#69 - Nick Hutchison - Founder of BookThinkers

Welcome back to The Necessary Entrepreneur. This week we welcome Nick Hutchinson, founder of Book Thinkers, a growing 7-figure digital marketing agency that serves mission-driven authors. His podcast, also Book Thinkers, it's life-changing books featuring captivating interviews with world-class authors such as Grant Cardone, Lewis Howes, and Alex Hormozi. During these discussions, Nick delves into the pages of their books, uncovering practical and transformative takeaways for his motivated audience. Nick is also the author of a brand new book, Rise of the Reader: Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learned. Click the link below and order yourself a copy. During our conversation here at The Necessary Entrepreneur, we talked about physical books versus audiobooks, how to find a good book to help you overcome your problems, Rereading books, how to retain the information learned from a book, and how to apply it to our lives. We also talk about public education, practicing gratitude, fleeting happiness, and how to be a surgeon with our words. Stick around as Nick talks about his 2 favorite personal development books, one of which happens to be my all-time favorite. Hey, thanks for tuning in. To continue supporting, slam that like, share, give us a comment, and especially Give us a subscribe. I hope this is impactful for you as it is and was for me. Thanks again.

We're telling you, you're the man. You're strong, strong future. Strong, strong future. Strong, strong future. Strong, strong future. Strong, strong future.

All right, Nick Hutchinson, uh, author of Rise of the Reader and so many other accolades. But, uh, hey man, thanks for joining us today on The Necessary Entrepreneur. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I'm a huge fan of books. I probably read too many of them. And so I'm interested today in having you tell me how I can take more away from the books I read. Um, share with us some of the awesome conversations, what you've learned, from all the awesome conversations of the authors and the highly successful people you've been around. So, uh, so thanks, man. Then you also are, um, you're highly successful in the marketing space. You have a digital marketing agency. Um, really excited to learn more about that and what we can take away. So selfishly and curiously, for the next 90 minutes, I'm pumped to have you on.

Yeah, well, I'm pumped to be here. What's the best book that you've read in the last couple of years?

I just listened. So I just listened to Walter Isaacson's book about Elon. I listened to the whole thing.

Oh, so good. Me too.

Um, and so that means that I'm, you know, I'm an avid reader then, or listener, because it just came out a couple weeks ago, I think. And, um, it was 26 hours long on Audible. I took, I think I took it up to 1.2 or 1.5. Um, so what was your takeaway compared to, uh, what's your thoughts about that book coming out of, coming out of your listen or your read?

I decided to listen to the book as well. I love to listen to biographies because they sort of play like a movie. in your head and there aren't really actionable takeaways. So I'm not worried too much about having the physical book. We could talk about the difference between reading a physical book and listening in a minute because I'm definitely an advocate for reading the physical book. But books like Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson or Elon or whatever it was titled, those are great listens. So I had a long car ride to and from Toronto, Canada, and I live in Boston. And so my wife was with me and we decided to listen to the book and on the drive up and on the drive back, cumulatively, we finished it. So here's my takeaway. There are superheroes among us. People like Elon Musk are capable of balancing multiple billion-dollar companies at the same time. And for me, that gives me confidence. It shows me that I'm capable of doing more. And I think that's the biggest takeaway. He's also not afraid to use that same reality distortion thing that Steve Jobs did.

Yeah.

Where he would just say, we're going to do it by this date, figure it out. And people would achieve more than they ever thought they could under his instructions and confidence. I think the last takeaway is that he was never afraid to bear the total responsibility, sort of like Jocko's extreme ownership thing. He was not afraid to like take all the hits, take all the responsibility, be at fault when things didn't go wrong. But when things went right, he'd give the credit to his team and the manufacturing process and stuff. So. I don't know, a lot of cool takeaways, I think. What about you?

Um, yeah, so I, I think, um, I tend to dig in on something like this and really get theoretical about things myself and just try to figure out the whys. And I say, okay, how can I apply the things that I learned from this book? And you're going to talk a lot about that today, I think, and how we can have those takeaways. But I took away that I just wish there were more Elons. I don't know if in society we could handle it. 330 million people in this country and 7 billion worldwide. But I just wish there were more truly innovative thinkers like Elon because I think the world would be better because you hear him say all the time that you all really don't want to be me and live in this head. And I believe that. I believe it's probably tough to be him and it's stressful to be him, but I just wish because I took away the analogy on what they did with SpaceX. Um, and what NASA couldn't do because of all their bureaucracy, and then what he was able to do. And then also the same thing applied to battery cars and, and that GM in 2005, when he bought Tesla, GM and the big legacy manufacturers had all but given up on making battery-operated, battery-derived cars. And so If it weren't for him, maybe someone else would've come along. But if we didn't have such a radical innovator in that space, the world wouldn't look like what it did. If you were driving your Tesla to Toronto, is that what you said? Were you driving your Tesla to Toronto?

No, I didn't. I don't have a Tesla, but I was driving to Toronto. That would've been cool though. Okay. Yeah.

So I just, I found myself then, I know I took something away from it because I'm on a nonprofit board about education here in Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati Marketplace. We're in Northern Kentucky. And I found myself sitting in the room and we were discussing innovating in education. And there were superintendents of school districts, there were provosts of universities, and I was one of the few business folks that were able to be in the room. And the guy that was having the— leading the conversation with us, it was about innovation in education. I went, man, does this not fit from this book? My question after I sit and listen for an hour and 10 minutes to all the folks sharing about education, I said, hey, if you're saying we need this type of innovation in education, if the public school system isn't working right now, who's the Elon Musk in the innovation category in education? And here's what he said. No one. And then I want, I want your take on this because then someone in the room spoke up who was in a significant leadership position in a university. And they said instantly, they said, yeah, we can't do that because we have laws governing what we do.

Hmm.

And I went, therein lies the problem. So is society just too threatened by Elon Musk's The change, the— is it scary to think differently like that? It's going to interrupt our systems. What's your take? Why, why, um, why can't we have Elons in every category?

Well, having grown up in the US public education system, I have my qualms with it. For instance, I grew up with a lot of insecurity and I grew up with a lot of fear of failure. And then you become an entrepreneur and you realize that failure is the best thing since sliced bread, right? That's where all the magic happens. When you fail, you learn, you're forced to iterate, and magic happens. You create progress. Yet in the traditional education system, you're taught to fear failure. You'll fail the class, you'll get a bad grade, kids will laugh at you, right? So I've always had some issues with the US public education system. And I will say, I listened to a podcast recently where Tim Kennedy, former UFC fighter but also Green Beret for 10+ years, was talking about a school system that he started. It's private education. You could consider it like homeschooling off the grid. It combines a full family, sort of a full family schedule with Socratic learning styles. Like you're born with all of the education already and now you need to go explore and understand and sort of like recreate this environment for yourself. And it sounded great, right? You're like, on a ranch, you're learning about guns and farming, but you're also learning the traditional stuff. And I just thought what a beautiful school system that sounds like, and it's growing rapidly. And so, maybe there are going to be some Elon Musks in the education space. It's just there's a big system holding people like that back right now, I think.

Yeah. So, I think— so, another one I'll have you— the other one I read recently, I went back and read John Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. That's just one of the all-time greats. And there was a 25th anniversary edition, and I did a leadership book study for 3 weeks inside my company.

Mm-hmm.

And we went through that. And so we broke it down into 3 sections: first 7, second 7, and third 7. And we picked out 1 or 2. So that just— I read that one differently. So I would like to hear your take too on What we can take away about reading a book a second and third time maybe as well.

