Turning Pages with Purpose: Nick Hutchison's Reading Strategy

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Nick Hutchinson, the founder of BookThinkers. I met Nick through his Instagram channel where he was reviewing personal development books.
He's got a great podcast where he interviews some of the biggest names out there in personal development, in business, in leadership. And Nick has a new book out called Rise of the Reader.
And as many of you know who listen to this show, I am a ferocious reader. I read every morning, every night, putting down a couple books a month.
I just love to intake knowledge, and Nick has developed a process for working through books, not necessarily faster, but with more value, extracting more value from books, which is right in my sweet spot and something that obviously I wanted to share with you guys. And just so happy to have Nick on the show and talk about his work, his Instagram channel, which is phenomenal, and his new book, Rise of the Reader.
Before we get to Nick, I want to give you guys a quick shout out. The podcast is growing like crazy.
I appreciate you. Please keep sharing the show.

It means so much to me. As we've come off the Agency Intelligence Podcast Network and we're starting to redevelop our own vein of content and bring in new guests, new ideas, it warms my heart.
it makes me so happy that you guys continue to find value in this show

because I love doing it. I love having these conversations with you.
So, you know, the only thing I ask, we don't run ads on the show anymore. The only thing I ask of you is that if you find value here, please share the show.
It's how more people find this content. It's how more people find our thought process, our mindset.
Because if you listen to this show, then we think alike. And I love that.
I love that about you. I love you for listening.
And with all that, let's get on to Nick Hutchison. Dude, I appreciate you taking some time.
I know you got a new book coming out which is

very hectic time in anyone's life even though books are your business um but i appreciate

taking the time and and chatting with us here yeah man listen there's nothing that i enjoy

more and that brings me more energy than talking about books talking about my book so

thank you for the opportunity and hopefully i can drop some something useful for your audience today

So what is it about books? And I have a particular opinion on this topic, but I'm interested in you because a lot of my guests, when they come in here, they've started recommending audiobooks. And I am not a huge fan of audiobooks personally, But what is it about books in general long form versus just pumping out 10 000 social media posts what what what attracted you to this and um had you found it as a business well when i was growing up i was not much of a reader which would surprise anybody watching the video version of this podcast i've got a thousand books behind me but when i was growing I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic.
But going into my senior year of college, I took an internship at a local software company. And my boss at the time introduced me to the world of podcasting.
So a show just like this, where a host would interview a series of guests in some type of niche, insurance, entrepreneurship, whatever the case is. And I had about an hour commute each way to that internship that summer.
So I started to listen to a ton of podcasts. And just like you're highlighting, a number of these people who I wanted to be like, successful people, they were giving at least some of the credit for their success to the books that they were reading.
And so eventually I just kind of had this aha moment where I'm like, and if I'm deliberately choosing not to read these books, I'm deliberately choosing to live under my potential. And so that was kind of my wake up moment.
From there, I fell head over heels in love with the personal development space. I just removed pain after pain and developed skill after skill after skill by reading and implementing these books.
So I'll wrap up this tangent by saying that just like you, I appreciate the look and feel and the utility of a physical paper book. There's nothing that beats that for me.
I do listen to some audio books, but only when I'm in the car. If I have the chance to read a physical book, that's always my default go-to because I can pull so much more out of a physical paper book than I can an audio book.
Yeah, it was funny. I was being interviewed on a podcast earlier this week and the guy was talking and he was talking about audio books and he said, you know, you got to listen to audio books and blah.
And I was like, I'm going to push back on you. I was like, I think audio books are a marketing hook.
I think they're a way to sell more stuff. That's my, that's my honest opinion.
I don't think anyone actually gets stuff out of audio books. I know.
Oh, you know, I'm an audio listener. Statistically, audio learner, audio listener, audio learner, audio learners are relatively small portion of the population.
To me, I think audio books are really a way for people to say, I read a book or whatever without actually fully engaging in it. Because when you're listening to an audio book and if you were to pan over here, you'd see, I have like stacks and stacks similar to you.
I don't nicely color code them like you do. Mine are just a disaster.
Because what I do is the first thing i do when i get a new book is i rip the jacket cover off and i throw in the garbage that's the very first thing i do i don't keep the jacket covers um so all the books look basically the same unless they're paperbacks and i'm i'm like not a purist at all i make whichever one is cheaper if the hardcover is cheaper i get that one if the paperback's cheaper i get that get that one. So I have both.
But they become like textbooks for me. And I learned from James Altucher.
He's a former guest on the podcast. Same here.
If you're two chapters in and you're not loving it, throw it out. And I hate this.
I actually – I wanted to give it a shot because I love him. I'll get back to – I go on tangents as well.
There's only one. Can I guess what you're about to say? Yeah, I know.
Just like, I feel like we're cut from the same cloth. You love Alex Hormozzi.
So you listened and read the book at the same time. I know I did.
Although I'm going to, I'm thinking about trying that. I actually, I actually, uh, um, bought a book from a guy who I've followed for years, and the first two chapters are so terrible, I literally flung it across the room into the garbage, and I was like, hated it, because I'm staring at it in the garbage.
I feel terrible. I don't know why this person who has no idea who I am, I feel something bad about throwing in the garbage.
I was like, another chapter of that will be a waste of my life. I can't do it um no hermosi's new book 100 million dollar leads is awesome i'm i'm plowing through that yeah yeah i got it right there yeah it's right there so i think it's i think here any so here's my pitch for books i when you read a book a physical book not and i i this goes for kindle too i think kindle's i think Kindle's garbage as well.
When you read a physical

