The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn by Nick Hutchison

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn by Nick Hutchison https://amzn.to/3T4PkT7 The Ultimate Guide for Transforming Information into Life-Changing Results Are you devouring every personal development bestseller out there but still finding it hard to apply what you’re learning to everyday life? Reading for self-improvement can be powerful as long as you’re effectively implementing the right information. You can become a more successful problem solver and transform your life in as little as 15 minutes a day! Nick Hutchison, founder of the popular book review site BookThinkers, read over 400 personal development books, but implementing their valuable lessons was tougher than just finishing the next chapter. Nick knew self-help books could help him do things like master his social anxiety and fear of public speaking, opening the doors to a successful career in business. Through trial and error, he developed an easy-to-follow framework to retain the knowledge needed to transform his life completely. Now he’s giving you over 100 habits to implement into your own reading journey and fulfill your dreams. In this book, you will learn: How swapping 15 minutes of social media scrolling for 15 minutes of reading can dramatically impact 20 different areas of your life. The power of intention when it comes to choosing the right books for you and how much you retain from their knowledge. How to avoid bias and situational advice in the self-help industry. Methods for note-taking and information implementation. More than 100 new habits to improve your health, wealth, and happiness. With relatable anecdotes and engaging stories, Rise of the Reader will inspire and motivate you to take action and embrace the power of reading. Whether you are a student, a professional, or someone who just wants to reach their full potential, this is your guide to self-actualization and embracing change through reading. Grab your copy now and start improving your action today! Show Notes **About The Guest(s):** ​ Nick Hutchison is the visionary force behind Book Thinkers, a marketing agency that connects authors and readers. With over 400 personal development books under his belt, Nick has distilled his knowledge into his latest book, "Rise of the Reader: Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn." Through his agency, Nick helps authors expand their reach and drive revenue growth through services such as short-form video production, podcast booking, and social media brand building. ​ **Summary:** ​ Nick Hutchison, the founder of Book Thinkers, shares his strategies for mastering reading habits and applying what you learn from books. He emphasizes the importance of setting SMART goals and intentions for each book, optimizing for action rather than simply finishing the book. Nick also discusses the impact of swapping 15 minutes of social media scrolling for 15 minutes of reading, highlighting how this small change can dramatically improve various areas of life. He encourages readers to prioritize quality over quantity and to implement the knowledge gained from books to solve problems and achieve personal growth. ​ **Key Takeaways:** ​ - Set SMART goals and intentions for each book to optimize for action and implementation. - Replace 15 minutes of social media scrolling with 15 minutes of reading to read 20 books a year. - Prioritize quality over quantity by focusing on implementing a handful of books rather than reading a large number without taking action. ​ **Quotes:** ​ - "Life doesn't have to be so hard. People have already figured it out. Read the book, implement the book, and avoid the next 10,950 experiences." - Nick Hutchison - "Personal development can become a form of procrastination if you're not watching out. Action is the key." - Nick Hutchison About the author Nick Hutchison stands as the visionary force behin...

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaks Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There it is, ladies and gentlemen.

The Iron Lady sings it. That makes it official. Welcome to Chris Voss Show, folks. We're bringing you another episode of the show. You know, we're doing, what is it, three to four shows a weekday. Now, 15 to 20 shows a week. Bringing you the most amazing minds, the most amazing people that will give you the disbursement of their distilled knowledge that they have developed over a lifetime of achievements and everything else.

And they bring it to you in a format that gives you what we like to refer to as the Chris Voss Show glow. I'm drinking a cup of it right now because we make so much of it, it's in a cup full. So make sure you're listening to every one of those shows, the CEOs, the White House advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all of the smartest people that we always have on the show, the billionaires, in fact, too.

We've had billionaires on the show. Can you believe that crap? There is always people here who are going to be making you smarter, and none of them are me because I'm just the host, and I'm some idiot with a mic who flunked second grade. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. But before we get to him, before we show your family, friends, and relatives, goodreads.com, forceofchrisfoss, linkedin.com, forceofchrisfoss,

the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 LinkedIn group. Go to chrisfossfacebook.com. Chris Foss won the tickety-tocky, and I think that covers it. He is the author of the latest book that just barely came out, November 1st, 2023.

