Why Reading 400+ Books Changed My Life!

Nick Hutchison disliked reading while growing up and initially struggled through college. After graduation, he took an internship that required long commutes. His boss suggested podcasts and audiobooks to maximize the time, which sparked Nick's interest in personal development content.

He soon became obsessed with reading the books commonly referenced by podcast guests and authors. Over the years Nick has cultivated a book recommendation community on social media and created his agency, Book Thinkers, to help authors market their books. He consume over 100 books annually and wrote "Rise of the Reader" to teach his reading optimization strategies to others.

In this interview, Nick reveals tactics on how ANYONE can maximize reading comprehension and retention through simple daily habits. Want to read more books but struggle to make time? He explains a "life hack" tweak that frees up an extra 30 minutes per day.

Plus - the SMART goal framework to get WAY more out of every book you read moving forward. Along with his favorite authors and quotable book summaries - it's a bookworm's dream conversation!

To purchase a copy of Rise of the Reader 👉 https://a.co/d/blPZB5M

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Transcript

Linda (00:04.366)
What if I told you that you can transform your life in just 15 minutes a day? Today's guest has done just that and even wrote a book on it literally. He's the author of Rise of the Reader and founder of Book Thinkers Agency and has cracked the code for maximizing personal development through reading. With over 400 self-help books under his belt, he's here to share his wisdom on habit mastery, focused learning and unlocking your full potential through literature. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Nick Hutchinson.

Nick Hutchison (00:32.534)
I'm excited to be here, Linda. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. Can I ask you the first question today?

Linda (00:38.526)
Oh, wow. Yeah, sure. Have another one.

Nick Hutchison (00:42.315)
Little surprise, we didn't plan this. So I'm curious, we just wrapped up 2023. And so I wanna know what comes to mind. What was the best book that you read in 2023?

Linda (00:54.594)
Oh gosh, oh um there was one book that I'm still kind of reading it. This is my problem though, I've got so many books beside my shelf because I get like, it depends on the mood that I'm in as well. So um, How to Be the Love That You Seek, I think that was a, like I'm still nearly finished but I think that's a very powerful book. I'm into so many self-development books as well but that one I think um was very interesting too. It's based on relationships.


Linda (01:22.574)
because I'm just learning through podcasters and recommendations with books and that was one of them. And yeah, what about you?

Nick Hutchison (01:33.174)
Well, thank you for satisfying my curiosity. I'll have to check that one out. I have not read that yet. I read about a hundred books last year and I probably have a top five or six. The one that comes to mind is Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. And what I find fascinating about that book is how actionable it is.

Linda (01:45.602)
Mm.

Linda (01:50.852)
Oh, wow.

Nick Hutchison (01:56.182)
Arnold optimizes for taking action. And that's sort of my middle name at this point. I think action is the real measure of intelligence. Action is what we should be thinking about when we read these books. And I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger has his own issues, you know, politically, socially, whatever you wanna call it, but talk about a cool story, you know, just closing the gap between dreams and reality. He went from...

growing up in rural Austria in a house that had no running water and could barely speak English to a successful business person, a movie star, a world champion, bodybuilder, the governor of California, and just so many other things. And I find stories like that really inspirational.

Linda (02:40.626)
Wow, yeah. Well, let's go back. Let's take it back from the start. What inspired, like, tell us about yourself and what inspired your journey to where you are today and why self-development and personal development books?

Nick Hutchison (02:54.122)
Well, what might surprise anybody that could see the video is that I was not much of a reader growing up. And I say that because I have like a thousand books behind me. But when I was growing up, I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic. I mean, you couldn't pay me to do my homework half the time. And that behavior sort of carried with me through most of my college or university experience as well. But everything changed for me when I took an internship.

going into my senior year of college at a local software company. So I was a sales intern. I had to show up five days a week and dial for dollars essentially. But my boss, Kyle, at the time, he recommended that I start listening to podcasts, just like this, where a host interviews a series of guests and the guests talk about what they did to become successful. And I was commuting one hour each way, five days a week. So I was spending 10 hours a week in the car.

Linda (03:43.25)
Hmm.

Nick Hutchison (03:48.158)
And he said, listen, man, listening to the same song or the same playlist, the same radio station for the 5,000th time, it's not gonna get you closer to where you wanna be in life. But the right podcast might. And so I started listening to podcasts and I heard the same book titles getting referenced over and over and over again. It seemed like all these successful people, whether they were healthy, wealthy or happy, they were all reading the same books. And I felt kind of left out.

Linda (04:15.477)
Let me guess which one is one of the main ones that you've heard. Napoleon Hill's book, how to influence, wait, Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich, that's the one, yeah, yeah. Is that one of the main ones?

Nick Hutchison (04:18.975)
Yeah, I guess, guess.

Nick Hutchison (04:27.01)
Think and grow rich.

Yeah, that was definitely one of, that was one of the first 10 books that I read. And then also it seemed like it was on the tippier tongue, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. That was another one. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. So those were all like within the first couple of books that I decided to read.

Linda (04:44.831)
cool.

Nick Hutchison (04:52.67)
So I just, one day I just went to my local bookstore. I picked up a bunch of books and the rest is history. I just, I fell in love with this idea that a book condenses decades, literally decades of somebody else's greatest life lessons and achievements. And you can consume it in days. It's like the greatest life hack ever. And so I just became kind of addicted to solving problems and building skills and learning more about the world.

by reading and implementing these books. So that was kind of my origin story. I went from like, I would never read a book to reading 50 to 100 books a year in a pretty short period of time.

