In this solo video for his Book Thinkers audience, Nick Hutchison recommends Gunnar Andrí’s book Message from the Middle of Nowhere, whose subtitle is “Icelandic Viking Philosophy for Conquering the Challenges of Business and Life.” Nick explains his personal fascination with Viking culture and his past trip to Iceland, which made him eager to hear Gunnar’s perspective. He characterizes the book as three‑in‑one: an autobiography, a sales guide, and a life‑philosophy work that weaves ancient Icelandic folklore into modern business lessons. The centerpiece of his tip is a passage on page 84 about mastery through repeated practice, illustrated with a humorous shower analogy. Nick expands on the idea that mastery requires continual revisiting of material, likening it to the habits of top salespeople and perpetual students. He highlights Gunnar’s journey from door‑to‑door sales to becoming Iceland’s top salesperson, and shares his own two‑year experience in door‑to‑door sales to underscore the relevance of the book’s teachings. The video concludes with a strong recommendation to read the book, revisit its lessons over time, and apply the mastery principles to improve communication, sales, and life.
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Hello, Book Thinkers family. Today's book tip is going to come from Message from the Middle of Nowhere by Gunnar Andrí. And the reason I'm using this sword as a prop in this video is because the subtitle of this book is Icelandic Viking Philosophy for Conquering the Challenges of Business and Life. And this is the most Viking thing that I own. I'm going to put it down before I hurt somebody. When Gunnar reached out about this book, I jumped at the opportunity for quite a few reasons. I went to Iceland a couple years ago and I loved the experience. Everything about the Viking culture resonates with me because when I was younger, I used to dress up as a Viking for Halloween and I used to have sword fights with my brothers and stuff all the time. I loved everything about Vikings. So Gunnar, having grown up in Iceland, I was like, wow, this is such a cool dude. I want to know what he thinks about business and life. And this book is really— well, it's 3 different things in my opinion. It's number one, an autobiography of Gunnar. He's a very interesting person. Number 2, it's a sales book. It teaches you about proper sales techniques and different ways to approach, you know, different strategies and things like that for effective selling and communication. And then number 3, it's a book about life. And what's interesting about Iceland and its Viking culture is that there's a lot of folklore tied into the culture. And so Gunnar uses a lot of ancient Viking stories and ancient Icelandic stories to tell his stories in this, and I found all of that to be very fascinating. I loved it. It was a very fun read, and it brought me back to my travels over there. So if you're somebody who wants to improve your ability to communicate or succeed at life in general, this is a good book for you. Today's tip is going to come from page 84, and it's about mastery. Gunnar says that he uses this philosophy in his own courses. He teaches sales courses But I'm going to read a big quote from the book here and then talk a little bit about it. Quote, it's very common that people expect to be taught everything in a few hours, and that's also why there are so many popular apps today that teach you book summaries and things like that. But those that manage to acquire skills in this business know that the key to success is returning again and again, even to the same seminars. I love that repetition breeds retention. The more and more that you revisit a subject, The more that you can master it over time. Patience is key. He goes on to say it's the same with showering, which is pretty funny. It isn't enough to take a single shower. Ask anyone who has tried it. The best of the best see themselves as perpetual students, always seeking more knowledge and finding out new ways to remind themselves about the things they already know. It's a matter of always staying alert and ready, keeping your swords and knives prepared before the battle begins. One of the reasons that you probably follow Book Thinkers is that you want to revisit this knowledge all the time. Yes, you get book recommendations, and yes, you get to understand what book might be a good fit for you and for the specific skill that you'd like to implement, but you get to revisit popular books, books that maybe you already have read. And like we talked about, repetition leads to retention. You need to revisit something over time for a very long period of time before you can become a master. And what Gunnar did was he applied his desire to succeed in the sales world and constant education through reading about people like Brian Tracy and all of the greats, Dale Carnegie. And over time, he developed a sales mastery, a skill set that allowed him to become Iceland's number one salesperson. An entire country. It's a small country, but he was the best sales guy in an entire country. That's something to aspire to be. That's something that I aspire to be. And I also identified with Gunnar's story because he started off knocking on doors. Door-to-door sales is very difficult. I did it for 2 entire years, and I can say that I had some of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows. It really teaches you to be an effective communicator when you only have 30 seconds to pitch somebody at their front door. You need to make the sale in order to eat. Those are commission-based jobs. So if you're not an effective sales guy, you will not succeed. Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was fantastic. Gunnar, I look forward to visiting Iceland again soon and getting to hang out with you and talk a little bit about sales strategy and success, have you show me around a little bit. And that's that. Go out there, read something, pick up a copy of this book. It's fantastic. And enjoy your day. Bye. Thank you.
