hey hey there welcome back to the freelance friday podcast today i want to share five books that have
really kind of transformed my business or you know changed the way that i actually think about
and run my business like have done a video on my youtube channel in the past more on
the marketing side i'll link that in the show notes if that's more of what you're looking for
but these are books that yeah i've kind of just guided i guess like my business principles and
sort of changed how i fundamentally think about entrepreneurship if you just want the books just
open up the show notes in the description box and there's clickable links and you can move on with
your day all right so the first book that i want to talk about is called steal like an artist i've
talked about this a lot this is probably not a new book to you but i was going to class one day
and it was i think it was like exam week or something so i had to be on campus kind of
all day and i read it all in that one day it's super short and sweet and i loved it i just was
so obsessed with it first of all it is a very easy read so i think this is a good one if you are not
into reading i wasn't at that point i mean i was reading for school because i had to but i
definitely didn't read for fun or for leisure or business or anything at that point
so it's a good one if you don't really like to read because it's very beautifully
designed he does these little sketches i don't really know what the art style is called but
it almost feels like you're looking into his journal but the premise of the book is basically
you know how to find your own unique style by way of getting inspiration right because we all start
creating because we're patrons of whatever it is whether that's art or writing or business
like we're fans of it right we look up to people in those spaces
and it can be kind of natural to want to copy to want to just do what the people that we look up
to are doing because that feels like the right thing to do right but what he really says in
this book austin cleon says is there's a way to do it that is unique and that is creative
and that also isn't you know insulting and illegal of course in short it's about stealing
like an artist not from an artist one of my favorite quotes from the book is he says don't
just steal the style steal the thinking behind the style you don't want to look like your heroes you
want to see like your heroes and ooh that is just so good right like there's that a whole quote i
always get it wrong you know you teach a man to fish he eats for a billion years or whatever you
you give him a fish he eats for a night something like that it's this very similar concept you can
look at a creator's video that you want to make and just copy it frame by frame but now you're
reliant on them to also create original new ideas that perform well for you to be successful instead
what you want to do is you want to study how they become creative how they come up with their ideas
so you can make your own unique creative ideas and i think this book is so so relevant in today's
day and age it actually just had its 10-year anniversary and i think there's a reason that
it has stood the test of time to some degree but i think it's especially relevant right now
where i'm definitely feeling like everybody is just not everybody i don't want to be
negative but there's this pressure to kind of conform you know to certain content types and
to do certain things and i feel like there is a real loss of individuality that i'm i'm definitely
missing the next one is called the minimalist entrepreneur by sahel lavinia i feel like this
is my blueprint to business like the whole time i was reading this book i read it on a plane to
new york city last year and the whole time i was reading it i was highlighting and i was like i
i wrote this like i feel like i wrote this line like it's one of those books that i kind of
wish i would have written you know sahil was one of the first employees at pinterest he has since
went on to found the company gumroad which is like a creator platform where people can host
courses and ebooks and things like that and he really kind of compares
and contrasts his two different journeys in his career right pinterest is this unicorn
startup this one billion dollar more valued startup and then gumroad he really bootstrapped
and he built slowly and in a lean and profitable way really on his own largely and i just talked
about recently in a video or a podcast episode the elizabeth holmes show and her whole silicon
valley adventures there was just a big startup or you know pretty popular on twitter at least start
up in the news recently they went under after raising i think over 100 million dollars and
the reports were saying that they only actually earned like 600 000 in revenue like this is a very
common thing i'm not saying pinterest is in that same boat obviously pinterest is very successful
but everybody wants to be the next pinterest right everybody wants this hyper growth
the big shiny office the hundreds and thousands of employees and all the fancy things but
realistically that is like so i don't want to be a downer but it's kind of unlikely and what happens
in the startup world is a lot of these companies just raise so much money chasing that unicorn
status and a lot of them never make it out and so what sahil argues is hey i've kind of lived both
i've worked with a successful startup a successful unicorn and i've also bootstrapped my own business
and that's what i'm gonna recommend to most people like most people should be building in a lean
profitable way thinking revenue thinking profit first and skipping some of those big flashy things
one of the things he mentions focusing on a lot is community which i really like he
talks a lot about groups on reddit and twitter and things like that which i just think are so
underutilized today everyone wants to talk about the instagram right because it's flashy it's cute
but i'm like i have had so many more valuable business connections on twitter where i barely
post and i post about random stuff all the time and i'm just uniquely myself than i honestly have
on instagram and people don't want to talk about that but you know it's cool on the internet they
say one percent create nine percent contribute and 90 consume so which one do you want to be
right if you want to stand out in a particular industry the answer is pretty clear right you
got to be creating in that space okay the next one i'm gonna recommend you is called the war of art