Nick Hutchison joins us on the show with us today. His book is entitled Rise of the Reader, Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn. Because if you don't apply what you read, you're kind of wasting your time, I suppose. I don't know. We'll get the deets on that from him and find out more about it as we bring him in the show. Nick stands as the visionary force behind BookThinkers, a growing seven-figure marketing agency that seamlessly bridges the worlds of authors and readers.

In just seven years, he's organically built a platform that reaches over a million people each month. His podcast, Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books, is a global top 2% show that features captivating interviews with world-class authors such as Grant Cardone, oh, we just had his partner on, Brandon Dawson, I think, Lewis Howes, I think it's Lewis Howes, a great guy, Alex Hormozy. Through the use of his platform, he's helped hundreds of authors expand their reach to hundreds of millions of readers and drive significant revenue growth as part of their book campaigns. His expansive services include short-form video production, podcast booking, and social media brand building. He's dedicated his life to helping millions of readers take action on the information they learn and rise to their potential through his

books, speaking, and personal brand as a whole. This is the inspiration for his newest book, The Rise of the Reader, where he dives into strategies for mastering your reading habits and applying what you learn. Welcome to the show, Nick. How are you? I'm doing well. So in your intro, it said guests. So smart. It'll make your brain bleed. I hope I can live up to that expectation today. There you go.

There you go. You know, we actually have somebody doing an audio right now, and I think it's the same guy who did the intro. He's going to make a soundbite for us where it's, I'm just here for the brain bleed. It should be fun. Watch for that to come up. We're going to throw that every now and then on the show. We'll just pound the button whenever.

Give us your dot coms, Nick. Where can people find you on the interweb, which is there in the sky? For my personal website, which has more information on the book, you can book me as a speaker, additional inquiries. We have nickhutch.com, N-I-C-K-H-U-T-C-H. And then I also have bookthinkers.com. That's the agency that I operate where we help authors get more exposure for their books. There you go. And now you've got a book out that helps the people who read the books of those authors get more out of it. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside the book, Rise of the Reader.

Sure. So I started posting book reviews on social media all the way back in 2017, 2018. Oh, wow. I was just sharing the books I was reading, personal development type books, like business, entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, communication, philosophy, psychology, and all that. And over the years, we've grown that audience. It's pretty big these days. But I've received hundreds and hundreds of the same questions. Hey, Nick, how do I choose the right book for me? Or how do I take effective notes? How do I use what I've learned to actually create results, behavior change? How do I implement more

from the books I'm reading? And so I decided to take a step back, observe my own behavior. Like what the heck does Nick Hutchison do to get more from the books he's reading? I documented all of that, simplified it, put it into some frameworks, and now it's available to everybody who can buy a book. And so it has basically all the secrets to getting more from the books that you read. It has all the secrets. You know, we have secrets. There's so many books that you'll read. I recently this year finally tried to become one of those people who I tried to read a hundred books this year. I suppose it's almost over. I should have to sit down and figure it out if I did it. I'm not sure when I started to. I'll have to check my Facebook notes because I think I announced it on Facebook.

But, you know, there's so many great books that I'll read and I try and consume a lot by audio book at the gym or in the car. Anytime that I can, you know, I'm just kind of burning some time. I'll try and consume them. And there's a lot of ideas you have during the reading of a book or listening to a book. I should remember to do that. And then it kind of goes by you. There's a habits book that's really popular. It's Power Habits.

I forget the name of it, but it's really popular. Probably Atomic Habits. Yeah. Yeah, Atomic Habits. There you go. Yeah. So I read that book, and I was like, damn, this is really good. I should make a habit or a task list to utilize this stuff in there.