I've read about 500 physical books over the last 10 years. And when I look back on those 500 books, I think 5% of them have probably created 95% of the change, right? So, I kind of have a top 25. And at this stage in my life, I'm looking to reread those books as often as possible. I think when you're first starting out in the world of personal development business books, you should read as many different books as possible because you don't really know what you don't know yet. You need to explore all of these different genres and subjects, and you don't need to worry too much about retention or implementation or rereading books when you're first starting. But as you get a little bit older, as you start to read more and more and you understand what works and what doesn't for you, I think it becomes more important to narrow your focus and to start rereading the books that have the biggest impact on you. And so for me, like I said, I have about 25 books that I think as of right now, I'll continue to reread every couple of years for the rest of my life. There's also a fun saying, it's a Buddhist saying that you can't step in the same river twice because you've changed and so is the river. And I would argue that you can't read the same book twice because you're consistently upgrading If you're a student of life, you're consistently upgrading the paradigm, right? The lens through which you see the world. And so sometimes I'll read a book for a 4th, 5th, 6th time, and I'll find brand new takeaways and new perspectives from it. So yeah, just like you, I think it's important once you reach a certain level of education and understanding and awareness to reread books sort of as often as you can.

So do you think we should just read any book?

No, I don't. But I do think when you're first starting out, it's okay to be a little bit loose with your intention. Nowadays, I read to solve problems, develop skills, or satisfy curiosity. Those are really the only 3 buckets for me.

So what do you do? Just open up ChatGPT and say, what book should I read in this category? Like, is that that simple? Like, how should someone go about solving a problem in their life and finding the right book for it.

Okay, we'll take a step back for just a quick second. And I will say that, I mean, about 100 billion people have lived before us. Millions of them have written books, and thousands of those books could solve the same problem that you're dealing with today. I heard Jordan Peterson say one time that if you're dealing with a problem on a daily basis, like you just can't get rid of it, Over the next 30 years, you'll deal with that problem almost 11,000 times, right? 30 times 365. But when you realize that life doesn't have to be so hard, other people have already figured it out, and it might have taken them 10 or 20 or 30 years, and you can access that solution for $20 and a few hours of your time, right? You begin to be a little bit more optimistic. So I do think books can solve problems. And I think what everybody needs to do is sort of slow things down and go through a personal inventory, ask themselves what problems are they currently facing that they could remove if they just read about how somebody else solved it. Because as humans, we aren't really that unique. I mean, you go to Marcus Aurelius writing over 1,500 years ago, he's writing about the same problems we're dealing with today. And so over the last couple of thousand years, a certain number of people, right, a small percentage did figure out all of these secrets to life and they wrote about them and you can read about them too. So what I would recommend is identify the problem. Think about it for a while. What's holding you back? What's the difference between where you are today and where you know you could be in a few years? What's the difference look like? And is there a book that could help you develop that skill to overcome the problem? Or is that solution in a book somewhere? And then you have to start to do some research. I would say, ask mentors, ask friends, reach out to somebody like me. I love doing this book matchmaking thing where somebody can DM me on Instagram @bookthinkers and they can say, hey Nick, here's the problem I'm dealing with. Do you have a good book that can help me solve it? Right? Or if you go to Amazon, I mean, you probably could ask ChatGPT, which I haven't really played around with too much as far as asking for book recommendations, but you could probably ask there too. And then when you're on Amazon, you know, I have some fun kind of tips and tricks and stuff. For instance, the more reviews a book has, the better it is as a general rule of thumb, because it's very— now that I'm in book marketing, it's very hard to sell a book. And the books that have just 1,000 reviews on Amazon, They're optimized for the first sale, right? They had a large number of people buy the book the first time, but the ones with thousands and thousands of reviews, like 10,000 plus, those books are good enough that word of mouth started to happen. People started recommending it, they were implementing it, and that's how it sold so many copies. So when you're in Amazon, ditch the 5-star reviews, ditch the 1 and 2-star reviews, focus On the 3 and 4-star reviews, because those aren't written from a place of emotion. They're written from a place of logic. And you'll see things like, here's what I expected, but here's what I got. Or this was the promise and it delivered most, but this is what was missing. And I think that's where the magic can happen. So to kind of recap, 'cause that was a little bit of a rant, just have some self-awareness, have some humility, understand that somebody else has probably figured out your problem. Identify the problem, go looking for it, mentors, Bookstagram, Amazon, and then focus on the reviews. See what people thought of the book before you purchase it.

Um, so what makes— now, I like that rant, by the way. It was a, it was a logical rant, Nick. It wasn't emotional. So good job. Um, so if the thought leaders have come before us, The Socrates and the Marcus Aurelius, and we could go back to Sun Tzu, all the stuff, right? Haven't all the books been written?

In one way, shape, or form, yes, they have. I really think they have. But when you look at somebody like Ryan Holiday, who's taken 2,000 years of Stoic philosophy And he's repurposed it, sort of mixed and matched it, and he's presenting it in a way that maybe somebody who grew up in 2020 or 20— you know, 2000 or whatever could understand and implement a little bit more effectively. So have all the books been written? Sort of. But I think it's okay to refresh the fundamentals, to diversify your perspective, and to get updated information that's easier to digest and apply. Because somebody like Ryan Holiday has analyzed thousands of years of one philosophy and he's constantly thinking about how to apply it to today's situations. And that's a valuable shortcut, if you will.

Yeah. It's kind of like reading the tea leaves, but it's breaking it down. Maybe we have to put Tim, because he's probably, how many books do you think he has read on Stoicism? How many do you think?

Well over 100. And I'll say this, I remember asking, because I've interviewed Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene on my podcast, and I remember asking Robert Greene that same question, like, how many books did you read to write The 48 Laws of Power? And I think he said over 400 books went into making that one book. I think maybe it was 4,000, but it was a huge number.

Yeah.

You're condensing time. You're condensing decades of somebody else's research into days of reading. And I think that's a beautiful life shortcut, if you will.

Yeah. He's— Robert Greene is one of the fascinating folks to me. When I hear him interview, whether it's on a podcast or he sits down for one of the more traditional interviews, it's always fascinating. The information that I take away from listening to that guy is brilliant.

Yeah.

Um, so what makes a good and valuable book? You know, self-development, like, I think in today's age there's things— we're using words that I don't remember in my 20s. So I'm sitting here getting ready to— I'm 44, so mid-40s— and things like self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and these things weren't in the vocabulary when I was going through high school. They weren't for college. They weren't there. And so we're like in the self-development age. That's what it feels like. Um, what do you think makes a really good impactful book in that category? Like, what, what's the purpose behind it? What's the idea behind it? What makes it the one that gets 1,000 reviews on Amazon?

I think it's a book that's extremely actionable. I think action creates behavior change and behavior change drives word of mouth. So I think the only books that become super bestsellers and sell over a long period of time, not just a flash in the pan, but they consistently sell over a long period of time, they're being talked about and they're being talked about because somebody says, hey Mark, looks like you lost weight, what's going on? Or, hey Nick, you know, you're going to the gym all the time now, what happened? Like, why are you doing that? And then you go, well, I read this book. And it created a mindset shift. You should read it too. And that happens again because somebody notices that there's something different in your life. So I think the books that are the most actionable, the most practical, the easiest to implement, those are the books that do the best. And sometimes I'll read books that have great information, but they're just not spelling it out easy enough for the reader to take action. And those are the books that unfortunately, from my perspective, start to fade away. And whenever I'm talking about my favorite books, I only realized this in hindsight being asked this question sometimes over the last couple of years. My favorite books are the ones that created the most change in my life. And they created change because I took action on them. Napoleon Hill says, action is the real measure of intelligence. And so a book that helps you take action, that's a smart book.

So you asked me the question, what's the— it's so hard because you've created relationships with these authors and so many of these names of these celebrities in the self-development category, but what's your book? What's the book that caused you to take more action the most?

There's 2, and I haven't worked with either of these authors yet. So The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, that book has Totally changed the trajectory of my life. We could talk about why if you want.

And then number 2— I'm interested. I'm interested. Yeah.

Number 2 is The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.

Dude, that's my number 1.

Yeah, that's a— I've read that book. Talk about rereading books. I've read that book, I don't know, 10 times.

So I'm interested to dig in on that too, because that was the first book study I ever led inside my company.

It's amazing. So, let's do a deep dive on each one. Which one do you want to do first?

So, The Compound Effect. Why do you want a penny that compounds and doubles every day for 30 days or $1 million right now, right? There's so many principles in that book.

