Nicholas Hutchison: Founder of BookThinkers - Using Books To Make Progress In All Areas Of Life (35)

You are listening to episode 35 of the Lewis and Kyle Show with Nicholas Hutchison from BookThinkers.

I mean, there are dozens and dozens of examples of things that we've implemented directly from books into the business that have worked, like dozens and dozens of them. And so when you look 10 years from now at whatever kind of massive behemoth business BookThinkers is, it's not going to be a question of getting lucky. It's going to be a question of How many books did we apply?

Hello and welcome to the Lewis and Kyle Show, an interview podcast where Lewis and I share the best of what we learn in the areas of entrepreneurship, investing, and health through conversations with inspiring mentors.

In this episode, we talk to Nicholas Hutchison, who runs the Instagram page called Book Thinkers and the related accounts Book Thinkers for women and Book Thinkers Family. He has aggregated the largest nonfiction book community on Instagram with close to 100,000 followers on the main account, probably north of 100,000. If you combine the accounts I've just mentioned. He also runs the Book Thinkers Podcast, which is one-on-one interviews with inspiring authors where he goes into behind the scenes on the books. In the first 20 episodes, he has amazing guests like Russell Brunson, Alex Benayan, Robert Greene, Grant Cardone, and Elena Cardone. In this interview, we talk with him about how he's grown and monetized that audience and the importance and usefulness of books. We also dive into his passion for travel and discuss what's the future for Book Thinkers because of Amazing opportunities he's created for himself by aggregating this large following of book enthusiasts.

Yeah, and I think that, you know, one thread through the entire conversation is just the idea of getting 1% better every day and the effects that has in every area. And, you know, he does that in books, he did that on Instagram, his shirt says progress.

Yes.

I think everything that we talk about with him really It all comes together with the idea of just getting a little bit better every day.

Yeah, I actually, since we recorded this, I went back in and listened to pretty much almost every episode of the podcast, if I'm being honest. And he did one with Evan Carmichael, who's the author of a book called Your One Word. And I heard Nick kind of through that podcast how he explains how his one word is progress. And that's why his shirt said that and that 1% better every day.

But anyway, that's enough teaser.

Super interesting conversation. I hope you all enjoy it and I know you will. So, with that, I'm going to cut to the audio.

Hey, Nick, thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

It's great to have you. I'm super excited for everyone to hear about Book Thinkers and what you've learned interviewing so many incredible authors and just kind of immersing yourself in the book world extremely deeply for a couple of years now. Real quick, for listeners who aren't familiar with you, can you introduce yourself, explain what Book Thinkers is, and tell us just the quick backstory as to how it got started?

Sure. Well, my name is Nicholas Hutchison. I am 26 years old. And I consider myself a student of the world. I love learning from other people, building on the truths that came before me, and then sharing those with the world. And so that's really my mission in life right now. I love making daily progress in every area of my life, and books are a fantastic vehicle to make that happen. And so Book Thinkers is my business. I own it with my co-owner, Ryan. And over the last couple of years, we've done a lot of really exciting things. We have a couple of different Instagram communities, one that has over 90,000 active participants, We also have a mobile application called Book Thinkers Smart Retention. We have the world's number one nonfiction book podcast. It's called Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. And so Book Thinkers is growing and providing more value to people each and every day. And that's sort of where I am today.

You mentioned a lot that it's the Book Thinkers family. Can you explain kind of why you call it that?

I do, yeah, because I get the most fulfillment from providing value to other people. If I can make other people feel a sense of progress in their daily life and they can use books to make their lives better, then that makes me happy and fulfilled. And I feel like everybody's a part of my family when that's happening. And so it's really a community-focused Instagram page. I'm not showing off and showing flashy things. I'm not displaying the money I'm making to everybody else. It's really about helping the audience become better in their daily lives and helping them reach their, you know, unfulfilled potential and things like that. And so that's why I call it a family. And also, you know, a funny story about family. I read a book about branding very early on in Book Thinkers, and part of it said, hey, you need to describe your audience in a specific way. You need to name them. You need to form a community around something that you love. For me, books and Book Thinkers, and then allow your audience to take on their own name. And so I actually did a little survey at the time. I maybe had 1,000 followers or something like that. And I said, do you want to be called Book Thinkers Nation, Book Thinkers Community? What's the name? And most people said family. And so that's how it came to be.

Absolutely. And like you said, that what you want to do is provide value to these people and get them to the point where they feel like they are fulfilled. And you mentioned in our pre-call that you had a very obvious inflection point in your life where you kind of changed direction and started going toward that, that place where you're trying to take these people. And you clearly accredit that moment to books. What was the book or the books that you accredit with having the biggest effect on that inflection point? Sure.

So a little background on that inflection point. I went from a place where I was very average or below average to above average almost in every area of my life. I mean, prior to the inflection point, which was these couple books we'll discuss in a second, I was very unfulfilled on a daily basis. I was kind of just going with the flow, doing what everybody else was doing. I was operating from a place of insecurity on one hand with a lot of social anxieties, and I felt the pressure to conform to what society wanted me to be like. But then I was also operating from a place of ego where I was getting a little bit of success in a couple areas of my life, and I was letting that ego dictate my decision-making. And so I kind of had the worst of both ends there. And I took an internship with a sales company, and my mentor of mine at the time recommended a few books because he said, look, if you're not fulfilled in the classroom, which I was not, I wasn't even showing up to class anymore, then why is that? And I said, it's happening too slowly for me. I'm not getting enough out of these classes because they're broken out over an entire semester. And he said, well, these books are condensing decades of information down into days. And so you can consume that information and all of those crazy lessons in a very short period of time. It's efficiency. So I said, I like that. Let me challenge myself. And so I read a couple of these books and it was pretty painful at first, but wow, did everything change. And so the first book was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And that book represents a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But to me, it taught me the importance of financial literacy. very early on. We don't learn about money in school, so we're not all on an even playing ground. We learn about money in the home. And so, if your parents don't have the best money habits, you're not going to learn the best money habits either. And so, I had a lot of insecurity about money. I went to business school. I didn't do very well in school in the first place, so I didn't have a great shot at getting a great job or a great internship like all my friends did. And so, money was sort of a subject that I shied away from at first. After reading that book, I started to understand more about money. And I said to myself, wow, I can contribute in these conversations. And I have now unleashed more potential in my future. What a brilliant thing. And this really small book that costs like $15 helped to solve so many problems in my immediate life. And so that's an example of one book. I mean, I could go on forever about those early books. If you want, I can give another example.

Let's do one more.

Sure. I was going to say that it's just absolute, like, On the podcast BiggerPockets and a lot of podcasts, that question is asked very often. And even in my own life, my own personal mentors, that book comes up over and over and over again as something that caused an inflection point in these people's lives. And it's just really incredible that Robert Kiyosaki wrote this book 20 years ago and here today it's affected millions and millions of people's lives for the better.

Yeah, there are a lot of reasons why I think it's everybody's first book. It's very simple. The language can be digested by about anybody that understands English. And it's a short book. It's not overwhelmingly long like some of the more popular nonfiction books might be. And so when you're recommending a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad, there's a good chance that somebody is going to read it because of how informal the language is and because of how short the book is. And there's also Some very actionable stuff that you can implement immediately into your life in that book. And so a lot of people know that the education system in the US is somewhat broken, and it's been that way for a long time. And so by creating sort of a decisive line in the sand there, and then allowing people sort of relief by identifying with them and then giving them some solutions, it's just a home run book for a lot of people. And so I think I've read the book 4 or 5 times now, and every time My understanding of what he's trying to communicate to me changes, which is also very interesting.