And guess how many i use so tell us which is not uncommon by the way oh well that's good to know i feel better at being a failure the so hey i'm here to solve it i'm here to solve there you go there you go i think we got kind of an origin story of you of how you got into this business. Give us some, can you tease us out some different ways or maybe some modalities that we can utilize to maybe let that, what we're reading soak in a little bit more? Absolutely. And before I do, I'll just give everybody a little bit of additional context because you might be listening or watching this live stream today going, well, I'm not much of a reader, so I think I'll tune out. But the fact is I was not much of a reader growing up. In fact,

you couldn't pay me to read a personal development book. I was more of the athlete stereotype growing up, not really much of the academic. And a lot of that, I'm not a reader type behavior followed me into college as well. But it all changed for me when I was going into my senior year of college. I took an internship at a local software company. It was a sales internship. And I had a one hour commute each way, five days a week, 10 hours in the car. And my sales director early in that experience, I think he recognized some unfulfilled potential in me. I was sort of a cocky, know-it-all 20-year-old. And he said, hey, listen, listening to the same song for the 500th time, it's not going to get you closer to where you want to be in life, but the right podcast might. So that's how I started. I started listening to shows just like this, where a wonderful and smart host, you don't give yourself enough credit,

interviews a series of guests and they talk about what they've done to become successful. And so many of those people being interviewed give at least some credit for their success to the books that they were reading. I went to my local Barnes and Noble, list in hand with a bunch of the names that I was hearing these people talk about and give credit to, and the rest is history. So I'm reading 50 to 100 books a year. And there was an opportunity cost, I think, at the start because I was reading these books. And just like you, I definitely was not applying anything from them. And so I realized that these books do condense decades of somebody else's lived experience into days of consumption. It's the greatest life hack ever made.

I mean, somebody spends years and years and years learning something, and then they just write about it. They give you the shortcut for $20 in a few hours of your time. You can apply it and solve a problem. So anyway, that's the background context. Do you want me to jump in and give a tip? Sure, please do. I think one of the starting points for me is setting a SMART goal, an intention for

each book that I read. So when I jump into something like Atomic Habits by James Clear, I'm not reading the book hoping that it's going to change my life. And I'm not optimizing for finishing the book. I'm optimizing for taking action by setting a SMART goal. So for anybody that's not familiar with it, SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, meaning it's a realistic goal. Relevant, meaning you're emotionally connected to the outcome. The book is solving a problem or developing a skill set that you need to develop. And T is time bound. You give yourself a deadline for taking action. So the most common format for me, if I was reading a book like that, is something like find and implement at least two ways to improve my habits in my morning routine by the end of December.

So now I know exactly whether or not I finished the goal. It's measurable. Peter Drucker, the legendary management guru, he says, it's not being measured, can't be managed. And so you have to know whether or not the book achieved its goal and you have to give yourself a deadline for taking action. So by writing that SMART goal on the inside cover of the physical book and reviewing it every single time I read another chapter, I'm sharing my goal with the book so that it can share the information back with me that I can take action on. I like that. You know, I may have really wasted a lot of time pounding through books and trying to hit that 100 books a year goal. Me too.

Because I cranked up the Audible two and a half. Two, two and a half is usually when I can listen to most stuff at. It means you're blasting through books. And, you know, I think I'm pretty present when I'm listening. But, you know, what you're pretty present when i'm listening but you know what you're doing is taking it to a whole new level there's some books that i have enjoyed that i'm like i really i need to slow down the data that's coming at me but i like how you're taking more action items and you're really like consuming the book as opposed to i don't know if i remember

half the damn books i read last year i mean i, I kind of, I have a sense of them, but yeah, that makes all the difference in the world. So you've put in the book that you've read over 400 personal development books. That's pretty freaking awesome. And then those reviews that you did are on bookthinkers.com? Yeah, bookthinkers is our website. And then our largest social media presence is on Instagram. We have about 155,000 followers. Wow.

And our promise to everybody is that they'll see a new book every single day. We typically share a book three times over the course of a month, but every day we put a piece of content out there. Wow. That's awesome, man. Instagram's hard to get going with the intelligent stuff because it's basically dating app but you're killing it over there good job yeah thank you you know what i've got some

strategies for that too which maybe we could share a little bit later oh there you go on there so you you run an only fans entry point to the no i'm just kidding books and feet yeah books feet that's that's my next book, people. Yeah. It's really interesting, the whole Instagram thing. TikTok is really taking off with some interesting things as well. But inside of your book, you've got, out of that 400 personal development books, you've got 100 habits that you're giving people in the book to implement their own reading journey and fulfill their dreams. That's pretty amazing. 100 new habits.