break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles i was asking for something that
helped with creative blocks which i guess is what the book literally says it does one of my students
was was asking me and so i was asking twitter as they do and if it turns out like i needed this
book too and i didn't even realize it and this book really i've read it towards the end of last
year and towards the very end of last year is when i started writing my non-fiction book again so
i definitely think there was a correlation right even though i didn't realize i needed it i totally
needed it what this author does is he really talks about treating your art like a full-time
job and i also want to say before before i dive any further in this episode like i've talked about
you know still like an artist the war of art and i'm talking about business right and some of you
may or may not consider yourself an artist i don't really i always make a joke because my family is
so creative they're all artists and musicians and then there's me who like has no talent
but one that's just me being hard on myself to some degree because i do have some artistic
talent but you know what we do is creative like i consider myself a creative entrepreneur and i
think sometimes the hard business stuff doesn't really resonate with me all the time because so
much of what i do is out of this like passion and out of this creativity even if i'm not freaking
picasso or something i don't know so yeah that's something that i'll just pose to you is like maybe
looking at more creative things versus some of the hard business things it's kind of changed my
perspective on what i do anyway he talks about how every artist every creator every creative
whatever you want to call yourself struggles with resistance you know there's a million reasons why
we can not get up and do our craft today it's a gloomy day i'm not really feeling it i'm having
one of those days where you know like i just don't i just don't like feel like i look great whatever
i'm not looking for compliments i'm just saying you know we all have those days where we don't
want to get on camera where we when i write in the morning some days i'm like tired i have a headache
i had a bad day the day before and i just want to like watch tv or go for a walk or
whatever right we all have these little things that are telling us why we shouldn't do it
everybody has that though every great artist writer youtuber blogger whatever has those days
the difference is they treat it like a job and they get up and they do it anyway you know you
just have to push through it so another thing that i learned from this book is or that kind of was a
was a shift for me is like i definitely used to be one of those people who was like i cannot be
creative on command i am creative in some ways but i have to really be in the mood you know i have to
really have that big light bulb moment and it's just like it's that you know romanticized view of
creation or of art you always picture this like writer and the typewriter with his glass
of wine like you know just in this fiery you know that's like not how it happens though for like 99
of people i i would assume it's definitely not what my writing process looks like i'm going
off on a tangent here now but i something else that's not a book but that kind of challenged
that thought process for me too is i listen to a lot of interviews and things with artists
musicians songwriters and maren morris she's a singer songwriter she was like yeah i had like an
office job before i became a singer myself you know she was writing all these songs for like
these big country artists she's like no it's like a clock in clock out kind of office job
and i was like what but you can create on command and that is what the war of art suggests that you
do and that is how you make progress there's so many good quotes from the war of art the most
important thing about art is to work nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying
just try to make something and i think my second favorite one is the professional loves her work
she's invested in it wholeheartedly but she does not forget that the work
is not her and i want to hold on to that thought because we're going to circle back to it actually
with the next book the subtle art of not giving a blank i'm not going to say the full word
not because i'm like a giant prude or anything but just because i don't want to get in trouble
with the podcasting platforms or demonetized or whatever but speaking of being a giant prude
actually i didn't i didn't love the book when i first read it i did think it was a little overly
vulgar and and like i said i'm really not a prude i have the humor of like a 12 year old boy
like in my personal life truly so it's not that i don't know i just felt like time and place i
felt like it was a little distracting like the number of times the f-bomb was in there i'm just
like okay okay we get it but i did find myself referencing back to this and some of the core like
principles of the book over and over again and i realized despite all of that despite the style
i actually really really liked it basically what this book teaches you to do is to to stop caring
what people think of you i mean a novel concept but it's easier said than done no matter what
you do in business you're putting yourself out there in some way you're putting yourself out
there for judgment if you are getting on video if you are just telling your friends that you're
gonna quit your job and do your thing if you're quitting your job like people are going to judge
you people are going to have opinions and it's a different climate nowadays with the internet than
it was you know years ago obviously everything we do is under a microscope even for the most sort of
private entrepreneurs or ceos you don't have to be vlogging your daily life for people to judge
it so it's easier said than done because we're all human okay like i don't care how strong of
a person you are if somebody just comments on something that you spend eight hours of your life
editing and putting together and trying to make sure is helpful for people and somebody just says
hey you're ugly or hey you sound like an airhead or hey i hate this about what you said
that isn't constructive you know it's just like mean uh i don't care who you are that's
hurtful but what the book teaches you to do is to really learn how to choose what you care about