book, you can't do anything else. You have to physically turn the pages.
If you want to highlight something, you have to take a pen out. You have to write notes, whatever you're going to do, dog ear.
You have to work it. It becomes a work of art.
It becomes your thing. It's not just this book that 10,000, 100,000, a million other people have.
It becomes yours specifically to you, marked up by you, dog-eared by you, creased by you. And in my opinion, your brain just sucks more of that in.
You own it versus all the other methods. So I highly advocate.
Now, if people want to buy a book that I write on audiobook, I'll take the cash. That's great.
But I don't condone it, I guess. Yeah, listen.
We have a lot of very similar viewpoints. Number one, my books look like they've gone through war by the time I'm done with them.
Coffee stains, pen, marker. I mean, here's another example of something that I do that pisses people off.
I rip out pages. So here's a page of $100 million offers because I want to look at that value equation as often as possible when I'm talking about my own services.
So yeah, if I want to retain something, repetition leads to retention. I'll rip the page out and keep it with me all day so that I can revisit it every time I fumble for my keys or my wallet or whatever.
It's right there. That's the next level, man.
That's next level. So the thing about audiobooks and Kindle that I don't enjoy, let me restart.
I read a book called The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin. He's multi-time chess world champion and mixed martial arts world champion.
Really interesting duo. And he would study a subject like chess so intensely that it would become part of his subconscious.
And when it would become part of his subconscious, his subconscious could act on his behalf. Right? You're not going to get that from an audio book.
You're not going to get that from a Kindle. You're not going to get that from a book summary.
Those are the worst things on the planet. Something like Blinkist.
I'm not an advocate because yes, you might be motivated for a few minutes, but you're not going to implement anything. You need to read the physical book, be with the information, study it where it's your only focus.
All of the ancillary case studies stuff, the lead up stuff, that's how you retain and implement a book. I mean, I have tons of strategies on how to do that more efficiently, but I do think it starts with a physical paper book too.
Yeah. Well, I think there's two kinds of people out there.
There's the people who are, the people that read Blinkist, in my opinion, want the soundbite so they sound smart. That's what they're looking for.
They don't actually care about the information. They have no intention of actually implementing it.
It's I want the soundbite so that when I'm at a party and there's a pretty girl or a good looking guy in front of me or whoever I'm trying to impress, I can like rip off this soundbite and sound super smart. Right.
Like that to me is why you read those things, because I subscribe just to like, why are so many people subscribing to this? I got whatever book was the first one. It was Ray Dalio's new book.
I looked at it and I had listened to that on audio and I had read that one. So I've done both there.
And I looked at the Blinkist and I was like, this is like, there's nothing here. Like, yeah, you can get a couple soundbites, but there's so much context woven into that book that you have to have to understand why this soundbite is even important that you're just regurgitating something without, it's just completely shallow.
Now, I think for most people, I shouldn't say most, I think for a lot of people, that's enough. That's really what they're looking for.
But if you're trying to take your game to the next level, which it sounds like you and I both try to do very well, I think of them as like tools in my tool belt. I don't care about the soundbite.
I want to know how to use the information. And that to me is what's most important.
And why I'm so excited to have you on the show, because literally you wrote the book on how to do this. So, you know, this book that you wrote, what, I guess, before we get into exactly what the book is, what did you see happening in the marketplace that you felt it was necessary to write a book on essentially how to read better? I mean, I don't want, that's probably a shallow interpretation of what you're trying to do, but essentially how to consume and use that better.

