[00:03:29] Nicholas Hutchinson: I had about an hour commute each way to and from the office, and so I started listening to all of these business podcasts during that first summer internship. And all of these people lived such amazing lives – the guests on the different shows that I was listening to – and they always referenced books

[00:03:50] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I kept thinking to myself, “Man, what is it about these books? I don’t read books. I have no interest in reading books. Why are all these successful people reading books?” And so, because that summer internship was not very demanding, I took a lunch break one day. I went to a local Barnes and Noble bookstore, and I got a couple of the books that I had heard referenced on those shows.

[00:04:20] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I went back, and I started reading a little bit of those books every single day. And some magical things happened. I went from this place of insecurity and fear-based decision making to this place of security and confidence. I went from this place of ego, sometimes representing itself at the expense of other people, to this place of impact and empathy, and all of these changes started happening as a result of the books that I was reading. Friends and family encouraged me to start sharing them on social media, so I did have a couple [00:05:00] of business ideas with BookThinkers to get things going, but it was really about sharing books on social media so that my friends and family in my immediate circle could understand why I was reading these books and what some of my favorite takeaways were from them.

[00:05:18] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I never expected it to grow into a large community like it has today. But that’s kind of the origin story. I went from not a reader to a reader, and I found my purpose through my pain, and books helped me bridge that.

[00:05:36] Rebecca Hotsko: That’s so amazing. It’s honestly like a massive book club group with all like-minded individuals wanting to learn more and achieve more, and so I think that’s such a fantastic story.

[00:05:48] Rebecca Hotsko: I was wondering if you wanted to always make it into a business or if that just kind of happened because you turned something as reading books and then providing resources for them into this great online business. 

[00:06:02] Nicholas Hutchinson: Sure. So the full story is a little bit more detailed. What kind of happened was my senior year at school, I had just started reading these books the prior summer, and I had a few friends that were also entrepreneurial.

[00:06:13] Nicholas Hutchinson: And what happened was two of us read the book Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill around the same time. And within that book, there’s this concept of a mastermind. Napoleon Hill says that one plus one can equal three. That when two people are focused on the same problem, , there’s sort of like a third mind that gets created, one plus one equals three.

[00:06:32] Nicholas Hutchinson: There’s momentum, there’s synergy, and so we started to meet actually on a weekly basis, on weekends, and we would discuss different types of business ideas, different entrepreneurship ideas. When I was talking about, okay, I’m reading all these books, I’m sharing my book recommendations, but people ask me the same questions over and over and over and over again.

[00:06:49] Nicholas Hutchinson: I wish there was one place for people to go and see everything that I was reading. We came up with the idea of creating a mobile application way back then. That would organize all of your book notes and it would basically be like a social media for books. And so we did have the intent to monetize book thinkers from the very beginning.

[00:07:07] Nicholas Hutchinson: And although that mobile application never really took root, it never really found its way out in the world and it was not successfully monetized despite our attempt to build it. Social media started to grow, and I never anticipated monetizing social media in the way that we have. So that just started organic.

[00:07:26] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I didn’t have a preexisting passion for books, but I definitely developed one through consistency pretty fast. And once that community was found on social media, I mean, I knew there was no turning back and I knew I would have to find a way to monetize it because I gained so much genuine fulfillment and joy from introducing people to books.

[00:07:45] Nicholas Hutchinson: People read those books, they come back and they say, Hey, Nick, or Hey, book thinkers. This changed me. And so I knew that it had to become a business eventually, but it was definitely more organic in the very beginning, and we definitely didn’t intend on monetizing the social media. . 

[00:08:01] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah. It’s so interesting how it can just turn into something completely unexpected and you’re just following your passion almost.

[00:08:09] Rebecca Hotsko: But you did go to business school, and I’m wondering from a business and entrepreneur standpoint, do you think business school helped you advance your success in any way? Or maybe what was more important to your success as a business owner? 

[00:08:24] Nicholas Hutchinson: That’s such a great question and I have some mixed feelings, so maybe we can explore them right now.

[00:08:30] Nicholas Hutchinson: I think on one side of the spectrum there are a lot of benefits to business school. I think the organization, uh, I think learning about all of the different areas of business so that you can see what peaks your interest the most, and then you can focus on that. I think the network and the socialization that comes through business school is also important, but at the same time, I have my qualms with it as.

[00:08:51] Nicholas Hutchinson: When I was in college as a freshman and sophomore, I ran my own house painting business. And through those first couple of summers, I hired all my friends. I did door-to-door sales. I sold house painting jobs. We went through certifications. We learned how to paint houses. I had 10 people working for me, and I literally learned 100 times more through that experience than I did.

[00:09:13] Nicholas Hutchinson: The classroom talks that I was attending at the same time. And so could I have built book thinkers without business school? I think so. But one of my problems with the traditional education system, especially colleges and universities, is that they teach you that failure is a bad thing. But where I come from in the world of entrepreneurship and business books is that failure is the best thing.

[00:09:35] Nicholas Hutchinson: It’s the only thing you want to fail fast. You want to fail as much as you can because failure leads to opportunity. Failure is action. It’s movement, it’s momentum, and there’s so much to be gained from it. , but in school you’re taught, no, you’re not supposed to fail. And so I think that trips people up. I think it puts them in an employee mindset, teaches them to follow rules and that you’ll get in trouble when you break the rules.

[00:09:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: But what’s funny about all these entrepreneurship  biographies behind me is that they’re breaking every rule possible to build these big businesses. They’re bending reality to fit their needs. Innovation depends on rule breakers, because if everybody just stepped in line and followed those rules and avoided failure, then we wouldn’t grow as.