Yeah, there really are. I think at its core, small steps in the right direction repeated over a long period of time will lead to disproportionately positive outcomes, right? That hockey stick curve that we're all looking for. And what's so digestible about that information is that it is just small steps. Like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Not in one bite, but one bite at a time. And that's not intimidating. It's easy to do. We can all implement 1% improvements. And so I'll kind of take you back in time a little bit. The first time I ever read that book, I was reading it around the same time as my friend Joseph. And Joseph, He gets to the part about building an accountability group and having an activity tracker. And he says to me, hey, Nick, I think we should implement this.

Okay, cool.

So we started to meet on a weekly basis and talk about that book. And we were both brand new to this world of personal development. We didn't know what we were doing, but he talks about measuring your activity. And he talks about scoring yourself on a week-to-week basis and asking yourself, What 1% improvements can you implement? And so we started to do that. We met on a weekly basis. We developed this little online activity tracking system, and we kept each other accountable to the goals that we had. And here we are later, 6, 7 years later, and the group is still going. It's wildly different than it was, but it's upgraded and elevated. And it all stems from reading that book. I took action. I implemented it and I still have those behavior changes today. In fact, I teach about that book in my book, Wrath of the Reader, right? Couple of other things from it. He has that great metaphor where he says a plane is taking off from Los Angeles and headed to New York City, but as it's taking off, the nose of the plane gets shifted just 1%. And at first that 1% is imperceptible. You can't even tell. But as it starts to compound, by the end of the trip, It's either north or south, 150 miles, like somewhere in upstate New York or somewhere in Delaware. And so the question to ask yourself is, what 1% improvements can you make in your life that 10 years from now will have created a wildly different human being? And so I ask myself that question all the time. Every time I read a book, what 1% improvement can I make? And again, this entire mindset that I have stems from The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Last thing on this. When I showed up on social media and I started to post book reviews in 2017, 2018, I was nobody, right? I was super insecure if I didn't get like 10 likes on a post because I didn't have a community. But in the back of my head, Darren Hardy was saying, hey, if you just show up every single day with a step in the right direction, post a piece of valuable content, Stay open to learning. Try to continue to make 1% improvements. Eventually, that same activity of just showing up every day and posting will lead to a big community. And I'm like, okay, okay. Quiet the voice in my head. The negative Nancy, like quiet it down. Darren Hardy's right to show up every day. The magic penny will turn into $10 million. And it did. It took a long time, but it did. The momentum started to build. The compound effect took root. And now we do a million impressions a month on Instagram and I've interviewed all my favorite authors because of that book. So that's why I love The Compound Effect so much.

You've interviewed all your favorite authors except for Tim Ferriss.

And Darren Hardy, yeah, except for both of those guys.

Really?

Almost all of them. Yeah.

So what's it going to take for you to get those guys to engage?

Probably not that much.

Yeah. So why not? I mean, Tim Ferriss is a little bit harder, harder to get to.

Tim actually has an entire article written on his blog about how he's made himself impossible to get in contact with.

Part of his disconnection, The 4-Hour Workweek. So, so what about Darren Hardy?

Yeah, Darren, I've made decent attempts in the past to get in touch with him to no avail yet. But I could go get Darren Hardy. He, he either sold Success Magazine to Jerick Robbins or, or hired Jerick Robbins in. And I have a really good connection with Jerick. So I bet I could get him tomorrow. Maybe I'll go do that.

Is that maybe we can co— is that Tony's son?

It is.

That's what I thought. Yeah, go get it, man. I mean, who am I to say it and challenge you? But it doesn't make any sense why you haven't. Because you—

he's your favorite. Have you interviewed him yet? Let's, let's go get him.

No, but here's what I think. I really think that he aligns with your platform and what you're building and with your brand. It makes a no— it's a no-brainer for him as well. There's tremendous built-in value for him.

Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Listen, we'll go get him. By the time this is out, let's go. I'll have interviewed Darren.

So, um, we'll get back to The 4-Hour Workweek in a minute, but since you were touching on, um, The, just, I don't know what we call Tony Robbins at this point, but, um, you know, with, with his mentor being Jim Rohn, who's just one of my all-time favorites. Um, I go back to the thing about Jim where you gotta work more on yourself than you do on your job. There's just a, you know, he hits big on so many levels. He was a master communicator. And Tony Robbins, no doubt with studying under Jim Rohn, he's different, but he may have even taken it to another level. And there's something that's hitting for me recently. I wasn't, I hadn't gone to the conferences. I wasn't just one of these massive followers, but there's something over the past year or two that Tony Robbins is hitting. And I'm like, man, this guy gets it at every level. And I'm, I, if I was his good friend or if I was his son or one of his probably 2 or 3 tight core people, I'd probably be like, Tony, like there's nothing else for you to do. Like, what else can you do? But there's something he said in an interview. Over the past year or two that really hit me, and it's called The Tyranny of How. I don't know if you've heard him speak to that or not, but he said, if you ask yourself how, you're screwed. What's your thoughts on that?

Is he saying that because why matters more than how?

Yeah, I think if you get to the point where you're stopping and you're asking how, you're not taking action. So I'm probably paraphrasing, but But I listened to it and he said, if you're asking how, you're screwed. And I think it's because we often see in our lives so often that person stops and they say, well, how do I do this? It's like, well, that's not how this world's built, you all. You've gotta go, you gotta go read a book. You have to come up with an idea. You have to have a vision. You have to have these big significant goals in your whys, and you have to go and take action. For those people, we've just seen so many people, well, how do I do it? Um, And the tyranny of that. Because you don't hear him make these definitive statements so much like that. It's always, yes, we can. And, and it's like he said that and he said, you're screwed. You could type it in. You could Google it. You put on Instagram. I don't know who was interviewing him.

I was— this makes me think of an interaction I had recently. So I was— I spent Canadian Thanksgiving up in Toronto. I told you I drove to Toronto with Evan Carmichael. Are you familiar with him?

Man, he's doing some big stuff. He started out and he would— the 10 things, he'd say the 10 things that Warren Buffett, the 10 things of Grant Cardone. But now obviously he's starting to build his company and doing some digital marketing stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He seems like a special, really nice guy.

He, he has a lot more going on behind the scenes than even I was aware, and I follow him pretty closely. So I got to spend a couple of days at his house for Canadian Thanksgiving. He's been a mentor of mine for a little while and I remember I was talking about this same subject of accountability groups, like the one that I started with my buddy Joseph. We meet on a weekly basis. We hold each other accountable to things. And he said, hey, listen, I think you've grown out of that. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, why do you need accountability?

Just do.

Just go do. Why do you need to talk about it? Just do it. And I said, I don't know. I think I just enjoy the camaraderie maybe. And he said, You can have the camaraderie, but don't challenge each other. He's like, you guys are past that. Just go do. And I think it's very similar to what Tony's at, you know, talking about. If somebody shows up to an accountability group and it's, how do I get better sleep? Why are you relying on your group? Just go get better sleep. Do the research. Read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Like, what are you doing? So I kind of vibe with that message. And I think that when you reach a certain level of execution, or the ability to execute, you have enough momentum, you don't need all that extra stuff anymore. Like, how doesn't matter.

Yeah. Alright. So, The 4-Hour Workweek with Tim Ferriss, that really hit with you big. Yeah.

So, I was a recent college graduate working a full-time software sales position, working a 9-to-5 in a cubicle. And I read The 4-Hour Workweek. And Tim says, escape the 9-to-5, join the new rich. Like build your dream life type of thing. And I literally used that book to take that existing position from location dependent to location independent. That was step number one. And then I started to build Book Thinkers, my business on the side as a side hustle. And not only that, but I started to travel the world internationally and build a life that was uniquely fulfilling to me. So Tim basically says, hey, society has this box. And it's going to try to shove you back into that box every time you get out and try to do something unconventional, sort of like Tony's message. And that's okay. It's going to continue to happen. But reality is negotiable. You can negotiate a reality that's uniquely fulfilling to you and go live it. Go do it. Here's— and then he outlines like his story. Here's how I did it. And then he gives you a bunch of tools and tactics. Here's how you can go do it. And so here I am less than 10 years later, and I've built my dream life. I only focus on things that I love. I automate, delegate, or have eliminated everything that I don't. I get to travel the world with my wife. My business is location independent, and I'm an entrepreneur. And so all of that kind of initial momentum came from Tim telling me it was okay. And that it's possible and that other people do it all the time. And that just, it was so contradictory to everything that I had learned, but I said, screw it. Like, let's implement. And that book gets constantly criticized as sort of like impossible to implement, but I did it and it worked. And yeah, I've got to go get Tim at some point.

