Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

I view the books I read as my mentors #nonfictionbooks #mentors #biographies #booktube #booktok

30 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, Nick Hutchison explains his philosophy of treating books as mentors. He cites historical and business figures—Marcus Aurelius, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Benjamin Franklin—as mentors he has 'personally' learned from solely through reading their works or biographies. Hutchison emphasizes that books distill decades of experience and massive business insights into affordable, time‑efficient resources, offering an unparalleled return on investment (ROI) for personal and professional growth. He encourages viewers to adopt this mindset, positioning books as cost‑effective, high‑impact guides.

Chapters

I have been personally mentored by amazing people like Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, Steve Jobs, the founder of trillion-dollar Apple. I've been personally mentored by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Benjamin Franklin. How cool is that? Yet all of these people never met me. I just read books about them or books written by them. I have hundreds of books behind me and hundreds of mentors that support my personal growth. And so if you don't view books as mentors, I encourage you to start thinking about them like that. These books condense decades of lived experience, billions or trillions of dollars worth of business lessons into a $20 book that takes a few hours to read. You can't beat that ROI.