#087: How to Get Through (and Absorb!) That Pile of Unread Business Books

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing.

Podcast, helping you propel your writing business.

To a whole new level.

And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 87 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find details shown us of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com forward/episode87. This might not be a big surprise to you guys, but I love to read. And I am, like, I would say most writers out there. I'm an avid reader. In fact, I have more books that I want to read than I have time to read them. And that's a, a common problem might be facing the same thing. Just so many books, so little time. It's not as easy for me to make the time to read as it was a few years ago. You know, family obligations and two businesses that I'm trying to run and other personal interests. It just makes it harder. I got more things competing for my time. I've tried some speed reading courses. They helped to some degree. But you know what? I've yet to reach a level where I can read, let's say 50 or more books a year. I would just love to get there. So when I came across Brandon Hakim's techniques on how to read and absorb dozens of books a year, I was very intrigued. And I have to tell you, after interviewing him just by applying a few of his simple ideas that he shared in the interview, I've already read two books in the past two weeks. And just to kind of give you some context, that's something it would have normally taken me up to two months to accomplish, usually four to eight weeks. So I got some great stuff for you today, and Brandon's going to explain essentially how he reads over 300 books a year. He describes a key mindset shift you have to make in order to get to this level, and a handful of practical techniques that to help you get through nonfiction books much faster. This is not going to be some sort of pixie dust and magic here. Some of the ideas he's going to share might seem very, very simple, but I got to tell you, they work. So stand by, check it out. I think you're going to get a lot out of this interview. Hope you enjoy it. Brandon, man, it's so good to have you here. I'm glad you've agreed to come on the show.

Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm really so excited to be here.

Before we get into the meat, I always start with every guest. I ask them the same question. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about the work you do today. I want people to understand where you're coming from.

Of course. Well, I own and run a restaurant, and I have several online courses as well. I think really the biggest thing that I consider myself as is, is a learner. That's what I'm really passionate about. It's what I put a lot of my focus on, both in the restaurant and in my courses as well. And I think the other big thing is writing as well. I think everybody listening to this, I consider myself a writer because whatever it is we're doing, we're always communicating informing ideas and sharing it with others. So I'd say those are really the things as far as the writing goes. I think I like to write about things that I believe in my core. And what I really believe in and what I try to share in my courses and in my emails and everything is that a degree isn't an education. And I think confusing those two things is probably the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to education and learning. So I really try to explore that area, and a lot of the time I spend is exploring things on my own and sharing it with others as well.

It's very cool. And I'm intrigued by the fact that you're an entrepreneur. You're a restaurateur. What kind of restaurant do you own?

It's a wine bar.

Awesome. You're talking my language. And where is your restaurant?

It's in Los Angeles, where I live.

Perfect. Awesome. Well, let me kind of set the stage because I want people to understand why I wanted to bring you on the show. One of the things I really struggle with is I've always been an avid reader since I was a teenager. And there are more books that I want to read that I have time to read them. So there's that. I just. I have a natural thirst for knowledge. I think many of our listeners feel the same way. They're just like I am when it comes to that. My problem is. So the time factor. And the second one, which a lot of people don't really talk about, is I want to make the information actionable. Like, if I read a good book and I'm very selective, I only. If I'm going to spend that time, it has to be a great book. And if it's a great book, it's probably going to have some wonderful ideas that I could implement and should implement to improve my business and my life. The challenge I have is there's so many ideas, so many things I could implement, I get overwhelmed. So then a couple of things happened. I'm not sure how to put them into play, number one. And number two, I don't go on to the next book because I'm still thinking through the ideas and processing the ideas. So in a way, I kind of stall. And it's a really frustrating cycle to be in. And know when I talk to people, I think they have the same thing, the same problem, but they haven't identified it or they're not really sure what to do about it. So I'm very intrigued with your approach and what you've done to change all that, because I know from your story, the bit I do know is that you've had the same issue. So tell us a little bit about, like, how this became an issue for you and how you decided or why you decided to do something about it.