Linda (05:32.134)
Amazing. And how did you manage to read like over 400 books? Like, cause like you just mentioned one word implementing. There's people that read and don't take action. But you mentioned implementing as well. So, you know, I, I love to read myself personally, and I've got so many different books that I have to, sometimes I go back to reading them again too, because you know, you forget, but what's your advice on how to implement these actions as well?

Nick Hutchison (05:59.678)
Well, how much time do we have? Because I could talk about that subject all day. There are so many little intricacies and so many little details. I'll tell you why I started to think about it. That same software company where I was an intern, I took a full-time job with them when I graduated school. And what was interesting about the B2B, business to business software world that I was in was that we would sell a software package to a company and then that company would spend weeks or months


Nick Hutchison (06:29.77)
training and implementing the software that we were selling them. And if they skipped the training, if they didn't practice, if they didn't go through the whole implementation process, they would fail and they would end up wasting tens of thousands of dollars. But the companies that would practice and they would implement and they would try things out and they would ask questions to our support team, they would get fully implemented up and running and their businesses would take off.

And so I started to almost naturally do the same things with the books that I was reading. Like I would read a book and then I would go through my own period of weeks or sometimes months of trying out everything that I was reading about. So if it was a book about health and fitness, I would try out the different diets or the foods that they recommended or the different eating schedules or the different exercises.

If it was a book on personal finance and investing, I would try to implement some of the money management tools or try out some of the online tools that they suggested. I was in a sales position, right? So I was reading a lot of books on sales and marketing and communication and negotiation and persuasion, and I would apply the scripts or the sayings like right into my role and I would measure it and see if it worked or not.

And so yeah, that was abnormal behavior, but I think it was because I was working at that company and that's how they did it. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna do the same thing with the books that I'm reading. So nowadays I teach a whole different process. I'm gonna give you the first step in my framework because it could be kind of long. So nowadays when I sit down to read a great personal development book or a business book or a biography, I will set a smart goal.

And SMART is a goal setting acronym that a lot of us are familiar with. It stands for specific, measurable, attainable, meaning realistic, relevant, meaning we're emotionally connected to the outcome. So the book is solving a problem or it's building a skillset. We wanna be really clear on what we're looking to get out of it, right? And then T is time-bound. We give ourselves a deadline to take action. So if I was picking up How to win friends and influence people for the first time?

Nick Hutchison (08:39.934)
I would set a SMART goal. I would say something like, my goal is to find and implement at least one strategy for improving my interpersonal communication by the end of February. And I would take that SMART goal, which is specific, it's measurable, at the end of the experience that I implement at least one strategy for interpersonal communication.

It's attainable. I didn't say like, I wanna make 10,000 friends next month. I just said, I wanna implement one strategy. Am I emotionally connected to it? Of course I am. Like I love networking, I love people. I wanna meet more people and I wanna be of more value to them. And then it's time bound. Then I implement the strategy by the end of February. And so what I'll do with that smart goal is I'll write it on the inside cover of the book.

and I'll review it every time I read another chapter. So I'm sharing my goal with the book so that the book can share that strategy that I'm looking for back with me. And anyway, I know that was a ton of info that I just threw at you, but that's kind of step one in my process.

Linda (09:39.65)
Wow.

Linda (09:44.05)
I like that, that's a definitely a very interesting strategy. I personally when I'm reading books, because I fold the corners each time I find something really interesting and then I go backwards towards the end so, oh hang on, my dog is hearing your dog. My dog just thinks that someone out the window, cookie! Sorry.

Nick Hutchison (09:52.654)
Woof

Nick Hutchison (10:01.024)
My dog is barking, yeah, sorry.

Linda (10:12.674)
So walk us through what inspired you to write your book, Rise of the, what is it? Your Rise of the Reader. What inspired you to write that book?

Nick Hutchison (10:24.154)
see if my dog stops barking here. Over the years of building my community on social media and sharing the books that I was reading, I accidentally became a source of information on reading books. I never intended for that to happen, but as I was reading books and sharing my favorite takeaways from them and what I was implementing on social media, people would ask me questions.

I want to be of service to those people. So I'd look up the answers. Like I'd go become a subject matter expert every time somebody would ask me a question. And so over the years, I had just received hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of questions related to the reading process. And what I realized was that there's no leverage to answering questions individually. And I'm also sort of being a disservice to the same people that I'm trying to help because in an Instagram DM or in an email.

or on a quick call, I can't provide everything that I know. But if I was to write the entire process down in a book, well then, every time I got one of those questions, I can send them a link and just say, hey, read this book, it has all of the answers to your questions and more. And I always just sort of envisioned being able to hand them that book. One of the authors that I've worked with, his name is MJ DeMarco. He wrote a best-selling book called, Yeah, He's Amazing.


Linda (11:45.542)
Oh, I love him. Yes. All his books are amazing. I just, he's a game changer with the way you think. So yeah, had to plug that in.

Nick Hutchison (11:55.138)
Oh yeah, and I'll tell you this, if you love his work, you'll think this is really cool. I spent a day at MJ's house, I wanna say it was like two years ago, and yeah, it was a lot of fun. And it was just me, a couple people from my team and MJ. And check this out, he has a basketball court in his house, which is so cool. Inside his house. Yeah, we got to play basketball in his house with him. It was a lot of fun.


