In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, host Marc Bautis is joined by Nick Hutchinson, owner of BookThinkers, host of BookThinkers: Life Changing Books, and author of Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn. Nick has 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.
Nick Hutchinson’s journey from someone who wasn’t much of a reader to a dedicated reader and advocate for personal development through books shows that reading habits can be developed over time. Even if you haven’t been an avid reader in the past, tune in to discover how you can cultivate a habit of regularly reading.
In this episode, you will learn…
- How to actually take action on every book that you read.
- How to use the SMART goal-setting framework for your reading.
- How to read effectively and take notes.
- How delayed gratification applies to reading, and the benefits of sacrificing immediate pleasures for long-term growth.
- And more!
Resources:
Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn | BookThinkers | BookThinkers: Life Changing Books | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Books Mentioned:
Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life | Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth: How You and Your Financial Advisor Can Grow Your Fortune in Stock Mutual Funds | Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! | Think and Grow Rich | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your host Marc Bautis. On today’s show, I’m joined by a special guest, Nick Hutchinson.
Nick is a business owner, personal development enthusiast and author of Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn. He is the visionary force behind BookThinkers, a company dedicated to bridging the gap between authors and readers. Nick also hosts the popular book podcast, BookThinkers: Life Changing Books, where he chats with the authors of his favorite self-help and business publications. As a speaker and coach, he’s helped thousands of people achieve their personal and professional goals through the power of positive reading.
Nick has 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 was the inspiration for his new book, which we will discuss today.
Nick, welcome to the show.
Marc, I’m excited to be here. Can I ask you the first question today?
Go for it.
I know you’re a huge proponent of reading and we just wrapped up 2023, so I’m curious: What was the best book that you read last year?
So I probably read over 20 books in the self-help and business genres, and even in my field of finance as well. I think my favorite one – which we read as a team in our Book Club – is called Die With Zero.
I love it, man. Bill Perkins is a friend of mine
The book kind of throws traditional financial planning on its head. Bill Perkins really encourages readers to live their best life, enjoy every moment, and use their money – their wealth – along with it. That book was one of my favorites from 2023.
Related: Episode 132 – How to Get All You Can From Your Money and “Die With Zero”
Yeah, Die With Zero is such a great book. I read it a couple of years ago. In fact, my company did a 100 book giveaway where we gave away 100 copies of Die With Zero a couple of years ago. So I’m definitely really familiar with that one. I just read a book that I’m curious if you’ve read… Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth by Nick Murray.
Yeah, I have read that book. Actually, when we start working with a client, we send them this welcome package, which includes a book. That’s one of the books in the rotation. It’s a great book… A lot of people overcomplicate what they have to do with their finances, and we love the message that finances can be simple. It’s a great book as well.
Yeah, both are great. Thank you for indulging my curiosity there.
Reading Tips for “Beginners”
Absolutely. So, we touched on my reading a bit… I try to read at least 20 books a year, and I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember. And, as I mentioned, my team started a Book Club which we’ve all really enjoyed. We’ll typically read something that’s related to financial planning, or self-improvement – and for each book we read, we record a podcast episode. Although reading is something I incorporate into my personal and professional life, I’m really excited for today’s conversation around how to master reading habits and actually apply what we learn from our reading into our day-to-day lives.
While some may argue that getting into the habit of reading is easy, I do think it’s a lost art to actually implement lessons from each book before picking up the next.
Before we get started talking about Rise of the Reader, Nick, can you tell me what led you to dedicating your life to help readers?
Well, what might surprise you is that I wasn’t much of a reader growing up. I was more of an athlete, not much of an academic. You couldn’t pay me to read a book when I was growing up. I wasn’t the best student, and that sort of behavior and attitude carried with me through most of my college experience as well.
I went to business school and heading into my senior year of college, I took an internship at a local software company. It was a sales internship, and my boss at the time, Kyle, saw some unfulfilled potential in me. I was this young, kind of cocky, know-it-all, 20-year-old sales guy.