Sure. When I finished college, I really wanted a challenge. So I took over a restaurant that the one we talked about that my dad had invested in. And it really wasn't doing well at all. It was actually bleeding money, by the way. When I was in school, I always questioned how I would ever use what I was learning. I even went to the teen at the university and told her, I feel like we're getting an outdated education. But still, some part of me thought, when I walk into this restaurant, you know, I went to a quote unquote top 10 business school. Some part of me felt like I would still be able to walk in and kind of just save the day. But it really, it wasn't the case at all. The restaurant was months away from closing. The waiters hated it. The Yelp page was just had tons of negative reviews, and the place really looked like a hospital room. Just really big, brightly lit, and no marketing plan. So nothing. And I had no one to help me either. And what really made it crazy is one day I found out, and this was kind of in the beginning too, that one of our employees was stealing money and we had to let him go. And this made me so nervous that morning, I was, like, shaking almost. And what I did is I read a book about having difficult conversations and I did exactly what it told me.

And.

And this person quit later that night and thanked me for the opportunity. I was like, wow, there's really something to this. In school, I memorized all These things that I didn't know how to apply here. And here I am. I read one book and I got some sort of result. So later on I wanted to know how to do things like create a great working environment or how to hire the right people, how to drive sales through email marketing and on and on. And for all those things, I just turned to books and was able to come up with either a system to do that or a quick fix or something that helped me get the results that I wanted. And I just realized that all the answers I ever wanted were in books. I just think it's so amazing, by the way, that we can spend a few hours and learn something that someone maybe has spent their entire life to, to mastering and learning about. And we could just spend a few hours and just take that all in. So I just became obsessed with reading better and reading faster. And as I went through it, I wrote down every breakthrough I had. I talked to other people and I even read books on the topic until I was getting through probably like on average, a book a day. And because of it, everything started turning around.

Oh, wow. Wow. So that I just can't even process that. A book a day. That's crazy. Every time I hear people say something crazy like that, I'm thinking they must not have kids. But in your case, you figured out a way. You figured out a way to get the information you needed so you could start applying it as quickly as possible because you had to. It sounds like it was by necessity.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I'm very intrigued. So walk us through the. Can you give us a high level overview of the process you use?

Of course, absolutely. By the way, just kind of related to that last thing that something I think about, and I kind of try to remind myself of this actually is Steve Jobs said that everything around us was made up by people no smarter than you and me. But I really think about how many of us go on and challenge that. You know, a lot of people talk about changing the education system and some people even devote their lives to it. But I just think about how many of those people first give themselves the education they should have gotten in school but didn't. And I really think that's the goal when you're learning to read books and go through information quickly.

Man, I'm with you 100%. I've changed my view of education completely over the past few years. And in fact, I'm not impressed by degrees anymore and I haven't for years. I do believe that I've given myself several MBAs since graduating from college just from not just reading information, but applying it and then refining it. Right. Because once you apply it, that's when you really learn. It's one thing to understand it conceptually, but, man, you put it into play and that's when the fun begins. And to me, that's been the biggest education ever. So, you know, when people tell me I'm going back to school to get my mba, I cringe. Or when they tell me they're going to law school. That's like the worst. But anyway, yeah, so great point, great point. So let's talk about your.

Your.

The process you've. You've developed. I mean, how do you go about this? How do you. How can you read a book so fast?

Sure. Well, I think the first and really the most important thing is changing your mindset. And I think it's very tied to. To what you just said, you know, going back to college. I remember my first semester, we had to take this business organization class, and we had 300 pages of PowerPoint slides to memorize for the final test. And all I could wonder is, when would I ever use this? Because the thing is, in school, they teach you things so you can have a conversation about it. But what the focus needs to be when you're reading books is to read for action. You want to read for things that you can take and apply to make your life better. So Jim Rohn, the. I don't know what we categorize him as a motivational speaker, business philosopher, whatever. But he said, don't let your learning lead to knowledge. You'll become a fool. Let your learning lead to action. You'll become wealthy. And I think it's no wonder. Andrew Carnegie was probably one of the richest men ever, said whenever you learn something, you should go about applying it immediately. Or Henry Ford said that an education isn't memorizing a few dates in history. It's about being able to get results. So when it comes to reading, I think it's important that we really drop that mindset that we learn in school that, okay, here's page one. Here's page two. I need to go through the whole thing just because it's written. And I need to impress a teacher or professor and get a grade and really adopt the mindset that, okay, this is where I'm at right now. These are my goals. And what I'm really looking for is I'm looking to extract information that I could take and apply, and in that applying process, really internalize that information.