Nick Hutchison (12:26.022)
But one of the things he told me was, and this may be in the millionaire fast lane as well, but one of the things he told me was that driving around in his Lamborghini, like he comes out of a restaurant or a grocery store, shopping, and people would stop him. And they would say, MJ, how'd you get the Lamborghini? Like, what do you do for a living? How do I get one of those? And he would pop open the hood.

I guess the trunk is in the front on a Lamborghini. I don't own one, but he would pop it open and he would hand them a copy of his book and he would say, this has the answers, the millionaire fast lane. And again, I just like, once I heard him tell me that story, I was like, I wanna do that for people too. So when somebody says, Nick, how do I get more from the books I'm reading? I could say, here's the answer. So MJ was kind of a big inspiration for writing the book too.


Linda (13:13.046)
Wow. Yeah. I'd love to have him on as a guest on the podcast. Cause he's so inspiring and he definitely shifted my mindset. Once I read that millionaire fast lane book, I recommend it to every business owner out there, that book and unscripted as well. So I love that, that author.

Nick Hutchison (13:30.187)
Yeah, he's amazing.

Linda (13:32.01)
Okay. So talk about, um, let's talk about, you know, your brand and how you built it because you, it's, you've done amazing things. You've built your reach to over a million followers organically. And, you know, you've just, you've been, you just mentioned you've had the opportunity to hang out with MJ DeMarco. So tell us what strategies were key for you in building that organic region. How did you build your brand as well to, to that, that following?

Nick Hutchison (13:57.238)
Well, like I mentioned, it sort of started by accident. You know, I was just, I was reading books. I wanted to talk about them as much as possible. So I started sharing them on social media. As I continue to share them on social media and provide value to the audience by recommending books and sharing how I was using them, the following continued to grow. And...

I was reviewing books written by my favorite authors and slowly but surely as my community was built, those authors, they were sharing the book reviews with their communities, right, which was increasing my followers and they were following the account and they were engaging in the comment section. So years into this, I decided to start a podcast and I had follow-up questions from these books and I assumed that my community did as well.

So I started reaching out to these authors and I offered to host a conversation with them where we do a deep dive on their book and then I would share with my audience, right? So they have a book that they wanna sell. I have an audience, I could be the middleman. So over the years, I've had a chance to interview some of my favorite authors, people like MJ DeMarco and Grant Cardone and Alex Hormozi and Patrick Bette-David and Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday, Vanessa Van Edwards, like all of these amazing human beings.


Nick Hutchison (15:16.346)
And that was a really big way for me to grow my audience because one of the secrets of podcasting is that like trust is transitive. That's kind of how I think about it. So if you trust MJ and I can demonstrate to you that MJ trusts me because I have photos playing basketball at his house with him.

then you're more likely to trust me as well, right? A is bigger than B, B is bigger than C, A is also bigger than C. So that's how I think about social media credibility. Trust is transitive. If you can collaborate with the biggest names in your space, then you can naturally grow a lot faster. So when somebody is prospecting, like let's say your Instagram page, and they're deciding whether or not they wanna follow you, you can increase the likelihood of that person pressing follow.

by demonstrating credibility, by showing that you're collaborating with people that they already trust. So I did that for a long time, you know, every day posting content, providing value. I started working with bigger and bigger authors. And then, you know, it eventually became a full-time job for me because authors started to reach out and say, hey Nick, I love your book reviews. Can I pay you to review my book? Like, okay, that sounds pretty cool.


Nick Hutchison (16:32.69)
Again, same kind of thing. Like I have an audience of engaged book buyers. They have a book that needs to be sold. I can be the middleman. And as I got to understand the industry a little bit more, I realized that every single author, no matter how many books they've sold, wants to sell more. Everybody's insecure about that number. And so I started to try out other services, like where we could book authors on podcasts, or we could fly out to the authors and help them build content for their social media.

And so now Book Thinker is my agency. I have 10 people on my team and we work with over 100 authors a year to help them promote and market their books. So that's kind of the backstory for how the agency was built. And if, I don't know if it's valuable to you or not, but if you want, we could talk about some more social media growth strategies and brand building strategies. Cause I, that stuff's a lot of fun. It really is.

Linda (17:08.378)
I really like it. I'm glad.

Linda (17:24.338)
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask too. How did you do it? And what advice would you give to someone looking to build a strong personal brand like yours and get all these awesome guests on their show as well, because I'm curious to know personally for myself too.

Nick Hutchison (17:37.106)
Yes, yes, yes. I have a bunch of things to say here. Number one is that your dream guest, so in this case MJ or other people like MJ, for anybody in the audience, your dream guest is far more accessible than you think they are. And the example, the best example that I have to drive this home is kind of a funny example, but everybody ends up getting the point. So here's how I've heard it. The hot girl at the bar.

Every guy at the bar anticipates rejection, so they don't even try. And then at the end of the night, she walks out feeling insecure because nobody wanted to talk to her. The same thing happens on social media with these big personalities. Everybody anticipates rejection, so nobody tries. And I've noticed this with my own following. Like back when Book Thinkers had 10 to 20,000 followers on Instagram, I used to literally get 50 DMs a day.

a day, every single day, like clockwork. And I would spend an hour plus every single day responding to messages. As my community grew, less and less and less and less people reached out now. We have 160,000 followers. We probably get like five DMs a day. And so I'll meet people at conferences or sometimes I'll meet people from social media and they'll say, hey, I've been following you for years. Why haven't you, you know, and I have all these questions.