[00:10:15] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so I have mixed feelings. I like the social aspect and the structure, but I dislike the fact that they ridicule failure. And, uh, you know, I think action speaks louder than words. And, a lot of times school is just words. They don’t put you to action very much. 

[00:10:31] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I honestly couldn’t agree more.

[00:10:34] Rebecca Hotsko: My experience was super similar. But there is one thing though, I know from some entrepreneurs, I think Elon Musk says this where he does and then he learns versus some people learn and then do. Do you have any thoughts on which approach you like in entrepreneurship? 

[00:10:53] Nicholas Hutchinson: I think what’s nice about entrepreneurship is you can do a little bit of both at the same time, and so it’s kind of like reading books.

[00:11:00] Nicholas Hutchinson: I mean, I, I view reading these non-fiction books about entrepreneurship as kind of like sharpening the saw or developing a tool that you can keep in your tool belt that you can use when necessary. But entrepreneurship, I think the problem that I had, my unique experience was that I didn’t grow up around entrepre.

[00:11:19] Nicholas Hutchinson: And it wasn’t as popular, I don’t know, maybe seven, eight years ago as it is today. And so the barrier to entry is actually a lot smaller than I thought it was. I built up this idea of an entrepreneur and how do I legally register a business, and how in the world am I supposed to do accounting and, uh, what’s a business write off and how do I hire people?

[00:11:39] Nicholas Hutchinson: What’s the paperwork? Look. And it’s all so much easier than you think it is. And so, you know, going back I had, uh, you know, on the other side of the spectrum, I think there was a lot of ignorance, but I needed that ignorance because if I knew what I was going to go through, maybe I wouldn’t have done it at the same time.

[00:11:56] Nicholas Hutchinson: So yeah, I think you do. And then you learn it is definitely  better. I definitely agree with that. Like go out there, figure it out, fail, mess up, reflect on it, implement changes, try it again, and you can use books sort of to help avoid some of those disasters because, When you’re reading a book about somebody else’s experience, then you can apply their experience to your own situation and sometimes avoid some of the pitfalls that you would’ve fallen into.

[00:12:24] Nicholas Hutchinson: Otherwise, you can move around them, maneuver them with a little bit more skill, get out of tricky situations, maybe a little bit faster because you’re condensing decades of somebody else’s experience in days of learning, and then you could implement it immediately. So there’s a little bit of both, but I really like that differentiation from Elon.

[00:12:43] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I think that is great advice. And I guess touching on advice, what would you say is the most influential or best piece of advice you’ve received from someone? It could be in terms of entrepreneurship business that has really had the greatest impact on you. 

[00:12:58] Nicholas Hutchinson: Well, this actually brings to mind a book, uh, the E Myth Revisited by Michael e Gerber.

[00:13:04] Nicholas Hutchinson: And the advice that people had given me, I think when I first started, was that it will always take longer than you initially anticipate and to be. And when I look at that book, in that book, the EMyth Revisited, Michael Gerber talks about the fact that 95% of small businesses fail within the first five years.

[00:13:22] Nicholas Hutchinson: And of course, you wouldn’t start a business if you thought you were going to be part of that 95%, but to get over that hump, sometimes it takes a little bit longer than initially anticipated. Like I thought once I started to monetize the side hustle of mine and, and as it turned into a full-time hustle that I could just build this multi-million dollar business over.

[00:13:41] Nicholas Hutchinson: and, uh, despite the feedback from everybody that, hey, it takes longer than you initially anticipate and you need to be patient. I think I set my expectations a little bit too high, and as a result, I consistently failed to build the business as fast as I wanted to. But then I would remember those lessons like.

[00:13:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: Gary V always says, the clouds in the dirt. Like you want to hustle, hustle, hustle as hard as you can every single day when your boots are on the ground. But from a high level perspective, you need to be patient. And so sort of a balance between, again, a balance between both of those has been very useful for me and I would say that to anybody in today’s audience as well, who’s thinking about starting a business like it might take a little bit longer.

[00:14:20] Nicholas Hutchinson: Than you initially anticipate, which is totally okay because most businesses fail and the ones that succeed, not the unicorns that you read about on social media that generate a billion dollars in the first couple of years, but the day-to-day businesses out there that you can actually leverage to create your dream lifestyle, they just take a little bit longer to build sometimes, but that’s okay, and it’s totally normal.

[00:14:42] Nicholas Hutchinson: So I was so happy that that advice was given to me because I never really thought about quitting, but remembering that gave me the strength to continue. I think when times are tough or things are moving a little bit slower than than I wanted them to. 

[00:14:54] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I think that’s great advice and things are not a smooth line in business and [00:15:00] entrepreneurship as much as you’d like them to be.

[00:15:02] Rebecca Hotsko: Do you think having a mentor is very important when you’re kind of starting your own business and having someone who’s already been successful in the field, or do you think that you could get that same level of education and lessons drawn? Looking up to maybe people in the field who you don’t maybe have direct contact with, but you can learn from them by reading books and things like that.

[00:15:26] Nicholas Hutchinson: It’s an interesting question. Uh, when I was first starting my journey, I stumbled across a TED Talk that Ty Lopez had given, and Ty Lopez is somebody who, if you’re familiar with him, was sort of the king of advertising a few years ago. He had that Lamborghini in my garage clip on YouTube that would pop up all the time.

[00:15:43] Nicholas Hutchinson: Not everybody loves a guy, but if you’re great at advertising and you’re all over the place and you recognize his name, it means he did something right. So you can learn something from. And during his TED Talk, he said to the audience, ” Hey, how much would you be willing to pay to come over to my house tonight?