Okay, that Makes sense. That makes sense. So I don't know if this is something you want to address now or maybe you'll have the answer later, but I'm curious, because every book is different. How do you know in a book what information is actionable and what it's not? Because. Right. If I knew exactly where I need to go to get what I wanted, that'd be the best. But obviously we're not giving that kind of guide. It's not highlighted for us already.

Of course. And yeah. So I think the first thing we need to do when reading a book is to preview the book. So it's a big mistake. Just open the book and say, okay, page one, page two. Let me just go through from beginning to get to the end. So as soon as I get a book in the mail, I'll open it up, I'll go to the table of contents, and I'll start flipping through it just to see what the main message of the book is about and to identify what parts can help me in my life. And by the way, just doing this is sometimes enough to get everything you need out of the book. You know, it depends on the book, but a lot of books have a lot of filler and things like that. I remember, for example, I actually liked this book, a book called Cashvertising, and I previewed it. I ended up previewing it twice before I read it. And when I came to read it, I was like, wow. I feel like I had already gotten everything I want out of it.

Wow. So previewing is table of contents. Does it involve any other steps beyond that? I mean, do you kind of flip through the pages quickly? I know I've heard of that before. Or is that another step?

Yeah, absolutely. So see what's covered in the table of contents. Maybe read the back cover if you don't know what it's already about. And then, yeah, just start dipping into different sections and getting an idea of what's covered and what are the parts that really resonate with you and what are the parts that you're like, okay, this is interesting. I can remember that this is covered in this book. When I have that problem, I can come back to it, but really don't have much to do with where you're at right now.

Okay, fair enough. By the way, when you do this, do you set aside a certain amount of time, or do you just kind of preview and then let go from there?

At the beginning, when I first started doing this, I would actually set aside five or 10 minutes and do this. But the way I feel right now is, I don't know if you can relate to this, but when I get a book in the mail, it's kind of like Christmas. Oh, yeah, right. I actually order so many books that I don't remember which one coming or. So you get one package, and it's kind of exciting to see what's in there. And. And then when you get the book to you, okay, what's covered in this book? So as soon as I get it, that's when I start going through it and getting an idea of what's covered and how much I want to. How much time and effort I want to invest in the book.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And then, okay, so that's the preview stage. What's the next step? And then do you also do that immediately after the preview, or do you do it on a different day?

Sure. Well, yeah, if I do preview, I guess the traditional way to do it is to preview it and then start reading it immediately after. And there are two ways to go about reading after previewing. So sometimes not in most cases, but sometimes that's enough that you've gotten everything you want out of it. But from there, there are two ways to read. The first is in your preview. You've identified the sections that really resonate with you, the sections that you know can add a lot to your life. And you go straight to those sections. You don't start from the beginning and go to the end just because it's written that way. Instead, you go straight to the sections that you know will have the biggest impact for you. So that's the first way. And the second way is if you can't identify that or if it's a book like you were talking about, that just has so much value, like, wow, I really don't even know where to start. Then the approach for that is start from the beginning and go through it. But you want to become aware of unnecessary writing. You want to become aware of unnecessary description stories, bullet points, just things that don't really add much to the book but take up a lot of space. And when you have this on your mind, you realize this is actually the case a lot more or than you think. And sometimes there's nothing to skip. But it really doesn't happen that often. And if that's the case, there are things you can do for that as well.

I'm curious about this, because I know that stories, although they might feel like fluff on the surface, stories trigger a different part of our brain that helps us actually retain the information or. Or think about it a little differently. Right. So it can frame the information or the ideas differently. And as much as I am tempted sometimes to skip through that, I know there have been some books that I didn't really fully get it until I read that story in that chapter that I almost skipped or that I skipped the first time around.

Absolutely.

What would you say to that?

Absolutely. And I couldn't agree with you more. There are actually a lot of books, and it's been proven the best way to teach is through story. We learn differently through story. But, you know, a lot of points that the stories are illustrating, again, it may be a point that you're not very interested in. So I'd say that's the first thing. And the second thing, as far as stories go, is even within those stories, there's still a lot of times, I mean, depends on the book and the writer, obviously, but there's still a lot of fluff and things and room to kind of. Okay, I get this. I understand it. I feel like I've grasped it. Let me move on, you know, so it's. Let your. Let your thinking be the guide rather than the writers thinking, if that makes sense.