Totally. I completely agree with that. And something you had mentioned there is, you know, how it's actionable. This is a big thing that's a part of your brand and your messaging that I really resonate with, is behavior change. You know, it's not just sitting down and absorbing as much possible information as possible, but it's actually developing a bias towards action and taking the ideas from books and bringing them into your life. So how do you personally make behavior change part of your reading process? What are your systems or your habits for encountering an idea or a question in a book and actually making that something you experiment with and implement?

Great question. A lot of people major in minor things, so we spend a lot of time doing things that don't have a big impact on our lives. We spend 80% of our time only generating 20% of the results. And so reading can end up as one of those activities, unfortunately for a lot of people. I call them self-help junkies, people who are reading and not implementing. They're not changing their behavior. And so we actually did a study, before I answer your question, of our community, nonfiction book lovers, people who love consuming this kind of stuff, and 94% of them said that they want to retain and implement more information from the books that they're reading. And so it is a big problem. Now, for me, I listened to a podcast years and years ago on the science of success, one of my favorite podcasts, and one of the guests at the time said that he removed his TV And he replaced it with a bookshelf. And so instead of watching TV, he would start to read these books and then systematically, like every 5 books that he finished, he would go back and reread his notes from 5 books or something like that. And I thought, wow, that systematic approach to reviewing your notes, and it definitely will lead to more retention and more opportunities to implement the information. And so I started to do that manually. And so for the last couple of years, I've been taking my book notes. After I read a book, I'm highlighting things, I'm writing down notes during the process, and I'll put it in an Evernote document. And then I would go back and systematically reread those book notes, flex those neural pathways, strengthen my relationship to that information. And therefore I could spit it out on a podcast interview like this, or I could talk about it with my friends, but I could also identify more opportunities to implement those great lessons into my life. And then I was doing that, but I realized a lot of other people still had issues and that system was not bulletproof. And so we developed this BookThinkers mobile application, which allows you to take away your top 10 favorite notes, put them into the application, turn on systematic reminders, and then BookThinkers will push you notifications to come back and reread your book notes at the right frequency because repetition leads to retention. We want to retain this information, ingrain it in our subconscious, And then your subconscious will do the rest of the work for you, which is so brilliant. And that's how I'm doing it today.

I love that answer. I've actually kind of tinkered with a lot of similar systems in the past, some, you know, manually put together spaced repetition type stuff similar to what you have in your app. But what I've done most recently actually is I've put together just a stack of flashcards of like, you know, it's meta. So it's one additional layer of abstraction upon my notes from books. And it's like from my notes from books, what are the notes from my notes and kind of condensing that into something I can read through in like 2 minutes in the morning. And if there's too many, I can kind of thematically separate them. But when I transition now a little bit into asking about your podcast, because, you know, you've gone through years and years and all these, these books behind you of spending time learning about authors and getting decades of wisdom condensed into 500 pages, but with your podcast, you've condensed decades of wisdom into 30 to 60 minute conversations. You've only been able to do that though with, with living authors. Uh, so I have a question. If you could only interview one deceased author, who would that be?

That's a great question. I don't know that he was an author necessarily, but probably Leonardo da Vinci. I found him fascinating. Walter Isaacson wrote an amazing biography about him, and so it's very well documented. His journals and things like that, I would love to have conversations with him about those because he thought about things Hundreds of years before other people approached them. And I find that fascinating to intentionally cultivate his creativity the way that he did with the approaches that he used. I find it so fascinating. So I'd probably choose him. He did write those journals, like I mentioned, so he's technically an author.

Yeah, I also read, I think, half of that Walter Isaacson biography, and the sheer amount of things that this guy was able to do in a period of time where people, like, were far— like, they didn't know what was happening. And I mean, he's tearing apart cadavers, he's drawing models of, like, the human brain, he's building bridges, building, like, these crazy, like, dams in the middle of Milan.

It's just—

it's unbelievable.

Yeah.

I wish that I had done some smart retention on that book to be able to Go over it even better. But what books have your podcast guests, the living ones, recommended the most? Is there any one common theme that you've been able to draw among these top-performing authors and people?

You know, I think that, I think that a lot of people look at historical work and they look at work that has stood the test of time. And so I call those perennial books, books that will live forever because of the importance that they have in our modern-day lives. And so we look forward into the future and we think people generations from now will still be reading those books. And so, you know, I don't have any specific recommendations that come to mind right off the top of my head, but, you know, a lot of those people, a lot of the icons of industry, they look at icons of industry in the past, and that's sort of what they're reading. They're not reading modern-day books, books coming out, you know, in today's age.

That makes sense. Another question I have from, you know, your podcast and your interactions with all these authors is It's a natural thing for someone who spends years reading books to over time get the thought, you know, maybe I should write a book. Has making all of your podcasts and having these detailed conversations with successful authors made you more or less eager to write a book of your own?

Yeah, in certain ways, sort of both answers. I mean, it makes me more eager because I can see on the other side of a successfully published book. Now, these people are impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, and that feels very good. when you're going to sleep at night, you know, and those books will last forever. They say if you're, if you receive a certain amount of Amazon reviews, your book will literally be purchased for the rest of time. And I think that that's a really important thing for a lot of these people. They're leaving a positive dent in the world, but I do ask them offline a lot of questions about the publishing process and it's vicious. There's a lot of uncertainty, you know, even for some authors. Like I just had James Altucher on the other day. and he's published 20-something books and only 2 of them have been successful. And that's a very scary thing to look at, even with somebody who has such a big social following and such a popular blog, mechanisms for distribution, tens of millions of dollars in the bank, and the book still flops. And so it's not about the connections or the environment that you've set up for yourself. Sometimes it's about the actual quality of the book. And so I don't know that I'm that good of a writer, but I still I still have in my gut feeling a book that I want to write soon, within the next couple of years.

That makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, I've kind of had the same thought. You see all these authors and it's extremely inspiring, but you do just an ounce of research into what it takes and you realize that it's a big investment. That's why only so few people do it. I want to transition now to do a little bit of curation because you have such an expertise in a wide range of books. in X circumstance, who would you recommend X book for? So the first question, kind of continuing the Rich Dad Poor Dad theme, someone's interested in investing in real estate, which is another common theme on this podcast that Kyle and I like to talk about. What would be the first books you'd recommend someone go out and read?

Well, I definitely would recommend starting with Rich Dad Poor Dad. The second book that I would recommend is a lesser-known book. It's called The Heart of the Deal, and it's by Anthony Lawley. And so Anthony and I connected, and we were able to meet up in person, and it was such a brilliant experience. But his book is an introduction to multifamily real estate investing. And also sort of, it's also sort of an autobiography of his story coming up from the teenage years all the way to exiting his business. And so understanding the full story instead of just the techniques, I think sometimes has its own benefits. And then you get to follow the person and ask them questions if you can and communicate through social media. And so Anthony is a very accessible person and I would recommend The Heart of the That's a really good one. And then outside of book recommendations, we talked about BiggerPockets before. I would highly recommend checking out the BiggerPockets podcast and also their publishing arm. So, BiggerPockets has now published maybe 10+ books under their own brand, and they also represent a lot of other authors in the real estate space. And so, because real estate is so diverse and real estate investing has a million different opportunities, I would check out their books and see if something resonates with you. They actually have a new book coming out. I believe it's next month and it's 25 Unique Real Estate Come-Up Stories, all addressing different real estate investment methods and different stories from sort of the icons of real estate investing that are alive and well today and have been guests on the BiggerPockets Podcast. So that's another book that I would recommend checking out and pre-ordering. I know that I just received my copy and that's one of the books that I'll prioritize reading in the next couple of weeks.