He saw that I was commuting about an hour to the officer each way, five days a week. So he recommended that I listen to podcasts – shows just like this one. So I started listening to podcasts to and from my internship every day that summer. Very quickly, I realized that so many of the people I listened to were giving at least some credit for their success to books they had read, or maybe a book that they had written. I realized if I was deliberately choosing not to read the books that made these people successful, I was also choosing to live under my potential. The roadmap was available for $20 and a few hours of my time, and I was choosing not to read the books.
“I realized if I was deliberately choosing not to read the books that made these people successful, I was also choosing to live under my potential.”
Nick Hutchinson
So, I think probably by the 10th time I heard mention of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I realized that there must be some magic sauce in this world of personal development/business books. That’s why I decided to start reading, and I haven’t looked back ever since.
Thanks for sharing that, I think it will resonate with a lot of my listeners. Personally, I started reading with paper books, but then over time I have switched to almost exclusively listening to audiobooks. While I listen to a book, I always keep a notebook close – either an Evernote notebook or Google Keep – to take notes. Otherwise I can get distracted and lose focus of what I’m reading. How do you consume the books you read?
I’m still a physical book guy. I mean, I read a couple of books a year on a Kindle if I’m traveling, or if I can’t get access to a physical copy. I also listen to about 20 books a year. But there’s an interesting stat that I came across: 80% of the inputs to our brain are visual. So, by default, if you’re only listening to information, you’re at a disadvantage. It’s harder to retain and implement if you’re only listening to a book.
Now, I love that you listen with a notebook by your side. Most people don’t. Most people listen while they’re in their car, at the gym, or doing chores. That’s multitasking. So not only are you at a disadvantage because you’re only listening to information, but you’re also not focused on it.
So, I try to read physical books, but I think that any form of a book is positive.
Now, I know one of the biggest excuses people have for not reading is the lack of time. But in your book, Rise of the Reader, you you break down reading into a math equation:
- 15 minutes of reading = roughly 10 pages
- 10 pages in the morning + 10 pages in the evening = 20 pages/day
- 20 pages/day * 5 weekdays = 100 pages/week
- 100 pages/week * 52 weeks = 5,200 pages/year
- 5,200 pages/year divided by 250 pages/book = OVER 20 BOOKS
I was impressed with this simplification, right off the bat. By replacing 15 minutes of your morning social media scroll and 15 minutes of your evening entertainment with reading, you can read 20 books and therefore improve 20 different areas of your life. What other tips or suggestions do you have for someone that says, “I just don’t have the time”?
Well, when somebody tells me I don’t have the time, I love to say: “If I paid you $10,000 to read a book by the end of the month, do you think you could do it?” The answer is always yes. So time is not the issue, it’s a question of whether or not we value reading enough to prioritize it over other things in our schedule.
Once we get to that agreement of like, “Yeah, you’re right, maybe I’m not viewing a book as valuable as $10,000. I get that.” Then I think it shifts into a question of why are you reading?
- Are you reading to solve problems?
- Are you reading to build skills?
- Are you emotionally connected to the content that you’re reading?
If you read with more intention, then I think it becomes easier to pick up the books, because the books are solving problems, they’re removing pain, they’re building skills, they’re exciting.
Another thing is, when are you trying to read? Are you trying to read at the end of a long day, when your willpower is drained and you’re burned out? That’s never going to be a successful reading session. So, maybe shift your reading to a time in the day when you have more energy.
I love reading right after my morning walk with the dog or right after my morning gym session, when I start drinking coffee. I have the exercise endorphins flowing, the caffeine is hitting my brain, and I’m ready to go. It would be impossible to fall asleep.
So think about when you’re scheduling the reading into your day.
Yeah, that makes sense. In Rise of the Reader, you talk about when and why you started reading personal development books. You picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Art of War, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to name a few. Can you talk about where your book recommendations come from?