Yeah, Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. So we talked about preview. We talked about kind of going straight to something you think is going to give you the biggest value. Maybe it's a chapter, maybe it's a section. You go straight there. Now, when you go in through it. Any particular way you go through it? Or. I mean, are you trying to. I've heard of techniques where you read the subheads, read bullet points, read the first sentence of every paragraph. Anything like that that you methodically do.

Absolutely. So after the preview, like I said, there are two things. Two approaches. The first is just go straight for those sections. The second is to start from the beginning. So when I do start from the beginning, that's exactly what I'm doing. Looking at the subhead, looking at the first sentence and so forth. Okay. This isn't. At least. This paragraph isn't really something I want to go. Let me go to the next one. Something that comes to mind, actually, and I talk about this in the course, is I was reading the book Winning by Jack Welch, and he was a part that I actually liked. He was talking about your mission statement and core values and things like that. So he was talking about what a mission statement is, and really just talking about how you. You want your mission statement to have teeth and really be actionable and so forth. And then he goes into this long description of what it's not. And as soon as I saw that, I'm like, okay, I know what it's not. I've been to four years of business school. It's not all those things essentially, that they told me it is, which is just up in the sky description. So I saw that and I go, okay, I'm going to go skip to the next thing, because knowing what it's not at this point and where I'm at isn't really actionable for me. So, you know, go to the next point. So that's really how I apply that second way of reading.

And I'm curious, as you're going, as you're doing this, are you highlighting, underlining, making notes, anything like that? Are you marking up the book in any way?

Absolutely. Yeah. Something actually, this was a big mindset shift for me as well, is that we need to look at the book like a tool. It's not. Again, in school, it's looked at. Okay, this is your assignment. Depending on the school, you've borrowed it, or even if you bought it, you probably want to sell it back. So it's like, this is kind of like. It's kind of like the Bible. Don't do anything to it. But, yeah, for me, you need to look at it like a tool. So I take notes in the book. If there's something in the book that reminds me of something else I've read or something else that I know, I. I'll make that connection and write that in the margin as well. I'll write my takeaways from the book, all those things. I'll write it in the book so I can always refer back to it in a very short amount of time and kind of reread it in 10 minutes, 20 minutes. But also, the act of writing helps you ingrain it on a much deeper level.

I have this recurring nightmare that I am reading a really awesome book and I don't have a pen anywhere near me. Yeah, I have been marking up books since I was in college. I didn't care. I figured, okay, I'll resell it. I know I'll get less, but it doesn't matter. And it is a horrible habit in a way, I feel it does slow me down. But it does make the book, I think, much more easily reviewable. But when I go back. But I'm wondering, and that's why I wanted to ask you if it's. If it's not worth it, you know, if it slows you down too much.

Well, I think, you know, the whole idea of speed reading has become very popular these days. And it actually, it is something I talk about, and I have a course on it as well. But what I really try to emphasize is it's more like selective reading is a lot more important than speed reading. And I'd rather read the things that I know can change the rest of my life I know will lead me down a completely different course. There's no reason for me to speed read that section. I'd rather really just take my time, mark it up, and go deep into that section and instead just not put effort in those things that I know really won't move the needle at all. Because time I spent on those things is. Is time I could have spent somewhere else again, learning something that could have had an impact on my life or an impact on other people's lives that I care about.

So you'll take your time with that. You'll go ahead and take the time to mark it up, write notes, things that are going to help you not only recall the information better, more efficiently, but also make it more usable if you do decide to go back and review the book.

Absolutely. And to be honest with you, it really doesn't take that much longer at this point, if it takes longer at all. You know, it's not very hard to just draw a line on the side to indicate this is a paragraph that really has an impact on me or write a few words on the side of something else that you've read that this reminds you of. Things like that, or what I actually do is on the title page, I'll write my biggest, biggest takeaways from the book, the things that I can take and apply and so forth. So I'll just take those, and I'll take the time to write those in the front because again, it'll remind me of what it is that I want to take action on. And I can also come back and when I review that book. Okay, these were the 10 things that really just had such a deep impact on me.