Yeah. So, but maybe you implemented it. This is my take on that book. You have to have such Maybe what initially made us buy the book and open the COVID is like, what? 4-Hour Workweek, we all want it. But it's like, hey, that's not— that statement isn't as practical as really what's inside because you're working way more than 4 hours a week.

Yes. And I don't think I'll ever stop. I think what Tim did was he sold people what they wanted to be sold, but he gave them what they really needed. You know, however that saying is. Bad books sell you what you want to be sold, but they don't actually deliver anything of value, right? They just catch you with like a good hook as a title. Tim's a little salesy with that book, but he delivers so much value.

Yeah. So, hey, I have to, you know, everybody says they're going to write a book, right? And hardly anybody does. So, I finally committed to writing a chapter from a friend of mine who wrote his first book. It's called Rethink Everything. It's a pretty cool book. His name's Kyle Draper out of Dallas. It really started from the mortgage and real estate space, but now it's transitioning into rethinking everything, not just that.

And so if you can— I have a copy of it.

Really?

Yeah.

So there you go. So I paid Kyle Draper. I was the first person that paid him to speak anywhere. I brought him to my company because I heard him speak on stage in San Diego about 5 years ago. And I went up to him and said, dude, I want you to come to Cincinnati. And he's like, I don't even know what to charge you. I said, whatever, man. It's okay. You're probably going places for $500. How about I give you $3,000? I fly you here. And so he reached out to me and said, hey man, I want you to write the chapter about, it's about helping mortgage loan officers. There's 20 chapters and they're gonna have 20 different people write the chapter. And he said, I'd love you to write the chapter, uh, from a real estate perspective. And so I said, good, this will be a good intro into me writing my book. Um, how should I write that chapter? The mindset going into it. So if I'm not a, this will be good into the, and this is a good kickoff to the question of people writing a book. So what mindset should I have? Because they're going to sell this, that it is really beneficial to loan officers, every loan officer around the country, and helping them grow their business in these 20 different categories. And one of their most important segments, how the mortgage loan officer business goes, they actually have to make relationships and connections with realtors. And so I'm gonna be responsible for writing this chapter. So give me advice.

I misspoke, obviously. I thought I connected with somebody who just sent me his book named Kyle Draper, but it's not the same person.

Okay. So maybe I need to send you one. That's really— I'm looking at it on a shelf behind me. It's really cool. The book is neat. They'll take a story and they'll say, hey, if it's gonna be a 2,000-word story or 2,000-word chapter, Make it 300 words, and we'll put a QR code, and that QR code will link to you telling the story in the 2,000 words.

Yeah, that is really cool. Well, I mean, here's here's my answer: What makes a good book? It's actionable. It's I heard a great sales analogy once. They said, "Be a surgeon with your words." Surgeons don't make extra cuts while performing surgery, right? It's unnecessary. Salespeople. Effective writers shouldn't use extra language when selling or communicating. Be a surgeon with your words and be as actionable as possible. And so those are my recommendations. I think that, you know, gone are the days where you need to write a 600-page book, kind of like you're describing, that has every case study, you know, God known to man in there. Drive something home that's short, effective, and actionable. Super packed with value. And yeah, I think that's how you write a good book and that's how you write a good chapter like this.

So how do I take— so this is the, when I kicked off the conversation, I said, hey, I'm going to be selfish and curious at the same time. And hopefully that benefits so many listeners, but how do we retain? So the Elon Musk book I just listened to, I'm assuming when I go back and I read the Steve Jobs book, I believe Walter Isaacson was also the author.

He was.

And I read that book was thick. And I remember reading that. And I'm assuming the, uh, Audible one because it was 26 hours or 20 hours of listening on normal speed. I'm assuming it's a thick book. There you go. You actually have the hard— there it is.

I get all the hardcovers too. It is a thick book. Okay.

It's thick. So how do I—

600 pages.

How do I retain and take away 1 or 2 or 3 significant unique things out of a book like that to really help me take action in life?

All right, we're now opening up the can of worms. So, I'm excited to dive in and be a little practical here. I'll tell a quick story. When I first started reading, I was always optimizing for the wrong thing. I thought that retention meant you could retain as much as possible from the book. All these quotes and stats and stories and examples and case studies. And so while I was trying to retain as much as possible, I was also optimizing for some vanity metrics, like how many books could I read in a year? It went from 26 books, one every 2 weeks, to 52 books, one every week, to over 100 books, right? 2 books a week. And I was just kind of checking the books off the list. I read every word of every page and then boom, okay, I'm done, onto the next one. And then it was retention. I started meeting with this guy, Kevin Horsley, who wrote a book titled Unlimited Memory. Kevin has a fascinating story because he grew up with some learning disabilities and wanted to conquer them. So he started to study memory and then he ended up winning this thing called the Everest of Memory Championships, where he memorized the first 10,000 digits of pi. And somebody would say, what's digit number 2,706? And he'd know it like that. And the next 5 digits, like crazy memory stuff. So I started to learn from him that if you become a little bit more selective with your retention, your ability to develop a relationship to that information strengthens. And so nowadays when I read a book, I start by This will be counterintuitive for the audio example of Elon Musk, but nowadays when I read a physical paper book, I start with setting a SMART goal. SMART, for anybody that's not familiar with it watching or listening today, is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, meaning realistic, relevant, meaning you're emotionally connected to it, and T stands for time-bound. You want a deadline for taking action. So instead of just opening up a book and hoping that it's going to change your life, you set a goal before you even start reading it. Let's say I was reading The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy for the first time. I would read the front cover, the back cover, a little bit of the Amazon description maybe, and then I would say, let's build a SMART goal. Something like find and implement at least 1 or 2 mindset strategies for compounding in my business by the end of November. So I'm baking action right into the goal. I'm looking to find and implement at least 1 or 2 strategies for leveraging the compound effect in my business by the end of November. It's specific, it's measurable, right? After you're done with the experience, did you implement at least 1 or 2 things? It's attainable. I didn't say like make $1 million by the end of the month, but just find or implement 1 or 2 things. I'm emotionally connected to it because I love my business and I love what I do and the people that I serve. And it's time-bound by the end of November. And so that's how I approach these books now. I'm not looking to retain tons of information, but I'm looking to take action on just a couple of things. And when you take action on something, you will retain it because it becomes part of your life. You strengthen that neural connection. Because you're really implementing something. So I guess if I was setting a goal like that, which I don't really do for biographies, but if I was setting a goal like that for this book, I would say find and implement at least 2 strategies for thinking bigger in my business by the end of November or something like that. And what I do with the SMART goal is I write it on the inside cover of the physical book and I reread it every single time I read another chapter. Because I want to share my goal with the book so that it can share the information back with me. Our brains have this great filtering system called the reticular activating system, your brain's natural highlighter. And so when you tell your brain what to focus on, it will filter everything else out. And just those actions that you can implement into your business, that's all that's left. That's all you're going to see. And that's how you take better action. I'll kind of wrap this up by saying that 80% of the inputs to our brain are visual. So by default, if you're only listening to something and you're multitasking because you're driving or you're working out or you're doing chores, you're at a disadvantage. So if I want to implement something from a book, I choose to read the physical paper book because it's multisensory. It's one focus at one time instead of multitasking, and I'm leveraging my visual input, which is the best way that you can build a relationship to information. If I'm listening to something, it's more for entertainment or context or to satisfy curiosity. Does all that kind of track? I know that was a lot of info.

100% is. I mean, that is what I think about when I actually take the time to read a book. It's more intentional. You know, I'm carving out a couple hours and I'm going to give that couple hours It's an appointment on my calendar like anything else because it's time that I need uninterrupted. It's that personal development time. And I take more, way more away from it. You know, I used to highlight, I used to, you know, dog-ear. I used to take, you know, I'd write a, I'd go to the back of the book on extra pages or on the front cover and I'd write the page and the chapter and reference it. But I just found if I take the intentional time. If I just reflect a little bit back on each chapter, maybe that's your part of go back and read your goals and your intentions about the book. It helps me a ton. Read the chapter as it is, reflect on the chapter. It helps me a ton.