Yeah. You know what? I'm sharing 35 healthy habits, 35 wealthy habits, and 35 happiness related habits from the hundreds and hundreds of books that I've read just to show everybody exactly how I implement the things that I'm reading, what the experience is like, the ups, the downs, the lefts, the rights, and then also the results that I've experienced from these habits. So yeah, it's a little bit of a shortcut. Like you don't have to read the same four or 500 books that I read. You could just read this one and get some of my favorite takeaways. There you go. And one of the tips I think you share is how swapping 15 minutes of social media doom scrolling, I'm going to call it doom scrolling, for 15 minutes of reading instead can dramatically

impact 20 different areas of your life. Give us some samples, if you would, of how that can improve your life. It seems quite obvious to me, but I mean, the Gen Zers grew up with phones in their hands, so they don't know a different world. Yeah. Well, you're already crushing books, but I'll tell you what. Sometimes I hear from people, hey, Nick, I appreciate all this personal development stuff. I understand that the right book at the right time can change your life, but I don't have time to read. So I start by saying, well, if I paid you $10,000 to read a book by the end of the month, do you think you could do it? And that same person's, well, I could read a book by the end of the month, do you think you could do it? And

that same person's, well, I could read five, you know, so they've fallen into my trap. It's not a question of whether or not we can read, but it's a question of whether or not we value reading enough to prioritize it over something else. So let's say that we're on the same page, like I want to start reading, but I still don't have time. Instead of trying to find time, I recommend replacing a low impact activity with reading. And one of the low impact activities that I talk about in the book is doom scrolling on social media, because it can be quite negative, quite divisive, and quite time consuming. And although it does lead to some short term dopamine hits, right, some instant gratification. It does nothing for us in the long run, generally speaking. So by replacing 15 minutes of Instagram scrolling

in the morning and 15 minutes of Netflix or whatever you're watching in the evening, you can read 20 books a year. And here's the math. 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening is 30 minutes a day. For somebody who's just starting out, 30 minutes is roughly 20 pages. You do that five days a week, 20 times five, that's 100 pages a week. And most of these books, as you know, they're 200 pages on average. So that's a book every two weeks. If you miss a couple of days, that's okay. Because a book every two weeks is 26 books.

You miss a few days,, that's okay. Because a book every two weeks is 26 books. You miss a few days, you get 20 books. So that's what I'm talking about. Replacing a low impact activity like social media or Netflix with a book that serves your future self that can alter the direction of your life. James Clear in Atomic Habits talks about 1% improvement. So what 1% improvements can you make in your health and your wealth and your happiness that as they compound over the next 10 years will put you in a drastically different place? There you go. So, I mean, basically it's better to consume that way than, you know, what I've to really trying to marinate or soak up everything that I possibly can out of the book. Do you recommend people read a book by the old format or do what I'm doing on a book?

I recommend both. So I consume, let's say, roughly 100 books a year right now, 70, 75 physical books, 25, 30 audiobooks. So I do think that the right audiobook at the right time can change your life. But we are at a disadvantage when we're only listening to information and we're multitasking at the same time. Here's the data. 80% of the inputs to our brain, meaning 80% of our ability to form a connection to a new piece of information is visual. By default, the remaining senses only make up 20% of the inputs to our brain. And if you're listening to information and you're driving or you're cleaning or you're at the gym,

you're multitasking. You might feel present with the information, but you're more present if you're reading a physical paper book, leveraging the visual input to your brain, and you're monotasking, right? Only focusing on one activity instead of multiple activities. So although I am a proponent of audiobooks, I do think there's a slight disadvantage to listening compared to reading a physical book. Yeah, I, you know, one of the, it's funny that you mentioned this because I've just had an epiphany, which was why we do the show. We have a lot of epiphanies and, and my audience better have them too. You know, I started a thing this spring somewhere when the sun started shining here in Utah, where I could go out, which just got taken away from me today because it started snowing. And I started a thing where it was a multitask thing where I was taking out meditations by

Marcus Aurelius that sits off to my left and Epictetus and Ryan Holiday really turned me on to a lot of those stoic things. Me too. And a great guy. And so I started reading the books and contemplating them. And so what I would do is I'd go out every day and just take one of those books. I think there's Thoreau. Is there Thoreau?