Yeah. BiggerPockets just has so many free resources. That website has so many resources for anyone that wants to learn real estate investing. And the podcast, we actually had somebody on, his name is Will Brown. It was a few episodes back. And he's just a, he's a 20-year-old, 21-year-old guy who learned how to wholesale real estate by listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. And he listened to every single episode. And when he was doing it, he made paper cranes because like otherwise he wouldn't be able to focus. So he got all the way through and then actually ended up being a guest on BiggerPockets. So it was a really cool story for him.

Yeah, that is a cool story.

But while he dropped out, there are a lot of people that are currently like myself about to enter the real world and graduate college. So, so what books would you recommend to a smart, driven college student about to go out there into the real world?

What books would you recommend to a college student? Yeah, it's another great question. The first book that I would recommend is a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. And in that book, Cal says that essentially having control of your attention and being able to focus on one task for more than a couple hours is a differentiator for a college student because so many college students are coming out today and they don't have the capacity to focus. They haven't trained that area of their brain. And so if you can sit down with somebody that's interviewing you and articulately describe how you can stay focused throughout the workday in a college whatever's in front of you. That's, that's a differentiator in, a differentiator in and of itself. I would also recommend sort of as a follow-up book or a complementary book to that, Indistractable by Nir Eyal. That book teaches you how to basically remove all of the distractions. And I think that that will enhance your ability to focus on your work. So those are 2 books that I would really recommend as far as studying. A 3rd I think would be Limitless. Limitless by Jim Kwik is a new book. It just came out this year. And Jim talks about the benefits of speed reading in that book. And so in all jobs, regardless of industry, regardless of expertise or degree, you have to do some reading. And so if you can accelerate your reading speed and get through whatever portion of your job requires research or reading, then you'll be able to perform more efficiently. And Jim also talks about smart learning and smart reading in that book and ways to retain and implement more information, which you guys know I'm big on. So that's the third book recommendation that I Throw out there.

I absolutely make a testament to the Deep Work recommendation. I've had one or two monologues, to say the least, on this podcast about Deep Work. That's the book that I've kind of read. That was kind of my Rich Dad Poor Dad, one of the first books I read when I started reading that really changed things for me. And I've read it 4 times or so, and I can definitely attest to exactly what you said. If you can have sustained focus concentration, which, spoiler alert, almost all of your competition in terms of people competing for the jobs, people competing for promotions, will not have because they are perpetually distracted, perpetually unable to sustain concentration for more than, let's say, 25-minute intervals, you will double the amount of work that they do when it will seem natural to you. That's happened to every professional experience I've had so far because I've adopted that deep work ethic.

Yeah, it's a fantastic book.

I actually got into— and the other thing about Indistractable, I got into a little bit of a Twitter argument today where I listened to your podcast today in prep for for this podcast with Nir Eyal. And you got into time blocking and someone on Twitter went out and said that time blocking is one of the most overrated things. And I was like, so I completely agree with that.

Let me give you one more. This is a lesser known book, a less popular one. It's called Flip-Flops and Microwaved Fish. And I don't remember the subtitle, but it's by Peter Jawitz. And it is essentially a textbook for entering the workplace and how to navigate workplace culture. And so reading that book, there's a lot of funny workplace experiences that he dealt with in the past that he details. But whether you're a remote employee or you're in an office trying to navigate that space for the first time, there's a lot of to-do lists to check off and a lot of little things that you probably wouldn't thought, you know, you wouldn't have thought about even from the interview process all the way out through, you know, navigating coworker relationships and things like that. So that's a really good book.

That's—

I have not heard that one. You're definitely, uh, you're right about it being under the radar. That's awesome. Yeah, I'll have to put that one in the show notes. So a kind of twist on the curation question, you know, we've kind of thought, you know, I'm a college student wanting to enter the world, or I want to start real estate investing, and we've kind of adopted the habit, okay, let's turn to a book for the answer. Are there situations in which, you know, you identify a goal or there's something you want to do where you think, you know, maybe a book isn't the right first step and there's another actually more high-impact way to get moving towards that objective?

Well, from— for a lot of people, books aren't the answer in the first place. You know, there's auditory learning, there's visual learning. I'm a big fan of reading books, but a lot of people learn better by watching videos in the first place. As far as situationally, I take the stance that in the, you know, for almost— I think for every situation that you could possibly come across, for any goal that you're facing, there is a book that can help you get to the other side of that. So I really do believe that. And if you ask me that question in a little bit, I'll do my best to think of think of a couple situations where maybe it isn't the best, you know, maybe some hands-on situations as far as like engineering or whatever. But I really believe that a good book can solve every single problem.

Yeah, I mean, you're a good guy to believe that in terms of your branding and the kind of the thing that you've created. But so we, we talked briefly in our discovery call about your mindset of resilience that you've been able to build and how, you know, you're confident in yourself and your ability to make things happen in the world. Like, if everything was taken away from you tomorrow, BookThinkers is gone, you're on your feet in a different country, you know, you said that you'd be confident that you could get back to where you are or even better. So what are the principles that you've learned and developed throughout your life that allow you to have the confidence, that sort of confidence, to be able to say that? Sure.

There's a great example where Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street, he says that if you— actually, he did lose everything. He went to jail for a little while, and he came out and a couple months later he was a millionaire. And so he was being interviewed about that process and he said, you know, I could, I could replicate that over and over and over and over again because I have the confidence, I have the swagger, and I have the know-how now to do it. And so I really believe that to become successful in any area of life, you need to get over some uncertainties that you have about yourself. And so I was a victim of a lot of those insecurities for a very long time, but having surrounded myself with so many successful minds for so long, I really believe I have the tools and the methods and the principles and the strategies that I can apply regardless of where I am or in what industry to become successful. And, you know, one of those is resilience like you talked about, but I think it's resilience over a very long period of time. So I'm a big fan of this principle called the compound effect, that small steps, really small steps in the right direction over a very long period of time will lead to a fruitful place in life. And that can be applied anywhere. There's this great example from the book, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, where he says that if a plane is taking off from LA and it's heading to New York City, but before takeoff, you adjust the nose of the plane just 1%, as that 1% compounds, as it's flying across the US, it'll end up about 150 miles off course. And so for me, one of the most successful principles or ways to kind of reinforce my confidence in life is that I know if I make these little 1% changes all over my life, in my health, in my wealth, in my communications with friends, family, loved ones. And then you can kind of break down each one of those categories. Wealth— if I make 1% improvements in my reading, in my investing, in my professional life, in my income, over time you will become successful. It's just math. You know, Anthony Lawley, who I mentioned before, who wrote The Heart of the Deal, he said real estate is sort of a dumb person's way to get rich because it's just math. You just need to be able to show up over and over and over again and take those small steps over a very long period of time and you will end up rich. You will end up financially wealthy. And so I think that we can apply that principle in every single area of our lives. That's one of the principles that I think, or values that I hold, that I think leaves me with that sort of confidence. Because whether it's a sales job, whether you're in agriculture, whether you're in any random industry in any random part of the world, you can apply that principle and become successful over time. And in our discovery call, I know we talked a little bit about, you just need to show up. It does get a little boring sometimes. You know, for me, I've read hundreds and hundreds of personal development books over the last couple of years. And a lot of authors talk about very similar subjects. And so there are things that are being reinforced for me. There are new examples that I get to use when I'm talking to guys like you. But for the most part, I'm reading repetitive content. It's not always super fulfilling, but I know at the end of doing this over and over and over again is the lifestyle that I truly desire, that I truly want. And so the resilience is patience. The resilience is grit. The resilience is knowing and being confident in the fact that you just need to show up over and over and over again and take these very small steps, seemingly insignificant when you do take them, but the result is massively disproportionate to the effort that you're putting in over time.