I definitely want to come back to that, because to me, this is. I kind of want to touch on. How do you review it? How do you take notes? But before we do that, anything else besides, we talked about preview. We talked about skipping maybe, maybe to a section that you feel could make the biggest immediate impact. We talked about what to do when you're in those sections or if you want to go ahead and start from the beginning. Anything else that you feel has been really helpful for you.

Of course. Yeah. There's a lot more things. Just one last thing I want to share. As far as the selective reading goes. I think most people I share this with get a lot out of the reading for action concept. But a lot of people don't even want to try it because they feel. I mean, just some people, a few people feel this way because they say that, hey, if I'm not reading every word, that shouldn't count as reading the book. And I understand that because that's the mentality we're taught for so many years, again, in school. But we really need to focus on reading for results. We're not trying to impress anybody by how many books we read or to get a good grade. Again, it's about getting measurable results. The only thing that you want to, I guess, impress anybody by, if you do want to impress anybody, is the measurable results you get in the real world, not by how many full books you've read.

Yeah, a good point. Good point. And this fear of missing out or this fear of, what if I missed something important? I get it, and I feel like I got a lot out of it. But, you know, gosh, I feel like I cheated. I feel like I skipped a lot. What if there was something really valuable in there that could change my life?

Sure. Well, I think there are a few things to keep in mind. First of all, I'd rather spend a small amount of time, small amount of time and get almost everything out of the book at 80, 90% out of it, than to spend five or ten times longer just to get that little bit extra. The juice isn't worth the squeeze in that case. And the other thing to keep in mind is opportunity costs. You know, Warren Buffett says the most important investment decision is opportunity costs. What are you giving up in order to pursue this one thing? And for me to spend five or ten times longer reading every word just to make sure I don't miss that little thing, is five or 10 other books that I could have read. And what I say in the course, too, is it's more important to get one idea that you can completely change your life with. Thank you. Than to read every word. Because a single idea that you thoroughly apply can revolutionize your life. But a hundred, a thousand average ideas, really, actually, it'll just confuse you if anything.

Yeah, man, that really resonates with me. I mean, just the thought of how many potential books I could have read and the time I've wasted because I'm just overwhelmed with kind of the ideas that I'm still trying to process or this mindset that I have to read the whole thing that's really holding me back. Now, before we get to the kind of, how do you review this? How do you make some of these ideas actionable? I do have a question about digital books, specifically, like Kindle and so forth. What are your thoughts on digital versus physical in order to really get actionable information from books?

Sure. Well, everything we talked about, it works with digital books as well. But to be honest, I don't read digital books because it takes much longer to do so. Physical books, they're easier to preview, they're easier to read, and most importantly, they're easier to come back and review. At any point, I want my books. They're kind of like my friends. Almost at any time, I know that I can go back to my library and. And refer back to it and kind of, if I'm going through something or if I'm having a hard time with something, if I have a question, I can just go there, open it up, flip through it, and really just kind of reinvigorate myself. And I feel like I can't do that with digital books. So even to give you an example, the book Breakthrough Advertising, which.

Oh, classic.

Yeah, it's amazing book. It's like 100 bucks on Amazon last time I checked, because it's out of print. But it's online in PDF form. But instead of reading it online, I just printed it out and I took it to a print shop and had it bound. And that ten minutes it took me to do that, plus the six bucks it cost, I think not only saves me a lot of time, but helps me learn it a lot better. And I always have it to refer back to.

Man, we're a lot alike. Because I cannot stand. The only reason I use my Kindle is for fiction. That I think is fantastic. It's just. It really is a wonderful tool. I have no idea how people do business books, personal development, professional development books in digital format. To me, it's ridiculous. I completely agree. You can't flip through it. You can't review it as easily. You really do lose a lot. And, you know, it's funny, I do talk to most of the people I talk to about this. Agree with me. So I don't understand why they continue to talk about the death of print when most avid readers would agree that there's certain genres or formats that they must have in print.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So let's talk about the. Okay, you're done with the book. You know, there's A lot of ideas there. You've made some highlights, starred some things, dog eared some pages. You alluded to this a little bit earlier in that you take kind of the front page and you put some notes there of the big takeaways or action items. Tell me more about that. And do you really fit everything in there? Because there's some books where I don't think I have enough room in one page.

