Learn More While You Read by Doing This | Nick Hutchison

It is no secret that your girl reads a lot of books. Now, unless you're reading for just pure enjoyment, sometimes reading more books doesn't really do you a lot of good unless you apply what you're learning.

Feeling a little guilty. But how in the world do you apply everything that you're learning?

If you're like me, you're a personal development junkie, so you're constantly learning new tips and ideas and steps and all of this stuff. How do you get the most out of your book bang and buck?

That sounded kind of bad.

Today I connected with Nick Hutchison, who's the author of Rise of the Reader and founder of Book Thinkers. His platform bridges authors authors with readers and helps folks actually take action on what they read. I've been reading for years. I've read hundreds of books, and I cannot believe everything that I pulled out of this interview. Nick shares with us how to remove the overwhelm of learning too much. It's a real thing. How to organize tips from books into action items. And we even dig into his entrepreneurial journey and why sometimes you shouldn't burn all ships.

If you're deliberately choosing not to read the books that made other people successful, you are deliberately choosing to live under your potential. I was talking with a mentor of mine and I said, hey, I think I'm ready to make a jump, like try this thing full-time. And he said, don't. I said, why not? And he said, we need to know why we're reading the books that we're reading.

Because I don't have value. What if I don't have any value? I'm just some kid making art on the side of the road. Tell me how I'm going to give him value.

Well, here's how I'd position things. I had a much smaller audience. I was just starting my podcast, and I'd reach out to people and I'd say, Man, we got Nick on the show with us.

And when I scrolled through your IG, Nick, I was like, you're my kind of person because you are a book nerd. And I hope I don't offend you by using the term nerd, but I own it. I love reading. Reading has absolutely 100% changed my life because there's a lot of us out there who maybe don't have access to people that we wish we had access to. Maybe we were dealt the wrong hand of cards. And sometimes media and books are our first entry step into realizing we can absolutely change our lives. And Nick, I just respect the hell out of what you're trying to do out in this world, because what you're doing is you're giving a tool to people to change their lives. And it's just through this beautiful form called books. But before you click off here and say, I'm not a reader, y'all, I want you to lean a little bit because we're not going to be just preaching at you about reading. We're going to talk to you about something a little bit deeper. But Nick, thanks for joining us today. And I'm going to start us off. Tell me how many— how old you are and how many books you've read.

I am 29 years young. I've read about 500 nonfiction personal development self-help style books in the last 10 years. So, for those of you listening today that are not readers, I was not a reader growing up. But I wish I was.

What switched you for reading?

And maybe we'll convince everyone today. When I was going into my senior year of college, I took an internship at a local software company. And my boss at the time introduced me to the world of podcasting just like this. And I had about an hour commute each way to this internship. So, I listened to a lot of podcasts. And over and over and over and over and over again, all these successful people gave at least some credit for their success to the books that they had read early in their journey. And I just kind of had a wake-up moment. Like slapped myself in the face and said, if you're deliberately choosing not to read the books that made other people successful, you are deliberately choosing to live under your potential.

Yeah.

And so, I had to Face the facts and read the books.

What path were you on at that point driving down the car? Where did you see your life going?

I knew that I wanted to work in the world of business. I had just accepted a sales internship and I knew that I wanted to work in the world of sales when I had graduated. So yeah, I just wanted to be a businessman.

It's interesting that you were drawn to business and sales, but it wasn't books and stuff, because to me I tie those so tightly together that usually all the business people I know I mean, granted, you were probably in your early 20s at this point, so I'm gonna give you a little slack on that. But what captured you about reading? I mean, how did it start manifesting and changing your life?

Well, it's funny that you don't tie— well, that I didn't tie those together at the time either, because now I do, obviously. And I think a successful salesperson is reading the most successful sales books of all time and implementing them, and that's why they're having success. So I don't know what I was thinking back then. But it definitely wasn't about books. So the first book that I read was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And right in the beginning of the book, he essentially says that poor and middle-class people teach their kids poor and middle-class money habits because the subject of money is not taught in school, right? So not every kid is on an even playing field.

Mm-hmm.

Rich kids learn rich money habits from their rich parents. And so how do you get out of that rat race, you have to read books by rich people. And I went from insecure and scared to talk about money and investing to leading those conversations after just a few books. I mean, that was wild for me. I removed all of this gut-wrenching kind of fear for a few dollars and a few hours of my time. And so I just immediately started to think like, what other areas of my life can I apply this to? What other fears and insecurities can I remove What other skills can I improve? And I just started reading everything that I could get my hands on. So that was kind of the original aha moment for me.