Or no, it's Emerson. And I'm trying to think of who the other person is. Epictetus and… Seneca, maybe? Seneca. There we go. Thank you. And so I would take it out in the morning, sit with my coffee, sit with my dogs, play with them in the yard, and soak up some vitamin D.

So I get that 30 minutes of that real vitamin D. And then also just be present and start my circadian rhythms. So it's like a multifaceted thing. And so I would sit and just kind of open Marcus Aurelius meditations and just kind of read excerpts of that or the other books. And I found that really stuck with me. But me blasting through Audible lists, I'm realizing now in my epiphany that a lot of it didn't stick. And I almost should probably go back and read everything I did in the last year. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what. In my book, in the healthy habits section, I talk about early sunlight exposure, setting your circadian rhythm in place before consuming caffeine. I talk a little bit about grounding. I talk a little bit about a few of those things in the morning. And just like you, I'm also a big fan of stoicism. I've had the chance to interview Ryan Holiday on our podcast, and he is a great guy. And I love all of those books. In fact, I have a few stoicism-related tattoos because the works of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus,

those guys have totally changed my life. Yeah. I mean, in our world today, it's harder than ever to figure out what masculinity and manhood is, especially for all the shit that gets thrown at and misinformation. And stoicism is so important for men to reset themselves out of emotional states back into logic and reason and masculinity and in controlling our things. Because we're not, you know, we're built to be violent. We're built to have upper body strength. We're built to be killers. And we don't do well in emotion if we live in emotion. And that's why you see some of the problems that we see in today's society.

But moving on, tell us more about what you do over there at bookthinkers.com? Well, as I started posting the book reviews online, authors started to reach out to me years and years ago. And they'd say, hey, Nick, how much do you charge for a book review? I'd love to pay you to review my book. And I thought, well, this is interesting. There's inbound interest. People are willing to pay me to review their books. At first, I didn't understand it.

But very quickly, I realized that it's tough to sell books. People spend decades learning something, years writing about it, and then nobody buys their book. And so I had an audience of people that wanted to read books. And so people would pay me for book reviews. And I would follow that red thread. I'd follow the lead. I would follow up with these people and ask what else I could help with, because I wanted to work in this space full time one day. So kind of fast forward until today, BookThinkers, our agency, we have about 10 people on the team. And we serve about 200 authors a year helping them promote market their books, get more exposure for the things that they're doing to try to impact the world in a positive way. So you mentioned it during the intro, but we do

short form video content where we fly out and help the author turn the concepts in their book into 50 or 100 pieces of social media content. We do podcast booking where we place authors on shows to talk about their book. And then we also still do book reviews and podcast interviews with authors. And I just have so much fun doing it because there are so many good people out there. You wouldn't know it if you just doom scroll on social media, but there are people trying to make this world a better place and impact everybody, share what they've learned. And so we try to give a voice to those people and help them get more exposure.

There you go. It's the impact of, or the problem impact of social media is so destructive. I mean, I believe 13 states right now are suing the social media networks for, you know, destructive impact on young children, I think under 13, or young people. The depression, the FOMO, the disinformation, the, you know, and it's only getting worse with AI. I was just listening to a podcast about it, what it's going to do to AI and maybe some of our political voting systems and stuff like that with AI. It's just going to get more crazy. And it's, you know, you can get so depressed looking at these sometimes fake influencers on Instagram or social media that, you know, they're not really in a plane.

They just went to a stage that has a private plane and took photos and, you know, all this, all this stuff. And it can just make you depressed. You're like, Hey, this person is my age or whatever.