The Best Place to Find Book Recommendations
I strategically look for specific types of books. In a past life, working in a company, I would do the same thing with our company book club. Everybody would get together to discuss the problems the business or its employees are currently struggling with, and then we’d search for books to solve those problems.
I heard a recent math equation that puts this into perspective. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said that if you’re dealing with a problem on a daily basis in your business and your personal life, over the next 30 years, you’re going to deal with that problem 11,000 times: 30 x 365 = 11,000.
So instead of facing that problem every day for the next 30 years, you could read a book about how somebody overcame that same problem. Read the book, implement what you learn, and go without the pain.
That’s how I think about it. When I’m searching for a book to read, I’ll ask myself:
- What problem is my business experiencing?
- What problem am I experiencing in my health?
- What problem am I experiencing in my wealth?
- What problem am I experiencing in my relationships?
- What skill sets am I lacking?
- What’s the difference between where I am today and where I know I could be in a few years?
- What do I need to do in order to be more capable and achieve more?
Then, I look for the best books on those subjects.
There are a lot of places to go for book recommendations: Social media, friends, family, mentors… You can go right to Google, or you could use Amazon. Love or hate Amazon, they have the most data on books as far as reviews are concerned. So, when you’re on Amazon and look up books about business communication, for example, a ton of books are going to pop up. You can then filter by the books that have the most reviews.
Typically, it’s very hard to sell a book consistently for a long period of time. I mean, I work in book marketing and I know how much of a challenge that is. With a big enough audience, you can make a little splash, but to sell a book consistently over time means that it has to provide a lot of value. So filter by reviews, and when you jump into the reviews, toss out the five-star and the one- and two-star reviews. Those are typically written from a place of emotion, either positive or negative. The reviewer might know the author, and they might love them or hate ’em. I recommend reading the three- and four-star reviews, that’s where reviews are typically written from a place of logic.
That’s a really good tip that I haven’t heard before. One of the problems that I’ve struggled with in regards to reading is, I’d almost read a book just to get through it. How formal are you with actually implementing the knowledge that you learn from each and every book?
How to Actually Take Action on Every Book That You Read
Thank you for the transparency, because just like you, I was reading to hit a certain number of books for years and years. That would influence my reading in a negative way.
Eventually, I realized that my goal isn’t just to read a certain number of books. Although there are benefits to reading a certain amount, it’s more of a vanity metric – it doesn’t mean anything, objectively. So, a couple of years ago, I shifted my goal. Instead of reading a certain number of books a year, I just wanted to take at least one action from every book that I read. That could be one book for the whole year. Although, I’ll tell you, it gets addicting once you start taking action.
Let’s use Die With Zero as an example. Instead of just opening the book and hoping that it’s going to change my life, I’ll set a SMART goal before I jump in. SMART is an acronym that’s used in goal setting. It stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time bound
For example: Find and implement at least one strategy for living more of an experiential life by the end of February.
- That’s specific.
- It’s measurable. I can ask myself: Did I implement at least one strategy for being more experiential with my life?
- It’s attainable. I didn’t say “Make a million dollars by the end of February.” The goal is to find and implement one action or strategy.
- It’s relevant, because I’m emotionally connected to it.
- It’s time-bound: By the end of February.
I’d also leverage Parkinson’s Law, which states that a task will expand to fit the timeline that you give it for execution. Then, I’ll write that intention on the inside cover of the book. I’ll review it every single time I read another chapter, so that I’m sharing my goal with the book so that the book can share just the most important information back to me.
How to Read Effectively and Take Notes
Now, let’s talk about how to read effectively and take notes. This is a dedicated chapter in Rise of the Reader, but for those listening who haven’t had a chance to read your book yet, what is the process you use for taking notes while reading, and how has it helped you retain more information?