That last piece, you kind of explained it to us from James Clear as kind of mastering the mundane, as being willing to conquer the boring things that are required. I've heard that explained in a similar way as, you know, taking like a blue-collar work ethic where no matter what, you just show up to work and put in the hours on whatever the problem is. I'm putting that blue-collar work ethic applied to any type of problem and expecting results that way. I've had The Compound Effect on this bookshelf for probably 12 months. I gotta maybe get it a read after that last explanation there.

I'll give you one more analogy from that book that, that relates To this piece of the conversation. They say if you picture a horse race, a horse wins by a nose. Or maybe you could picture like NASCAR or something, a car wins by just a little bit. But do you think that in the horse itself and the, you know, the guy riding it, they get 10 times the reward compared to the horse that finishes in second? But did they put in 10 times the amount of effort? No, it was just a little bit more, but they get 10 times the reward. And so I think for A common listener like any one of us, right? We think, okay, over a very long period of time, you don't need to work 10 times harder than other people. Like, yes, I love the 10x mindset. Grant was a great guest. But if you just put in a little bit of extra effort, an extra phone call, an extra email, you reach out to one more potential guest, that's the difference maker. It is those very small steps. You win and you get 10 times their the reward. You lose with just a little bit less effort and you get nothing. And so that's, that's kind of what keeps me going all the time.

Yeah, I think for me it's like you lose when you quit, you know, and if you keep going, you'll eventually see those results. And it's actually the background on my phone is like an exponential curve, and it's like on this side of the exponential curve where it's flat, you know, it has a— it's pointing to one spot on it says this is pointless because like before you get To the point where you start to see these returns, you know, you feel like you're drudging through nothing when really you're building towards something. But one thing I wanted to ask is, like, you've read hundreds and hundreds of books by all these authors and you're encountering a lot of the same idea. What's something that you've recently encountered for the very first time that you were like, you stopped for a second, like, whoa, this is, this is saying something that I haven't read in hundreds of books before now?

Yeah, sure. I read a book called The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. recently, and I had him on the podcast. And something that blew my mind was his introduction. He talks about something called the drama of the party. And so he says, imagine showing up to a party and everybody there is very drunk, very, very drunk. And so you have a difficult time communicating with those people, right? They're at varying levels of intoxication, but what you realize is that everyone else is intoxicated. So you might try to spark up a conversation with them and they're just swinging back and forth between very emotional states. They're not balanced whatsoever and they just keep drinking and drinking and drinking. You realize when you're reading a lot of personal development books that this might happen in specific areas of your life, right? Everybody else is very emotional. We can use politics as an example. It's very bipartisan in the US right now. You're either on the right or you're either on the left. And there's a very clear line in between them and people hate each other on both sides. And so if you're trying to communicate with people who are drunk at the party, they're going to react emotionally. They're not going to be open to what you're saying. And I find this in the personal development space all the time. And so when he used that analogy as being aware or what we would call like woke these days, you know, you can't just go out there and show this stuff off to everybody. You can't be trying to shove your knowledge everywhere. You need to realize that people are intoxicated. And unless they're sober, they're not going to be willing to hear you out or have a sober conversation with you. And so you need to realize as a sober person that everyone is drunk and that is reality. So go out and live your world. Don't get super upset when people react negatively, right? Let's say you make an error driving and somebody honks at you. Don't get mad at them. Or somebody cuts you off. Don't get mad at them. That's a representation of yourself getting off balance. Realize everybody else is already off balance, right? And so I thought that was super interesting. And then he goes on in the book to talk a little bit more about this subject. And he says that in your day-to-day life, if anything makes you emotional, right, kind of making you drunk in this term, if anything makes you emotional, you need to stop and reflect on that. Because any swing in emotion is where most of the error and unhappiness and the loss of fulfillment comes in your life. And so by stopping, pausing, reflecting, journaling, approaching it all the time until it's solved. When you get to that other side, now you're living a balanced life. You're somebody who is, using the term before, resilient, right? Nothing on the outside is going to hurt you. The Stoic philosophy aphorism amor fati, which is the love of one's fate, is just realizing that the world is as it is and how you respond to it is all that you have control over. And so I thought that drama of the party analogy You know, being somebody who's super into this personal development stuff, whereas a lot of other people think it's like woo-woo sometimes. That was very like— it was a cool analogy to read, and I hadn't read it anywhere else before.

I love that. It's a great way to contextualize something that I've definitely thought about a lot as well, because I mean, you know, you think about all this stuff and not everyone wants to hear about it, and it's not necessarily such a bad thing. You find the audience for that and you don't be upset and you don't try to change people about it either. But we've talked a lot about books and, you know, Book Thinkers, as much as it is just you on camera talking about books and making great summaries and making great content, it's also a genuine business. And I wanted to ask you a couple questions kind of about that side of things, you know, the behind the scenes growing an actual company. Yeah. So first, in terms of focusing on the audience, can you talk a little bit about what strategy and philosophy you had for growing your audience? And then, you know, kind of once you're seeing some success with that, how you approached monetizing that?

Sure. Well, we'll use the Instagram audience specifically because that's our largest community and that's where I've spent most of my time testing different strategies to grow the audience. So when I first started the Instagram, I found it very— not depressing, but it definitely lost my energy when people didn't react in a positive way, right? You only have a couple hundred followers or maybe even a couple thousand followers, but you're not getting a lot of engagement and the community is relatively small. small. And I read a book called Crush It by Gary Vee. It's the older version of Crushing It. And in that book, he talks about the importance of an audience of one. If you have one person that cares about what you're doing, then you've already won. You're helping to impact at least somebody else's life. And you never know who that person is. He uses the example in the book that we over— we overvalue data sometimes. We think, because I'm not getting as many views as my competitor, because I'm not getting as many views as my other friends, I should stop. But the value of your views is very hard to put a value to. The person that is watching behind the scenes or communicating with you could hold the keys to unlocking all of your potential and your growth. And so that thought early on helped me kind of push through that early phase, which was— it wasn't very interesting, right? You want to talk about answering all of your comments and things like that as you grow your page, but you're only getting 1 or 2 comments. It takes 5 seconds And so pushing through that phase, realizing that as long as you're helping to impact somebody's life, keep going, keep pushing. There are brighter things ahead, right? That same compound effect principle. You will gain momentum as you roll the snowball down the hill, right? It will get bigger and bigger. It just takes a lot of time. So that was one thing that I faced. And then another Gary Vee strategy or sort of mindset that I adopted was called the $1.80 strategy. And so very early on in my Instagram, I would get on 2 times a day in the morning and in the evening, and I would search popular hashtags. So I'd search something like personal development book, and I would go to the trending posts and I would leave a genuine comment, my 2 cents. And so Gary Vee's $1.80 strategy says do that 90 times a day. Search a hashtag, look at the top 9 trending posts, leave your 2 cents on each one, repeat that 10 times, and now you have $1.80. And so I did that a couple times a day and that did a lot for me. It helped me understand more about the competitive landscape, what other people are finding value in, what is creating a lot of engagement on other accounts. It also helped introduce me to new books in my sort of area of expertise, which was books. And by commenting on other people's posts and leaving genuine feedback, I was never like, hey, follow me or check out Book Thinkers. It was more like, I really liked this book, or hey, I haven't read that before, thanks for sharing a summary, things like that. It does give you the opportunity to get new followers because people might only get a couple comments and now they get a notification from this random page and they check you out and they say, hey, I do like his stuff, follow. And so I did that morning and night for a very, very long time, and that was a big strategy for me. Another thing that was very important with the growth of my community was Receiving feedback. Early on, I A and B tested different types of content all the time. I was coming up with new ideas. I was trying new, new styles of content. I was changing the format and layout of my page all the time. And I was polling my audience. Instagram's a great tool for a business owner because you can throw a poll up on your Instagram story and put, do you like this type of post better or that type of post better? And let people vote. And so you get real feedback and then you can implement it. Or you can ask questions like I used to do all the time, which was, what do you want more of? What am I doing? Or what am I not doing that you wish I was doing? What am I doing that you want more of? That kind of stuff. And so listening to the audience and really applying that. And then also getting, you know, here's another one too. Make a lot of friends in your space. You know, there are a lot of other book accounts that help promote my content. I help promote their content. They give me great ideas. We have fantastic conversations offline. And so You know, leveraging the network and always making sure that you're overdelivering on content by doing your homework behind the scenes. You know, that was another very, very interesting thing for me. The last thing that I'll mention, you know, because there might not be a ton of content creators out here, the last thing that I'll mention is I read a bunch of books on branding. One was called Influencer by Brittany Hennessey. One was called From Individual to Empire by Laura Bull. I read Your One Word and Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael. Those were great branding books in my opinion. There's plenty more down the list, but they all talk about the importance of identifying your purpose and being able to communicate that to your audience. When somebody shows up on your Instagram page, your layout, your bio, your name, your picture, it all matters. You're trying to convert that person to a follower, and so by telling them in your bio what they can expect to see, on your Instagram feed will help you increase the chances that they're going to follow you. And that's also very important. You need to build out a legit brand, not just post random content all the time. So those are a ton of strategies. I mean, I have a million more, but if you implemented all of those, I know that you would grow your page.