Why didn't you ever reach out? Well, I didn't think you'd respond. You have too many followers. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So the more followers you have, the more the average person anticipates rejection. So the less likely they are to reach out, meaning all of these business celebrities, and now I've had a chance to ask a lot of them, they all back this up. The larger their following gets, the less people reach out. So that's one lesson. And I think it works for a lot of these people.


Nick Hutchison (19:34.63)
that you want to reach out to. There's two books that I'll recommend that hammer home like creative ways to get to people. One is called The Third Door by Alex Benayan. Have you read that one?

Linda (19:45.662)
No, I haven't. I'm looking to that.

Nick Hutchison (19:48.174)
All right, so here quickly, here's the metaphor because it's a really good metaphor. He says, every nightclub has three ways to get it. Door number one is general admission. And that line typically wraps around the block. You got to pay a cover. They might say, no, hey, we're at capacity. Like that stinks. You got to wait it out in the cold. Nobody wants general admission. Door number two.

is the VIP entrance. You either have to have a lot of money or you have to already be famous. Most of us don't have access to door number two either. But there's always a third door. And in the case of a nightclub, that might mean like sneaking in the back door, army crawling through the kitchen, some of that nobody sees you and like popping in the back of the club. But here's the thing, you're still in the club. It's just you access to kind of a fun and creative way. And I think there is a fun and creative way to access every single one of these people that we wanna work with.

It's just how can you provide value to them in a way that they want that value and they can leverage it and it doesn't seem like you're asking for anything other than a little bit of their time to help them fulfill their own goals. And so authors are a great example because every author wants to sell their book. So not that you would ever do this, but it's not like, hey, MJ, I want you on my show so that, you know.

I can talk with you and you can teach me and provide me value. It's like, hey, MJ, I have an audience of people who have heard me talk about your book for years and they're sick and tired of it. You've changed my life, you've changed everything for us and I really want you to come on and share your message so that I can help you sell even more books. And like that positioning is way more like, hey, MJ, let me help you, you know? And a really good book for that is called Blue Fishing.


Nick Hutchison (21:33.846)
by Steve Sims. And it's all about the art of like value exchange and a really good book recommendations.

Linda (21:42.02)
I totally agree with that, but I think sometimes I wonder when I have, I've reached out to MJ and I haven't heard back, but the thing is I think the audience size, because he mentions scale as well, you know, because that's in his sense model. So I think maybe because I've just started out with this podcast, it's still pretty new and I've still got to build up that, that authority as well and the audience. So maybe, you know, for him to make it worthwhile his time, I'll have to


Linda (22:07.834)
build my audience too. So, cause at the moment it's still small, but it's getting there. I'm consistently posting like every day on YouTube, there'll be two videos. I'm like across all the social, like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook as well. So we're consistently doing all channels as well. And I have a team like that helped me do it. So we're gonna get there, but yeah.

Nick Hutchison (22:27.206)
Yeah, maybe I'll push back on that. I, you know, like episode number two on my show is with Russell Brunson, uh, who owns ClickFunnels and he's written a bunch of books and at the time, I want to say my audience, like it was a brand new podcast, so there were no downloads. Um, and I pitched him on just helping him promote a book that he was about to launch.

And I think that a lot of times, you know, MJ's not launching a book right now, but I think a lot of times you can bypass due diligence by structuring your ask in a specific way. Like I remember afterwards, I said, I kind of wrapped up and I said, hey Russell, I have a friend who's hosting a conference. He wants to do a virtual Q and A with you. How much would you charge for that? Not a podcast, a virtual Q and A with his community.

Russell told me 250,000 for a half an hour, but he just did my podcast for free. So it was all about the positioning of me helping and promote market a book to an audience versus like, hey, I want a half an hour of your time. I saved 250 grand, you know, by positioning it differently. Or here's another way, here's another lesson that I'll share with everybody and you, this one is really cool. Episode number one on my show was with this guy, Evan Carmichael.

Linda (23:25.015)
Wow.

Linda (23:31.43)
Thanks for watching!

Nick Hutchison (23:48.766)
Evan's an author, a YouTuber. Yeah, he's awesome. And by the way, he's famous for saying yes to like brand new podcasts. So reach out, tell Evan that I said he would be a great best for your show and he'll come on. I guarantee it. But here's the lesson that Evan gave me. Evan said to me, use my name. And I was like.

Linda (23:50.089)
On YouTube.

Linda (24:04.836)
Okay.

Nick Hutchison (24:13.566)
What does that mean, Evan? And he goes, use my name. When you're prospecting for a potential guest for your show, mention that you just interviewed Evan Carmichael if they follow me. And you can see that on Instagram's the best platform for it because you can just click on who people follow. As long as you're following people, they show right up top. So, and I'm like, okay, how do I do it? And he just said, oh, I help, you know, mention to people that you help authors like Evan Carmichael promote and market their books.

And if they follow me, that might move the needle 1% or it might move the needle 100%. And they might bypass any due diligence about how many downloads do you get or what platforms or how many episodes have you done so far because they see that their friends have been on the show and that creates a fear of missing out. So now when I reach out to an author, I try to be a, here's another fun one, like another fun metaphor. I try to be a surgeon with my words.