What were you seeing in the market that said this is something that needs to be written about?

Well, as I built my Instagram community, which has about 150,000 nonfiction readers in it, we do about a million impressions a month.

As I built that community over the years, literally hundreds and hundreds of people said to me, Nick, I appreciate the book recommendations. I see that you're implementing them.
Super cool. But I'm having a tough time doing that.
How do you translate information into action? Because like you're highlighting, action is the real measure of intelligence. It's not being able to regurgitate something.
It's not sitting on a stoop and debating philosophy all day long. It's by taking action and applying these books to your life.
So here I am. I'm in my late 20s.
I've only been reading for about 10 years. And I've designed my ideal life in a short period of time.
So people ask me, how do you take action? What are you doing that I'm not to implement these books effectively? And so I'd respond to people, a voice note here, an email there, maybe even a quick Zoom call, shaking hands at a conference or whatever. But I felt like I was underserving those people because I never really even took the time to analyze my own behavior.
So when I decided to write this book on how to apply more from what you're reading, I first started by almost like observing myself from a third party perspective. And I would look at my own behavior.
What am I doing differently than everybody else? Like what's my behavior look like? And I started to name these frameworks and build these routines that other people could implement. And I would start to offer them if people saw a lot of success and I'm like, I've got to write the book on this.
Yeah. And so that's why I decided to write it.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think the fact that you actually, there are actually strategies and methods to the application of what you learn in a book is probably something that people haven't thought too much about. Is that what you're finding? Like that, that people struggle, like they, without a true framework, as you said, or a set of filters, they, they are, they're reading these books, but then they just get popped back on the shelf and nothing ever happens from them.
Right. And same thing happens at conferences too, by the way, I'll give you an example.
So I haven't even, I've actually gone through the audio of this already just cause it was available earlier than the physical book, but I haven't started the physical book yet. Well, let's say that I was reading $100 million leads.
One of the issues that most people have with the books they're reading is they don't set an intention for the book. So I'll meet somebody and I'll say, what are you reading? And they'll tell me and I'll say, why? I'll be like, what do you mean, why? Why are you reading the book that you're reading? And then they'll say, well, somebody else recommended it to me or I saw it on Instagram.
Let's start here. Set an intention that follows the SMART goal framework.
It needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, actionable, written and relevant, and time-bound. So if I was reading $100 million leads, yes, this book can help my business, but I'm not going to read it aimlessly.
My intention, which I'm going to write on the inside cover, will say something like, find and implement at least two new lead generation strategies that I can apply to book thinkers by the end of the month. That's specific.
It's measurable. I know whether or not I achieve the goal.
It's attainable. It's not like use this book to make $100 million by next month.
It's find and implement at least two strategies. It's relevant to my business, which means I'm emotionally connected to it.
I'm going to write it on the inside cover, which I'll tell you about why we do that in a minute. And then it's time bound because you need a deadline to make action happen.
Otherwise, Parkinson's law, if you say by the end of the year, you'll take a year to read the book. If you can add the word because at the end of your intention, that's also where some magic starts to happen.
Why does this book solve a problem or help you build a skill and tie some emotion to it? So I'd like to find and implement at least two strategies for improving my lead generation at book thinkers by the end of the month, because this business means everything to me, man. The right book at the right time can change somebody's life.
And when I feel that impact, I'm fulfilled. So I know that by supporting more authors in my business, I could do that at a bigger scale and help the right person get the right book into the right hands.
So now when I write that on the inside cover of the book, each and every time I read a little bit more, I'm going to read that intention first so that my brain can filter for those lead strategies that I can implement by the end of the month. At the end of the book, I may have like 20 or 30 potential options.