So my mind automatically goes to 2 camps when you tell me this story. I think exposure, and then I think tangible knowledge. So the exposure of knowing that, you know, X person grew this from that, and I can do it too, that inspirational exposure piece. And then also to the tactical knowledge element, which one like lights you up a little bit more? And do you think was more instrumental for you personally?

I think at first it was the former, and now it's more the latter.

Yeah.

So I think at first, understanding what human beings are capable of doing and getting exposed to that, it feels really good, and it makes you realize, hey, I have all this unfulfilled potential, but there's actually a roadmap to close the gap. And so you start reading, fooling your way around these books, not really taking a lot of action but getting inspired. And then there's the, okay, here's a roadmap that we can follow. We can implement these things. We can take, I mean, books literally condense decades of lived experience and millions of dollars, sometimes billions of dollars worth of lessons into days of reading. And then you can follow the roadmap. And so that's what excites me now.

One of your missions, I believe, is to help readers take more action on what they read. So it's not just getting in your little comfy cozy clothes and drinking your coffee and saying you read the book, y'all. doing something with it. So that's what Nick's here to help us do. How do you even approach that with folks? Because here's what I hear— overwhelm. Well, this book told me to do these 3 steps, and this book told me something else, and this book told me just to lay down and manifest and let things come to me. There's so much information, and there's so many perspectives and formulas that I think sometimes we get crippled with it, my friend. So how do you approach readers to take action and not feel overwhelmed?

I think it starts with something I talk about in my book, Rise of the Reader. It starts with setting an intention for each book that you read. So I just did a little unboxing thing yesterday. I haven't read any of these books next to me yet, but I'll just grab one and we'll walk through the process together. So sometimes I'll meet somebody and I'll say, what are you reading? And they'll tell me and I'll say, why?

Mm-hmm.

And they won't have a good answer for me. I think we need to know why we're reading the books that we're reading. So the intention for each book should follow the SMART goal framework. We're talking about actionable. This is how it's going to happen. Instead of just reading this book, Amazon Ads for Authors, I think you probably know why I'm reading this or will be reading this soon. Instead of just randomly reading this, I'm going to set a very specific, measurable, actionable, attainable, written and relevant, time-bound goal. And I'm going to write it on the inside cover. So that might look like, Find and implement at least 2 Amazon advertising strategies that I can implement for my upcoming book, Rise of the Reader, by the end of next week so that I can maximize the book's potential. That's specific. It's measurable. 2 strategies.

Yeah.

It's attainable and actionable. It's not like a million bucks by next week, but it's something realistic. It's relevant to my life. I'm going to write it on the inside cover, which we'll talk about in a minute. And it's time-bound. I want to do that by the end of next week. And if you can add because to your intention, like add a little bit of flavor, because I want to maximize my book's full potential, I'll be more tied emotionally to the intention. So then I'll write that intention on the inside cover of the book and I'll read it each and every time I read a few more pages of the book so that my, my brain can naturally filter for those 2 strategies that I can take action on and I won't be overwhelmed by everything else that the book talks about.

Hmm.

So, to wrap this up, at the end of the book, I might have 20 or 30 strategies. That's overwhelming that I've highlighted as I'm reading. But if I can just pick the 20% of them that I think might have 80% of the impact and just take action on the most highly leveraged activities related to my intention, now I'm set up for success. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you change your life? One action at a time. You implement one thing from a book at a time. That's how you sort of remove the overwhelm from my experience.

I love that. Gosh, I read so much. I'm like completely geeking out over your process right now because, you know, I mean, like I have these stacks of books and what I do is I'm such a doodler and drawer. I'm a very like, ah, I just throw up all over the paper. I love it. Then I'm like, oh my God. And then I have 50 of those and they're sitting over there and I don't know what to do with it. You mentioned writing in on the COVID Remind me what you write on the inside of the COVID again.

So I write that intention. And it should follow, yeah, it should follow that SMART goal framework. Find and implement at least 2 Amazon advertising strategies for my book by the end of next week. Like, that's what I write down and then I reread it each and every time I dive into the book.

Okay.

One more nerdy question and then we can move on from here, but I'm, I'm curious, do you have like any kind of filing system? I, I do a lot of writing and like pulling quotes and so forth from different books. Do you store quotes or bullet points or anything digitally?