Sure.

Maybe I'm making a mistake, by the way.

Well, sometimes it'll take two pages, but I think the fact that it is one page kind of. It makes you be selective.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's kind of a. It's contradictory. It intuitively it makes sense. The more I take away from this book, the better it'll be for me and the better use of my time it is when in reality, the less you take away that you can go ahead and thoroughly apply, that's when it's really going to make a difference in your life. So, you know, it's. And I do that too. And still to this day, you know, it's very hard to be like, no, you know, I'd rather be selective than write every single takeaway from this book. Yeah. But also the other thing I'd say, Ed, is the front page is really just those key amazing things that I want to write on there. And the rest of it is where I'll write my notes in the book and underline. And as far as that goes, there's a lot more that's underlined. There are a lot more pages that are folded that I can go back and refer directly to. So all those things wouldn't fit directly on the page, on that first title page. But those key things that I want to take to apply to my life that really mean a lot to me. Those are the things that are going to go on that first page.

Yeah. I heard someone mention, I forget who it was, that they do a one page book report out of every book they read that they thought was worthwhile. And I really liked that idea. Now this is a separate page. I think I need to, I want to start doing something like this. I'm thinking for me, Evernote would be ideal. I'm not sure how I feel about doing it on the book itself, but I guess it doesn't really matter. The point is keep it to one page. It forces you to really stick to the essence absolutely of the book and the detail you've already marked up. So tell me a little bit about how often do you go back to Books I know you're reading. What pace typically? I mean, how many books are you reading a month?

You figure these days, I'd say probably I read close to a book a day, and also, I don't read every single day, and sometimes I read two books a day, but I'd say I probably read around 25 books a month.

That's insane, man. All right, love that. So, yeah, you got a lot of bookshelves. How do you. The paradox of choice is at play here. You know, you want to review some stuff, you're looking at your bookshelves. It's like a massive wall. How do you pick? How do you figure? Okay, how do you decide which book you're going to review today? Can I go back to it?

Sure. For me, I do a couple things. First of all, I think the most importantly, I let my life be the guide. Again. Looking at them kind of like friends, so to speak, or mentors or whatever, I really let. What am I going through? What are the challenges I'm having? What are the questions I have? And then it's kind of like rereading a book. But it's like you're using books that you've already read that you know are excellent as recommendations instead of just kind of asking a friend, hey, what book do you recommend? This is what I'm going through in my life. So as far as reviewing, I don't. It's good to have a process where you consciously review the books and all that, but I think most importantly is letting your life be the guide for what to review and at what point.

I think it makes a lot of sense. I like that. It makes it easy to figure out what to do.

Exactly.

So I definitely want to ask you about your course. Before we do that, I'm curious, because I don't know what I don't know. And I'm curious if there's something I haven't asked you about on this topic that maybe listeners should know or a point you want to really emphasize or something we didn't discuss.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I'd love to share another trick that everyone can use. Kind of going back to the speed reading things. Speed reading is a skill that you can develop over time, and it may or may not be worth the time. I think if you do it before emphasizing what we talked about, I think it's kind of a waste of time because you're focusing on the right thing. I'd rather be effective than efficient. But one trick that you can take that will instantly make you a faster Reader is, you know, when you read, our eyes take fixations. They take chunks of, if you're slow, one or two words. If you're a little faster, three or four words at a time before moving on to the next one. But if you can keep your eyes moving along in a fluid motion, you instantly become a faster reader. So we talked about, you always want to have a pen in your hand when reading. So you should also use that pen to lead your eyes along underneath every line because that will, you know, it'll make a movie instead of a picture, and that will make you a faster reader.

I've heard of that technique also. With the tip of your finger, have it follow it seems to work. I have found myself, and maybe it just comes with practice. I have found myself getting distracted doing it that way because I'm going so fast that I'm okay. And then I start thinking about, I don't know what I'm going to have for lunch.