That's overwhelming. That's not attainable.
So I'm going to look at that entire list. I'm going to rewrite it.
And then I'm going to say what 20% of these can create 80% of the change I'm looking to make by the end of the month. Realistic action.
So I don't want to implement everything, just the things that are related to my intention. Because otherwise you read these books and everything's interesting to you.
And then you don't take action because you're not being specific and you don't have a goal for the book. So that's an example of a reading strategy that I teach in Rise of the Reader.
And I'll stop there because I could go forever. Clearly you could say I'm passionate about this.
People are missing their reading without intention and it stinks. Yeah.
I don't know. I really like that.
I mean, geez, I've read more books than I have. I mean, I know I have hundreds, thousands I've been reading.
I used to get made fun of in college because like everyone else would be run around playing video games and shit. And I'd be sitting in bed reading mostly because I don't know.
I just enjoyed that a lot more. And it's like, I don't know that I've ever thought about it from the standpoint of having specific intention for that book.
So I guess my question would be just kind of framing, getting my head around that would be take a book like, so the other book that I'm reading is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kamen, which is a very rich book, we'll say. How would you, when you have a book that is just, I mean, I'm probably a little more than halfway through, there are 50 different conceptual concepts, you know, conceptual concepts that you're trying to like wrap your head around that are deep and dynamic that you could implement in your life.
Like, how do you start to pick? Okay. So let's say I say for my intention for that particular book is I want to better understand why I react to things and the difference between my reactionary brain and my logical brain.
Okay. I want to understand that difference, but there's a hundred things in there.
How do you pick, how do you start to then pick once you have your intention? Cause every book you're not, you're going to have more most likely than two, let's say like, how do you, how do you start to define which ones and do you come back to it again? Like how much time do you spend on a book? Like I could spend a year just on that one book, implementing the different things that are in it. If I were to take them and go through one by one, how do you start to break that down? Sure.
So I would ask you to structure your intention, just like you did find and implement, you know, two ways to understand that the difference or, or the space between an input to my brain and its reaction. Yeah.
Because why, Why do you want to do that? Yeah. Why? You're asking me that? Yeah.
Why do you want to understand that better? Because I am an emotional person and a passionate person who also has ADHD. And I found that oftentimes I allow inputs to create reactions that aren't actually the way that I want to react, which has a negative impact sometimes in relationships and in life.
And I want to start to fix that. I can relate.
So I would say one of two things. If you want to keep your intention as it is, just understanding the concepts, I would try to write down all of those concepts once you're done reading the book in one place.
And I would look at which two or three or four of these are the most mind-blowing. And then I would rewrite those into an online notebook and try to review them as often as possible.
Maybe even do a little bit of further research so that you truly understand that concept and can teach it to people, can talk about it on podcasts, et cetera. Maybe what I'd challenge you to do is instead look for strategies to improve the space between the input and your reaction and then work on those on a weekly basis until you feel like you've mastered them.
So for me, I know that through consistent meditation, I've been able to increase the space between an input to my brain and my reaction. I don't know if Daniel talks about it in Thinking Fast and Slow.
I've had that book since the beginning of my journey. I haven't read it yet.
But if he recommends meditation, for instance, I would say, okay, that's the actual lead mechanism that I can implement into my schedule and then I can measure for the outcome, which is better emotional intelligence. And so maybe I'd plug into my activity tracker on my calendar a few meditations throughout the week because Daniel details the science around how meditation improves emotional intelligence.
Making that up because I haven't read it, but find and implement some strategies, something that's a little bit more actionable. Otherwise, your intention of just understanding the concepts is useful.