[00:15:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: If I told you at dinner, I would have Arnold Schwartzenegger talking about weightlifting, I would have, let’s just say Elon Musk talking about entrepreneurship. I would have Michael Phelps talking about swimming. I would have, and just named all of these icons. Am you know, Jeff Bezos is there talking about Amazon and whoever goes down the list and people start throwing out all these numbers.

[00:16:18] Nicholas Hutchinson: And he says, well, they won’t actually be at dinner tonight, but I have their books. And you can read those books, understand more about their decision making frameworks, and then put your questions through their decision making frameworks. And it’s almost like having a conversation with them. It’s a form of mentorship.

[00:16:34] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so I’m so happy I stumbled across that video because that helped me reframe what a mentor really is for me. I do think that a real in-person mentor or somebody that maybe you meet with on a weekly or monthly basis via Zoom or something like that is very useful. But I also think the books behind me represent all of the mentors that I’ve had conversations with and my own time.

[00:16:55] Nicholas Hutchinson: And what’s nice is you don’t have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to that dinner. The book only costs  $20 or maybe even. And I think that’s so cool. Now, there was another point that he made in that video that was very interesting. It was called The Rule of 33, and he says that 33% of your time should be spent with, uh, people who have not achieved what you’ve achieved yet.

[00:17:15] Nicholas Hutchinson: And that’s you mentoring other people. And there are a lot of benefits to mentoring other people. I mean, number one, you get to refresh your fundamentals. You get to talk about yours. And every time you go through that process, you learn a little bit more about what got you to where you are today, because hindsight’s 2020 and you get to analyze and reflect on the things that have worked in your own life.

[00:17:34] Nicholas Hutchinson: So there’s a lot of benefit to mentoring. He said that the next 33 should be spent in your peer group. Those are people who are fighting the same good fight that you are. These are people who, when you look around at the average of the five people you spend the most time with, you’re proud about the time that you spend with them.

[00:17:51] Nicholas Hutchinson: And again, they’re in the same kind of bucket that you currently are. Maybe they’re reading a lot of personal development material. They’re similar age, they have similar goals in life.  Spend 33% of your time with them, but then the last third should be mentors. And what Ty says in that video is that spending a third of your time, a third of your day, outside of working hours with a mentor, that’s asking a lot.

[00:18:12] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so a good mix is somebody that you do meet with on a weekly or monthly basis that builds a relationship with you over time. and not only makes recommendations based on their own business experience, but makes recommendations based on your path because they develop a relationship with you. There’s so much value in that, but the rest of the time should be spent with these books, with these podcasts, with these online resources.

[00:18:36] Nicholas Hutchinson: And a mentor is somebody who has done exactly what you wanna do and maybe even done it 10 times better than what you wanna do, cuz they’re just gonna draw you up naturally. So those are a couple of the frameworks that I think about and that I’ve leveraged and mentorship has been extremely important to me.

[00:18:52] Nicholas Hutchinson: Both direct relationships with real people as well as the books behind me. 

[00:18:56] Rebecca Hotsko: That was so great. I definitely agree with that, but  I am wondering for listeners who are maybe interested in starting their own business or side hustle in 2023, do you have any advice for our listeners and maybe from some of your biggest learnings that we haven’t already touched on?

[00:19:17] Nicholas Hutchinson: Sure. The first thing that comes to mind is what is a business? What is a side hustle? I think the moment that $1 transfers from your customer’s bank account into your bank account, you’re in business, and that zero to one transaction is the hardest thing to achieve, that’s where the most friction comes.

[00:19:36] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I, I read a lot and I see a lot that it’s, it’s harder to go from zero to one than it is from, let’s just say, one to a thousand dollars. And that’s harder than going from a thousand dollars a month to $10,000 a month, and that’s harder than going from 10,000 to $25,000 a month in revenue. And so just that small little thing, that first step, that’s my encouragement to everybody out there, is with whatever your product or service is [00:20:00] going to be, just do it. Once $1 transfers from somebody else’s bank account into yours, you are in business.

[00:20:07] Nicholas Hutchinson: And then don’t be afraid to reach out and ask friends and family for advice. Entrepreneurship can be a little bit of a lonely game. Same with personal development. If you’re the most motivated person in your friend group and everybody else is partying and having a good time, You’re like, wow, I wanna stay in this Friday night because I’m working on this little side hustle project I’ve got going on.

[00:20:27] Nicholas Hutchinson: Put that out there. And then sometimes you’re scared to do that because you have a fear of judgment. You don’t want other people to be like, come on, you’re being lame. Come out and party, whatever the case is. And you’re like, no, I’m, I’m working for my future. I’m really dedicated to this thing. And it makes me happy.

[00:20:41] Nicholas Hutchinson: And don’t be afraid to express that to people. If they’re gonna criticize you for that, then they really shouldn’t be around you anyway. And you’ll be surprised. I mean, I’ve had friends from high school and college days that I never talked about business with. And then eventually when my brand became sort of public and started to grow a lot, I’d meet up with these people and they’d go, Hey, you know, I, I always thought about starting a business in this area.

[00:21:02] Nicholas Hutchinson: Or, dude, did you know that I’ve been reading these types of books my entire life? And you’re like, I never would’ve brought it up. We had a totally different relationship until you started socializing and talking about it. $0 to $1 in your bank account. I think that’s one recommendation. I think socializing with friends and family, that’s another one.

[00:21:19] Nicholas Hutchinson: And the third recommendation that I’ll make today, Rebecca, is that people try to find time a little bit too often, and there’s only 24 hours in a day, and most of us are filling up our days already. And so the idea of starting a business or starting a side hustle can seem overwhelming. Like where am I gonna find that 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks?

