Is Reading Bad For You? - FDDTC #14

What's up, guys? Most people consider reading to be one of the best things you can do. You've heard it, Tai Lopez. The more you learn, the more you earn. But I'm here today to tell you that reading can be one of the most damaging things that you do to your business or just your life, to be honest, if you're not doing it correctly or if you're going in with the wrong mindset. Hey, by the way, I'm Devin Zander, your host. This is the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast where I talk about how I went from a high school dropout and Jimmy John's delivery driver to. To being the CEO of an eight figure software and education company. So if you want to upgrade your marketing, your business skills and just have a good time doing it, well, you're in the right place. So let's get into today's episode. So reading, it's bad. What is that? Oh, my God. This is like, counterintuitive to everything I've ever heard. Reading is supposed to be good. It's supposed to be like the best thing ever. And it is. I love reading. Actually. I'm a very voracious reader. I read a lot of fiction. I love sci fi books. I love fantasy books. The Three Body Problem trilogy is amazing. The Stormlight archives are amazing. And then of course, there's a lot of business books and self help books and philosophy books that I enjoy too. So why am I telling you that reading can be so harmful? How is it that we can cause harm? And it all stems basically from why you're reading. Okay. And really understanding why you're reading, because what most people do when they read business books or self help books is, is they tell themselves they're being productive. I'm getting stuff done. I'm learning. And look, the best learning you can ever do is from taking action. I want to make that very clear that you will learn more from taking action for one week straight than you would from reading 10, 15 books. And I very much so feel that way. The difference is, is you have to seriously be taking action, like big actions. So for instance, if you're a sales rep, picking up the phone and doing 50 dials or 100 dials is going to be way more beneficial than reading a sales book. It just will be. There's. There's zero doubt in my mind that that is true. Now, I do think that you should read sales books and things like that, but I want to get to the real core piece of my argument here, which is that most People, when they read, they're really doing it to distract themselves. They're not doing it to learn. They're doing it so they feel productive, and they're doing it to distract themselves from actual work. Let me show you what I mean. So if you read a book without any idea of what you actually want to get out of that book, like, you're not really sure what the book is about, and you're reading it because you heard it's a good book, but there's not like a real problem you have in your business that you're trying to solve. Then you're reading that book for entertainment. You are not reading it to be productive. You convince yourself it's productive, but you're really reading it to. To entertain yourself and make yourself feel productive because you're not actually working. Now how can we make this different? It's easy. Have a real problem you want to solve. Find a book that teaches that and then, boom, read the book so you can solve actual issues in your business and do. Wait for it. Do what? Actually work on your business instead of remaining distracted. And yeah, most people are just lying to themselves. They're reading to make themselves feel productive when they're not actually productive. It's just a form of entertainment. Now let me give you an example of what I do. So I've fallen into this mistake quite a bit, actually. I don't want to say like, oh, I'm perfect. I've never made this mistake. No, the reason I'm even bringing this up is because I've made this mistake so many times and I've had to address it within myself. And this podcast is almost a reminder to myself, like, Devin, why the fuck are you reading this? It is totally irrelevant to your business. Okay, Like, I'll go out there and read a book about how AI is the future of business. And it's like, wait, why? I lead the, like, marketing team. I'm a manager. Like, what do I. Fuck that man. Right? And we're not using AI. We have no plans to use AI. So this knowledge is useless. Now there are times in my business where I have serious issues that I want to solve. And I will go out and find a book. And example of that is the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. This is one of my most recommended books out there. Oh my God, it's so good. And I didn't just stumble upon it one day cause I was looking for some fun reading. No, I sought it out because about nine years ago, I was still a fledgling entrepreneur and I really got fucked over. I hired a developer and I was like, hey, I want to make this Shopify app, right? And this was before smart apps. And it's actually what eventually turned into smart apps, which you know as scup, probably because we have a DBA which is doing business as. But. So right before I founded this company, probably like a year or two before, I had an idea for a Shopify app. It would essentially allow you to sell products directly in the Facebook newsfeed. It was probably a terrible idea anyways, but back then Facebook still supported Flash, so you could do a lot of really cool stuff directly in the newsfeed. Like you could create newsfeed apps and do a bunch of cool shit, collect payments and all that stuff right in the newsfeed, which nobody probably wanted to do in the first place. So it's like that probably would have sucked anyways. But I hired an engineer or a developer to build this product for me. I used odesk, which is now upwork. And I'll be honest with you, like, I did not. I did not know the first thing. Like, I know nothing about engineering at all. I can't write a line of code. Still can't. And yet here I was expecting to hire an engineer, right? So I go on there, I don't know what PHP is, I don't know what JavaScript is, I don't know what like any of this Ruby. I don't know, like, what the fuck? I just want an engineer who can build my app, right? So I make a job posting and all these guys sending applications, I have no idea what they mean, right? So really what I did was I just hired the person who had a high price because I was like, oh, well, if they have a high price, they must be good. And who seemed like they understood my idea, you know what I'm saying? So I hired this guy and he's like 70, $60 an hour or something like that. I can't remember. I actually still have access to that old Upwork account, so I should go look sometime. I hired him, we went through the scope of the project. All right, let's build it. It's time. Let's have some fun. Woo. So we start working on it and, you know, two weeks go by, I'm like, hey, everything's going. He's like, oh, it's good, it's good. Um, and I'm like, okay, cool, like, what? Can I check it out? And he's like, oh, it's. It's just code right now, you know, like there's nothing to look at. I'm still working on the code. Um, that was two weeks. And before, you know, it was four weeks, then it was eight weeks. I'm like, hey, can I check it out? He's