So, I go through a book twice. The first pass through, I read or listen to every word in the entire book. We’ll talk about a physical paper book in this example. Now, every time I see something that’s related to my intention (an action that I might be able to implement, or a home run quote), I’ll circle the page number bracket off the section of the book that might help me fulfill my goal. But I’ll continue reading – I don’t want to lose the momentum, and I don’t want to multitask.
The second pass through the book, I’m only rereading and rewriting the things that I’ve highlighted or bracketed off. While the first pass through is 100% of the book, the second pass through is 1-2% of the book.
The reason that I do this is not every action is created equal. Sometimes I’ll hear people say like, oh, I read the first chapter. I got it, I implemented it, I’m done. And I’m like, you don’t know if what was in the second chapter would’ve been 10 times more efficient and 10 times more impactful. So I think it’s important to read the entire book, collect all of the potential actions that you could implement, rewrite them in your notebook on a physical paper notebook or in your online Evernote notebook, and then choose which one of those actions that you’d like to take action on.
That’s how I do it. Like I said, I used to take notes on everything that I found interesting, but it was a long and arduous process. Most of the time, I never memorized the quotes I wrote down. I never took action on anything. Now, I’ve really simplified it down to: What am I going to use in my life?
Thanks for sharing that, I think our listeners will find that very useful. Another challenge I have is starting a book and not finishing it. Do you ever start a book and then not finish it? Or do you make a commitment to finishing everything you begin?
When I first started reading personal development books, I thought in order to check the box, I would have to read every word of every page. And I don’t know where that came from. I really don’t because there are no rules to reading and implementing books. But then I heard two of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferris on a podcast one time, and Ryan said, life is too short to read bad books. And he gave a rule, he said, the rule of 100, you take the number 100 and you subtract your age. That’s how many pages of a book you have to read before you can determine whether or not you’re going to continue. And so for me, I’m 30, so I’d have to read 70 pages of a book before I’m wise enough to know whether or not it’s going to solve my problem.
If it’s not going to solve my problem or it’s a bad book or I don’t vibe with the author, I’ll put it down and I don’t need to pick it back up. The older you get, the less you have to read because the wiser you have become, as the rule states, unfinished books represent problems that you no longer need to solve. They represent things that didn’t resonate with you. They still have value and they still have meaning. But I would say, yeah, don’t finish a book if another problem pops up and you need to solve it and you find a better book for it. You know what I mean?
Yeah. What are some of the other key strategies you’ve found effective for as someone who’s trying to master their reading habits or even trying to get into their reading habits?
Well, I think accountability is a really important variable, and that’s something that it seems like you have in your company book club. So reading by yourself is difficult. Taking action by yourself is difficult. But there’s the old gym partner analogy. If you wake up at seven and you go to slap your alarm clock and snooze it, but there’s somebody that’s waiting at the gym for you, right? You’re more likely to get out of bed and go take action and get to the gym. And I think that the same thing happens with the books that we’re reading. If you do have a monthly call where everybody sits down and they talk about their favorite takeaways from the book and what they’re going to implement, I think that’s really important variable for taking more action. One of my favorite Napoleon Hill quotes says, action is the real measure of intelligence.
And so if you can hold your friends accountable to taking more action on the books they’re reading, then you can fly. You can read and implement more and more and more over time. In the second half of Rise of the Reader, I give everybody access to my activity tracker. So the legendary management guru, Peter Drucker, he says, what’s not being measured can’t be managed. And so I have an activity tracking template that everybody can get access to, and you can make your own copy. And it just teaches you how I plug the actions that I’m going to implement from the books that I’m reading into this tracker. I set a goal to take action on it throughout the week. I measure whether or not I took action and what the results were. And there’s a whole bunch of other functions like streaks and stuff like that. So if you kind of merge the two, you have an activity tracker and you have an accountability group that has visibility to it, and when you meet, I can say, Hey, mark, you have a goal to read for 60 minutes a week and you haven’t hit it in four weeks, man, what’s the deal? Can I help you? Can I hold you more accountable? Do you want text reminders? Do you need to modify your goal? I think that those kind two things married together have been very powerful for me.