[00:21:39] Nicholas Hutchinson: and so instead of trying to find time, my encouragement would be to replace low impact activity like social media and Netflix. Just a little bit of it. Not the entire activity, but just a little bit of it with a higher impact activity. Something like starting your business and reading personal development books or books on entrepreneurship, biographies and memoirs so that you can take a step in the right direction.

[00:22:03] Nicholas Hutchinson: I mean, I’ve read books on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and Richard Branson and all of these icons of industry, and every time I read one of those books, I gain different perspectives and different understandings and different ideas that I can apply to my own life. And so, although too much of that can lead to procrastination, I think a little bit of that can give you the momentum that you need to actually go out there and, and start doing business with people.

[00:22:30] Rebecca Hotsko: You touched on so many great things there. I wanna go back to the one step at a time, and I’m curious to know what your framework is for goal setting, because I think often we can get caught up in very long-term goals and then trying to put that back to what we have to do today can be very hard.

[00:22:47] Rebecca Hotsko: So do you have any, do you have a framework that you like to use and even some book recommendations you think are great in that aspect? 

[00:22:55] Nicholas Hutchinson: Yes, absolutely. So number one, I’m a little bit crazy with this. I’ve read a  lot of books on habits. I’ve read a lot of books on goal setting, and I actually keep an activity tracker.

[00:23:06] Nicholas Hutchinson: It kind of works like this. For 2023, I have a certain number of goals. Those goals need to be quantifiable. Otherwise, how do I know that I’m making progress against them? So if they’re quantifiable, let’s say it’s a number of revenue. Now we’ve gotta back that. There are 12 months in a year. Let’s divide that by 12.

[00:23:23] Nicholas Hutchinson: There are four weeks, generally in a month. Let’s divide that by four. Then there are five working days generally in a week. Let’s divide that by five. Now you know what your daily activity needs to generate as an example, and so you take that yearly goal, which might seem intimidating and might cause a little bit of resistance and.

[00:23:41] Nicholas Hutchinson: And you kind of break it up so that it’s as small as you can. You might even say, okay, in a day there’s eight working hours. Now I’m going to divide that by eight, and in an hour there’s 60 working minutes. Now I’m gonna divide that by 60. You just want to kind of shrink that number so much so that it becomes palatable, that you can adjust to it, that it seems realistic.

[00:24:02] Nicholas Hutchinson: and I think that’s something that people say that they wanna do, but they don’t actually do. Like if you wanna run a marathon next year, okay, that’s pretty far. And if you don’t start measuring like I wanna add a little bit every single week until I can reach that amount, then you’re never going to get there.

[00:24:17] Nicholas Hutchinson: By just strapping on your shoes, heading out the door and trying to run a marathon every day, it’s not gonna work. You need to break it up into a digestible format, and it needs to be measurable like we talked. . So I like that smart goal framework that’s talked a lot about, but I actually have like my own little version of it.

[00:24:34] Nicholas Hutchinson: So the smart goal stands for specific. It needs to be very specific. Did you achieve this? Yes or no? Measurable, like we just talked about. Did you achieve that amount of revenue? Yes or no? That should be very easy to determine. Attainable. Is it real? Now for the R I like to say written that W is silent, but written like where is it that other people can hold you accountable to it?

[00:24:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: Is it written somewhere? Are you measuring your [00:25:00] progress? And then T in SMART is timeframe time oriented. Give yourself a deadline. I love Parkinson’s law, which states that your task will expand to the amount of time you give it. So we can all think back to a school assignment that we procrastinated on, but maybe we had a week to do it and we crammed the last night before it’s due, and we got it done.

[00:25:21] Nicholas Hutchinson: But if that deadline had been a day earlier, we would’ve gotten it done in six days, not seven. If it had been five, we would’ve done it in five, not seven. And so how can we apply that to our goal? We need to constrict the timelines a little bit and force ourselves to act a little bit more. And the last piece, a smart e I add the eye on the end is an intention, an emotional intention.

[00:25:42] Nicholas Hutchinson: Why are you setting these goals? Get emotional with it. So as an example, instead of just saying, I want to do a million dollars in revenue next year, and breaking that up and making it measurable and everything, why do you wanna do a million dollars next? What does that mean to you? Well, I wanna do  because it’s a big number.

[00:26:00] Nicholas Hutchinson: No, I want you to get emotional with it. I want to do a million dollars in revenue next year, because that’s the key word. And then whatever that means to you. I wanna do a million dollars in revenue next year because as a first time entrepreneur who’s experiencing a lot of momentum right now, I never thought I’d be able to do it.

[00:26:17] Nicholas Hutchinson: And every time a check comes into my bank account, it makes me so happy because I know that money is exchanged for. And I’m providing value to other people. It also makes me happy to tell my friends and family that I’m able to provide for them and give them gifts and just whatever, like go down your list, make it emotional, and write that out somewhere so that as you’re reviewing your goal, You’re also reviewing the emotion that sits behind your goal.

[00:26:42] Nicholas Hutchinson: If you have a weight loss goal for next year, I want to lose 50 pounds because I’m getting married and at my wedding I want to look amazing and I want my partner to think that I look amazing and I’ll be looking at these photos for the next 50 years and I want to feel so proud every time I look back at them.

[00:27:00] Nicholas Hutchinson: Now, when you wake up in the morning and you don’t wanna lace up your running shoes and you review that intention, you get a little bit more of a spark to get out the. And so I like that smarty framework and I like breaking things down into little tiny chunks and then measuring them on an activity tracker.