like, oh, you know, I still haven't worked on the front end yet, but here's the code. And he sends me a bunch of code. And of course, like, I'm not tech at all, so I'm just like, okay, I see the code. Cool. He must be doing work. There's a bunch of code here. Yay. My app is being built that two months turns into four months, and then before you know it, it's six months. And basically at like, $50 an hour over six months, that's $50,000. If they're working full time, $50 an hour works out to be about $100,000 a year. Anyways, so we're almost six months into this, and I'm like, yo, hey, man, we've been working on this for a long time. Like, I really. I need to see something. And he's like, oh, soon, soon, soon. So a week goes by, and I'm like, dude, come on. Show me. It's been some time. I need to see it. He's like, oh, soon. And I was like, you know what? Fuck this. Like, I have friends who are technically enabled. And I know, like, in retrospect, it's obvious that I should have had a friend look at it sooner. I was young, dumb, and way too trusting of people, which I don't know. So I get my buddy, David Abrams. He's a really good guy. Look him up on Twitter, Facebook, whatever. And I was like, yo, can. Can you help me? You know, look at this guy's code. I'm trying to understand, like, is he actually doing work? Because he's charged me a bunch of money. And, like, what. What. What's happening? Is it almost done? So David comes in, he does it for free, takes a look at the code. It took us, like, literally two more weeks to even get the guy to send us the code. So my idea is he's in, like, full panic mode now. Like, oh, no. Someone who actually knows what they're doing is gonna look at my code. So it takes two weeks for him to send it. He sends it, and David tells me. He's like, you know, Devin, I hate to tell you this, man, but this guy, like, he really hasn't done shit. It's nowhere near completion. And this guy's not even, like, the kind of developer you needed He's a mobile app developer. I'm like, how the fuck am I supposed to know? You know? I'm just an idiot who thought I could do this on my own. I was in way over my head, and I was like, fuck. Well, you know what I do? I've already paid him $50,000. And, okay, so I go to Odesk, and I'm like, hey, blah, blah, blah, can I get my money back? And they tried, and I did not end up getting my money back. I was SOL, dude. I lost about $50,000. And what I should have done and what I would have done if I was now, okay, like, looking back, is I would have gotten a lawyer, and I would have figured out a way to get my money back. But I was young, and I still, like, I didn't understand anything. I was in my early 20s and, like, 23 or something, and I really just did not know what I was doing. But I felt like my life was over, you know, I just lost $50,000. I felt betrayed. I felt, like, scammed by trust. Like, all these different thoughts going through my head. I had nothing to show for it, you know, like, zero. Not a single usable line of code. I had nothing. No nothing. Just money. I might as well have lit it on fire. I probably would have enjoyed that more. At least it would have kept me, like, warm. And me and my dog Brutus could have sat around it with, like, little marshmallows or something and enjoyed it, but we had nothing. And so I went and I was living in a condo at the time, and, you know, we had a little pool on the water. So I went over there and I sat by the pool just by myself, and I. I had audible. I'd only listened to one book on it at the time, which was the 10x rule by Grant Cardone. That's the whole reason I got audible. And then as I was sitting there, I was just so upset, like. And I felt hopeless, you know? And so I went on Audible and I started just, like, searching. I don't even remember what I searched because it was so long ago, and I was just like. But I was looking for a book to help me process my feelings and understand what the fuck was going on so I could come out of this and be okay. Because I want to be an entrepreneur, and I've had a lot of success, but this really made me feel like giving up, because I felt like I was kind of just like, fuck people, you know? And, like, fuck trying. Like, I'm trying to do something good. And this is what happens. And I just get scammed out of my money, right? So I went searching for a book and I found the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And I read that and it changed my life. And, you know, I actually plan on doing an entire podcast about that book. I keep a little totem from it, a little coin that says the Obstacle is the way in my pocket at all times. Funnily enough, this is the one fucking day in forever that I haven't brought it, so I can't show you. But my point is, is I didn't read that book just for fun, you know, I read it because I had a specific problem that I wanted to solve, and that's the purpose of reading, you know? And don't get me wrong, like, if you want to read for enjoyment, I think you should. Okay? I definitely think you should. I don't want that to be the message that reading is bad. The message here is that if you're lying to yourself and telling yourself you're productive because you're spending a lot of time reading, even though you don't have problems that that book can solve, that's bad. Okay? You got to fucking call a duck a duck, all right? Quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, shakes his cute little butt like a duck. It's fucking duck, you know? So if you're reading a book to distract yourself from the actual work, if you're reading business books to make you feel productive or self help books to make you feel productive, really need to take a long hard look in the mirror because there's definitely something better you could be doing with your time, which is working on that fucking business. And like we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, that's where the real experience comes from anyways. And then look, when you do find a problem that you have and you really want to solve, that's perfect. There's a ton of books for that. Go out, read them. Yeah. Fuck yeah. And then my advice to you is don't move on to another book until you've fully digested and implemented what you learned in that first book. Because if you read a book and you don't implement it, it's fucking useless, right? It's just then you just wasted a bunch of fucking time reading that book. Okay, now let's close by saying if you don't care and you want to read books because it's your way of being leisurely and having fun, well, fucking go do it. You know, Go do it. Please go do it. But don't ignore your business. And don't pretend you're being productive by reading that book when you don't need it, because what you're doing is entertaining yourself. That's okay. Go entertain yourself if you want, but also work on your business. Don't accept reading the book as productivity unless you actually have an issue that that book can solve. All right, guys, this is Devin Zander, your host from the Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure you like, comment, subscribe, and. And we're dropping episodes every Wednesday and Saturday, so make sure you're subscribed so you get them as we drop them. Baby, this is it. See you on Wednesday. Peace.