And they're living this great life and I'm not. So I must suck. And, you know, half the time that person is really living that life. They're living there based on suck. And, you know, half the time that person isn't really living that life. They're living their basement with their mom. You know, like you say, listening to podcasts about authors, great authors are coming on, listening to reading books, changing your life.

You know, like we've been throwing the show all the time. You know, these folks spend a lifetime of building their stories and their lives. And then they put it in a book and bring it to you. And people are sometimes missing out on some of the greatest learning lessons ever. Every show, I have multiple epiphanies where I learn stuff. And I go, I don't know, man. I might have learned more than everyone else in that show. There's probably some of my readers that learn a lot more because I already

know everything anyway. So there's only a few things that I still have to learn. Evidently. I don't know if that's true. You're crossing a few off on every episode. I'm trying. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing.

We're on a machine thing to cross everything off so that by next week, I'll know everything. It'll come fast. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, that was something that was good for me reading these books because in my early 20s, I had developed an ego, quite a big ego that would oftentimes represent itself at the expense of the people that I was around. And so I was in a lot of fun to be around. I was definitely a know

it all. And every time I read a new book, I realize there's an entire universe of knowledge and an entirely new industry area of philosophy or psychology of personal development that I was previously unaware of. And that's humbling. Every book I read, I realize I know less than I thought I did about the world and how things work. So it's a never ending journey. And it's one that I'm happy to be on though. There you go. And we talk about this on the show a lot. There's the things, you know, you know, there's the things, you know, you don't know like me in algebra and I don't care either. And then there's the things you don't know, you don't know. And those are the most important things to learn in life. You may not learn them all because it's,

I don't know, 90% of the stuff that you don't know or your circumference of knowledge, but trying to reach out, learn those. Those are usually the things that come at you out of the blue that you're like, why do I have to learn this now? In life, if you want to survive, you got to overcome this baby. And you're like, damn it. I was okay with not having to know that I needed to know that but here it is and so being able to see those have that visual sight have that mental acuity where you engage that muscle where you can learn to survive and overcome things that come at you from the i don't know i didn't need to know that i think i think that describes most lives you know i didn't need i know i didn't know i didn't need to know that but now i've now it's here so fuck me yeah well who is it is it is

it twain or somebody said you know there's also the things that you know the things that you thought you knew but you didn't know or what how does that saying go that just aren't so you know the things you know that just aren't so or something like that yeah people, people assume they know more than they really do most of the time. I mean, it's definitely happened to me before. Now, on your personal website, you do speaking and other things. Give us a tease out of what you do over there. Yeah, I've developed a little interesting niche for myself. I'm starting to become a conference opener. So I'll come out

first and I'll teach the audience how to be more intentional about what they consume, how to organize and retain the information they learn and how to put it into action. Because, you know, there are so many of these personal development conferences and business conferences where people show up, they're motivated, they're energetic. They take notes from every single speaker on stage and that notebook then goes on the shelf never to be opened again. And I'd like to put an end to that. I mean, there's an opportunity cost

to spending your time and your money to show up somewhere, get excited and then fail to take action. It's depressing in a lot of ways. So I'm trying to solve that problem for people. I'm laughing because I've done that. I'm thinking on my shelf. Me too. And that's why I'm trying to solve it. And you know, there's so many people that go to motivational seminars and inspirational stuff. And you're just like, why do you have to keep going? Like I went to Tony Robbins once. I read both his first two books. I got the tape system or the CD system and played the shit out of it.

And that was it. I didn't need to go to any more Tony Robbins seminars. Most of the time when I listen to stuff, it's great stuff. I don't mean to discount any way. But it's kind of the same stuff. It's the same stuff because it works. And, you know, I just did it, but I'll see some people that are, you know, they've been to like 20 Anthony Robbins seminars and life's still a fucking mess. Are you listening to anything Tony says?