[00:27:16] Nicholas Hutchinson: So the last thing I’ll mention Rebecca on this is that before I give some book recommendations, I love keeping a daily activity tracker. I actually have an accountability group that I meet with on a weekly basis, and we all have visibility to each other’s tabs on this Google sheet. And so I can see what my friends are doing on a daily basis and how they’re making progress against them.

[00:27:38] Nicholas Hutchinson: And then on Friday we talk about. I only achieved 78% of my weekly activities. Here’s where I fell short, guys. This is the fifth week in a row that I haven’t been able to achieve my, whatever, my gym workouts, I had five. I keep only getting three or four. What can I do to improve this? And then everybody gives you a little bit of additional perspective.

[00:27:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: They hold you accountable to it, and maybe they’ll text you throughout the week, Hey, are you at the gym? Are you at the gym? Are you at the gym? So that also, that accountability piece I think is really important too. , as I mentioned a little bit earlier, personal development, goal setting, entrepreneurship.

[00:28:11] Nicholas Hutchinson: It can be a very lonely place. And you want to invite other people into it so that they can kind of pick you up and hold you accountable when you’re slacking or when you fall down. And so the final part of your questions. Book recommendations. I have read so many books on habits and goal setting. I’ll give you a couple of my favorites.

[00:28:29] Nicholas Hutchinson: Number one is The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. This book teaches you that small steps in the right direction over a long period of time will lead to disproportionately positive outcomes. And these are little changes, little small steps. So I’ll give you an example for all of the US listeners, if a plane is heading from LA to New York City, but the plane, which is about 3000 miles, I don’t know what that is in kilometers, but if we just shift that nose of the plane by one, And as that 1% compounds, mile after mile or kilometer after kilometer, it ends up a huge portion off from New York City about 150 miles north or south, depending on which direction you go, which is a massive amount of space.

[00:29:13] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so what areas of your life can you implement little 1% improvements that will compound? It won’t be noticeable at first, but eventually you’ll wake up in this different destination, health, wealth, happiness. And you’ll be like, how in the world did I get it? And so this is an investing podcast. People love to talk about investing.

[00:29:31] Nicholas Hutchinson: There’s another example in the book about the magic Penny. Would you rather have a million dollars today or a magic penny that doubles in value every day? For a month, people call a million bucks, and on day 10, the magic penny’s only at $5,000, but your friend has a million bucks, but by day 30 it’s over 10.

[00:29:49] Nicholas Hutchinson: And that’s the compound interest. That’s the magic of compounding. And so that book is all about applying the magic of compounding to your goals. Another book that I’ll mention is Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book became wildly popular over the last couple of years, and I think it should be popular.

[00:30:07] Nicholas Hutchinson: It talks about habit formation and dissecting the different things that you’re doing subconsciously on a daily basis. And the idea that I like in this book is that for 90 days or 66 days, depending on what your thoughts are for how long it takes to build a habit, you should focus on implementing one habit at a time.

[00:30:25] Nicholas Hutchinson: And then once it becomes automatic after 90 days, now you focus on another one and you focus on another one. It’s these short sprints that eventually become permanent in the background of your subconscious and atomic habits. And the last one that I’ll mention for goal setting specifically is a book called the 12 Week Year.

[00:30:44] Nicholas Hutchinson: And this is a great book because it essentially gets that like, uh, New Year’s Resolution. I’m setting my goals for next year type feeling four times a year instead of just once. So every 12 weeks you’re really setting yourself up with a brand  new set of goals and you’re breaking things down between lead and lag measure.

[00:31:04] Nicholas Hutchinson: A lag is an outcome. It’s the reflection of your daily activity. So if you want to generate a million dollars in revenue, that’s a lag indicator. It’s the result of other activities. Well, what are those activities? Are they sales calls? Are they dollars invested? Are they a certain amount of trades? What is the actual activity that influences the outcome?

[00:31:24] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so you build this list of lead activities that you’re measuring on a daily basis that result in the lag and you adjust them as you go. And so that’s kinda what that book teaches, but in way more detail than what I just said. So Rebecca, that was a great question. I probably just talked for like five full minutes, but I hope there’s some value in there for everybody.

[00:31:43] Rebecca Hotsko: No, that was amazing. I think, yeah, those were all such great points. And I know I have the compound effect sitting on my bookshelf right now. I have to get to that one. And I think that Oh, yes, you do. Yeah, just everything that you mentioned, it resonates so much because these are all things that I think everyone struggles with in their life.

[00:32:02] Rebecca Hotsko: How to break down our goals into how we can achieve them on a daily basis. What do we have to do every single day to get there? And sometimes it can. Far out of reach and we don’t know where to start, or you started and then you don’t continue with it. And so I guess one thing I wanna ask you is how do you think about applying the things that you’ve learned in a way that we can stick with it?

[00:32:27] Rebecca Hotsko: Or once we read a book, it doesn’t just go on our bookshelf and then we move on to the next. Do you have a framework or any tips for our listeners on how we can better apply what we’ve learned? 

[00:32:37] Nicholas Hutchinson: Absolutely, and I’m continuing to upgrade and continuing to develop my frameworks, but I’ll mention a couple of things today.

[00:32:46] Nicholas Hutchinson: Number one, I’ll start with a metaphor. So I like to say that if you read a good book and you choose not to implement anything from it, then it was nothing more than a form of entertainment. It’s a distraction because you’re not creating any real behavior change. So what’s the difference in that scenario between reading a great book and playing video games or watching Netflix?

[00:33:05] Nicholas Hutchinson: I mean, there really is no different. They’re just a form of entertainment. Unless you implement the books and you create real behavior change, you create a real mindset change. You shift your paradigm around a little bit. You become a different person. Okay, now we’re getting into the world of personal development books.