Yeah. And nowadays, kind of to follow through with that example, if I'm reading The Compound Effect or if I'm reading Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, not only do I have the intention on the inside cover, but I try to actually separate reading and note-taking/reflection. Because I've read too many productivity books at this point to think that multitasking is okay, right? We all know it's sort of an inefficient use of our time.

Yeah.

And so I realized maybe like a year or two ago that reading and note-taking are 2 completely separate activities. Reading is just this passive visual thing that you do, and note-taking involves a pen and paper, and you're kind of translating information, but we kind of lump them together. So what I do is I go through the book. Straight through. And if I see something that's related to my intention, I'll circle the page number, I'll bracket it off real quick, but I don't want to lose my reading momentum. And then I'll go through the book a second time and I'll look for all of those pages that I circled and the areas that I bracketed off. And that's my time to sit with the information, reflect on it, and decide if I want to implement it. Because only once you have the full context of the book, from my opinion, Do you know what the 1 or 2 things are that you want to implement? Because if you jump on page number 1, there might be something that has 100 times more leverage and might be a better fit for solving your problem on page 50. But now you're busy like working on something that's low leverage and isn't going to create a big impact. So that's the way that I like to do it.

That's awesome. See, we're sitting here learning. We don't have to read a book. We just come to class with Nick. And we just learn. Um, hey, what's your thoughts about expressing and sharing your big goals and visions with others and putting it out there to be known or keeping it close to your chest?

I think that when you first decide on a goal, it's important to keep it close to chest because other people can be very critical, want to drag you down. They want to share their opinion that might dissuade you or kind of kill the emotion and you need that emotion to start taking action. But I think once you kind of have that flywheel in motion, it's great to share it with other people. I think that overall external accountability is a powerful motivator, but too much, too soon, too fast can kind of kill momentum. What about you?

Yeah, I think this has evolved over time. I think it comes with probably it needs to be congruent with your level of confidence as a human. Yeah.

That's a good point.

Right. Because I think the more confident you are, the better you're going to be able to fight, fight off the naysayers, the negative talk, um, the people telling you, you know, you're not enough or haven't accomplished enough, or why do you think you're going to? Because they'll come out. And, um, I think you have to do some things in life and prove to yourself that you can do some stuff, but then you have to start. I know that with publicly acknowledging your big goals, It will help keep you accountable. Yeah. Right.

Absolutely.

Um, yeah. So that's important for me, but you have to know that you're going to fall short. Just read, just read Elon's book. He's, he's known far and wide for being overly optimistic on the things he's going to accomplish within timeframes. But the wild thing is he hardly ever hits his timeframe, but he accomplishes way more than others still.

Yeah. It's that saying, like, if you shoot for the stars, but you land among the moon or whatever it is. I agree with you 1,000%. I mean, imagine being Elon and you have 3 failed rocket attempts in a row and your business is about to go out of business and you're like, nope, we're going to try it one more time. Hundreds of employees, tons of families relying on you, no success to show so far, but you're like, I'm just going to try it one more time.

And you're the only one and willing to risk it all. When I was growing up, so there was this show, So I have 15 years on you. There was this show. So I grew up, I was a public school kid too. Um, didn't come from an affluent or wealthy family. And I remember watching a show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. Do you know the show?

I feel like I've heard that name before, right? It kind of rolls off the tongue, but I haven't watched it.

So they would highlight mansions of the world and all the really wealthy people. And, and I just remember growing up, I used to look up, like society used to teach us that those were people to respect. Those were significant accomplishments. That's something that you should work towards. And what an achievement. Um, it seems like some things have flipped around a little bit on us. And I'm of this belief that I think we should look to every category where people are highly successful, whether it could be Oprah Winfrey, could be Elon Musk, could be Warren Buffett. It could be a significant actor like a Keanu Reeves. Or so anybody who has achieved the highest level of success in their category, I think we need to stop judging where we're at in our current outcome against them, but we should look to them on what's possible. I just wish that that narrative— so your take on that, that we're not there yet because there's a time that they weren't there. And I just wish we could reframe that around that idea. I just want to get your take on it with society now and how they're looking at folks that are extremely successful, whether that's monetarily valued or not.

Yeah, I agree with you 1,000%. I grew up in an era where the rich and famous were demonized and judged and hated on a lot, but I always admired people who were great at something. And people who can make a lot of money, I mean, the first book I ever read was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And right inside of that book, he basically says that the subject of money is not taught at school, it's taught in the home. And so if you grow up in a poor or middle-class family, you will learn poor and middle-class money habits and perspectives on the rich and famous. Parents are jealous, right? They don't want to tell their kids, oh, I wish I was like Elon Musk. They say, ah, screw Elon Musk, that guy sucks. Like, our life is better. Right? They're looking for admiration by shutting down other people. But if you grow up in a rich family, you learn rich money perspectives. And because you're open to it, I think you learn faster and more efficiently. I mean, you don't have to be materialistic to love money. Money is a game and you might as well be good at it because it requires food, water, and shelter, and also giving back to charity and so many other beautiful things require money. So when I was in my early 20s and I fell into this world of personal development, I started to read about all of these rich and famous people. And there was so much admiration. It's not, hey, I can't do that, but it's, how can I do that? It's not, hey, I can't afford that, but it's, how can I afford that? I'm capable. I want to do that too. I think the biggest shift for me, Mark, over the last maybe 2 years Is that I went from looking at somebody who is financially successful as successful to realizing that if that person is financially successful, but they're not healthy and they don't have great relationships and they're not happy, like I don't consider that success anymore. I look at a more holistic view of success. And I think money is one of those big 3 or 4 pillars because money removes financial anxiety, gives you space for opportunity. It helps you build, it helps you give back. I think it's a beautiful thing. But you also need to be healthy. You need to be able to show up at your kids' T-ball games or hike Machu Picchu when you're 80, right? I think you need to be happy. I think that happiness is important. There are some popular influencers today like Alex Hormozi. I wish we had him on our podcast. I wish I pushed him on this, but he says happiness doesn't matter. I think happiness matters a lot. And then there's relationships. Like if you're healthy and you're rich, but nobody wants to be around you, it's not worth it.

So that's kind of how I think about it. So let's talk about the happiness thing because I might talk— I might side a little bit here with Alex and with Grant as well. He's kind of— you've interviewed Grant Cardone.

Yeah.

Right. And so he's on the side. I just saw a piece of content on him this week that says, you're not going to like your job. You're not going to like doing the thing. So do it anyway. That doesn't sound happy to me. But isn't— so here's my take on this. Isn't happiness fleeting? Because what, what is it? And that's what I want your take is, because life, no matter how great life is right now, let's say we go out and find the happiest person in the world. Challenges are going to come. And there's going to be some really tough moments in their life. People are going to pass away that they love. Sometimes relationships end. People are having an ever-evolving relationship with their pets more than ever that I've seen. And so, there is sadness that's going to arrive in your life and there's going to be challenges. And so, if we're always trying to achieve happiness, is it possible? So, Nick, is it possible?

Yeah, I think happiness is— I do think it's possible. I do. I am happy. All the time. And yeah, challenges happen, failures happen, things are sad. But I'm full of joy. Maybe joy is a better word for this. There you go. So I try to optimize for enjoying the passage of time, doing more of what I like, less of what I don't like. For me, joy is pretty similar to progress, and progress requires a lot of failure, a lot of difficulty. You do have to fall in love in some way, shape, or form with the monotonous stuff that nobody else wants to do. Look at David Goggins. Now, David Goggins doesn't look to me like somebody who's actually full of joy or happy at all. But I do think it's important to fall in love if you can with some of the hard work. And for me, I enjoy that stuff. Like, it brings me happiness. I'd rather be doing some admin work that I hate than playing video games or watching TV or something like that. You know what I mean? Because I love it. I really do.