That's a fantastic primer on social media marketing on any platform, really. So then the follow-up question there, and thank you for sharing that. in such great detail. I'm gonna have to re-listen to that and document those 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tips there. But so the second piece, you've been extremely successful. You put your head down and did 90-180 for days and days and days and days and months until you had a substantial following. But how do you, you know, turn people into a business and kind of monetize the fact that you now are getting a lot of attention for this group?

I tell people all the time, you need to grow an audience first and then look for opportunities to monetize.

It.

The first way that I monetized Book Thinkers was, it actually wasn't the community, it was the authors that sat above the community. A lot of authors, they spend so much time, maybe years of their lives writing these amazing books and then boom, they have no audience, nobody adopts the book. That's a very depressing feeling for a lot of these authors. Authors first started when I had a couple thousand followers, sending me direct messages saying, hey, I'd love to send you a copy of my book totally free of charge. Just give me your address and if you want to post about it, post about it. And so at the time I was like, whoa, I'm getting free books in the mail. I don't have to spend any money on it anymore. And I'm networking with fun people. I'm having calls offline with them. We're talking all the time. All of these people are super successful. Like, whoa, that's awesome. But then one time I got a message that said, hey, how much do you charge for book promotion? I thought, charge for book promotions? I never even thought about it. I can get paid to read? And so I think I threw out a number that said, you know, I gave them options because I do have a sales background. I know that if you give a couple different options, some of them super unrealistic, but one of them very realistic, you're more likely going to get it. So I think I said something like, you know, I'll do $40 for a picture post, but $60 for a video post. So I'm like, extra $20, you get a video post. And it was just over DM and he chose the video and I'm like, cool, I just got paid $60 to read. Now I was making a lot of money in my full-time job and Book Thinkers was very much a side hustle at the time. So I'm like, I'm already reading, if I can make a few dollars, why not? This was years and years ago. And then over time I started to really figure out how to monetize the book promotions. I realized that, you know, my audience does consist of a lot of people who consume these books, but it also consists of a lot of authors. And so there was a need that wasn't being met. I decided to step up and fill that void. And so I worked my way out, you know, all the way up to a bunch of money that I won't say for a lot of book promotions. I stopped doing them this year because I started to focus on my podcast and reading for the podcast. But you can make a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars doing book promotions on Instagram, uh, just having a book account. So I listened to the audience. I started to have conversations. I came from a place of understanding and I decided to fill that void. You know, the next way that I monetize the account, well, we've done a couple of things in between the book promotions and the mobile app, but the next really big way is the mobile application that we put out. As I said, 94% of the followers on my Instagram survey said that they had an issue retaining and implementing information. And so I looked at my system. I said, how can we replicate this? In a way that other people can use it. Mobile apps are very accessible nowadays and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to build one anymore. And so my business partner and I, Ryan, we put the money together. We looked at maybe 20 different mobile app development companies based in Boston, which is where I live. We interviewed all of them. We created this little matrix across all the different qualities, including price and location and timeline and things like that. We picked one, we built the mobile app, we put it out, you know, and now we've got hundreds and hundreds of subscribers paying us for this service, but it's filling a void. As long as you can provide value and fill a void in somebody else's life, accelerate their path to maybe financial independence or something, then they'll pay you for that. So that's another way that we monetize the audience. And we've done everything from e-commerce to other offline author opportunities and collaborations and stuff like that.

And I know you mentioned to us that the mobile application, you know, isn't complete in your eyes. There's still a lot on the table there in terms of your vision for it. Can you share a little bit about like what you think it could be in the future?

Yeah, well, today it's very simple. It's a tool in your pocket, right? You put your notes in like I was saying before, and then it will systematically remind you. We don't have a huge database of books to pull from yet. You know, we have some bugs that we're working through and little things that we're looking to fix, but the foundation is getting set to grow the app and have, you know, a million iterations moving forward that are progressing the opportunity for us to help people retain and implement information. And so gamification is one example, having badges within the app that you can earn for reading specific books or an amount of books, using some more social features to to help the virality and the sharing from one person to another, like an activity feed where you can friend other people and you see what they're reading and what their notes are, maybe from other books. You can compare yourself to other readers and see what percentage of books overlap, or you can highlight some of your favorite books, some more social sharing opportunities where you can generate some cool images right out of the app of maybe your bookshelf or something like that. Share it right to social media. And so things like that are definitely on the horizon. And the idea, you know, Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, in his book Blitzscaling, he talks— actually, it's actually in his podcast, I think, is where I first heard it, Masters of Scale or something like that. He talks about the importance of putting out an MVP, a minimally viable product. And he says, if you're not embarrassed by your MVP, you're too late.

Mm-hmm.

Because you need to put it out in an embarrassing stage, which, you know, we're not embarrassed of the app. It works and it performs really well for what it's intended to do, but it's not all the way there yet, like we were discussing. So you need to put it out and collect legit feedback from the market. Because if we went out there and tried to perfect everything I just said to you before we even put it out there, we wouldn't know if that's what the market actually wants. And so put out something, the foundation, and then build upon it. Using feedback from real users, real data, things like that. And so that's kind of the way that we did it, and that's the way that we approached it. And also, by doing that, you put the MVP out, you collect working capital, and then you use that working capital to build the app. It becomes its own ecosystem rather than looking for outside investment or ways to accelerate the growth using external money or external people.

I mean, that's really kind of shows the beauty of Using your business as the backdrop for reading and applying everything you're picking up along the way, because that's another thing I'd mentioned to kind of my question earlier about how do you find ways to apply what you are picking up in books to life. And kind of the answer is just to do stuff. Like if Kyle and I have this podcast, and all of a sudden I read a marketing book, I actually have a sandbox to play in.

Exactly.

And so having a business, or if you know, if you're in a leadership role, and you actually do manage people, it's not all that complicated to say, how do I apply all these ideas from these leadership books? And it kind of sounds like you really are genuinely informing your business decisions and your technical decisions from some of the books that you've already mentioned just in this podcast. I mean, not even to mention your social media strategy, which was just you sharing, I read this and I applied it and it worked. And, you know, which—

Story of my life.

Yeah.

Exactly. Pretty simple formula at the end of the day.

It is.

