of the stories. But it’s all within context and to help us relate the concepts for our day to day lives.

I highly recommend this book! It took me a month to finish it.

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

I’ve been putting off reading this book even though it’s been sitting on our bookshelf for the last 3 years. I thought I had a good grasp of my finances but when things got hard with inflation and we had to move because of how expensive everything was getting, it was time to sit down, read this book, and learn about personal finances again.

We all have different opinions on money, and sometimes Dave Ramsey’s approach seems very old school and traditional, but he definitely makes his point in this book. Everything he talks about is very basic and sounds simple enough. But for a lot of people, it’s not! If you can’t even save up $1000 as an emergency fund, then you have got to figure out where your money is even going. That was me. LOL.

I would definitely recommend reading this book, because sometimes we don’t even realize for ourselves how our money is not working in our favor. You can also check out his show on YouTube. It’s pretty hilarious but also pretty embarrassing.

Organize Tomorrow Today by Dr. Jason Selk & Tom Bartow

I’m only halfway through this book but it definitely has a lot of great tips on how to organize your day. The biggest takeaway I got was to plan your next day, the night before. It sounds simple but it took me a while to get into the habit of doing that.

When you plan your day before bed, you can go to bed with peace of mind, knowing that you have a game plan for the following day. I’m so used to scrambling in the morning, not knowing what my priorities are, feeling rushed in the morning to figure all that out, and it’s just not a great feeling to start your day with.

The book also goes into how you can better prioritize, how much time to spend on certain tasks, how many tasks you should focus on per day, as well as stories to relate to.

So far I’ve enjoyed reading this book, although it is very sports related, which is not really my jam. But it’s been very helpful so far, and I’ll recap later on once I’ve finished the book!

The Art Of Closing The Sale by Brian Tracy

Whether you have your own business, or you work in sales for any type of company, this book is totally worth the read. At least from what I can tell so far. I have to sell my services with my music entertainment business, and I also have worked in different retail sales environments (selling clothes, musical instruments, high-end cookware, etc.,) So this book definitely caught my attention.

I’m also only halfway through but I’ve learned so much already and I’m really excited to finish it. He goes into the mindset as a sales person, and examples of sales breakthroughs in the beginning of the book. The mindset, I’ve learned, is the most crucial thing if you want to be successful at selling your service or product. You have to have the mindset of believing in what you sell, believing in yourself in selling, and believing that the customer wants to buy from you.

I heard one of my mentors say this before, but sales makes the world go round. No matter what industry you’re in. We all need to learn how to sell our products/services not only to buyers, but also how to sell ourselves in interviews, to audiences, at auditions, at any situation where you have something to offer.

The book also goes into how to deal with objections, how to qualify, how to soft-close, then hard-close, and other selling tips. So if you do work where you have to sell something, I highly recommend adding this book to your pile.

Thanks for reading my blog post! I’ll do a quick recap once I’ve finished reading the rest of the books. I have another 4 books I’ll be reading and reviewing next. In the meantime, let me know in the comments if you’ve checked any of these books out, and if you recommend any to me!

See ya next time – Joan