Because I think that's—

I found that thing.

Yeah, keep going because I'm— because it brings you happiness, but it— but that brings you happiness in the moment of what you're liking to do, but it doesn't fix the part, right, of the things that you have to do that are hard that necessarily aren't happy. I don't know.

They're still fulfilling. Yeah, they're still fulfilling to me. I think I had to change my definition of happiness.

Yeah.

And once I changed my definition, I was happy.

Okay, like, there you go.

I, I practice. So for instance, I've been practicing gratitude Pretty much on a daily basis in different formats for the last 7 years or so.

How good does that feel?

And it feels amazing. There's a great quote from an Indian monk named Gaur Gopal Das. He wrote a book called Life's Amazing Secrets. And he says, it's not happy people that are grateful, but it's grateful people that are happy. So gratitude is the input. It's the action. It's the lead measure. Happiness is the result. It's the output. It's the lag measure. And so, now that I've been practicing gratitude on a daily basis in multiple formats and I have some gratitude tattoos and stuff, every single day, I don't think there's a reality no matter what happens where I'm not experiencing gratitude. Like, there's too much momentum.

Yeah. How does that happen? Because I was sitting there with— so, I've been with my significant other, we've been together 15 years. We're not married. It's crazy, but we've been together 15 years and she was exchanging with me this weekend just about, um, the level of gratitude that she feels. She's worked very hard, has a good career. And, and then we find ourselves this weekend. I don't get a lot of time to sit around and watch TV, but we pulled it up and we pulled up Amazon Prime and we watched. She's like, I found something, you know, because I'm always wanting history. I always want to learn. I just don't watch really. Entertaining things on what most people would think entertaining, and so we pulled it up, and it was the documentary about the withdrawal from Afghanistan and what the citizens went through that lived there. That the difference in them getting out was life or death, and to see what those people went through. You just have to sit back and feel just a sense of the most basic gratitude of how fortunate am I to be here?

That's what I'm talking about. If you go back a few hundred years, the richest person on the planet didn't even have air conditioning.

Yeah. So how do you do it? Like, what's the mindset, right? Because there's— I'm feeling your energy even from the time we jumped on today. Like, man, you really are like, you're plugged into this thing. You're doing the hard stuff. You're working a ton of hours, but you feel great about life.

Yeah. I'll give a couple of tactical examples. When I first started, I journaled 3 things that I was grateful for every single day. And those could be as little as a bullet point, as much as paragraphs, right, on each one. And that created such a big shift so fast for me that I literally got the numbers 1, 2, and 3 tattooed on my wrist. And so no matter where I was or what I was doing, I always had the ability to look down and focus on gratitude. I started to create a little bit of a sense of awareness almost when I was feeling lack, like when I was feeling ungrateful. And so I just look at the tattoo and I would find 3 things in my environment or from my day that I was grateful for. And so I started to shift, like you can't feel both of those things at the same time. Then I started to think about sometimes they say that comparison is the thief of joy. I think comparison creates joy when you compare yourself to where you were a number of years ago, or you compare your current situation to somebody who has it worse, like the locals in Afghanistan when we pulled out. That creates a feeling of gratitude and of joy. It gives you, I think, perspective for where you are in life today. I have a fun practice that I think everybody should incorporate where I pull out my phone on Sundays once a week and I do a 1-minute gratitude time capsule. So I just verbally to my camera, hey, today is Sunday, November 19th, this was yesterday, and here's what I'm grateful for. And I recap my week, the best of the best, the highlights. It could be related to my business, my relationship, all sorts of things. And I upload that 1-minute video every week to a Google Drive. Love it. And it's categorized by year. And the idea is that in the future, I can condense an entire year's worth of gratitude videos, 52 times 1 minute each, into under an hour. So my kids in the future, me in the future, we can go back and relive these grateful moments. And what that does, I know I'm doing it every week. And I know I'm writing 3 things I'm grateful for every day. What it does is it sets the expectation throughout the day that I need to find things. Like, I'm always looking for things I'm grateful for because I know I have to write about it and talk about it. And there's so much momentum. I have this— here's a third tactic. My team at Book Thinkers, my agency, we use Slack as an internal communication tool. And we have a channel called Daily Gratitude where everybody— it's optional, but everybody does it. Everybody writes 3 things that they're grateful for every single day. And so, you mentioned Jim Rohn earlier. He's the original, you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with guy. And so, if the people around you are constantly writing things that they're grateful for, you're constantly writing things that you're grateful for, you're recording gratitude time capsules, maybe you're even getting it tattooed on your body and seeing it 1,000 times a day subconsciously, it's impossible not to feel it. Because it is me.

Um, have you ever seen anyone break out of the average of the 5 people you spend the most time around? Have you ever seen someone that is the example of the counter to that? Or is it pretty much the law?

I think it's the law, but you can change the people that you spend the most time with. I don't think you can break out of that 5. If you stay around them, I think you have to kind of manage your relationships and add some new people into the mix. I think it is the law. What about you?

Um, no, I think it is. And it might be the 3 people, but it's a small group of people because what I've found in life as I've evolved and grown and continued to, to level up or whatever we want to call it, I found myself not being able to connect to the people that I used to connect with. I found myself, I'm gonna be honest too, it's probably boring for them to be around cuz we're just not on the same wavelength anymore. Um, maybe they're more content where they're at because that's just what makes them happy, but I'm going somewhere else. It doesn't mean I'm better, but I'm going somewhere else and I'm gonna keep going. And I know it sounds bad often, but I say, hey, listen, I don't mind to go back and visit every once in a while. I just don't wanna live there anymore. And if I live there, that's how I'm going to act. That's how I'm going to talk. That's what I'm going to look like. And I want more. And so the tough thing is though, is that you have to let people go that previously were really important for you to spend a lot of time around. That's challenging. You know, good old Snoop Dogg talks about it, even though he recently just said he's going to stop smoking. I think he might change his name too.

Right. So I think what he did, did you see? Did you see his follow-up to that?

No. What is it?

He he's now endorsing this smokeless fire pit that doesn't create any smoke when it that that's all it was. It was just a marketing thing.

So good. Um yeah, but I think it's something about the the um we're an average of the five people, and I wish it weren't true. I wish it weren't. It sure would make life a lot more easy and it would make us feel like we didn't have to move on to different forms of relationships. Hey, why did you start reading? When you picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad, did it accidentally happen?

So, I was going into my senior year of college and I took an internship at a local software company. It was a sales internship. Prior to that, I had never read a personal development book. My boss at the time, Kyle, the director of sales, I think he recognized some unfulfilled potential in me. I was a 20-year-old sort of ego-driven know-it-all at the time. And he recommended podcasts. That's what happened first. So he took me on a couple of local sales trips and he basically said, hey, Nick, you commute an hour each way, 5 days a week during the summer. It's 10 hours in the car. Listening to the same song for the 500th time is not going to get you closer to where you want to be in life. But the right podcast might, so try these out. And I did. And very quickly, I realized that so many of the successful people being interviewed gave at least some credit for their success to the books that they were reading or have read, had read. And I just heard the same name so many times. I mean, you're in real estate. I was listening to a lot of BiggerPockets and everybody says Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad Poor Dad. So I just realized at one point that if I deliberately chose not to read these books, then I was deliberately choosing to live under my own potential. So I remember it was during that summer internship. I had my own office with a door that closed and locked. It was beautiful. And they didn't have much for me to do. So I was there for 8 hours. I had to clock in and out. I was hourly. And they would only give me like 2 or 3 hours of work to do every day. So I would read. I went to my local Barnes& Noble, grabbed a bunch of books and I would read. And that's how I got into it.

That's probably not too different from what you brought up about 15, 20 minutes ago about this idea of progress and progress leads to happiness. Um, still to this day, it doesn't matter how much money I make or what I achieve or the companies, what they become. Even when I accomplished the smallest tasks, there's just a sense of appreciation and gratitude. And you just prove to yourself every day, it's like, well, You kind of knew you could do it before, but it just feels good. And so maybe that happens when you pick up your first book. Maybe that happens and it's like, oh, there's more. I'm on a search and a yearning for more.