Yeah. And that, that's the behavior change piece that we were talking about. You know, I mean, that is the void that the app is filling, and that's why we monetized it that way. But behavior change from books has changed my life. I mean, I'm reading these books, I'm taking models from the books, and I'm applying them into the business. I mean, there are dozens and dozens of examples of things that we've implemented directly from books into the business that have worked, like dozens and dozens of them. And so when you look 10 years from now at whatever kind of massive behemoth business Book Thinkers is, it's not going to be a question of getting lucky. It's going to be a question of how many books did we apply? Was it hundreds? You know, and that's exactly what we're on that path right now. And going back to your other question about confidence, like I'm very good at implementing things directly into my life from books now. That's also why I'm confident. Strip BookThinkers away, say we get sued and lose the entire business, that's fine. I have tons of other ideas going in my head right now, and I can't wait to start implementing on those, you know, after BookThinkers. So it's, it's always just constant motion and momentum in my head.

That's great energy. One book that's come to mind that I just feel like I have to mention, off topic but on topic, is How to Take Smart Notes by Sanki Ahrens, if you're familiar with it.

I haven't read it, no, but it sounds like it'd be perfect for me.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great book on Basically how the idea of personal knowledge management is kind of the one of the books that forms the backdrop for Roam Research, you know, that note-taking app which is kind of blowing up in the personal knowledge management space.

Mm-hmm.

And he talks about how— I mean, I'm about to give the whole book summary here. Niklas Luhmann is a German sociologist who basically didn't do any formal education past a bachelor's degree, but because he had such a great system for reading and applying ideas from books, He, when he decided he wanted to become a researcher, ended up being one of the most prolific writers at his university and getting an appointment, skipping all of graduate school, because his process of reading and applying ideas, which again is kind of what the app is built around enabling people to do, was just so efficient and so helpful into turning ideas into immediately actionable thoughts that his system just turned him into like one of the most prolific researchers ever. So that book's kind of inspiring me for the idea of How do I remember what I read? And one thing that you're doing really well from that, and I've kind of used similar tools like Readwise, which is a great tool for showing you your highlights from books on a regular interval with the same goal of, you know, helping you remember what you read, is highlights is a very passive process and that leads to a lower amount of learning. Whereas something like your app, you know, I'm forced to, out of my own soul, out of my own hands or whatever, come up with what are my 10 most important lessons. And that automatically makes them more impactful. And then again, reviewing something in the words that I thought of them is gonna make me more likely to remember it as well. So I'm really inspired and love what you're doing, and I think you'll find in that book that you're doing a lot of things right, but maybe you'll get some other ideas too.

Yeah, no, I appreciate the recommendation. And yeah, that importance of a defined cadence I think is really important and maybe will be reinforced by that book because You know, reviewing at a random interval absolutely is better than not reviewing at all. But reviewing at a specific interval, we call it the forgetting curve. It's, you know, a popular scientific theory that states that the more you review something, the longer the interval is that you'll be able to retain it. So, you know, the BookThinkers app, we push you a reminder a couple times up front, and then each time after that, you know, the reviews are getting longer and longer and longer out because you are able to retain. And so you've got to flex those neural pathways a few times up front, you know, and then you'll be able to retain for longer periods of time.

I mean, and those same methods can be applied to studying, and that's why flashcard systems that use that same algorithm are so popular with medical students or anything like that. But I think we've nerded out a good bit about kind of PKM and spaced repetition, and I want to transition now into the bonus round and kind of talk about some additional passions you have that we haven't brought up. First, tell us that travel is one of your true passions in the world. And using The 4-Hour Workweek and other similar books, you've kind of had a roadmap for building BookThinkers to be a business that you're able to run virtually, remotely, and has enabled you to travel. So first question is, where is the favorite place that you've recently traveled and just what about it made you love it so much?

Back in January of this year, so pre-COVID, I went to Peru with my girlfriend for a few weeks. And I loved Peru as a country. Lima, Peru is totally underrated. I really enjoyed that city. It sits right on the water. You can use those little scooters and zip around the city. They have amazing food. It's very inexpensive to travel to. Everybody was extremely friendly. And Lima is one of, you know, the area that we stayed in Lima is one of many districts. I think there are like 15 or 16. And they say that most of them are not very safe. That's what you read about online. But it was a very safe experience. We traveled all around. We did tons of excursions. You know, like drinking tours around the city and things like that. So loved everything about that experience. And then we went from Lima over to Cusco, Peru. We took a train out to Aguas Calientes and we hiked Machu Picchu. We also did all the Incan Valley stuff. And Machu Picchu is very difficult to describe how positive and strong the energy is up there. I mean, I'm not somebody who knows how to articulate it very well. But sitting at Machu Picchu and looking around, knowing that it's one of the wonders of the world, the modern wonders of the world, feeling the energy, like wondering about how all of this got up there in the first place. You know, those massive stones that are razor-cut thin that are sitting, you know, stones don't even originate from that mountain. And like everything about it was just fantastic. And so spending a few weeks in Peru, I really came to love their culture and everything about it.

That's amazing. And I know that you've done a lot of like adrenaline junkie stuff. You jumped out of planes and, you know, scuba diving, all these things. But do you have one situation or story that sticks out to you as like the craziest or most dangerous that you found yourself in while traveling? Or maybe even, I guess, at home too?

Well, I went— so it's funny, I went skydiving this past weekend and it reminded me of how terrifying paragliding was. So I went paragliding in Medellín, Colombia last year in 2019. And we went, we booked it on maybe an Airbnb excursion or some bootlegged version of Airbnb. And we went up and it was very sketchy. You know, nobody spoke any English. We were jumping off the side of a mountain. There was no like formal infrastructure set up or anything like that. And the initial experience was fantastic. I mean, we ran off the side of a mountain. And the guy on my back again didn't speak a single word of English. And we kind of like tripped our way off the side of the mountain. And I was a little sketched out about that. The rest of the experience was beautiful. We're up like, I don't know how many thousand feet above Medellín, which sits kind of down below sea level. And so we had beautiful views and we sat up there for a while, but we had 3 false landings. The guy couldn't get control of the chute. And so we came in And at some obscene speed and missed the landing. My feet almost knocked some other guy's head off that was down there trying to like help us land. We circled around, missed again. We circled around, missed again. We circled around and we landed, but not anywhere near where we were supposed to land. We landed like 50 feet off in the wrong direction on a slope. And I just thought to myself like, yikes, I shouldn't be doing this. But because of how crazy it was, it was a brilliant experience. And I'll give you one more. I did, I did an ATV trip with my friends in the mountains in Costa Rica, like miles outside of this. I mean, you know, tens of tens of miles outside of the city. So we're in the middle of nowhere. And at part of this ATV trip, we showed up to a rope swing. I don't know if you guys saw this on my Instagram stories, but I have a video where I walk on the platform where there's this rope swing and it's missing boards and it's not stable. And one of my friends who's with me, he's actually a structural, a structural bridge engineer. And he's like, I would never step on that thing and, you know, in a million years. But I'm like, $20, you don't even need to sign a waiver and you're allowed to drink during it? Like, yes, I'm in. And so there was nobody else there and I did this rope swing and it was terrifying. Like, the guy was joking around with us. He's like, yeah, I mean, we don't have you sign a waiver because if you fly off into the woods, like, we're so many miles outside of the city that there's no way to even find you or get you to a hospital. So like, what's the point? I'm just sitting there like, this is my kind of thing. And so legit, like a beer in one hand and my GoPro in the other, you know, get up to the platform and I'm shaking like a leaf. And the little harness he puts on you has duct tape on it. And man, it was scary, but I survived.

Well, that gives me PTSD because when I was 13, I had a similar experience, jumped off a rope swing and And I wasn't fine. I broke my femur in half.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so anything about rope swings, jumping in the water, I'm completely averse to.