Absolutely. So first I rewrite everything on paper.

Okay.

One of the things about retaining more from the books that we read, and I love this line, repetition leads to retention. So the act of rewriting everything with your hand first, that's a form of repetition. Then I take the 20% that I think can change my life, and I'll rewrite that now using a keyboard into an Evernote document. And you can tag in Evernote like what each bullet point or quote is related to, so you can search by subject or genre. And it's really easy to filter and store stuff that way. So I use Evernote.

So good. So here's this young man. Let's, let's get back to him in the car. He's starting to discover books. These podcasters are talking about books. He starts reading these books. He starts implementing all of these practices and setting an intention when he reads. And you start taking actual action and you can see your life start to change. Starting, I think you said, with money, the conversation around money and into other areas of your life. At what point where you're like, damn it, Forget this business sales stuff. I'm going all in on books and actually going to build a community around that.

So I have a little bit of a unique story here. Very early in the side hustle of building Book Thinkers while maintaining a full-time job, I was talking with a mentor of mine and I said, hey, I think I'm ready to make a jump, like try this thing full-time. And he said, don't. I said, why not? And he said, Nick, if you try to build the parachute on the way down while you're falling through the air, you're going to operate from a place of scarcity. He said 95% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years because they run out of money. You don't want to run out of money. He said you'll compromise on your values, you'll give up, you won't persevere long enough, and you'll go back to your full-time job. So what he said was, keep your full-time job, your 9 to 5, do as much as you can to automate your responsibilities, to have less responsibilities. And because you're learning a skill set that literally translates into building a business, sales and marketing, small business, The time there is not totally wasted.

Yeah.

And it will give you the ability to build up a financial nest egg, an emergency fund, whatever you want to call it, so that if you run into some roadblocks as you continue to build your side hustle, your 5 to 9, you don't have to give up on it. And I am so happy that he gave me that recommendation because the business failed for years and years and cost me a ton of money, but I was connected to a purpose, so I didn't give up on it. Now we employ 10 people. We work with hundreds of authors a year. Things are good, but we failed for so long. And so here's kind of the home run point for everybody in today's audience that I think is a little abnormal about my story. I literally employed full-time people in my side hustle before I left my full-time job. Like, that's how long I waited to make the jump. And slow and steady wins the race. Like, no matter how many times you read Aesop's fable, The tortoise and the hare, the tortoise always wins. And so that was really cool advice for me, and I'm happy that I followed it.

I just, I want to like fist bump you through the screen like right now because, man, you know, there's so much pressure. And I'll speak for myself, I know I have felt like a failure if my side thing wasn't working. You know, I had this stream of income coming in, but I was really passionate about this, and unless this was making this then you feel like that you, you just fail, that you're not meant to do it. And the story you just told, thank you for being honest and sharing that vulnerably, because so many listeners, I think I told you before, of my crowd are in that spot right now. We have families, we are responsible, we want to do the right thing, have freaking put food on the table. But the same sense, there's this other thing over here that I believe is a calling on our life that was given us, given to us by God. And there's a guilt thing there. It's like, If I were supposed to do this, why am I not making income from it? Or am I selfish? Am I selfish detouring this straight conventional path by entertaining this craziness right here? I just threw up all over you, Nick, but anything that I just said stick out to you? Did you feel any of that guilt or did you just have a better head on your shoulders than I did? And that's okay if that's what it was.

No, I definitely felt that guilt. The term entrepreneur, like you don't feel like you can say you're an entrepreneur unless it's your full-time focus. And I had people listen, I gave, Keynotes where people introduced me as an entrepreneur when I still had a full-time job. I was on podcasts being called an entrepreneur when I still had a full-time job. I was selling and employing people while still having a full-time job. So I always balanced with that a little bit. I have tons of additional thoughts, but we could, we can pause there and see what you're thinking. I don't want to, I don't want to ramble on it too much.

I want to know, you're, you're working this full-time job, you're building this side hustle. Tell me, was it just time that you were able to take the leap with this? What other, like, do you— what other things do you attribute to being able to take the leap? Because if you could save anybody years and years, or is that what you recommend that it actually takes before you can jump ship?