[00:33:21] Nicholas Hutchinson: That’s how they’re intended to be used. And so a few things. Number one, every single time you’re reading a book, just like we talked about with goal setting, I strongly encourage people to write their intention for the book in the form of a smart goal that meets all of those check boxes on the inside cover of a book.

[00:33:38] Nicholas Hutchinson: So that when you open up that book, you filter for exactly what your intention is as you’re reading it. That will help your brain, the reticular activating system inside of your brain. That’s your filter. It’ll help you filter for opportunities within that book to fulfill your actual goal. A lot of us go, okay, I wanna read a book on personal finance, so I’m gonna pick it up. I will teach you to be rich by  Ramit Setti.

[00:34:00] Nicholas Hutchinson: Okay? I’ve heard it’s a great book. So you just open it up and you start reading and you’re like, oh, that looks like it could be cool. That’s cool, that’s cool. And you read the whole book. You’ve got a bunch of things outlined and you don’t take action. Why? It’s because you didn’t have a very clear intention.

[00:34:14] Nicholas Hutchinson: Something that’s measurable, something that’s actionable, something that has a time-bound deadline associated with it. . But if you said instead, your intention was, I’m going to read. I will teach to be rich by Ramit Setti by the end of next weekend, and I’m looking for at least two actionable automated money habits that I can implement immediately, okay?

[00:34:36] Nicholas Hutchinson: Every single time you pick up that book, you read that intention. Now your brain’s looking for, okay, actionable money habits that you can implement immediately, and you know that you need to finish the book by the end of the next. And so as you’re reading through, you find one and you take action on it because you know exactly why you’re reading that book.

[00:34:52] Nicholas Hutchinson: Now, we could get into some of the other things, but I think that’s probably a good place to start for people is to write  down with an actionable intention. And as you’re reading, if you find that intention, take action on it immediately. Know exactly what your intention is for that book and the compound effect.

[00:35:09] Nicholas Hutchinson: Rebecca, I know you’re going to read it soon. It actually talks a little bit about how to build one of those activity trackers and accountability groups. And so for me, when I’m reading and I have that intention, and I find one of those actionable money habits and I will teach you to be rich, I plug it right into my activity tracker.

[00:35:26] Nicholas Hutchinson: On my Friday meeting with my accountability group, I tell everybody about my biggest takeaway from that book, why I decided to add it to my activity tracker, why I’m going to implement it the following week, how it’s measurable, and then I have everybody hold me accountable to fulfilling it the next week.

[00:35:41] Nicholas Hutchinson: That’s a little bit of a lot. I mean, that’s a lot to implement immediately. So I would, I would encourage everybody to just start with that intention and you’ll be amazed at, at how much action you’re gonna take and if you can add a, because after that intention, Like, I’m going to read this book by the end of next week, and I’m looking for two actionable money habits to  implement immediately because money is one of my biggest insecurities, and as I get a little bit older, I want to be able to provide for my family.

[00:36:08] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so getting my personal finances in order will help me, you know, be more confident when my son is born in a couple years. That will get you moving a little bit more than just like, oh yeah, I heard I should read this book. You know what I mean? 

[00:36:20] Rebecca Hotsko: That was super great. I’m definitely going to implement that in my next book and give myself a deadline, because sometimes I open a book and honestly, I take about a month to read it.

[00:36:30] Rebecca Hotsko: I do it before bed, but then sometimes if I’m too tired, I don’t get to it, and then it falls through the cracks, and so I think that is perfect. It has to have a deadline and like you mentioned before, constrict the deadline. It’s not a one year, three month one. It’s giving myself a shorter duration so that you’re kind of pushing yourself a bit more.

[00:36:49] Rebecca Hotsko: One of the other things I wanted to ask you is that, How can we, so you talked about how we can be more intentional with our reading, but what about retaining the  information that we’ve read? Do you have any tips for that? Are you a fan of jotting things down? I believe I read that in a book, how to Build a Second Brain, where the author advocated for writing things down as you are reading them to make little jot notes in your head.

[00:37:17] Rebecca Hotsko: Do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:37:20] Nicholas Hutchinson: I do, I do. We talked a little bit about mentorship earlier. One of my biggest mentors, I meet with him every single week and I have for years. His name is Kevin Horsley and he’s the author of a book called Unlimited Memory, and this’ll blow everybody’s mind. He actually competed in one, a competition called the Everest of Memory, where he had to memorize the first 10,000 digits of pie, and then he would be asked about a random digit, and he would have to come up with what it is.

[00:37:45] Nicholas Hutchinson: So they’d say, what’s digit number 2,541? And he’d have to know what it is. So if you can achieve that, and by the way, when he was growing up, he was dyslexic. He had some learning disabilities. He was not a reader. He didn’t think he had a great memory, and he  was able to achieve that. So that just shows us what we’re capable of doing.

[00:38:03] Nicholas Hutchinson: As far as books are concerned, there are a couple of things. One thing that Kevin taught me is that repetition will lead to retention. The more often you review something, the more likely you will be to remember. And so writing, like you just mentioned in that book by Tiago Forte, is an easy form of repetition.

[00:38:22] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so I think that yes, writing down notes in the margin as you’re reading is definitely a strong thing to do. What I like to do is, by the way, I always read with a pen. I’m always jotting notes down and stuff like that. When I’m reading, I like to separate reading and note taking, so I will bracket something off immediately, and then when I’m done reading, I’ll go back and I will look through those takeaways.

[00:38:45] Nicholas Hutchinson: When I first started, I would always look for as many takeaways as possible, right? But as I’ve continued to read more, now I am only circling or highlighting things related to that intention. Because books can be distracting. Even within a book, you could get  distracted by other subjects that you weren’t there to read about.

