MBA1828 Guest Teacher – Steph Clarke – How to Get the Most Value From the Books You Read

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Hey O welcome to the $100. Our savvy business builders get a leg up on the competition every single day with their daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest Teacher episode. On our Guest teacher episodes, I bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have a very special guest, Steph Clark. And Steph is going to be teaching you how to get the most value from the books you read. Steph is a facilitator, designer, podcaster and bookworm based out of Melbourne, Australia. As a facilitator, she helps teams work better together and have much needed conversations. When she's not facilitating, you'll find her reading nonfiction books and sharing their three big ideas in her podcast, Steph's Business Bookshelf. And let me tell you, this is a pretty awesome podcast. I can't wait to tell you more about it later. But of course, here on the $100 MBA show, it's all about you. She's going to be sharing with you her best strategies on how to get the most out of every book you read. Not only is she's going to show you how to increase your comprehension, but also your retention so you can remember what you learn as well as how to read more books in general. This is a fun and practical business lesson. This is why I was so excited to have Steph on so so let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Today's guest teacher, Steph Clark and the host of Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast, is here to help you get the most out of every book you read. If you're a fan of the show, if you've been listening for a while, you know that I love reading awesome nonfiction books. I read around 50 books a year because I'm a big believer that you are what you read, right? Whatever you put into your head, whatever you feed your mind, will influence you as a person and the actions you take in your life and in your business. So how can we 2x3x5x the impact a book can make on you? Well, that's what Steph's here for. She's going to show you exactly how with her amazing strategies on how to get more out of your reading. I'm going to pass it over to Steph, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away, Steph.

Thanks, Omar. So you've built a reading habit. You're incorporating books into your daily routine and habits and you're clocking up a few more books a year. But maybe you'd like to up your reading game and to get more from the investment in the books you're reading. I'm Steph Clark and I'm going to be sharing four practical top tips for getting more juice and more value from the books you are reading. Let's go. Tip number one is take note. It's easy to just read a book, finish it and move on. But an easy way to get more from books is to note down your favourite quotes, lessons, ideas or thought experiments. You can do this as you read, or maybe at the end of each reading session to really cement what you've just absorbed and to make sure you have actually absorbed it. I recommend doing this definitely at the end of a book. It's really useful to look back over the notes you've taken or the highlights and the bookmarks you've left in your Kindle. Or if you're a terrible person like I am, maybe the highlights and the notes you've made in the actual book itself. And this lets you think about what the main ideas you're taking away from that book are, and maybe the things that you actually want to put into practice in your own life. This idea on note taking is actually why I started my podcast, to force myself to take good notes and better notes about the books I was reading and then to share them. To actually take the notes about the books you're reading, you can either write in the book itself, obviously only if the book belongs to you, keep a notes or an Evernote file on your phone, or use a physical notebook or book journal. There's always something nice about writing by hand, I find when I'm thinking about what lessons I've learned and summarizing those. I also really like the free Goodreads app, which I use to track my reading progress, as it also allows you to set a reading challenge for the year so you can see how you're progressing on that challenge. It also keeps track of my reviews, my ratings, and it also allows me to sync my Kindle highlights and notes too. You can also create a list on Goodreads of the books you want to read, which I find really useful for future reference when I'm thinking about what I'd like to read next or what I'm planning to read next. An extension to the idea of taking notes about the books that you've been reading is to listen to podcasts or watch interviews with the author. I have found this a really useful way to bring some of the concepts I've read about in books to life, and maybe some different examples or some additional context which isn't included in the book. There's been numerous times when I've listened to a podcast interview with the author about the book and they have explained something that's made me realize, oh, actually my understanding of that concept from the book was actually a bit different to what they actually mean when I hear them explain it on this podcast or in this YouTube interview. And of course, if you're listening to these podcasts or watching these interviews, add what you've learned to your notes that you're taking from the book as well. So that's tip number one is take notes. Tip number two is get social. We retain so much more information when we explain it to someone else. It's also a great way to test our own understanding, especially useful when we've just learned something new. And the more questions you get from the other people or person you share your ideas with, or the ideas from the book with, the better. Now, there's a couple of easy ways to do this. The first one is to just find a friend and share your lessons with them. This doesn't have to be super formal. You could just tell them about it when you're next out for a coffee or dinner, or just pick up the phone and tell them about it. If you want to go A little bit further, you could start or join a book club and you can make it your own. It doesn't have to be a book club where everyone is reading the same book. It might be that you all read different books and then come together to share the information you have learnt from each of those books with each other. Finally, another option is to share what you've learned from a book on social media. Always found that this is a great conversation starter, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn, and it might lead to a new friend or a new book recommendation on what to read next. Now, as a level up from this social idea, consider putting the lessons from the book into practice with maybe a couple of other people and you can compare what worked and what didn't. This is a great way of not just distilling the ideas or the lessons you've taken from the book into actionable steps, but also a way of really bringing the book to life and bringing the lessons to life and not letting the investment that you've put in reading a book fall by the wayside as you leave it behind and maybe don't put some of the things into action. I often think if we're going to invest time in reading good books with good ideas, then we should also invest some time into trying to put those ideas to life in our life or in our work. And what a great idea of proving whether the ideas in the book are as good as they say they are. So that's tip number two. Get social Tip number three is Read Like Elon There's a great article from a couple of years ago by Michael Simmons about how Elon Musk learns better and faster than the rest of us. And most of this comes down to the fact that he reads extensively across different disciplines and he focuses on the fundamental truths of science, particularly physics and maths. So if you want to learn about marketing along with reading popular marketing books, also consider reading books about psychology or behavioral economics or design theory. If you're interested in mental health, how about readings from some of the ancient philosophers who were thinking about these ideas centuries ago? Look at what has influenced your field and what your field that you're looking to learn more about has gone on to influence. In his book Range, David Epstein talks about how a broad spectrum of knowledge across disciplines allows us to see links and connections that can help solve more complex problems, and reading is a powerful tool for this. Reading, like Elon, or reading extensively is also a great reminder to read things that you might not agree with in order to get more from our reading habits, we need to challenge ourselves. So if you're reading to expand your knowledge, you also need to expand your points of view and be open to potentially changing your mind or at least helping you form better arguments for your position on a particular idea or subject matter. So tip number three is to read like Elon. Tip number four is to read like Bill. There's a bit of a theme here. This is one of my favourites. Take a reading week inspired by Bill Gates. If you've watched the Netflix documentary Inside Bill's Brain, you'll see that Bill disappears off to the forest a couple of times a year to take a reading week. This is a different reading experience when we can immerse ourselves in books rather than reading in the cracks of time of a busy life. But if a week away in the woods with a pile of books isn't for you, consider dedicating a weekend a month, maybe even one day a month as a reading day. You could even combine this with idea number two or tip number two and do this with a friend or two. Combining your day or weekend of reading with great conversations on what you have been learning and taking away from the books over a delicious dinner. I think this sounds like a pretty fantastic idea. Now, reading like Bill is not just about disappearing off to the woods with lots of books. The other thing that Bill does is he reads lot. In 2020, I decided to up my reading goal for the year to 45 books. I actually ended up reading 50 books. And the way I did this is by making a plan. First of all, I worked out that to read 45 books a year, I'd have to read one book every eight days. So this gave me a structure. And every time I opened a new book, I worked out how many pages or what percentage on my Kindle I'd have to read each day to keep me on track. Now, it's important to remember that you don't have to read a lot to read well. You might read a hundred books in a year, but if you didn't take a little nugget of wisdom or a new perspective or idea away from those, is that better than reading 10 books thoughtfully with notes by telling a friend about them and by putting some of the ideas and thoughts into practice? So that was tip number four. Read like Bill. So there we go. That was the four tips for getting more value or more juice out of the books you're reading. Here's a quick recap. Tip number one was take notes. Think about how you are collating and reflecting on the things that you're learning from the books you're reading, whether that's making physical notes in a notebook or using the functionality on your ebook reader or your Kindle to highlight the things that stuck with you. Tip number two is get social. Find some friends and tell them about the books you're reading. It's a great way of embedding the learning and the lessons and the ideas that you've taken from that book. Consider starting a book club. Tip number three Read like Elon. Read extensively. Think about the fundamental principles of the ideas that you're learning and what it is that might be feeding into those that you can read about further and challenge yourself to read things that you might not agree with. And finally, tip number four Read like Bill. Head off to the woods. Take some time to do some immersive reading on a reading week or a reading day and build your system and your habits for reading more books and reading well. If you found these tips helpful, let me know. You can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram where I share more tips like this along with a bit about the books I've been reading. And if sometimes you need someone else to do the reading for you, subscribe to my podcast Steph's Business Bookshelf where each week I share the three big ideas from the best non fiction books in around 15 minute episodes. Back over to you Omar.

