I saw somebody's Instagram story recently and they were talking about how
they were excited to get into reading.
The gist of the video was - this guy had
gone his whole life never reading a book, and now he's gonna get into reading.
I thought that was interesting because it reminded me about how I used to feel
which is - I used to hate books, I used to not know what was in books.
I don't like reading text. Not a fan.
Reading did change my life and I'll show you this right now.
This is my audible - I've got 258 titles in this library, Master-level
audiobook. So many badges, look at all my badges. Its so gamified.
But in today's video, I want to talk about how to read more books, why I read
AND HOW READING CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
What if I acted like that all the time?
Here's how I got into reading
Number one - I realized I don't like reading text on a page.
You give me a book and it's paperback and I can't do it. For some reason I just
cannot get my eyes to focus. Maybe it's something with my vision, maybe it's
something in my brain stopping me but I just do not enjoy the process of looking
at a screen and reading text.
So finding audiobooks was a game changer for me.
It allowed me to play books quick- two times or even three times speed and that got
me into the story enough to keep reading.
The other hack before I found audiobooks
was to take the paper book and try to just read it as quick as possible.
That way I would force myself to get into the book, experience some of the
book, and then hopefully get some of the ideas in.
But I didn't have the attention span
nor the desire to read at all for basically my entire life.
I think it has something to do with the school system.
Anytime anyone assigns me a book, or
really anytime anyone assigns me anything I don't want to do it.
But you give me a book to read. You say "Hey, read To Kill a Mockingbird by Thursday"
I will not read To Kill a Mockingbird, but you give me the To Kill a Mockingbird
audiobook, I might listen to it in an afternoon.
So everyone has different learning styles.
If you don't like reading, maybe you're an audiobook guy.
Do audiobooks have less value than real books?
I would say - No because
There's number Two - I would rather be the type of person that reads
ten audiobooks a year than the type of person that reads zero books a year.
It's a simple psychological principle. There's the ideal version and then
there's what you actually do. So some people would say, "I want to be the type
of person who reads one book a week " And then they'll try and they'll read maybe
ten percent of a book in a week and they won't get it done and then they'll quit reading forever.
I would rather be the person that's reading one page a week
than the person that's reading zero books a week because they want to read
one book a week and can't do it.
Starting is hugely important. I read through a couple books that changed my life.
Things like 4-hour workweek and a lot of those Seth Godin audiobooks really
opened my mind and painted a picture of the world as it is.
You never really know how your mindsets gonna change without it.
But forcing myself to go through that process, and read a few of these books
unlocked books for me as a pastime.
And then number three final point here is
-Read books about anything! The rule of thumb that I like is if you're even a
little bit interested in the topic, read the book about it.
I read a book recently about Michael Jordan. I hate sports as I've probably said a million times
but Michael Jordan I was listening to this podcast, it was like a conspiracy
theory podcast about Michael Jordan. It was recommended on Spotify and it was
talking about how he was kicked out of basketball because of the Mafia or is
like some weird story, but it got me interested and I read this whole twenty
hour book about Michael Jordan. Still not into sports, but I got a new perspective.
Every single book I read actually has changed my mind
or increased my point of view on something. And because I'm going for
these little interests, now I've read books about Art, I read Andy Warhol's book.
I've read books about sports and the more you can expose yourself to
these different points of view, the better you get at business. And I found that
there have been ideas in movie producing books that have improved the
process that x27. There were things in the Michael Jordan book- How he
approached his career that have improved the way that I look at things, my long-term view.
Things in Jack Ma's book about Alibaba have improved the way we
do storytelling in movies, so it all feeds together.
You don't have to read business books. In fact I barely read business books.
Its almost all biographies of people and some are businessmen, but most of them are just
very successful people in other industries.
We don't think about it a lot or at least I don't think about it a lot but
Richard Branson is a billionaire businessman but Andy Warhol, the artist was worth 200+ million dollars.
Picasso the artist - multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, Paul McCartney a musician is worth almost a billion.
So we think of these business magnates when we think of success and we think of money.
-I would argue that Andy Warhol was just as successful as Mark Cuban
and he was doing something that he found more fulfilling.
But that mindset would not have happened if I didn't read all of these random books.
Let's see the final part of this video which is
Books that I recommend. Here's what I'm reading right now.
Books that I recommend- Role models by John Waters, it's an interesting read
completely outside the realm of business but John Waters is a cult filmmaker.
He made a bunch of these movies in the 70s, 80s, 90s that have gone on to very
limited cult success, but he has a very dedicated audience. He also did "Hairspray"
and in this book he talks about all of his role models, all the people that
inspired him - a lot of artists, a lot of fashion designers, stuff like that. So I'd recommend that book.
Who is Michael Ovitz by Michael Ovitz. He started this talent agency called
Creative Artists Agency that went from nothing to basically taking over
Hollywood. Representing most of the major talent within a few years and he did it
just by hustling a little harder than other people and being completely
dedicated to client service. Huge win.
The other one, I did a YouTube video on this a while ago but the Hilton's.
It's all about Conrad Hilton and how he built this hotel Empire out of nothing.
Very interesting to see how people can put a business together
and create this multi-billion dollar empire from nothing, from just an idea.
Zealot, the life and times of Jesus Christ.
It's by Reza Aslan who i know is kind of a controversial figure, but I had such a
hard time getting into like Christian concepts. I love religion as a concept,
You know when I was raised. But I was raised in a really weird background like
my mom practices voodoo and my dad was Orthodox Jewish so it's like a really weird background.
This book really helped me understand a lot about why people follow Jesus, which is interesting.
I'm not a practicing Jesusite. You can read books outside of your religion.
Delivering happiness by Tony Hsieh. It's about how he built the company Zappos basically
from nothing, a lot of hustle. And then if you're a little bit more advanced in the
Entrepreneurship space, I would recommend the Howard Schultz book Onward, which
is how Howard Schultz came back to Starbucks after a long break he's the
CEO & Founder of Starbucks and rebooted their entire business.
Closed the stores down for days to retrain employees, rebuilt all of his systems, rebuilt its marketing.
It's an amazing book on troubleshooting your business.
Check all those out. Audible.com is what I use for audiobooks.
If you love paperbacks, or you love hard covers or you can't stand audio, I would say read them in that format.
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production projects, that is over at experiment27.com/proposal.
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experiment27.com/discovery. Its how we qualify clients.
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I'm Alex Berman