Yeah, I think it also comes down to one of the things you mentioned earlier about scheduling it, and if you do that, you’re more apt to probably stick with it rather than if you kind of say, well, okay, I want to read today. And just inevitable something’s going to come up. And if reading is one of the things that gets pushed to the side, there’s going to be more days than that where it gets pushed to the side and then it just becomes easier and easier to push it to the side every day.
Yeah, I think so too. Like you mentioned, scheduling the reading time, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening – or even just one of those two – is a step in the right direction, which you can compound. And what’s great about reading is that it pays dividends over time, just like the memory dividends that Bill Perkins talks about in Die With Zero, it’s like In Die With Zero. He says, Hey, if you have an experience and you document it and you relive it through storytelling or rewatching the content on your phone, you can feel that joy from a past event again in the future. It pays dividends over time, and it will grow and compound as the experience of telling the stories and stuff compounds. And I think the same thing happens with these books. It’s like every time I talk about them, the experience grows.
And I know that repetition leads to retention. And so when I talk about these books and when I teach them, and when I explore these subjects on a call like this with you, mark, it’s like it takes on a life of its own. It grows into something new. And so anyway, I love the power of these personal development books. I think that they hold so much potential. I really think there’s a book to solve almost every problem that we can ever conceptualize. Somebody’s figured it out and they’ve documented it for us, and we can read it, which is so cool.
How Delayed Gratification Applies to Reading
Sure. In the conclusion of Rise of the Reader, you talk about delayed gratification. How does delayed gratification apply to reading, and the process of developing strong reading habits?
Well, it’s no secret that in today’s social media environment, there is so much instant gratification. We’re so used to getting dopamine over and over and over again through variability, social engineering, and all sorts of other tactics used. We fall victim to these platforms, and they just suck all of our time and attention away. So I think that reading a book is becoming tougher and tougher. These days, it’s hard to sit down with a physical paper book and stay engaged with the material. There are so many other things that seem more gratifying to us in the short-term.
When I think about delayed gratification, I think about serving my future self. I think: What is Nick Hutchison in five years going to look back and thank me – in the present moment – for? Is it watching Netflix? Is it scrolling on social media? Or is it focusing on something that will provide dividends for the rest of my life, like reading a great book and implementing something from it?
I’m constantly trying to survey what the future me will thank me for, and reading a book is a great example of that.
On delayed gratification, there’s a popular experiment out of Stanford, which I know as the marshmallow experiment. Basically, a group of students were given a marshmallow. They were told they could eat it now, or wait and get another prize. Most of the students couldn’t – or wouldn’t – wait. They ate the marshmallow. But the ones that could wait got more marshmallows. Researchers tracked these students through a number of years, and the ones that could delay gratification ended up experiencing much more success throughout their lives.
Wow, that really is interesting. Well, Nick, that concludes the questions I have for you today. Thank you for taking the time to join me, I found our discussion today to be so interesting. I will be applying some of these tips to my own life. How can listeners find out more about you? Get a copy of your book?
Our most vibrant social media community is on Instagram at Book Thinkers. Over there, we’ve got 150,000+ nonfiction readers. We put out content every day, and there’s a bunch of engagement. You could check out the podcast that I host as well. I’ve interviewed so many of these amazing authors, including Bill Perkins. It’s called BookThinkers: Life Changing Books. My book, Rise of the Reader: Strategies For Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn, is available everywhere that books are sold. If you have a chance to read it, I would love feedback. Marc, thank you so much for the opportunity.
Great. We’ll include all those links in the resources section of the show notes. Thanks again, Nick. And thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s episode. Don’t forget to follow The Agent of Wealth on the platform you listen from and leave us a review of the show. We are currently accepting new clients, if you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with our advisors, please do so below.