And maybe the follow-up is to spend a little bit more time researching the things that you found the most shocking so that you could teach them to other people. Useful, but probably not implementable if, you know, just listening through your process.
because I do think that I, I fall just like everybody, uh, in the trap of reading a book, putting the book down and be like, wow, that was amazing. And during the time period of reading the book, I'm lit up and these things are, and then the book goes on another shelf and it kind of fades away.
Um, what I've started to do is put books within reach that I consider textbooks. One of those that's very, I've just read, it's awesome, which I don't know if you've read this one yet, is 10X is Easier Than 2X by Benjamin Hardy.
That is phenomenal, phenomenal book. Absolutely out of this world, like textbook style,.
I've implemented multiple strategies from that. But it was only because it really blew me away.
Now what I'm going to start doing after this conversation and after I read your book is going to be doing this with more of them. I'll give you another example.
Chris Voss has never split the difference. I've read it twice.
The first time I read it, like this is amazing. Maybe tiny little things sunk in the second time, some more sunk in, but I'm like, I need to figure out how to use this.
Like there's so much just in everyday life, how you communicate someone, helping them feel like you're listening to them. And again, my, my biggest problem, which is obvious is I have no problem making words come out of my face hole.
So I have to slow that down, right? So that other people can hear and all these different things. So I like this a lot.
I like this idea of setting an intention, making it specific, smart goal, and then finding ways to actually implement it. I think it's a wonderful strategy.
Yeah, I started to think about this originally because I'd go to conferences and I'd meet people at events, entrepreneurship events, whatever. I'd be like, why are you here? What can I help with? And they wouldn't have an answer.
And I'm like, you don't even know why you're at this conference. And then I'd start asking about books.
And you don't even know why you're reading the book you're reading. Let's build some intentionality into everything that we do so that when you're at a conference and somebody says, hey, what's going on? Nice to meet you.
You can say, hey, can I share my intention for the event? And they're like, yeah, sure. And you're like, I'd like to find and meet and schedule a virtual coffee with at least three authors so I can share with them the services that BookThinkers provides.
Do you know of anybody in the room that's an author? Right now, that person can help me on my journey. They know exactly what I'm doing.
And same thing with the book. So if I'm reading Never Split the

Difference, because last time I got hosed while buying a new car or something like that, and I

wish I had my negotiation skills tuned up a little bit, I'd read the book and I'd say,

find and implement at least two strategies that I can use next time I buy a car. Because I got hosed last time and spent thousands of dollars when I could have just read this $25 book instead and saved myself the money.
And now when I'm reading through, I'm visualizing myself at the car dealership and I'm thinking, oh, this is one of the strategies I could have implemented. And then you start to practice it.
So yeah, I think intention is like, I mean, for me, it's a big part of the process. Yeah.
I did the same thing with a work negotiation that I was having where the second time I reread it is because I completely blew this call. I shouldn't say blew it.
It just didn't go the way that I wanted. And it was my, it wasn't an easy call, but in self-reflection, I did not help steer it in a positive direction.
And I was like, you know what? I did not have the tools walking in. I didn't prepare properly.
So I went back and read again. I came back and I did the same exact thing.
I'm like, if I had just stopped and taken a breath and said, how am I supposed to do that? Right. And like brought them back to solving my, you know, the problem from, you know, whatever, we probably could have gotten to a solution that worked for everybody much faster, you know, and you're like, then you're going.
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Man. So I love that.
So one of the other things that I wanted to ask you about specifically about the book is note-taking, right um I have a very random underlined star highlight, like write scribble in the things like it is, there's no rhyme or reason to it. So do you have a specific style, tactic, recommended methodology for note-taking to help people capture more out of each book that they read? Yeah, absolutely.
It kind of starts with this understanding that note taking and reading are two completely separate activities. And if you try to do them at the same time and you pivot between both, which most people do, you're going to be very slow and inefficient.
So when I'm reading a book, I like to stay in the book. I'll have a highlighter or a pen and I'll note something next to an area of the book