Yeah, I think so.

What happens when we read a book that doesn't happen if we don't? This form of education, what is happening to our brains? If you go back to that, Nick, of 9 years ago that picked up that book. And whenever I first picked up The Compound Effect, why does it take books for our brain to all of a sudden know these things?

Books condense decades of somebody else's lived experience into days of reading. Sometimes you were joking around before we press record, you were guessing my age. You were pretty accurate. So As we're recording this, I'm 29, about to turn 30 in a month or so. But if you include all of the books behind me, I'm thousands of years old. Literally, that's how I think about it. I've condensed thousands of years of other people's lived experience into the last decade, and I've installed it into my brain. So no wonder things are working out. That's how it works. If you read the greatest life lessons from all the greatest people who have ever lived, magical things start to happen when you implement those lessons. So that's kind of one perspective. I read a great book years and years and years ago. I should reread it called The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin. And Joshua Waitzkin was a multi-time national chess champion, but he was also a multi-time national— it was some type of MMA champion, mixed martial arts. And he was able to achieve that status in both of those disciplines because he studied subjects So intensely that they became part of his subconscious. This is why book summaries and quick YouTube videos don't work for the long term. Because yeah, they might get you excited for a little bit of time, but you're not studying it so intensely that it becomes part of your subconscious. What a book does, especially when you read a physical paper book, is you're leveraging that visual input to your brain. You're studying the subject, all the case studies, the examples, the stories. You're building a relationship to the information. And then your subconscious can almost identify opportunities for you to act and implement on your behalf. And so when you're constantly giving inputs, like the greatest life lessons from the greatest people who've ever lived, you're going to see opportunities that other people don't. You're not going to get it from a book summary. You get it from a book. So those are some of the reasons that I think why books are amazing.

So maybe now, maybe books and podcasts in some way, maybe they're the best mentors that we could possibly find.

Yeah, absolutely. There's a, I'll give a quick thought. Maybe this just popped in my head. A long time ago, I watched a TED Talk. Yeah, it was a TED Talk given by Tai Lopez, sort of famous internet marketer here in my garage, Lamborghini guy. By the way, he's somebody who a lot of people don't admire, but you can learn something from everybody, especially the world's best internet marketers.

He's on the comeback trail, man. He's on the comeback trail.

Yeah, he is. He bought a lot of those businesses. So he's on stage and he says to the audience something like, how much would you pay to come over to my house in California and have dinner with Arnold Schwarzenegger? He's going to be there talking about bodybuilding. And Mahatma Gandhi is going to be there talking about peace. And Steve Jobs is going to be there talking about innovation. Jeff Bezos about entrepreneurship, whatever. Gives a bunch of examples. And people are throwing out crazy numbers. And he says, well, spoiler alert, obviously they're not going to be at my house next week, but I do have their books or books written about them or by them in my home library. And it's the same experience. They are mentors. You can share your goals with the book and they'll— the book will share information back with you. You can almost envision these people sitting at a roundtable and you're filtering your decision-making through each one of them to see what they'd say based on your knowledge and understanding of how they operate. Like Elon, what would Elon say? So they are mentors, absolutely are mentors.

What makes the hard things hard? hard? Why do our brains think they're hard? Because usually the things that differentiate us between our competition or really take us to another level, it seems like the hard things are the things we really need to do that take us to that. Why are they hard? Or is it they're not, our brains just tell us they're hard? Why is that?

Well, from what I've read, we are hardwired to take the path of least resistance to conserve energy. I think we still have the caveman brain that wants to make sure we don't expend energy when we don't need to in case a lion jumps out of the bush, we have to run or whatever. So, have you ever had that happen? No, I have not, thankfully.

The path of—

But yeah, the path of least resistance is what we're hardwired to do. And so, to take the path of most resistance requires a lot of willpower. And I think willpower is a muscle that needs to be trained and developed over time. And if you don't train and develop it, you just kind of always sit in this puddle of like least resistance, you never do anything. But you start to build momentum, the compound effect takes hold of you when you start to do hard things. And it might be as simple as turning the shower knob to really cold for 30 seconds before you get out.

Gotcha.

Willpower is transferable. So if you can start to master turning the showerhead to cold before you get out, You can then apply that to making one extra cold call or whatever that thing is, taking the path of most resistance. So, I think that's why hard things are hard because people are weak and they don't train their willpower. That's kind of what I think.

So, your digital marketing agency, Book Thinkers, what have you learned? What have you learned that we need to know?

Selling books is hard.

Because there's a lot I still need to know. We're trying to level up our game with content and really with marketing and branding ourselves as we continue to grow the companies that I lead and I'm involved with. So, what do I/we need to know?

So, I'll give a quick backstory on how the agency started and what we do, and then I'll answer that question. So, as I started to post about the books I was reading on social media and the audience started to grow, Authors started to reach out to me and say, hey, Nick, I'd love to pay you for a book review. How much do you charge? And I'm over here like, I can get paid to read. That's pretty cool.

Right?

I'm working a full-time sales job and now I'm being paid to read on the side. But I would always follow up with these authors because I'm reading a lot of business books. Like, hey, tell me more about why you have such a hard time selling books. Because I have this degree in marketing and I have this full-time sales job where I'm learning on the go. And maybe I can apply some of this knowledge to your book as a business. Like, tell me, why are you having such a hard time selling books? And I would try out all sorts of things at the intersection of social media, podcasting, and books. Most of them didn't work. A few of them did work. So fast forward until today, my agency serves a couple hundred authors a year. I have about 10 people on my team and we love books. We believe the right book at the right time can change somebody's life. We can help amplify people's message in a whole bunch of different ways. But with my digital marketing agency, I think what we were talking about before we press record is an interesting way to go. Borrowing the credibility of people who have built their credibility and their know, like, and trust factor over the last 30 years and insert it into your business because trust is transitive, just like willpower is transferable to other activities.

Yeah.

And what I mean by that is if you trust Grant Cardone and Grant Cardone trusts me because you see us together, then you're more likely to trust me as well. And Grant has spent the last 30-plus years honing his sales skills and building his reputation. And you could just borrow that and insert it into your business by collaborating with him. So I think a big part of digital marketing is skipping the line, jumping forward by working with the biggest names in your space. So that's one of the tactics that we like to deploy for our customers is how do we go out there and collaborate with the biggest names in your space because trust is transferable and you can get in front of their audience and get a lot of additional attention that way.

Why are you such a good sales guy?

I think I'm such a good sales guy because I was such a bad sales guy to start off. I had a lot of social anxiety and insecurity. Insecurities when I was in my teens and early 20s. So to fix it, because I knew communication was important, I had my own house painting business for 2 summers where I went door to door thousands and thousands of times and I got rejected consistently. Then I started to take public speaking classes at college and I took this phone sales job, which turned into an in-person sales job. I went to Toastmasters for a long time, which is a public speaking organization that Gives you critical feedback on your speaking skills.

Did Warren Buffett give you a referral for that?

No, but that would've been nice.

Sorry.

Yeah. No, I was just, you know, there's so many other steps along that way, right? Like I started to create content on social media, which turned into video content, and I'm constantly being analyzed by people. I've read dozens and dozens of books on sales, marketing, communication, persuasion, negotiation, and everything in between. And I've implemented it. Then I built my own business where I interview people, sort of famous people, and that's nerve-wracking and you have to be on your A-game. And so I'm constantly looking to improve the skillset and I have been for over 10 years straight on a daily basis. And again, if you work on something every single day, the compound effect, small steps in the right direction every single day for over 10 years, You'll be better than average at it. And so I think that's probably where the skill set has come from.

You see, I didn't ask you if you were a good salesperson. I just went ahead and said you were because you're a guy that would try to. You would have tried to input some humility in there. Uh, the small steps, small steps.

Yeah.

And so, and there's a lot of failure mixed in there, right? That's the piece that we just consistently hear time after time after time, and. I know personally, for me, man, the greatest growth always comes after big failure. Always.

Yeah.