Yeah, and it was a weird rope swing. Like, it went way out over the jungle and then it came back and you had to basically, you know, you were harnessed in but you swung until you stopped and then some guy like ran over and pulled the rope over to the side of the mountain and attached it to something and Like you could barely touch the ground and then he like unhooked you. It was very, you know, very sketch. But I'm with you, I have PTSD about it too.

That's hilarious. Well, moving on to a different question, we know that you're a Lakers fan, so if you could put any 5 Lakers players from any of the past teams onto, onto one team and watch them play, who would those players be?

So I'm actually a Celtics fan. fan. But I sent—

so I had Robert—

Let me ask you a question. I had Robert— I'll answer it Celtics. But I had Robert Greene on my podcast recently who wrote a lot of very popular books, including The 48 Laws of Power. And Robert is from LA. And he's been a fan of the Lakers since the '60s. Now, my dad is from Boston, and he's worked in the footwear and apparel industry forever. And so he had some friends at Converse and He was very attached to like that Larry Bird Boston Celtics kind of era. And so I mentioned that to Robert Greene and we kind of went back and forth a little bit. You know, Celtics-Lakers will probably be the NBA championship this year. And I ended up telling my dad that story and he found an old Magic poster that was super exclusive that was like a very small Converse rollout. And so I sent that to Robert Greene after the podcast as a little bit of like, you know, will I see you in the championships kind of thing? You know, poking fun at him. I do think account management after you film a podcast is really important with specific guests, but we can get into that later. And, you know, for Celtics, you know, it's tough. I mean, for a long time I was a really big basketball fan. Like I was very into basketball. Nowadays I'm a little bit less into it. You know, those older players back in the day, like Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, I think were superstars of the sport. And, you know, that I grew up listening to my dad talk about them, so I'd put them on a team. But then the new kind of Big 3 that the Celtics had with Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, like, those are also icons. So, you know, it'd be some combination of those 6 players probably.

Oh my bad, no offense. Sorry, it's like someone called me an Auburn fan.

No, it's okay. Speaking of college football real quick, we were talking about Vince Young before, I think, or maybe I didn't mention it to you, but But he was a Texas quarterback back in the day and then he was drafted to the Titans and he was my favorite football player ever. And just lined up a dinner with him for next month just to like hang out and talk. And I'm super excited. I think he was like pick number 3, maybe in the draft at the time.

How did you land that? How did you just go on a dinner with Vince Young?

Yeah, no, he— I posted a video at the beginning of COVID on Book Thinkers wearing an old Vince Young jersey because I'm not kidding at the time. I was Vince Young's number one fan. I played a lot of Madden at the time. I don't play video games anymore, but I was super into it. And Vince was my guy. Like, you had Vince Young at quarterback scrambling everywhere, you know, nobody could catch you. And so it was a lot of fun at the time. And I mean, he was a superstar. And, you know, being on the COVID of Madden and everything. And so anyway, I wore his jersey a lot and I wore it in a video earlier this year. And somebody forwarded it to him or tagged him in it or something because I didn't, and he followed me. And I was like, oh cool, Vince Young followed me. So I DM'd him and we started chatting a little bit. We went back and forth and, you know, just came— became friendly over Instagram.

And an audience, man, that's amazing.

Yeah, yeah. And so I hit him up and I'm just like, you know, he just started a real estate business in Austin because that's where he went to school at Texas. And I just messaged him. I'm like, hey, I'm going to be in Austin for a few months, would love to take you out to dinner. He's like, Sure, dude. And then he let me know that he has a book that he's writing right now and asked if I knew any publishers. And so it just became a reciprocal relationship pretty fast.

That's an incredible story. That's kind of applying the Third Door ethos, which is actually the next question I wanted to ask you, kind of on that same note of account management of past podcast guests, but also just getting them on the place, the show in the first place. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a great deal of overlap between some of the guests you've had and probably will have. Some of the dream guests for Kyle and I. So what are some of the strategies you've taken for connecting with a lot of these, you know, high-profile, high-impact authors besides having a dedicated audience of 100,000 people that self-identify as loving books?

Yeah, well, that one helps. It helps a lot. Well, for those, those listening that, that haven't read The Third Door, I know you mentioned it and you love the book, but I would highly recommend that book. I mean, Alex, Alex really takes you on a journey That, that is applicable to your own life. Yeah, there you go. And okay, so some strategies that I use. I use as many channels as humanly possible when I'm reaching out to somebody. I think it's the first and foremost thing. It's effort. It's hard work. You've really got to get creative. And so start at the top of the funnel. Start with social media. You know, you could shoot a message to every single person. I mean, every single person that is involved with that person as well. But start with every piece of social media and then work your way to things like LinkedIn. Find people that work for their business, send them messages with your podcast media kits and your pitch and whatnot. I think that that one's worked for me really well. I also fill out speaking forms on authors' websites or potential guests' websites. So I get pretty creative in that realm as well. And, you know, I use friends and referrals a lot. If I know that 2 people interact and I look at a past podcast guest, I'm not afraid to ask, you know, hey XYZ, I see that you socialize a lot with, you know, ABC. Would you mind making an introduction if you feel that you had a positive experience with me? And that works all the time. Like, I'll use one funny example. So I had a former Navy SEAL sniper, Brandon Webb, on my show, turned successful business owner, CEO, multimillionaire. And at the end of the show, I just asked a very simple question. Hey, Do you have any friends that you'd like to introduce me to that maybe would like to come on the show and would find value taking advantage of my audience? Because he had a great experience. And he said, yeah, sure. Here's my friend Kamal Ravikant. So I had Kamal on the show. Kamal had a positive experience. We built a lot of rapport. And I said, hey, Kamal, you have any friends? You know, since you were a referral, do you want to make any more referrals? And he introduced me to James Altucher and Jerick Robbins. And then I have really positive experiences with them. Now those 4 people are very tight with each other. And so when they meet up, they'll have all been on my show. They'll strike up conversation about it. Maybe somebody else will be around and that kind of networking effect or the viral effect will take place without you being there as long as you provide really good value. So that's another strategy that I would recommend. But kind of the overarching theme here, the notes on your notes, is that if you come from a place of value first, you offer value, you make sure that you understand what they're trying to accomplish in life and you align your messaging with that. you'll be more successful. And so very easy comparison would be Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone doesn't really care that much about his mission. He cares about selling books. He cares about growing his real estate portfolio. So I'm gonna help him sell books and grow his real estate portfolio in my messaging. Whereas somebody like Kamal Ravikant, who I just mentioned, he cares about impact. He cares about helping people through tough times. So I'm gonna use that in my messaging. Those are 2 very, very different messages. Selling the exact same thing, which is I want you to come on my podcast. And so the blanket messages that I receive on Book Thinkers all the time for podcast interviews, or hey, you know, like I want you to post something on your story and I'll pay you for it, like I could— hey, you know, they don't even use my name or my handle or anything. It's so generic. It's like, did you even follow me? You know, most of the time I check them and they don't even follow me. So it's Be very specific and do your research. I think that's kind of like the overarching method and then blitz people a million miles an hour. Last thing I'll mention on this subject is I had Heather Monahan on recently. She wrote a book called Confidence Creator. And Heather was talking about how she got Gary Vee on her show. She said that she probably reached out in her best estimate 1,000 times in different forms.

Oh no.

1,000 times. But guess what happened? You know, it happened. She put on Google Alerts. She saw that Gary Vee partnered with a new wine company. She was in the wine industry. She reached out to their executives, provided them a ton of free value, and then in return they said, hey, if we could do anything. And she's like, Gary Vee, I want him on my show. And so that's how it happened.