So the metaphor is that surgeons don't make extra cuts while they're performing surgery and salespeople shouldn't use extra language while selling. So now my DM template is basically, hey Linda, congratulations on the upcoming release of your book, I'd love to help you support it. I've recently worked with authors like A, B and C. I see you follow all three of them. You know, I don't say that, but I just list their names. I'd love to help you as well. Here's a link to book on my podcast. Like that's it.

Linda (25:08.572)
That's it.

Nick Hutchison (25:37.17)
And like they don't even respond. They just book a time on your calendar half the time, which is fun.

Linda (25:42.914)
Oh, wow. That's awesome. So who have been your favorite podcasting, like guests and so far, cause you seem like you've had some amazing guests. You've even had Tony Robbins on there. Incredible guests. Um, so which one's been your favorite podcast interview and what's the most inspiring thing that you've learned from them?

Nick Hutchison (26:02.558)
My favorite guest is Stephen Pressfield. Stephen Pressfield has written a number of books, including my favorite of his is called The War of Art, and a play on the art of war, but it's called The War of Art. And the book is all about overcoming resistance. We've interviewed Stephen a few times. Stephen is 80 years old.

Um, and my favorite lesson from him is about delaying gratification. Steven worked for 30 straight years writing every single day before he experienced any success, 30 years. And yeah, from ages 20 until 50. And then all of a sudden in his fifties.

Linda (26:49.816)
Wow.

Nick Hutchison (26:58.21)
He writes the Legend of Bagger Vance, which gets turned into a movie with Will Smith and Matt Damon. And then he writes Gates of Fire, which is a historical fiction book that sells a million copies. And then he writes The War of Art, a non-fiction book sells over a million copies. And now he's, every book he writes sells a bunch of copies. And I'm sitting there at the time, you know, when I...

when I conducted the interview that really had the big impact on me, I was in my late 20s. And I remember thinking, is there something in my life that I'd be willing to wait 30 years for? But that's the kind of mentality that creates people like Steven Pressfield who are a mega success. So it's a really good lesson about how much are you willing to sacrifice?

And if you're not willing to sacrifice that much, maybe this isn't the right path, which is a scary thing to think about. But then I thought about it, I'm like, you know what? I care so much about promoting and marketing non-fiction books that even if I had to struggle for 30 years to make it happen, like I would. That's how much I love these things. So yeah, most people.


Nick Hutchison (28:10.738)
Most people aren't willing to delay gratification longer than like a few hours, which is sad. But I think the most successful people that I've interviewed, a lot of these big names, they weren't successful until they were. And we forget that there is no overnight success. None of these people made it happen overnight. They all took years and years and years and years. And we don't see that work, but they all put it in. And Pressfield is just like an exaggerated example of that, but it was a really cool lesson.


Linda (28:40.162)
Wow. Gosh, that's very inspiring. And I can imagine like with what you're doing, promoting and helping people launch their books. Like, do you get given heaps of books as well? Because for me personally, I love reading personal development books. And I've got like too many books on the shelf that I want to read. And then now instead of just buying more and more and just filling up too much. Cause when we move houses, it just gets so heavy. So I've thought.

I'll start borrowing it. So I added to the cart in my Amazon cart and I've got like over 55 books that I really wanna read, you know? And it's just finding that time to read those books as well. Oh, but there's another app too that I've recently discovered called Headway that gives you a summary of some of the books. And I found like a quick summary, which is good. And then I find out if I wanna read it, then I'll go and borrow it. And then if I like it, I'll buy it because yeah, I just have to, there's so many books out there, but there are...

some books that aren't good as well. You know, do you ever find that, you know, you pick up a book and it's not that great and then you don't wanna read it? Like, what are your thoughts on that? And how do you deal with wanting to read? Like, there must be so many other books that you wanna read or haven't got time to read. So how do you find that time as well?

Nick Hutchison (29:52.274)
Yeah, great questions. Just like you, I think book summary apps are a great discovery tool, but not a great replacement for the book. So that was a good point that you made. I'm totally in alignment with you there. I think it takes reading an entire book to fully understand the author's message and to develop an emotional connection to the stories and all of the information and then take action on it.

Bad books, yeah, I think life is too short to read bad books. If you read a hundred books a year, you wouldn't even crack into a fraction of 1% of what's available. So life is too short to read a bad book. Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss, two of my favorite authors, they were on a podcast one time, and Ryan said he uses something called the rule of 100. So he takes the number 100, he subtracts his age, and that's how many pages he has to read.

after he's picked up a book before he can put it down or not. So, for me, I'm 30. So I'd have to read 70 pages of a book.

before I know whether or not it's gonna be a good fit for me. If I reach 70 pages and I'm like, nah, I don't really like this book. It's not gonna solve the problem I thought it was going to, or it's not gonna build the skill that I thought I was going to. I'll put it away. Because again, life is too short to read a bad book. And I guess the idea is the older you get, the less you have to read because the wiser you have become. So I think it's kind of a fun perspective.


Linda (31:23.946)
Yeah, and I totally agree because some books are just full of fluff, you know, and they just make it so long that they don't need to. So that's a good way to implement that. I like that.

Nick Hutchison (31:33.338)
Yeah, and I have some, I have kind of like a fun response to the time to read thing. So when I, and I meet a lot of people that will say, Hey Nick, I love what you're talking about, but I don't have time to read. And that's my favorite thing when people say that, because I'll respond like this. Oh really? What if I paid you $10,000 to read a book by the end of next month? Do you think you could do it?