that I think is related to my intention, maybe an action that I could take, but I'm not going to

stop reading just so I could take some notes. Think about this metaphor from Jim Quick's book, Limitless.
He says, imagine you're driving through a neighborhood and you're going really slow, right? You're reading slow. You're driving really slow.
Your mind can wander because you're driving at a slow comfortable speed you can notice the mailboxes the house the cars in the driveway oh look a g-wagon whatever but if you were driving fast your eyes are glued to the road because you cannot mess up you cannot drive onto somebody's lawn or whatever you need to keep your eyes on the road same thing with reading. We can read so much faster than we give ourselves credit for.
And so by reading slowly and taking notes, it's going to take you a long time to go through the book. Instead, know your intention, highlight things that are related to your intention.
And at the end of a reading session or at the end of the book, then you get into your note taking. And so what I like to do is I like to rewrite all of my notes.
I think that repetition leads to retention. And so if I can rewrite all of my notes into a notebook, that increases my understanding.
Then what I like to do is I like to go through that list and I like to say, what am I going to take action on? What 20% of these notes can lead to 80% of the change that I'm looking to make? And I'll rewrite those into an online notebook like Evernote. So you said never split the difference.
Maybe you find yourself in a situation where you only have three minutes to prep before you walk into a negotiation because it just got thrown at you at work. If you have all of your notes in an online notebook that syncs between your phone and your laptop and everything else, then you can quickly get in there, look at your notes from Never Split the Difference, review the framework, and walk into the meeting.
You mentioned tool belt. I like to call it a book belt.
Sometimes you don't need the hammer, but you have it available to you so that when you need it, it's there. So reading, you can read in anticipation of events and then pull those notes out later if you use effective note-taking strategies.
And again, rewriting them is another form of repetition. And if you can teach them to friends and family and you can talk about it on a podcast or whatever, it's another form of repetition.
Teaching increases retention as well. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a hundred percent the case.
It's, um, it's funny. I will talk through heady concepts sometimes with my kids that I know they don't even understand it at this point.
They're just used to it just so I can like talk the idea to them in my head so that I can like think through it. And they'll be like, sometimes my older son, he's nine going on 10.
He'll be like, dad, I don't even understand what you're saying. Like, and I can tell they're not even listening.
I'll just be like talking to them about something. And it's simply just to like, get it straight in my head because I have to talk through something to understand it.
Um, so it's like, it's like, you, you know, you read through it, you underline it, you work it. I

