A short spoken piece by Russ Lowry encouraging daily reading as essential for personal and professional growth. He emphasizes that leaders read regularly, recommends paper books over sped-up audiobooks, and urges continuous learning across industries—especially for business owners—warning that lack of learning equals stagnation.
This is a real quick short of something I used to say to you guys a lot when you were younger, and I should have kept saying it. Leaders are readers and readers are leaders. It's like a knife in my heart as a person who reads every day, seven days a week. This morning I'm reading a book about service businesses. Nothing to do with insurance, trying to find leverage for my industry to grow. I generally read business books, but I read, you know, science fiction, occasionally, anything. I don't care what you read, just be a reader. And it just gets your brain thinking. But especially if you guys own your own businesses, you've got to read, gain knowledge. If you're not growing, you're dying. I say, and I see so many people that they're like, oh, I haven't read a book since high school. And they brag about it. I'm like, you're a freaking idiot. And that's why you work for the city digging ditches, because you have no desire to grow yourself in any kind of education. And even no matter what you do. And we need ditch diggers no matter what you do. Reading, hey, keeps your brain going. And I'm not talking about playing an audiobook on two times the speed. That's not reading. That's cheating. Read a paper book even better than a Kindle. I know sometimes we have to read on our little electronic devices, but I read, I've gone back to paper books. You guys see my library, and I read one to two books a week. Sometimes I'm reading two at a time because I just like some diversity. If I read a business book and a nonfiction book, another nonfiction book or fiction book even, but I can't stress to continue reading and studying for your craft, looking outside your industry. You know, Riley is a coach. He needs to be reading books on coaching and keeping up on that to be the best he can be. Jack on H vac, of course, trying to own his own business or even in his trade, learning about new technology, which is coming for all of us. AI is coming. It's not if, it's when. It's here and it's coming faster. Sydney in her career again. There's always things to learn, so be reading. Leaders are readers, Readers are leaders. Think about that little phrase from when you guys were kids. And I just say in the car all the time because I want you guys reading and growing in life again. We're doing the opposite of probably 95% of people ask 10 of your friends if they read when the last book they read was and was probably the last time they were in some kind of formalized education, high school or college. Sad. But that's the way of the world, it seems like. And that's why some people are so much more successful, because they're just looking for answers and suggestions and ways to grow their business in their life and get better. You have to be doing that.