Nick Hutchison (31:57.482)
And they're like, oh yeah, of course, I could read five. And it's like, hmm, interesting, you've fallen into my trap. So it's not a question of whether or not you can read, it's a question of whether or not you value reading enough to prioritize it over other things in your calendar. Because if you were being paid to read, you would do it. So how do we adjust the lens that you view reading through to make it more valuable? And then instead of trying to find time to read,


Nick Hutchison (32:23.834)
I say let's replace low impact activities like scrolling on social media or watching Netflix for hours every night with reading a good book. Not the whole activity, but let's say 15 minutes. So replace 15 minutes in the morning of social media scrolling and maybe just the first 15 minutes of your Netflix or whatever you're watching in the evening with reading a great book. That's 30 minutes a day. And in 30 minutes, you can read about 20 pages.


Nick Hutchison (32:52.866)
20 pages, five days a week, that's 100 pages a week. That's a book every two weeks, just by replacing a little bit of social media and a little bit of Netflix with reading. And that's how I do it. And you could ramp that up, you could ramp that down. I mean, 15 minutes a day is 50 pages a week, which is a book every month. And that's a lot more than most people are reading, you know?

Linda (33:15.29)
Yeah, I agree because I read before I go to bed but do you recommend doing that or do you recommend doing it like you just do reading, do you read in the morning and at night time just a little bit here and a little bit there because my reading time is my winding down time so what do you recommend to get the best out of your reading?

Nick Hutchison (33:33.694)
Well, first I'll say that I don't think there is a right answer. I think it's so dependent on everybody's schedules and their interest levels. Like reading before you go to bed has a lot of other benefits. Getting away from the blue light on your phone or your TV screen helps you wind down and get more restful sleep.

I've heard it said that the last thought you have before you go to bed is the first thought you have when you wake up. And so if that's positive and it's constructive and it's personal development material, that's amazing. You know, our brains don't shut off while we're sleeping. And so if you can subconsciously prime your brain to work on a problem or think about something positive instead of like just consuming social media or news, like that's beneficial. But when is the best time to read? In my experience.


Nick Hutchison (34:23.97)
from my perspective, it's when our energy is the highest. So for me, the first thing that I do every single morning is I go for about a one hour walk in the woods with my dog. No headphones, not listening to anything. It's kind of like a walking meditation. Breathe in the fresh air, get the sunlight, get the exercise endorphins flowing. Then I head to the gym and I work out. I get, again, the exercise endorphins flowing. Like I really wake my body up.

And then when I go home and I shower and I sit down with my first cup of coffee, that's when I like to read. Because my energy is at its peak. I'm leveraging the caffeine, which is a nootropic. I'm leveraging the exercise endorphins, and I feel really ready to learn. And that's when I like to read.

But that's just my, you know, not everybody has the flexibility in their schedule. That's not realistic for everybody. So I think before bed is probably like the second best option in my opinion, because of all the benefits that I said before.

Linda (35:23.474)
Yeah, definitely agree with that subconsciousness, the thoughts before going to bed as well. But it's also when your mind is not so distracted, like for me, I have a lot of thoughts in my brain, you know, about business, about what the next day and family. So for me, I have to start reading a bit before I can focus. And sometimes I have to repeat the things that I'm reading because my mind is still a million miles an hour. So how do you stay focused and productive amidst the noise of social media and constant information?

especially in today's world with all the distractions that we have.

Nick Hutchison (35:57.398)
The best metaphor for this comes from Jim Quick's book, Limitless. So Jim says, imagine you are cruising through a neighborhood, you're driving, but you're going kind of slow. Well, because you're going slow, your mind can wander a little bit. You can look at the houses, the architecture, the cars in the driveway, like you have that luxury because you're driving slow.

Nick Hutchison (36:21.858)
But imagine you're driving through that same neighborhood as fast as possible. Your eyes would be glued to the road. There's no room for daydreaming, right? And so he talks about that through the lens of reading as well. I think if you read too slow, you're not leveraging your brain's full capacity for focus. And then therefore your brain's like...

only on half speed, so it's also daydreaming about other things. I think one of the solutions, it sounds kind of funny, but one of the solutions for retaining more from the books you read is by reading faster. And I'm not talking like remove sub vocalization or speed read by reading every third word or something like that, but just increasing the reading speed a little bit more and a cool hack would be.

to listen to the audio book on like 1.5 or 2X speed while you're also reading the physical book and that keeps you, it keeps you glued to the page. So my favorite way to focus and sort of like remove the outside world is actually by reading faster.

Linda (37:13.786)
All right. Thank you. Have a good night.

Linda (37:27.562)
Wow. And what is your advice for people who, cause you know, there's different types of learning as well, because some people learn better when they're watching my partner. He does, he's not much of a reader, but I did give him that Rich Dad Poor Dad book years and years ago. And that's the one book that he didn't mind reading. But other than that, he just, he says that he learns by just watching. So some people

prefer to watch, some people prefer to listen, some people are visual. What is your advice on that, especially to improve your reading and the knowledge that you can get from reading books? Because I personally love reading, but I also love listening as well. But some people just don't like reading.

Nick Hutchison (38:04.202)
Yeah, I have consumed so many conflicting pieces of advice and data on this point, so I don't know what the right answer is. I think that there's almost a difference between how we can optimally learn and how we like learning, right? So for instance, 80% of the inputs to our brain are visual.