and one of the biggest things that i find myself referencing back to is like considering the source
you know like listen if my mother told me that i said something extremely offensive
and disrespectful and like i should really apologize for it
i'm gonna be like you know what that's somebody i really care about i care what they think of me
i respect her so i might actually re-watch what i said and and issue an apology another thing
that this book taught me to do is consider my values like really know what is important to me
and this is something i think i've always had a pretty good hold on you know comments about
like looks or anything like that have never really offended me on youtube i just think they're kind
of funny honestly uh just because it's not that's not why you're here you know so yeah just doing
these little kind of exercises with myself over the few months since i've read this has really
helped me respond to criticism like unnecessary criticism of course there is a difference between
unnecessary just hateful hurtful stuff and things that can actually help you grow which he does talk
about you know that obviously paying attention to some things is important one of the quotes i like
says not giving a blank does not mean being indifferent it means being comfortable with being
different again going back to steel like an artist right everybody feels the same
these days and it's like yeah i'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea i'm just not
another one i like is he says in my life i've given a blank about many people and things
i've also not given a blank about many people and many things and like the road not taken it was the
blanks not given that made all the difference i remember this quote from like elementary school
of no one's going to remember the jeans that you were wearing or something like that you know 10
years from now and it's so true the things that we sit there and get anxious or get upset about
nobody cares number one and even if they do care they're not going to care in a day a week a month
a year 10 years but the stress that you are saving yourself the actions that you are taking despite
the possibility of judgment despite your fear those are the things that you are going to say
you know what i'm so glad i started that youtube channel 10 years ago or i'm so glad i quit my job
three years ago or i'm so glad that i left that toxic relationship or whatever like those are the
things that you are going to care about so all right and the last one i want to recommend is
called winging it by emma isaacs i read this last year on a camping trip and it just made me realize
a lot of things it's a real simple book again it's a really easy read so if you're not a reader like
this is a good one to start with it says uh stop thinking start doing why action beats planning
every time that's the subtitle and the theme of the book is quite simply like none of us know
what the heck we're doing we're all just figuring it out we're all just winging it and
yeah there are some like tips and some strategies and some things that i think
you can walk away with and help you know learn how to like be better at using your intuition and
just doing your own thing but i think the biggest thing for me is it was just comforting to know
that i'm not the only one who feels like this i am not the only one who feels like i am just figuring
it all out and i hope it's comforting for you too and i i like to be open about the fact that i have
no idea what i'm doing half the time because i know that there are people who look at my business
like it's something that they they you know they look up to it and i respect that and i do know
what i'm doing some days but there are a lot of days i don't know what i'm doing at all so i hope
that brings you some comfort one of the things that emma isaacs talks about is just like doing
it before you're ready you know taking messy action it's not going to be perfect you're not
going to have all the answers before starting something before starting a business before
investing in property before i think she talked about having um you know a health issue with one
of her children like you're not going to have all the answers in any of those situations even
just parenting like i think she has a bunch of kids i don't know it's been a while since i read
this book but right there's all these different things in life and in business that you're just
not going to be ready for you just have to do the best that you can with the cards you're given
and i love this quote that she says in the book it says when we overthink and overanalyze it can stop
us from really taking action we get fearful and scared and tell ourselves a million excuses
as to why something won't work or why we're not qualified to try yeah how many times have you done
that how many times have you sat there and said oh yeah you know what i'm not gonna start a youtube
channel because there's gonna be some trolls on the internet or because nobody's gonna watch it or
because you know my voice is annoying or because i don't feel confident enough to get
on camera but what happens if people do watch what happens if people tell you oh my gosh i
love your voice what if people tell you i want to work with you because i just learned so much from
your video like there are so many things that could happen and you're not gonna know unless
you try you're just not and none of us do none of us can give you the blueprint none of us can give
you the answer and say this is exactly what's gonna happen that's just not how it works so i
really like it it's a good little motivational kind of mindset book and yeah again it was just
it's just very comforting to know that i am not alone and feeling like i have no idea what i'm
doing all right so let me know in the comments if you're watching on youtube go ahead and leave me
a comment with a book recommendation if you have one i'm a big reader i do like to read
quite a bit i'm currently reading two books two business books and a fiction book um i'm reading
rework i almost said wework rework and i'm reading obsessed so it's a marketing book not obsessed
like in a creepy way in a marketing way but let me know if you have any other recommendations or
if you don't have any recommendations if any of these books sound like the kind of thing
that you would want to listen to you can comment below and let me know that as well thanks so much
for hanging out with me today i hope you enjoyed the episode and i will see you in my next one bye
you