In this solo YouTube book review, Nick Hutchison reflects on Derek Kinney’s Good Money Revolution and explains how the book reshaped his view of money as a tool for happiness through generosity. He introduces the author’s central concept of a “generosity purpose” – linking cash, profits, and personal purpose to a cause – and shares a concrete exercise from the book for identifying one’s own charitable focus. Hutchison reveals that, after years of providing book recommendations through his BookThinkers community, he realized the missing charitable component and, inspired by the book, committed to partner with a reading‑related nonprofit and donate a portion of revenue monthly. He also highlights several personal‑finance lessons from the book, including the “fail fast, fail forward” mindset for investing, overcoming scarcity mentalities, conversations about money with children, retirement planning, and strategies for career advancement or entrepreneurship. Hutchinson argues that integrating a charitable mission not only aligns with his purpose but also makes his business more attractive to Gen‑Z and Millennial audiences, ultimately helping him “make more money to do more good.” He concludes with a call for viewers to read the book and consider adding a charitable dimension to their own ventures.
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What I'm about to say is slightly controversial, but you're gonna have to hear me out. Here it is: money can buy happiness. But instead of focusing on how much cash you accumulate in order to be happy, you need to focus on what your money is doing and who it's positively impacting. That is why money can buy you happiness, and it's one of my biggest takeaways from a book I just finished reading, Good Money Revolution, by author Derek And the subtitle of this book is How to Make More Money to Do More Good. I really enjoyed this book and it came at the right time. It came at the right time because for years I've been focused on my purpose. My purpose is to positively impact this community by providing great book recommendations so that readers can make progress in their health, their wealth, their happiness. I do that because years ago a couple of good books totally changed my life and I know that books can do the same for other people. But there's always been a piece of the puzzle that's missing. And I've, in fact, I've received a lot of feedback about it. Is there a charitable component to BookThinkers? You know, 75% of the workforce in the next couple of years is going to be Gen Zs or Millennials. And Gen Zs and Millennials care a lot about pro-social movements. They care about diversity, inclusion. They care about charity and contribution. They really want to see that stuff from a business and from a community like BookThinkers. Yet for some reason, I've never really found something that I wanted to give a portion of our revenue to, which was totally backwards because impact is one of my core values. Progress, helping other people make progress, is my purpose. And so it totally fits. And I needed this book. It was sort of like the icing on the cake to push me over the edge here. Derek talks about something called your generosity purpose, and there's a line he repeats a couple of times in the book that I really enjoyed, and I'd like to read it to you. Here it is. Connect your cash to a cause, your money to a movement, your profits to a purpose. That is what changes everything. This is the generosity purpose. And on the next page, he says, most people lead with, I want to make more money. But what, but what if you led with, I want to give more money, and to do that, I'll have to make more money. You see, earning more money can create happiness if you start focusing on what can your money do for other people. This is a really powerful thing for me. And if you don't necessarily know, like if you're listening today, if you don't necessarily know what your generosity purpose is, Derek has a great exercise on page 42 in the book, and I'll read part of it here. He says, fill in the blanks: when I see insert name of an issue you feel passionate about, not being addressed, I feel— insert the emotion you feel. Then he goes on to say, I am passionate about— insert issue you feel passionate about— because— fill in your why. Why are you passionate about it? And if I don't take action now, here's what could happen. This was powerful for me. There's an opportunity cost to not dedicating a portion of your business to charity, right? Because that money could change somebody's life. So every single day, and this is what really hit me, every single day that you don't focus on charity, somebody else is sort of being hurt by that, especially if you have extra money to give. And this is when the wheels started clicking for me. Fill in the blank is an organization that I trust to help alleviate the issues or concerns I care most about. And so a couple of days ago, I actually posted on the Book Thinkers Instagram and I said, hey, does anybody know of, or is anybody aware of, Charitable organizations focused on reading or books, because those are the issues that I care about. And there were a couple of great organizations mentioned, and one of my homework items is to do a little bit more research on those. Say to yourself, quote, I am working today so I can help, insert issue you feel about. Today I am helping/working to make someone's life better. This is really— I mean, this is exactly what I've been needing for a long time. So I'm so happy that this book came my way, Good Money Revolution. I've been neglecting this for so long. Like I said, this is the icing on the cake that's pushing me in the right direction. By the end of April, there will be a charitable organization that Book Thinkers is related to and donating money to on a monthly basis. This is my accountability right here, my external accountability. And there were so many other great lessons in this book. Here's an example on page 97. Something that Derek taught me is that one mistake, two mistakes, three mistakes more— heck, none of these mistakes define you or your ability to make good decisions in the future. A lot of us, when we think about investing our money and we think about the mistakes we've made in the past, we become scared about investing our money in the future. But you need to fail fast and you need to fail forward. Every time you invest your money and things don't turn out well, well, great. Now you know what not to do and you're going to get a little bit better. The likelihood of succeeding is going to increase just a little bit the next time you invest your money. There was a lot of great information in here if you're a parent about conversations you can have with your children about money. There was a lot of great information about setting up a good retirement and some of the questions you need to ask yourself. There was a lot of great information in this book about if you're working for an employer that doesn't really fulfill you and you're not earning enough money and you're sort of capped at that position, leaving, finding another job, or even going out on your own. There was a lot of good information in this book about scarcity mindsets. I mean, I definitely have some issues with financial scarcity-related mindsets in my own personal life. And so Derek helped me rethink a lot of those and reflect on them. And so overall, this was a fantastic book, Good Money Revolution. And Derek talks about, hey, if he could just impact one person with this book— well, here's the thing, because of this book, I'm donating a portion of money pretty soon to a charitable organization that's going to help other people, and it's going to be in the personal development book reading space, maybe providing better access to self-education tools in low-income areas or underprivileged communities. And I mean, Derek, if you're watching this video, you've helped me. You've made a positive impact. And I hope that anybody else that's watching this draws a little bit of inspiration from the journey that I sort of laid out in this book, which in summary is that for years I've been focusing on impact, but the charity piece has been missing. Now that final puzzle piece is going to be put in place. And for business owners watching this too, like, other people want to do business with people who have a charitable component to their business. So I think that this is actually going to help me make more money to do more good, which is basically what the call to action on the book is. And on the top of the back of the book here too, it says, make more money, change the world, live the life you deserve. The life I deserve is one where I'm giving more money. That's the bottom line. So I hope everybody enjoyed today's review. I really enjoyed this book. I had a ton of additional notes that I couldn't share in here. There's a lot of great personal finance tips and stuff like that that I'm implementing, but go out there, read something. I hope you grab a copy of this book. Thank you, Derek. Adios.