[00:39:03] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so to encourage more action and more repetition, only highlight the things that are related to your intention that you look to take action on or that really blow your mind and you want to go back and review. So, Ideally, I don’t do this every time, honestly. I gotta, I gotta admit that, but ideally, I go back through the book, I look for what are my 20% of takeaways that can create 80% of the change from me.

[00:39:26] Nicholas Hutchinson: Maybe that’s five to 10 takeaways from the book. And I’m going to rewrite those in another document so that active writing is a form of repetition, and then I’m going to review that document on a scheduled basis more upfront, and then over time a little bit less. So if you could reread your takeaways from a book every day for a week, and then you review them once a month for a little while, and then you review them once a quarter for a little while.

[00:39:50] Nicholas Hutchinson: This is how I used to do it. It was very regimented like that. You will absolutely improve your a. Because again, repetition leads to retention. And if you take action on something, you’re going to, uh, remember it a little bit more as well. And also, if you have a motion behind your intention, you will also increase your retention.

[00:40:09] Nicholas Hutchinson: That was a mouthful, but if you have a motion behind your intention for reading the book, Then you are more likely to retain and implement, take action on that information. And once you’ve taken action on it, it’s hard to forget it, right? Like I have an automated transfer after reading, I’ll teach you to be rich from my checking account to an emergency fund every single week.

[00:40:30] Nicholas Hutchinson: And I retain that because I implemented it. You know what I mean? I see it happen all the time. So that’s another good thing is that action will also help your attention. 

[00:40:39] Rebecca Hotsko: I think that was super helpful. And I wanna go back to, cuz you mentioned Malcolm Gladwell’s book, um, with the 10,000 hour rule, and so we’re stepping back a bit in the conversation, but I wanted to ask your you to explain this to our listeners because this book was so incredible and it just really shows how long it  takes to be great at something and why I don’t know it.

[00:41:03] Rebecca Hotsko: really inspired me to pick my one thing and not try and be great at several things because it’s very hard to do. And so can you speak a bit about the 10,000 hour rule? 

[00:41:15] Nicholas Hutchinson: Yeah, absolutely. So Malcolm Gladwell is an amazing author. What he does that’s unique is he essentially takes data that exists out in the universe in different places, and he patches it all together to make these really, really convincing arguments.

[00:41:28] Nicholas Hutchinson: And one of them is this idea of the 10,000 hour rule, that mastery, that becoming very proficient at something happens at around 10,000 hours. And so in the book, he gives so many great examples. Now, it’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but now we’re testing our attention. I think he talks about maybe a violin player, chess players, sports prodigies.

[00:41:49] Nicholas Hutchinson: These people are spending 10,000 hours practicing their craft, whatever it is, in order to achieve a level of mastery that essentially, instead of  consciously acting, your subconscious is so ingrained in whatever your craft is that your subconscious is acting on your behalf. And so this reminds me of a form of learning called form to leave form or numbers to leave numbers.

[00:42:13] Nicholas Hutchinson: And this is what’s great about books. , instead of just reading a book summary about something you need to put in the work, you need to read the entire book. You need to read all of the complimentary resources. You need to try implementing that information. Only then will it become part of you. And that’s what Malcolm’s talking about in this book, is that mastery.

[00:42:31] Nicholas Hutchinson: There are no shortcuts. The lead measure that you’re measuring for the outcome of mastery is ours. It’s reps, it’s practice. Repetition leads to attention, repetition leads to mastery. You need to put in the hours. There are no shortcuts. And I think that applies to so many different areas of ours. And so Rebecca, you mentioned the one thing that’s a great book by Gary Keller and j Papasan, and I remember the intro to that book says, it’s like this Russian proverb that says If you chase two rabbits, you’ll catch none, or something like that.

[00:43:03] Nicholas Hutchinson: And the idea there is that if you focus on so many different priorities and try to multitask, okay, well, you’re really just, you’re really just cannibalizing your own activity. It’s at the expense of everything else you’re focused on. But if you focus on one thing instead you can build momentum like we talked about, the compound effect and magical things will happen.

[00:43:22] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so yeah, I think those are some great lessons. 

[00:43:25] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I think a lot of these books come down. They have different frameworks and great insights for thinking about it, but they all bring it back to the same point where it’s small, actionable steps will help you achieve your goal, and it’s making them measurable, quantifiable, like you said, and repetition, always doing it and doing it with intention.

[00:43:45] Rebecca Hotsko: So I think they’re. Fantastic books that you mentioned today. I learned so much from doing them in their one set. I like going back and reading them again and maybe I wouldn’t have to do that if I did my retention notes. So that’s definitely something I’m gonna implement. The last thing that I  wanted to ask you about today is um, personal finance.

[00:44:03] Rebecca Hotsko: Cause we are an investing podcast and I know that you. , do you have a lot of personal finance books on your website and I’m just interested to know if you were always interested in investing in personal finance, or did you more so get into that through reading and later in life? 

[00:44:20] Nicholas Hutchinson: Well, I mentioned I ran a house painting business in college and uh, so I got a little bit of, I got a little bit of money back then.

[00:44:26] Nicholas Hutchinson: I got a taste for money and so I wanted to learn more about it. Now, what was tough about business school is that I was a business school student that didn’t really know much about money. And so kids were always having discussions about how much money they were gonna make after school. And there was, there was a group of kids managing an investment fund on campus and I didn’t know anything about it.

[00:44:45] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so after reading a couple books on personal finance, I went from the back of the classroom to leading discussions on money. And uh, that was kind of the impetus for why Book Thinkers started. I mean, it was one of the first areas of study of personal finance that I really applied myself to. And so I read a lot of amazing books back then.