Like, no, it happens to a lot of people. And I, I think that action is becoming my favorite word. I think that's the thing that I can help people do is to take action because I've got a kind of a funny metaphor. Imagine your goal was to set out and make the world's best chicken parm dish. So you buy a book on chicken parm, you read every single page, It's dog-eared. You've got notes in there, sticky notes. You even buy all the ingredients, but then you fail to make the chicken parm. That would seem so goofy, like such a waste of time. Yet people attend events on entrepreneurship and they don't start businesses. They read books on dating and they never ask anybody out. And so

personal development can become a form of procrastination if you're not watching out. And action, as you said, is the key. That's a great analogy. It's like going to school to learn cooking, you know, cordon bleu or something, and then you just go eat at McDonald's all the time. People read books on nutrition and then they go to eat at McDonald's and it blows my mind. Yeah, that's true. You're like, did you really order the mcrib so anyway i've been seeing that mcrib popping up everywhere and i'm just like i'm having flashback nightmares of of all the worst times that i that i took and read it or that i ordered it i think i've tried i think i've eaten it twice in my lifetime and i'm pretty sure i'm dying of it what from whatever no boy no it's probably still in there digesting there you go yeah it's really hard for authors to get traction in in what they

what they want to do it's hard for them to get out you know we pretty much we've got you know great the top book authors that come to us from all the top publishers random random penguin house and there are 50 variations of their name. I can't even keep track of. There are a lot of them, yeah. They just call them book, and I go, okay, whatever. And then Simon & Schuster. And they come on the show.

They're pretty well prepped on PR. They're pretty well prepped on talking about their book, their media, their talking points. A lot of independent authors, they need a lot more help. And a lot of times they really struggle at showing up and doing media. They really struggle at, you know, knowing how to sell their book. They're good at writing books and telling their stories. But they really struggle at all that stuff.

They struggle with the marketing part they struggle with the social media you know especially guys who are really into you know sort of educational you know like scholars and professors and stuff they're just like you're like are you on tiktok and they're like what's tiktok you know that sort of thing and so they need as much help as they can get. Social media game is harder than ever to do. It's definitely gone beyond the wild west when we started out and we're doing social media. Oh, the line that I pulled up for you, it's Mark Twain. It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't. So there you go. Which is how people get in a lot of trouble,

actually, thinking when they know what they know. So it's great that you provide these services on your website so that people can take advantage of them and everything else. I know, who else does the book reviews that you pay for? Kirkus. I didn't know that Kirkus was something where you pay for book reviews too. Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story. I paid Kirkus for a review of my book just so I could understand how it worked. And I'm a

first time self-published author and they came back, they wrote a glowing like first paragraph. And then the second paragraph, they said something like, they said something like, oh man, you know what i'm gonna have to pull it up because it was so bad it went it went good and it went bad on the second pair okay yeah they even described the book properly do they even really read it they described some of it properly and then they ended with a line that that was just a shot at my heart hold on i'm pulling it up it's pretty funny let's see wow yeah okay view file and then they actually they give you an opportunity not to share it which is really interesting so they can tell you basically okay you don't need to share this with your audience yeah okay here it is so a huge paragraph outlining everything positive about the book.

And then the last sentence says, a manic reading manifesto from an unpolished writer. Like, oh, thanks. Wow, that's brutal, man. Manic and unpolished. Yeah. But, hey, you know what? So be it.

That's some passive-aggress passive aggressive i don't know anger there whatever yeah and it's just so funny because if i if i could share my screen i could show you there's 20 sentences straight positive stuff and then bam they hit me so when i was reading and i was like oh this is awesome this is oh man that's man. They slid that right there in the end with the knife. Yeah, I mean, you got 105 ratings there on Amazon, and it looks like the average of 4.9. You're killing it. You're doing good. Yeah, I'm really excited.

They're all real. They're all organic. And so far, people seem to be loving the book, with the exception of one or two people who basically said, hey, you said I'd master my reading habits, but this is kind of entry-level stuff. So that's okay. Not everybody, most people don't have those reading techniques under control. There's always those people that are just dumb. So let's put it that way.

They probably didn't even read your book well or use any of the tips because they didn't get anything out of it i mean i've i've just been listening to give me the overview and i've gotten more stuff out of it than than that guy or whatever but you know you mean you made me rethink you really sold me on making me rethink how i approach reading and books and maybe it's not so much about volume. It's about quality. And I should really try and ponder books. I really miss reading books.