No, I think time is one variable, and there are definitely ways in hindsight that it could have accelerated that timetable a little bit. Making faster decisions has been on my mind a lot recently. Sometimes people take weeks or they take months to make decisions, and the faster that you can make decisions, the faster you'll probably fail. But through failure, you'll learn. And so the entire process gets condensed. The faster you can make decisions, the faster you can fail, and the faster you can learn and then make iterations from those failures. So what Book Thinkers is today, my business, and what this book that I'm putting out is today is totally different than where they both started.

Mm-hmm.

But what I didn't do was wait to be perfect before I started. I put things out too early, sort of embarrassed a little bit. And I collected feedback. That's called a minimally viable product a lot of times in business. And so what you don't do is make assumptions and then get proved wrong by not having product market fit and then have to spend all the money to go back and restart anyway. You just improve, you include your audience, your target customer in the process of building what you wanna build. And so those are a few things that, that definitely helped accelerate the time clock a little bit.

Yeah. Rick Rubin talks about that. And have you interviewed him? If you, when you can interview him, man. Oh man. That'll be the day. Creative Act, he mentions showing your work before it's ready, just for what you said, because he said that the work likes to reveal what it is through the process of giving it. And I love what you just said, but there's so much ego that we have to swallow from that because I want Nick to think that I have my shit together and I have, you know, this is an awesome product immediately showing you. But the humility that comes with saying I'm going to give something in its imperfect form so I can figure out and learn and grow from that, make faster decisions, dude. I mean, that's some badass advice right there.

Yeah. And you said it better than I did. And so did Rick Rubin. I agree 1,000% with that. And I, you know, there were a lot of times where I didn't follow my own advice there and I paid for it financially and with time.

Yeah. Now you've built an insane network and I know the answer is probably going to be time again, my friend, but just mad respect to that because I know the hustle and the grind of being able to widen your network and bring some incredible people on. I mean, Lewis Howes, we're going to be at his conference next week. NQ, I'm a huge fan of his. Alex Hormozi, I mean, all these people who are just freaking killers. Tell me how you've been able to build that network and bring those people on your show.

I think it starts by providing them value. I, you know, when I reach out to these types of people, especially in the early stages, I would just try to offer value.

Nick, I don't like that answer. That's so hard because I don't have value. What if I don't have any value? I'm just some kid making art on the side of the road. Tell me how I'm going to give him value.

Well, here's how I'd position things. I had a much smaller audience. I was just starting my podcast and I'd reach out to people and I'd say, I want to help you amplify your message. This book is amazing and I'd like to share it with my audience because most likely, most of my audience, they don't know who you are but I wish they did. And so now I'm just— yes, I'd like to borrow their credibility by hosting them on my podcast because it's going to help me generate a lot of business and grow my show but I'm not going to tell them that. I just want to tell these people, let me help you share your word, your message in the most genuine way possible. And as the audience starts to grow, as you start to leverage the credibility of a lot of cool people, yeah, that becomes easier. But you know, I've, I've realized a few things over time. Number one is that the larger the audience of the person you're prospecting is, the less messages they're actually getting. And that sounds a little counterintuitive.

So interesting.

But when I had like 20K on IG, I used to get 100 DMs a day. That's not an exaggeration. I'd spend an hour or 2 hours of my time every day answering messages from people, book recommendations, things like that. Now we have about 150,000 in our community and we get 10 messages a day.

Why is that?

And it's because I've asked over and over and over again and it's because the perceived likelihood that I'm going to respond has gone down because the audience size has gone up. And the same thing happens with these superstars.

Wow.

People don't reach out because they don't think they're going to get a response. And so once I realized that, I went all in on it and everybody responds. Not everybody but most people do. The other thing that I'll say For your audience and for you, Heather, is that you have to be, and I'm not practicing this right now, but you have to be a surgeon with your words. So I love this metaphor that surgeons don't make extra cuts while performing surgery.

Why?

Because it's not necessary to the outcome.

Right.

Salespeople, podcasters, content creators shouldn't use extra language while prospecting. It's not necessary. So my message to somebody, an A-lister, is not paragraphs. It might be, hey, congratulations on the upcoming release of your book. I interview authors like insert 3 people they follow.

Yeah.

And help them, you know, promote their content to my audience. I'd love to have a conversation with you as well. Here's a link to book an interview. That's it. That's it.

I, I love that. I love that, that the— y'all hear what he said? Be short, quick, to the point, because otherwise you're going to annoy them because they're busy AF and they're not going to read all of it and completely dismiss it. That's so valuable, Nick.