And, um, man, if you can develop the resilience to push through that when the failure arrives, uh, you're just right on the other side of just some big things really happening for you. Um, hey Jack, can you grab me a book right behind you off of a shelf? So we're gonna prove a point here. This is gonna be good. Um, so we have a couple more minutes here. What, um, what is, uh, what's on your mind as we wrap 2023 and go into 2024?

Oh, we talked a little bit about one of the, one of my clients from last week, Matt Higgins, guest shark on Shark Tank, wrote a book called Burn the Boats. So I've always been this sort of play it safe, small steps in the right direction, kind of build the foundation, build the momentum. Yes, fail, but also don't fail too big too fast because you might get burned out type of guy. But Matt Higgins is over here saying, burn the boats. Don't give yourself a plan B. And he has this great metaphor that I can't get out of my head. He said, I think it's actually in the Old Testament, but there's a story about a war. And when you attack a castle, you leave, you attack from 3 sides and leave one exit opportunity available for the people you're attacking. Because if those people have a plan B, They're not going to fight as hard as if they were cornered, right? You give them an out, they're not going to fight as hard. And so, I think having a plan B in business, you won't fight as hard on your plan A. So, he says, toss it overboard, burn the boats, and just fully commit to your vision in life. So, I'm starting to think that bigger risk, bigger thinking is more important. And yeah, I'm having a fun time balancing both perspectives in my head right now.

So there's the proof.

Love it.

Yep. Um, so I, I keep a box of these. It's what you show me yours. I keep a box in my office and sometimes I give these to people. Do you have the silver? Do you have the silver 10th anniversary edition?

I, uh, I don't think so. Sorry. Can you hear my dog?

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good though, man.

Um, I have, here it is. No, I don't. I just have—

Yeah. The paperbacks. You don't spend the extra money. You've taken somebody's advice. You don't spend the hardback money.

I do now, nowadays. But when I bought this first time I read it, let's see, December 2017, because I date them all. I definitely didn't have the money back then.

This is something— he's got all kinds of different programs. There's a little card in the book, but I think you need to go get him, man. I would be pumped to listen to your conversation, your interview, because you do such a good job with it.

Oh, well, thank you very much. I will go get him. I committed to it. I'm burning the boats.

So, how many commitments at one time are too many? Do you think about that at all or you just commit to what you want to do? Can we do too many things?

Yeah. Greg McKeown in Essentialism, he says there is a point of diminishing returns where doing one extra rep actually hurts your progress. And so, I do think about that, but I think flirting the line between too much And and just enough is the place to live. Like that's where I love to live. So I always have just enough, maybe slightly too much on my plate, but that's creating the progress that I've come to know and love and really appreciate. You know, back in the day, I used to say we were talking about this before press record too. I used to say forty hours a week. I remember my first part-time job, you know, kind of like tongue in cheek, laughing a little bit. And I'm very happy that I had that mentality and sort of still do because it's created such a big amount of progress that I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, 2 final— this has been a great conversation. I always like it when it's conversational and not questions, but I have 2 questions. So, you've traveled the world.

Yes.

Don't know how many countries, but you've traveled the world. What's the place that's impacted you the most? Not necessarily that you've liked the most. What's the place that's impacted you the most?

My first solo travel trip was to Buenos Aires, Argentina for 5 weeks. Now, I didn't know anybody in South America and I didn't speak Spanish, but Tim Ferriss sort of told me to do it through his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. And I was forced to embrace so much discomfort. over those 5 weeks that it changed me. It made me a more resilient person. I mean, when you're traveling internationally and you don't speak the language and you're with other people and you have kind of like an awkward exchange or you don't know how to convert the currency or you ask for directions and you don't know what the person responded with, like you can kind of share in that awkward feeling. But when you're by yourself, man, that's a whole different experience. And so Argentina, because I grew the most.

Um, and then of all these people that we've read their books, we've heard from them, we haven't had direct conversations ourselves like you have. We haven't spent a few days with Evan Carmichael in Toronto, right? We haven't given Grant Cardone a nice hug around the shoulder. Um, are there things that a bunch of the highly successful, accomplished people that you found that they have in common?

Yes, definitely. There are a lot of things. The first thing that came to mind was charisma. Vanessa Van Edwards defines charisma as a balance between warmth, like showing love, being approachable, like making people feel good, but also competence, knowing your stuff, being certain with your words. And so all of these people, they're so charismatic, they make you feel like a million bucks. But they're also extremely educated and certain with their language. So, that's kind of the number one thing. And the other thing is the compound effect. It's small steps in the right direction. There are no overnight successes. They all have a huge backstory of failure and misery and pain and overcoming and life lessons that led to who we see on social media today.

So, you talked about— we'll wrap this up, man. So, I think you talked about your future kids. So I don't know if you have any yet or now, yet or not, but your future kid.

Not yet. Not yet. Okay.

Your future kids. Um, what do you, what do you want them to know? What do you want, maybe the, what's the head start you'll give them? Because I think one of the challenges parents are facing now is it's admirable that they want their kids' lives to be easier than their own. But I have a take on that. That's not always best because if they get—

Yeah, they can follow your take.

Yeah, well, I think that, um, if parents looked at what made them them, it was some of the adversity they had to face. It was when life was a little tough and a little hard. And so it's admirable that they want the kids' lives to be easier, but hey, it's life and it can be tough at times. So what do you want your future kids? What's the head start you want to give them? But, um, what do you want to teach them?

Hmm. To enjoy the passage of time and to think of failure as a positive thing, to have agency and control, awareness, be logical, less emotional. When you were talking about that, what you had just said when you were asking the question, again, I'll bring them up just because it's so recent, but Matt Higgins grew up in abject poverty, this guy we were just working with. And he said, as a result of the poverty, he developed enhanced pattern recognition that's led to the successful business life that he's experienced today, because he was always on the lookout for an opportunity or a way to like get food or whatever the case is. Like he was too aware because it came from trauma. And so I asked him, I said, hey, would you, now that you have kids, like do you try to put them through traumatic experiences to develop their pattern recognition so they can be successful like you? And he's like, no. I would never put my kids through what I went through, but maybe an artificial version of it, like maybe a lighter version of it, maybe push them in different ways, not through traumatic experiences, but try to cultivate those same skill sets, but in a more approachable way. And I guess I think about that as I become a parent in the next couple of years as well. I want a lot of kids and I think I'll teach them a lot of those same kind of lessons. I mean, frankly, I didn't come from a terrible background, so I almost had to develop a chip on my shoulder a little bit to get out of bed and take the path of most resistance as often as possible. And so I think it's possible, but yeah, I definitely want to be tough on them. I definitely don't want them to live in a bubble. I think today the average person my age and younger is soft and yeah, I definitely don't want them to be like that.

Yeah. So I think, who's the president of UFC, Dana White?

Yes.

Boy, just listen to him, right? He talks about how soft the generations are.

Yeah. And he's not wrong. David Goggins says it's not enough to be a wolf anymore. You have to be a wolf amongst wolves because the average person is a sheep. So to be above average, you just have to do a little bit more. And then voilà, here you are. You worked 41 hours this week. Great for you. Or you worked 40. That's like a badge of honor now. Yeah, I agree with you.

The final thing, what's the next book? What's the next book we should read? Tell me the next book I should read. The next book. So let's assume I've read so many. What's the next one on the horizon that you think's coming or just came out that you think it's burned the boat? I mean, that's been out for a minute though, right?

Yeah, I think it's been out for around a year. Okay. No, I think Alex Hormozi's new book. $100 Million Leads.

What about that release he put on, huh?

Yeah, that was, that was one for the books. Alex's books are so actionable and he writes about extremely complex subjects at a 5th grade or 3rd grade reading level, whatever the actual number is. I think everybody needs to read his books. $100 Million Offers and Leads, both of them.

Awesome. Hey man, thank you. We went over a little bit of time here. Thanks for the time. I think I'm gonna be better today because of talking to you. So, it's my—

I think I'll be better today because of talking to you as well. So, I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you for giving me a platform to share my love of reading and the power of personal development. And yeah, man, I'm excited to connect when we have a chance in person sometime.

100%. And go get Darren so I can enjoy that conversation and that listen.

I will.

All right. Thank you, Nick.

Cheers.