I do the audio part, especially if the reader or the writer is the person doing the audio. Because it really feels personal to me. If I read Robert Greed reading one of his books, it just really feels more personal to me. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I mean, here's my recommendation. When somebody is first starting in the world of personal development, nonfiction, stoicism, Robert Greene type stuff too, I say go crazy. Read as many books as possible. Listen to as many books as possible. But once you feel like you have a good understanding of sort of this world of personal development, and you have a solid foundation to operate from, I say quality then becomes more important. It's more important to

successfully implement a handful of books than it is to read 100 without implementing anything. You go from optimizing for reading to optimizing for action. And that's a quality game, not a quantity game. But that change doesn't happen until you've consumed a ton of information and sort of you're ready for it. And so I would say you're at the stage where you would probably enjoy reading the physical copy of Rise of the Reader, and then sort of implementing some of those reading habits. You've already got a great routine, it sounds like, so you could just start to insert some more of these physical books into that routine. Then maybe play Modern Warfare 3 a little bit less and spend some more time reading books.

I'm also an advocate for that. That's the biggest time waster for me. I hate social media there as well. So as we go out, give us your final thoughts and pitch the audience on waster for me. I had social media there as well. So as we go out, give us your final thoughts and pitch the audience on your book, Nick, and all that good stuff. So many of us think that our problems are unique to us, but the harsh reality is that a hundred billion people have lived before us and millions of them have written books and thousands of those books detail somebody else overcoming the same problem that you're facing today.

Stoicism is a great example. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about how hard it is to get out of bed and he's ruler of the entire world at that point, right? Spend some time analyzing what problems are you facing today and then go out there and get a good book that details how to overcome that problem, right? They're only $20. It only takes a few hours of your time to read them and solve the problem. I heard Jordan Peterson say recently that if you're dealing with the same problem on a daily basis over the next 30 years, so 365 times 30, you'll deal with that same problem

almost 11,000 times. Why? I don't get it. Life doesn't have to be that hard. Other people have already figured it out. Read the book, implement the book, and avoid the next 10,950 experiences. You don't have to be living a life full of pain and problems. You can solve them. And great people are out there trying to promote that message, and then social media steals our attention. So really good book. That's kind of my final message. And life doesn't have to be so hard. People have already figured it out. There you go. I love it, Nick. And I love what you're doing to support authors. We support authors here on the show. And we want the world to be smarter and better. That's why we changed

the format of the show in 2000 when COVID hit. We got tired of talking about just CEO stuff and corporate stuff and Silicon Valley stuff and technology stuff. We're like, we want to talk about stuff that changes the world and can really improve people's lives. I mean, there's a segment of that thing that does it, but we need more support for readers and we need more people to read. They need to learn. One of the things you learn when you read is to be analytical and evaluate stuff, or at least hope you do, unless you're like me who's blasting through Audible. But it's so important. Who used to blast through Audible. Who used to blast through Audible.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. So, Nick, thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms one more time as we go out. Nick Hutch, H-U-T-C-H dot com or book thinkers dot com spelled just like it is. And I'll throw this out there too. If anybody is motivated and they're like, heck yeah, I want to get into the space of reading, but I don't know where to start.

Send me a DM, a direct message on Instagram at book thinkers. And just tell me about a problem you're facing or a skill that you want to develop and I'll provide a custom book recommendation to you. There you go. That's awesome, man. Well, thank you very much, Nick, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Chris, you're the man.

I hope we had some brains bleed today. My brain is bleeding because I had some epiphanies and I'm going to go slow down all my consumption of books. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com. Forge Ask Chris Foss. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from the alleyway bookstores. Rise of the Reader.

Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn. Just came out November 1st, 2023 by Nick Hutchison. Go to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the LinkedIn group of 130,000 people over there. All the stuff we do on LinkedIn. There's a company page and all that crap. ChrisFossFacebook.com. We love LinkedIn. LinkedIn is so amazing. If you're not on LinkedIn, I don't know what people are doing. And what is there? Chris Foss won on the tickety-tockety. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.