You really caught my attention when you said Google Alerts. That's a great idea for being the first to reach out when there's something exciting. It's, hey, you've, you know, launched a product. Someone like Cal Newport, for example, is a huge dream guest for me. And it's if you can be the first person to ask when, you know, he's— you're on his email list and you're the first person to notice he's launching a new book and you're the first to say, hey, can I help you promote your new book? Not, hey, do you want to do your 75th podcast to talk about Deep Work, which he wrote in 2016? It's, hey, you're publishing this planner in November, like, how can I help you?

Mm-hmm.

But you also have to have the audience to catch that up. But for someone where you don't have that channel already set up, Like being on their newsletter, or you just don't— maybe they don't have a newsletter, Google it. That's, that's a great tip.

Yeah, timing matters a lot too. I didn't touch on it at all, but I've been very fortunate with some of my guests coming on, you know, saying things for the 75th time because authors don't want to do that. But if you do catch them when they have a new book coming out, or maybe you're trying to get a real estate investor who just made a big deal or was just on BiggerPockets or is promoting some program that he's selling, like That's the right time to reach out. And as I said, you're catering your message to that thing. And so that's why timing, I think it only helps accelerate your opportunity to get them.

Absolutely. Who to you are your dream guests? Some people that have eluded you or maybe seem impossible? Because like the list of people that you've had on, for me, seems impossible. So like, who is it? Like Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Donald Trump? Like, who are we Who are we looking at?

Yeah, I did reach out to Donald Trump because, you know, he wrote a sales book and I was like, Art of the Deal is a classic.

Yeah.

The Rock would be fantastic, right? He's just the coolest guy in the world. Here are a couple. So Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek, you know, and a series of other books that are all my favorites. I would love to have Tim. We talked during our prep conversation about how impossible to reach he is. Now I've had a couple people on my show already that were in Tools of Titans or Tribe of Mentors. I've had a couple people on my show that he's interviewed. And so the bigger that roster becomes, the more likely that I will accidentally bump into him one day. You know, talking about Alex Benayan as an example, like I've chatted with Elliot Bisnow. Elliot has a book coming out next year. If I can be Elliot's guy, you know, and then provide him tons and tons of value for a long time, eventually get invited to Summit. Tim's sitting there, like, that's the perfect time to bump into him. So Tim is like my dream guest. I think I want to be a lot like Tim in the future as well, where you kind of make your money and then you drop back, you provide value from behind a closed curtain, and you don't let anybody in. Like, that's kind of my ideal life. Another guest who actually has a book coming out next month is Matthew McConaughey. I think he's like the coolest dude. And he has a— his biography is coming out next month, autobiography. And so I just reached out to his team, fingers crossed. He's another really cool guy and he's one of my favorite actors. Maybe somebody like Will Smith as well. You know, I love biographies and I love applying sort of general life advice to personal development rather than a book written specifically for personal development. So those are the stories that fascinate me.

That's cool.

And we, we also talked about Ryan Holiday. He's absolutely one of my dream guests and So happy I'm talking to him on Tuesday of next week.

You know, I found out today in his, his email that he is an investor in ButcherBox. So I'm gonna see if I can work that into a creative pitch one day. I don't know, for us to get Ryan. I don't know. I have ButcherBox in the freezer. So my sister didn't hear that, but I got— I got— but yeah.

All you gotta do is provide tremendous value to somebody at ButcherBox, and then they're gonna say, what can I do in return? And you say, I just want to talk to Ryan just once, just one time.

Let's get the CEO of ButcherBox on here, Kyle. Let's see if we can make that happen.

We'll clip this moment, send it to Ryan after having provided—

We'll actually just find a sequence of all the clips where we've made mention of something that's in that, you know, police station kind of red yarn diagram of how we schemed it, and we'll send him the whole explanation of the, the lengths we went to to make this happen. And he'll either be extremely scared or—

This, this clip will help. Hey Ryan Holiday, since we already had an amazing conversation— by the way, this is Nick at Book Thinkers— Lewis and Kyle are cool dudes and you should be on their show.

Perfect. We might open with that.

We've got AI, Lewis. We got AI that we can, we can change Ryan Holiday to any name. We've got it. We're good. Ready to go.

Now all you have to do is have an amazing interview on Tuesday.

So yes, yes. And you know what's so funny is, uh, when I had Robert Greene on, I mentioned— because, because Ryan worked for Robert for a while— and I mentioned Robert, I'm like, hey, I have Ryan coming on. He's like, well, this better be a good interview, otherwise I'm telling Ryan it wasn't a good interview. And at the end he's like, I'll tell Ryan it was great. So I've been working to get Ryan for a long time. You know, he's somebody who, who we talked about. It took a lot of creative different angles and a lot of unanswered messages. Before I got Ryan to accept.

That's great. I think the other angle I might try to do is if we can work through the Alabama system, our school. He's been a guest speaker here to the football team a couple of times, so that's our other potential route we need to brainstorm, Kyle.

Absolutely. We gotta get Nick Saban.

We gotta get Nick Saban, Tua, and we'll just— and then Tua will get a biography one day, plug him to you, the Tua story, the Hawaiian man, and it'll be sick. So We are kind of just rambling now and having fun brainstorming the future of podcast intersections. But where can people catch up with you? What's your call to action for anyone who really enjoyed your perspective and your commentary today?

I would encourage everybody to go to Book Thinkers on Instagram. It is the best place to find us. And in the link, in the little link that I built in my bio, you can see a lot of the other things that we're doing. So it'll connect you to our e-commerce or our podcast. Connect you to other social media programs that we have going on, our website, everything else Book Thinkers. So check that out, just Book Thinkers on Instagram. It's the best place to find me. And I do, you know, I say this with caution, but I answer every single Instagram message over time. You know, sometimes it takes me a few days, but I try to get ahead of them. You know, I also have some people help me out answering them, and they'll forward me anything super interesting. So feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any questions about books, you know, we're starting to build out a little book discovery thing as well, so you could check out on the website. If you want a book recommendation, either scroll through my feed or go to the website. Don't DM me and ask, but for anything that's interesting, feel free to shoot me a message.

Oh great, this has been awesome. Kyle, thank you so much for making this one happen, and Nick, thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, thanks guys.

That wraps up our conversation with Nicholas, also Book Thinkers, You know, as we said in the beginning, it's obvious to you now how this, this common thread of getting 1% better shows up in every area of his life. And it was just super interesting to hear him talk about his passions between books and traveling and, and the future of Book Thinkers and the future for him. What'd you think, Lewis?

No, I agree. I think it's such a powerful concept how, you know, books are just such a reliable way. They talk about this a lot on Nick's podcast, just to to turn decades into days, right? That's what they say. If you need to learn about some area of improvement in your life, there's really not much better strategy than finding the best book on that topic and reading it. Someone who spent a decade thinking about the exact problem you're trying to solve put all of their wisdom into a couple hundred pages that you can get through in a couple of hours. And when you do that over and over again in every area of your life, you're gonna see continuous progress. And Nick's just such a, like, beautiful demonstration of that and how he's applied that to his business problems, to his personal life, to his passions, to his finances, and what he's been able to become because of that. So I was really encouraged by that conversation. I hope you all learned as much as we did. And if you did and want to support Kyle and I and encourage us to get 1% better, the best way for you to do that is subscribing on iTunes or leaving a rating or review. And if you ever have any feedback for us and want to say good job, bad job, do this, don't do this, bring on this person, we're open to it. So send us a message on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, @LewisKyleShow or something similar.

The—

we've been around long enough now where the search engines can find us with most combinations of those names. So hit us up if you got something to say, we appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. See you in a week with the next episode. Have a good one. Bye-bye.