Right. Well, I think, you know, when it comes to learning a speed read, and again, this shouldn't be the main focus, but just to clarify that point, a lot of people say, just do that and push yourself to the point where you don't understand and eventually you'll catch up. And I don't like to do that because, again, I'm not reading like at school. I'm reading so I could take away the few things that will matter. But if you actually want to practice that, you should divide up your reading time and your time to practice separately. But when we're talking about using this trick, I don't think it's so important to push yourself beyond what you can't do. It's just leading your eyes along in a fluid motion, maybe a little bit faster than you would have before. It's preventing you from going back in the text and just moving you forward. And that's the reason that it'll instantly make you a faster reader. And I don't think you want to push it beyond where you can't understand. Because I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be like, okay, I'm kind of bored now.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious, do you consider yourself a speed reader? Do you. Do you have the ability to do that?

I do have the ability to do that, but I don't consider myself speed reader because it's not the primary tool that I use because. And other. Others may feel differently, but I rather be effective than efficient. So I rather focus first and foremost on the effective side of things.

Makes sense. So you use it as a tool when appropriate, but that's not your focus.

Right.

So tell us about the course you created. I'm very intrigued by this, and I was checking it out earlier today, really like what I saw.

Thank you so much. So, yeah, when I really started to understand everything we've talked about here, and you could probably sense this in what we've talked about, I actually started feeling angry that it's something we're never taught in school. So I first started sharing this with my sister and my cousins and close friends and things like that. And at some point, and it was kind of. I don't even remember how I had this idea, but I thought maybe I'll just put it up online and see what happens. You know, actually, I didn't know if other people felt the way that I do, but I kind of was just hoping that other people would resonate with this message. And it's kind of, you know, it's really taken on a life of its own. It's. I've been really humbled by the response so far. It's just grown into a community of amazing people who are committed to learning things. Everyone that goes through the course, they commit to how many books they want to read this year. And beyond that, something else that's grown out of it is a lot of questions I got is what books do you recommend I read, where should I start? And things like that. It does take some time to do, but it's really been great. I've created an email community where I actually like the most amazing books I read. I'll take that. Two or three takeaways, sometimes more of things that I feel like you could take action on and apply to your life. And I'll share that with them as well.

So where can we learn more about it? Where should I send people?

Well, the course is on Udemy, but I think maybe the best thing to do is I put together a page where you can go. You can just go to Insider School, and then I'll just send you an email with a link because I want to hook everyone up who's listening to this. I'll send you a link where you can check it out. And by the way, I'd love for everybody to respond to that email, tell me a little bit about themselves, let me know what they thought of this, and even if they have any questions, it goes right to my personal inbox, and I'll respond right back.

Awesome. That URL again is insider academy.com insider.

School.Com insider school.com.

My first name. Okay, cool. I'll make sure to include that in the show notes so there'll be some good stuff in there they can sign up for and that's when they can reply to you.

Absolutely, absolutely. And beyond that. So in the first email I'll share where they can check out the course and beyond that I'll share share those same emails that I sent to the students of the course where it's, you know, those amazing ideas from some of the best books I read.

Man, this is, this is fantastic. I encourage everyone to check it out. And I got a page full of notes here. I'm actually really now pumped to start tackling this, the stack of books that I bought over the past six weeks that I haven't even gone through because I'm still agonizing over the ideas from the last book I read. So time to move on, man. You've encouraged me to do that. Brandon, thanks so much for coming on, man. This has been, this has been a really, really valuable show.

Thanks so much, Ed. It's really, really great to be here.

Well, I hope you found that interview as helpful as I did. And I wanted to remind you that you can grab the details show notes for the episode episode@b2b launcher.com forward/episode87 and I just have one quick announcement today before I sign off. If you're going to the AWAI Copywriting Boot Camp next week in Delray Beach, Florida, make sure to look me up. I'll be there. In fact, I've arranged with Awai to have a B2B writer meetup Thursday evening from 9pm to 10.30pm and that's going to be right in the Marriott. So right there in the first floor next to the main conference room in the Coral Reef room. So don't worry about if you're going to be there, don't worry about taking that down. We'll make sure to announce it during a couple of the sessions, but just wanted to give you a heads up. Hopefully you can join me there. I'd love for you to stop by. I'd love to meet you. I'd love to chat with you if you're going to be at the boot camp. So that's it for today, folks. This is Ed Gamdia, your host. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Have yourself an awesome day. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is.

A production of B2B business launcher.

Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.