Yeah, as somebody who is time pressured himself, I'm far more likely— just, I noticed this over time too, observing myself from a third-party perspective— I'm much more likely to answer a message if it's shorter. I'm far less likely I'm not less likely because I answer everybody, but I'm less likely to answer it with enthusiasm if you make me read 5 paragraphs first.

With enthusiasm, I love that. What is your opinion on leveraging influence? I know that people's minds immediately go there, and I'm curious if you, you know, with all the people you've interviewed, I mean, you've interviewed, quote, big authors and, quote, smaller authors, have you seen much of a difference with that? I'm just curious. As far as your response goes?

Yes. If somebody can repost a piece of content and they have a bigger audience, it does provide more value and leverage to yourself. Trust is transitive. They usually don't. So it's a good point. I think there's— I could probably argue for both sides because trust is transitive. Like Heather, if you trust Lewis and I can show you that Lewis trusts me, you're far more likely to trust me as a result. So I think there is some benefit there, but you are right. In that working with somebody with a smaller audience, but they'll go out and promote you a lot more, is probably more valuable than working with somebody with a big audience and won't promote you at all, especially from a podcast or content creation standpoint.

Right. What is your vision from here, Nick? I know you want to connect readers and authors together and make this world more actionable and sexy and awesome for this younger generation. And so I'm putting the words in your mouth with that. I just, I don't see many Usually people promoting books are older people, and since you have kind of a young vibe too, I just think it's really cool. What is like the big vision from here? Do you believe this is like your life's calling, this is what God put you on this earth to do, is this thing around books? Or do you see this as something more seasonal?

Personally, I try to optimize for enjoying the passage of time. I like to do what I like to do, and I don't like to do what I don't like to do. And so right now, I live in the present moment. I love everything about my day-to-day. I consistently perform energy audits within my business. I'll look at an entire week's activity and I'll say, what brought me energy? What took me energy? What was neutral? And I try to outsource, eliminate, automate anything that was neutral or took energy from me. So I optimize for enjoying the passage of time. Right now that looks like Book Thinkers. It looks like my podcast. It looks like this book that I'm putting out. And I'm not tied to that being my forever plan, but it feels really good and I really enjoy it right now. As far as setting future goals, I don't have a future vision that looks different than what I experience on a daily basis today because I've already optimized for what I enjoy. But I'm sure that my tastes will change over time. I mean, who knows? My goals are always written in pencil because of that. But yeah, I feel, you know what? I feel good. I don't want a reality that's too different from what I have already.

I'm, I'm so grateful you brought up optimizing based off what gives you energy, cuz this is something that I've struggled with in all the books that I've read. is this mixed messaging with struggle versus what you just said, what brings you life, what brings you joy. So I can see on one side that the grit and the grind and like, growth only comes through the pain, blah, you know. And then there's, you know, stuff like Esther Hicks. It's like, what lights you up? You know what I mean? So you have like these 2 extremes. And, uh, I love both of them. And I think there's a yes and we live in a yes and world. But how do you wrestle with What is growing pains for you and your organization versus something that you shouldn't be doing?

I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I'm not afraid to fail.

Mm-hmm.

I study a lot of Stoic philosophy, things that can keep me grounded in logic.

Mm-hmm.

And less in emotion. I'm, I'm not an emotionally reactive person anymore. I definitely used to be, but books have solved that problem for me. So I embrace failure. I embrace a little bit of discomfort, not enough that could burn me out, but always enough to push the agenda forward a little bit. And I used to think that my one word was progress. And so just because I live in the present moment doesn't mean that progress doesn't bring me joy. Discomfort and failure, those bring me joy.

That's good.

You know, it's a process. It's not an outcome. So like, I'm not just sitting here meditating all day long, but I'm living an actionable lifestyle that fulfills me. And so, yeah, I think there's definitely like, I wanna live on the edge of my comfort zone. I don't wanna overextend and get too far outside of it, but I also don't wanna live within it too far either. I think like balancing right on that boundary of too much but not enough. Like, I enjoy the dance and I don't get stressed out about it.

I love it. What do you say to people when they say that either A, they don't enjoy reading, or they can't? I mean, are you just as big of a proponent of audiobooks and podcasting form, or do you push people a little bit to go the paper route? Is there something special about that?