That doesn't differ person to person. It's just a fact. 80% of the inputs to our brain are visual. So if you're only listening to information, like you're listening to a book, the chances of you retaining and implementing are lower because it's harder to form a neural connection to the information that you're listening to if you're only listening to it compared to reading it or watching it.

And most of the time you're multitasking while you're in the car or you're doing chores or at the gym and you're listening to something. So you're at a disadvantage, but. If you like it more than it becomes sustainable. And I think sustainability is a really important variable here. Like you have to enjoy the process of learning in order to continue learning for a long period of time. So for people that don't like reading and they like listening.

Linda (39:04.995)
Mm.

Nick Hutchison (39:25.626)
and they're more likely to stick with it. Like I say, go for it, you know what I mean? So I don't know if there's a right answer.

Linda (39:29.578)
Yeah, it depends on what you're passionate about learning. I think it's also what you're passionate about learning, I guess too, because if it's a subject that you're passionate about, then you're more likely to continue whatever reading the book.

Nick Hutchison (39:35.092)
Yeah.

Nick Hutchison (39:42.578)
Yeah, I mean, I teach that SMART Goal framework, like how do we retain and implement more? It starts by setting a SMART Goal. And the R in SMART is relevant. You need to be emotionally connected to this book that you're reading. You need to have a goal for it. You need to be solving a problem or building a skill or.

satisfying your curiosity, and that keeps you hooked. So that's why a lot of times people ask me for book recommendations just blankly, like, hey, recommend me a book. And I'm like, if I just recommended something off the cuff, you'd be reading with my intention for you, not solving a problem that you know you're already facing. So instead of me just blindly recommending a book, let's talk about a problem that you're facing, or a skill that you wanna develop.


Nick Hutchison (40:31.358)
And then I can provide a book recommendation that's a little bit more accurate and you'll be more emotionally connected to it. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Linda (40:38.926)
Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. Yeah, because so many people make so many different recommendations on books, but like, you know, there's so many categories like business and fun and like, yeah, for me, I just, I like learning based on what I need to learn in terms of the skill that I need at the time as well. Like you mentioned, when you needed sales, when I was in sales, I was reading

Linda (41:04.554)
in my life and what I need to. So I totally agree. I'm currently fascinated by, you know, Dr. Joe Dispenser because have you read any of his books at all?

Nick Hutchison (41:16.134)
I've seen him speak at a conference, but I haven't read any of his books yet.

Linda (41:21.462)
Yeah, like I was never into all the topics that he discusses about like the quantum world. Like he adds psychology with science and he backs it up as well and talks about manifestation. And it's just, so I was really fascinated. I just love learning about different things.

Nick Hutchison (41:39.434)
Yeah, me too, me too. I think he has a lot to offer. And I did start one of his audio books one time, but it was just because I saw him speak on stage and it was one of those scenarios where I like, I wasn't emotionally connected to the information just yet. So like if we were to interview him or something on our podcast, that would give, I'd dive back into it, but I think he's a brilliant guy. Yeah, that emotional connection piece is important. I've heard it said this way.

Linda (41:43.855)
Yeah.


Nick Hutchison (42:09.23)
Face a problem that creates pain. If you face a problem every single day and it goes unaddressed, which most of our problems do, unfortunately, because we're so busy and distracted, over the next 30 years, so 30 times 365, you'll face that problem almost 11,000 more times. Or you could read a book that has the solution, solve your problem and avoid the pain.

You know, that's kind of how I like to start it with people because everybody has a problem, whether it's personally or professionally that bugs them on a daily basis. And you can avoid a lot of pain, a lot of problems by reading a book about how somebody fixed that same issue. Like as human beings, oftentimes we think we're so unique, but the fact is 100 billion people have lived before us.


Nick Hutchison (43:01.41)
And millions of them lived great lives and figured it out. And they wrote books about it. And it's like, we can access those books sometimes for free or for, you know, a little bit of money in a few hours of our time, which is just so cool.


Linda (43:13.274)
I know that's so true. What are your thoughts on fiction books though? Cause I personally don't read fiction, but I know people that love reading their fiction books. And for me, like, I, I totally agree with you that my time is so valuable that I want to read nonfiction self development books. But what are your thoughts on fiction books? Do you ever get into those books?

Nick Hutchison (43:33.43)
I'm just like you. I don't read many of them. I see definitely a bunch of different ways that you could get value, expanding your vocabulary, lengthening your attention span, boosting your creativity. I wrote in my book just like a little bit about fiction. And one of the things that I came to realize was that the

Fiction is one of the only places where the impossible can become possible with a stroke of a pen or the typing of a keyboard. And I think that's really cool. But yeah, I would say every year, if I read a hundred books, I'd say 95 of them are nonfiction, personal development or business style books. And then maybe

five of them are fiction, but they're books like, you know, The Go-Giver by Bob Berg and John David Mann or The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which teach kind of non-fiction lessons anyway, even though they're fictional books.

Linda (44:27.798)
Wow, that's awesome. Can we talk about your business growth and a little bit about, you know, your, the entrepreneurial world? So what's one key piece of advice you give for your younger entrepreneurial self?

Nick Hutchison (44:41.366)
This one isn't fun or sexy, but here it is. Slow and steady wins the race. So when I was first starting my business and it was a side hustle and I was just starting to experience some success, I wanted to take the jump. In fact, I called my boss at the time and I basically quit. And I was so thankful that he said no, which was funny to hear at the time.