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What a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic Guest Teacher Lesson by Steph Clark. I love these tips, especially be like Bill. I like the idea of just dedicated time to immerse yourself in some books. Of course I read a little bit every day, but on top of that I like to just read a whole book over a weekend. I know Nicole and I, we actually look forward to holidays, to long breaks, like a week off from work just so we can get a whole bunch of books that we want to read done. We're just looking forward to reading those books and it's just great to have extended periods of time, 3, 4, 5 hours of reading and of course you're having some snacks and sipping some drinks and having some casual conversation like Steph mentioned. But it gets you in that mode. It's wonderful. It's one of the best forms of holiday for me. Now before we wrap up today's lesson, I gotta tell you about Steph's podcast. Now, Steph doesn't know I'm doing this. You know, we met briefly at a conference at the Gold Coast. It was a podcasting conference a few years back. And the thing that struck me about Steph was that she was taking some really thorough notes in her notebook at the conference. And she actually said, hey, I took this note taking course and she sent me the link. And my first thought is, okay, this is somebody who takes learning seriously. As a former educator and teacher, I know how rare that is. So when I heard that she has a podcast on sharing what she's learned from nonfiction books, from business books, I was like, I gotta check this out. So I went over to her website, Steph's Business Bookshelf, and I checked out her podcast, Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast. And this show is so cool. She shares the big three ideas from the book and it really gets you thinking, Wow, I want to read this book. I highly recommend you check out this podcast if you're looking for an episode to start with. I really liked effortless by Greg McKeown, why Life doesn't need to Be so Hard. You can go ahead and check that out at her website, Steph's business bookshelf.com that wraps up today's episode. If you love today's episode, let us know in a rating and review over on Apple Podcasts. And of course, don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss our next episode once it's released. We got a lot of great episodes coming up this week from Understanding why do payments fail when they get processed by your payment processor? Do all these people have no money on their credit card? Spoiler alert. No, there's a lot more involved. And I'll explain what you can do to avoid so many failed payments by reoccurring customers. We'll also talk about how to keep your product fresh every year, as well as some small changes you can make in your business to stand out from the competition. So hit subscribe so you don't miss those episodes. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. It's not a coincidence that people like Elon Musk and like Bill Gates do a lot of reading. They know that in order to be competitive, in order to be successful, in order to grow as a professional, you gotta get better. You have to change. And the way you change is you change what you consume. And reading is one of the easiest ways to do that. If you're feeling stuck, if you feel like you want things to be different in your life and your business. Don't wish the world was different. Don't wish the economy would change or the market will shift. Start with you. Change yourself with reading. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care of.

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