[00:45:03] Nicholas Hutchinson: Rich Dad, poor Dad by Robert Kiosaki, taught me the importance of assets, um, differing from liabilities. It taught me that rich people don’t work for money. Their money works for them. It taught me about financial literacy and the importance of understanding cash flow. And to be able to read financial statements.

[00:45:22] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so that was a great book for me to read very early on. Then I remember I read The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and that taught me the concept of debt snowballs and to be a little bit more conscious of debt than maybe I was before. Cuz Kiasaki loves debt and, uh, Dave Ramsey does not love debt.

[00:45:39] Nicholas Hutchinson: And then I read, you know, some fun books, some easy books to read, like The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clayson, and he talks. Putting 10% of your money away immediately when you earn it like that, 10% is yours to keep. Which reminds me of Parkinson’s law that your money will also expand to the budget that you give it.

[00:45:58] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so if you constrict  yourself a little bit by siphoning that money off before you even look at it in an automated transfer, then you won’t even miss it. You won’t even notice that it’ll be gone. You’ll still spend all the money in your bank account, but you’ll have that little emergency funder side fund outside of your main account.

[00:46:15] Nicholas Hutchinson: And then I will Teach You to Be Rich, which is a book that I used as an example earlier. That book taught me a little bit about The Psychology of Money, which is the title of another great book. But uh, in that book he says, listen, you don’t have to cut ruthlessly on the things that you love. You can spend money fruitfully on the things that you love, but cut ruthlessly on the things that don’t.

[00:46:35] Nicholas Hutchinson: And so what? 20% of things bring 80% of my joy and fulfillment related to spending. Okay, great. Keep those in place. But the other 80% that only generates 20% of the happiness of fulfillment in my life, cut it. You won’t even miss it. Get rid of it. And so for me, as an example, I love traveling internationally.

[00:46:52] Nicholas Hutchinson: My fiance and I, we’ve been to like 20 countries over the last few years. We work up to a couple of months at the same time in different locations. And so when I’m at home, I don’t eat out because that doesn’t bring me. I’ve been to these restaurants before, I don’t need to go over and over and over again.

[00:47:08] Nicholas Hutchinson: But when I’m traveling internationally, no budget. Having fun, going out to dinner every night, trying all of these great restaurants, trying new foods, I don’t need to remove the joy in life. But there’s just not as much joy in spending money on the restaurants that I’ve already been to a thousand times here.

[00:47:24] Nicholas Hutchinson: There’s not as much joy as the ones internationally. So that’s a cool rule that I learned from that book. And um, I just mentioned the psychology of money there. Funny, that’s by the Morgan household. There’s a funny example in that book, cause I used to always want a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or something like that.

[00:47:40] Nicholas Hutchinson: And that book teaches you that, you know, let’s say you see a Ferrari or a Lamborghini pull up at a stop sign or maybe at the gas station, like the first thing you look at is the car, not the person in it. And so although it might make you feel cool, it’s the car that’s cool, it’s not you. And these little perspective changes that help me kindly.

[00:47:57] Nicholas Hutchinson: I don’t know, not risk what I have today, which is money for something that I don’t really need, which is a car. You know what I mean? Those are some of the books that I’ve read. But, to answer your original question, I didn’t have, I had a little bit of an original interest in money, but I think as I continued to learn more about it, I realized that we’re all forced to play the game of money.

[00:48:15] Nicholas Hutchinson: So you might as well be good at it. You have to trade money for food, water, and shelter. You have to trade money for some things a little bit higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as well. And so, Make your money. And if at the end of the day you want to give it all away, then you give more away because you have more money.

[00:48:32] Nicholas Hutchinson: So it’s important. And then I started listening to shows like Bigger Pockets, which is a real estate investing show. And I’ve invested in a couple multi-family, uh, as a result of that. And I just, I invest in different ways and it’s all a result of the books that I’ve read. 

[00:48:47] Rebecca Hotsko: I think that is so fantastic and I agree with you.

[00:48:51] Rebecca Hotsko: It’s just so powerful what you can learn from books and now resources, like great podcasts and even YouTube channels. There’s so much great information out there and you need to filter through it and find the good ones. But I wanna thank you so much for coming on. That was such a great conversation, I think.

[00:49:08] Rebecca Hotsko: I know I’ll take a lot away from this. I have a lot of practical takeaways that I can do now with my reading, but for our listeners who aren’t connected with you yet, can you let them know where they can find you, learn more about you and everything you do. 

[00:49:21] Nicholas Hutchinson: Sure. I think Book Thinkers on Instagram is the place to go. That’s our largest social community. It’s also where I’m the most responsive. So if you’d like to reach out to me, ask some questions, book recommendations, anything of that nature, if you want to learn more about any of these strategies, Chris, head over to Book Thinkers on Instagram. You’ll get a daily book recommendation with some of my biggest takeaways from that book, as well as other fun content related to books, and you also get to meet people in the comment [00:50:00] section that love these books and can answer questions as well.

[00:50:04] Rebecca Hotsko: That sounds great. Thank you so much again. 

[00:50:06] Nicholas Hutchinson: Thank you. Yeah, this was awesome. 

[00:50:09] Rebecca Hotsko: All right. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast app so that you never miss a new episode. And if you’ve been enjoying the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you left a rating or review.

[00:50:24] Rebecca Hotsko: This really helps support us and is the best way to help new people discover the show. And if you haven’t already, make sure to sign up for our free newsletter. We Study Markets which go out daily and we’ll help you understand what’s going on in the markets in just a few minutes. So with that all said, I will see you again next time. 

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