Linda (45:11.182)
He wouldn't let you quit.

Nick Hutchison (45:11.406)
And he didn't let me quit. He said, hey, I think it's cool that you want to start your own business and you want to go full time with it, but why don't we just reduce your existing responsibilities for a few months. You can focus most of your time on your business. And if it doesn't work out, then you can come back in. No, you know, we don't need to ruffle any feathers like, you know, it'll be a smooth transition back in. And I stayed in that limited capacity for a couple of years.

because my business took years to really get off the ground. There's a couple other metaphors that drive this home. One is like, no matter how many times you read Aesop's fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise always wins. Everybody wants the hare to win. They wanna be the hare. They wanna sprint to the finish line, but that's just not how business works.

Michael Gerber in the E-Myth Revisited says that 95% of small businesses fail in the first five years because they run out of money. And it always takes more money than you think it's going to, and it always takes longer than you think it's going to. So another way of saying this, this was another piece of advice from a different mentor of mine. He said, don't jump off the cliff and try to build the parachute on the way down.

Nick Hutchison (46:28.214)
because you're going to operate from a place of scarcity. You're going to compromise on your values. You're going to discount unnecessarily. Prospects are going to see that. And he said, if you just keep your full-time job on the side, you know, which wasn't really a full-time job anymore, but it was kind of a part-time job, and you just keep that on the side, let that act like a sponsor, you know? He said like, golfers have sponsors.

that pay the bills while they learn to become really good at golf. And I was like, okay, like I get that. My full-time job's my sponsor. My side hustle's gonna take a long time to grow. And I'm so happy that I took that advice. I went to the extreme. I even had full-time employees before I officially severed ties with that software company that I was working for, because I really wanted to make sure that the business was going to be successful before I jumped. And you know, you see...

Linda (47:22.702)
Hmm. What were some of the key mistakes that you've made though? Because I've made that mistake as well. And I've heard other podcasters doing that as well, just hiring before preparing, you know, which is not good. And then they have to let go of these people. What was, what were some of the biggest challenges that you've had to face in your business and how did you overcome them?

Nick Hutchison (47:37.824)
Yeah.

Nick Hutchison (47:43.474)
I think the biggest challenge that I can, or the biggest mistake that I consistently made in the early years was assuming that I knew what my customers wanted. So I would like develop something in its entirety and then go try to sell it.

rather than develop it with my target customers. And I did this on the author side and I did this on the reader side. So one of my famous mistakes, I spent years trying to build a mobile application that could help readers retain and implement more from the books that they are reading. And I did it with a couple of my friends. We spent tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours of our time.

And it totally failed. It never found a product market fit. And that's because we assumed, we assumed that everybody wanted what we wanted. And that just wasn't the case. Now, if I had developed more of an MVP, a minimally viable product, collected feedback in real time and built it with a community, I would have found much better traction. So I made that mistake too many times in a row and eventually I learned like.

Linda (48:42.565)
Mm.

Nick Hutchison (48:53.846)
Don't assume you know what the customer wants. Ask the customer and then build what they want. I had it backwards.

Linda (49:01.612)
Well, at least now that you've learned. What are you excited about for the future to come, especially in business and in general as well?

Nick Hutchison (49:08.566)
Yeah, I've reached a point where I really do enjoy the passage of time. And that's what I optimize for. Like I wanna wake up every single day, I wanna love what I do. And after 10 years essentially of trying to achieve that, I have achieved that. So I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, and I wanna do more of the same. I wanna grow a bigger business, helping more people, but in a sustainable and slow and steady way.

I want to continue to travel the world. It's one of my favorite things to do outside of my business. So my wife and I have visited 25 different countries over the last five or six years. And we want to continue to do that and start a family together. We just got married last year. Yeah, thank you so much. I want to continue to be as healthy as possible. I'm really into fitness and nutrition and biohacking. I just signed up for my first sprint triathlon. So that's a swim bike run and.

I'm really excited for that. And, you know, just continue to have great relationships with everybody that I choose to work with. And so I think that's the secret to life is trying to enjoy the passage of time and make that sustainable.

Linda (50:18.894)
That's beautiful. I totally yeah. All that I agree. What's your definition of success?

Nick Hutchison (50:26.266)
That is my definition of success, somebody who enjoys the passage of time. And success is holistic. It's not just financial, right? It's I've met, I've met and interviewed, unfortunately, a lot of people who are very financially successful, but they have terrible relationships and they're not healthy. And I'll tell you this, they are not successful. So success is holistic. It's.

Nick Hutchison (50:54.474)
You know, it's healthy, it's wealthy, and it's happy all at the same time.

Linda (50:59.002)
beautiful. Finally, where can people find you?

Nick Hutchison (51:04.334)
If anybody wants to reach out to me for a custom book recommendation, I mentioned I love giving book recommendations earlier. So DM me, direct message me on Instagram at Book Thinkers. That's our largest and most vibrant community. And over there, just shoot me a message. Tell me about a problem you're facing or a skill that you wanna develop and I'll provide a custom book recommendation to you. So that's the best place to go. And in our bio over there, you can find links to everything that you need.

Linda (51:33.622)
Awesome. Thank you. This has been a really great conversation. So if you guys enjoyed it just as much as I do, please be sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And thank you so much for being on the show, Nick.

Nick Hutchison (51:45.63)
Yeah, thank you, Linda. I really appreciate it.

Linda (51:48.262)
awesome.