Okay, I have 2 answers for this. Number one, if somebody tells me they're not a reader or that they can't read, I'll say, if I paid you $10,000 to read a book by the end of next week, do you think you could do it? And they'd say, of course I can. And so now it's a question of prioritizing time and assigning enough value to the book, not a question of whether or not you can read. So the follow-up there is how do we schedule enough time in our calendar to make it happen? And the following math is pretty blowing, mind-blowing. Replacing, so not finding, but replacing low-impact activity with reading books. So replace the first 15 minutes of your morning Instagram scrolling or TikTok scrolling, not the whole thing.

Hmm.

Everybody spends time on their phones. Just the first 15 minutes with reading a good book and the first 15 minutes of your Netflix or your Hulu or your whatever, HBO, in the evening. Not the whole thing, just 15 minutes.

Yeah.

15 minutes of reading for somebody who's just starting out is about 10 pages of a good nonfiction self-help book. You do that twice a day, that's 20 pages a day. 5 days a week is 100 pages a week. That's about Give or take 20 books a year.

Yep.

By just replacing a little bit of time in the morning and a little bit of time in the evening on workdays. That's it. And if you can read a book that solves an immediate problem in your life or can help you close the gap between where you are and where you want to be by improving a very specific skill that's holding you back, you'll be tied into that book. It's literally going to help you solve problems. And so those are just a few of the examples I give in my upcoming book. I want to show people that books are an incredibly efficient vehicle to close that gap and help you live up to your fullest potential. Like, I genuinely believe that.

Hey, freaking man. Amen, man. I have a final question for you that I'm gonna get to in just a second, but thank you for doing this work out in the world. I'm really grateful we had a few minutes to connect, but I'm even more grateful that there are voices like yours that are pushing the book agenda on us. Like I told you, I— my life— look at me, y'all. Look at me. My life has completely changed reading books, 100%. So thank you for pushing that initiative, man. Truly believe you're never going to really know the full impact that you're making ever, maybe until the end of this life when we're standing before the Lord. It's going to be incredible, Nick. Tell me, you have a book coming out this month, this month, that you— this is your first one, right? First one. Tell me what it's about and where you'd like to direct our listeners to.

Well, over the years of growing my social media community, I've had hundreds of people tell me some variation of, hey Nick, I appreciate all of the book recommendations, they're amazing, but I'm having a tough time Turning that information into action. I know you're doing it. What are you doing differently? How are you implementing this? And I'd always answer those people like voice notes, DMs, maybe jump on a quick Zoom call. Like, I try to serve my community. That's why I'm here. But I felt that I was underserving them because I knew that what I was doing was far more extensive than what I could answer in a short period of time. So, I decided to write a book on it. I knew that what does my community want to consume? Books. So, what I did was I actually spent a couple of years trying to observe my own behavior, which sounds kind of goofy, but what was I doing to translate information into action? Because it's worked really well. Like, I literally love my life, and most people unfortunately don't. And it's not super complicated. You just have to be consistent and read good information. And so I observed my behavior, I documented it, I spent a couple years writing this book. And so what's the book— the purpose of the book? It's to serve that younger version of me in the car who realizes he has all this unfulfilled potential and says, I wanna close the gap, but I don't know how. Yeah. And it is by taking better action. And I outline tons of frameworks to do that in the book. So Rise of the Reader: Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn.

Yeah.

And if there was a second subtitle or it, or an extension, it would say, so that you can rise to your potential.

'Cause come on, that's what it's all about.

Do you hear that?

Do you hear that, friends? Applying what you learned. All that'll be linked in the show notes. Very last question for you, Nick. There's a quote written on my wall. It's from this cowboy out in Texas and he's an artist. His name's James Victore. He has a big-ass mustache. I just need you to picture him while he's— while I read this to you. He says, the things that made you weird as a kid make you great today. So if we're looking back at baby Nick running around this world, I need you to identify something very weird about you back then that you now embrace and know makes you great.

Hmm.

I was a weird kid, so there are a lot of things for sure. I think being a young person, I was far more empathetic and like conscious of what other people thought in a good way. Being able to filter the conversations I was having and present myself in a certain way. And I got away from that in my teens and 20s but I'm totally back in that world now. I'm super conscious of what other people are going through. I'm super conscious of how my communication impacts them. And so, yeah. I think that was one of my superpowers when I was little. I never gave it credit but I totally give it credit now.

This world needs that superpower, Nick. Thank you for jumping on today. This was awesome.

Thank you, Heather. You're amazing.

Thank you.