completely agree on the repetition part. That's one of the things that I don't do.
I used to do book notes. I used to do book notes on my, on my website, mostly for myself to like work through it.
And then sometimes I do as like a podcast episode, I would talk through why, you know, what I found in the book, what was good about the book as a way to promote it, the book it was good as well. And also, um, just talk through some of the concepts.
Um, and I, I think I may get back into that because I've been reading pretty heavy. And even though whether it's interesting to the audience or not, I could care less.
I mostly want, I mostly want it for a year because, um, you do, you spend this time. It takes time.
You're choosing to read a book versus some other activity. You might as well get the most out of it that you can get out of it if you're going to take that time.
Yeah. And so when I've been selling this book recently, it just became available for pre-order launches November 1st.
I've been telling people, if you choose to read other books before you choose to read this one, there's an opportunity cost to that because you won't have everything that I've learned to get the most out of the book so you'll miss something where you won't get enough out of the book and uh that's what it is man like 10 years ago when i started this journey i've learned and changed and evolved and iterated a thousand times and the the i know in the future i'll have better strategies as well but what i have now is much much better than what the 20-year-old version of myself had access to. Because again, like you said, nobody teaches you how to implement what you read.
I wish they did. I looked for the book a thousand times, but it doesn't exist.
And so that's why I've decided to write this one. And I had a little bit of imposter syndrome.
I'm 29 years old. Am I old enough to write a book? The average age of the people that I'm reading is 50s, 60s, 70s.
But I have something to offer that that earlier version of myself didn't have access to. I'm one or two steps farther than they are.
So I'm just trying to be as useful as possible to that guy. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I'm 42 and I still have imposter syndrome daily.
So don't feel bad about that. Um, I don't, I don't know that anybody that's trying to actually do something meaningful.
I've never met anybody that doesn't have it. They say that, you know, some people might say they do don't, or I just don't think that's true.
Everyone that I've met who's honest, that is trying to do something big. They feel the exact same way.
You, you, you can't not, it's, it's part of the creative process. So, um, I, I self-published a book back in 2015 when I was, what would I have been? 34.
Um, and you know, there's a lot of, it's, it was a pretty amazing process. I'm, I'm proud of parts of it.
There are other parts that I just, as a rookie kind of doing it myself, I would do differently or better. But putting all your thoughts into something like this, it codifies your thought on it, right? Like you own it now.
That's one of the processes that I really liked about it was that there are certain concepts in that book that I still believe today that, that are still true, that are universal in my opinion, that I, they're, they're, they're here no matter what I could pull them out and talk through them in a, in an instant. And, you know, I am, I have no doubts that you're going to sell a ton of copies of your book and you're going to be just fine.
But if nothing less, you will own this process and be able to teach this process at the drop of a hat at any time. And you'll be able to build upon it, right? It becomes you now have this ledge for the rest of your life.
You have this ledge that you will never go below that spot. You now own right here.
You've set it in stone. And if you were climbing this wall face, you're not going to fall below that spot now.
And the next book will do the same thing for you. Now you'll be here.
And that's just how you continue to get up the mountain. And I think that it's very important for people to create long form content like that, specifically books.
So at 29, I'm impressed. I think it's phenomenal.
So talk to me a little bit about your actual business book thinkers. What are you guys doing? How are you helping authors? Where does it come from? Obviously, you have a love for books and that's where this comes out of, but like, what is the problems that you're seeing? I just had two very good buddies, uh, that wrote books.
Um, very happy for them. Uh, but watching them go through the process, you know, kind of like I did a while ago, um, it's, it's a freaking challenge.
So like when people come to you, what are, what is the, what is the problem that they problem that they're initially looking to have solved? What's the most common problem? Yeah, well, I'll tell you about that problem and how it all started. When I started sharing the books that I was reading on social media, I had no real intention other than connecting with like-minded people and sharing the books that I was reading.
And as that audience started to grow, authors would reach out and say, hey, Nick, my target reader for my book looks exactly like your follower base. Can I pay you for a book review? So here I am, BookFinkers is a side hustle.
I'm just sharing the books I'm reading and people are willing to pay me for book reviews. That's pretty cool.
So I started to understand that, oh, they're looking to pay this as a form of advertising because I could sell books for them.

So I'd go back to these authors and I'd say, hey, is there anything else that I could help with related to PR, book marketing, social media? Like this is my interest and one day I want to work full time in it. Let me explore things with you.
And what I realized was that most authors were behind the eight ball. Launching and promoting a book is a team sport, yet so many of these solopreneur types or semi-retired business executives, they try to go at it alone, but it's a lot to manage.
And so oftentimes they'll release the book, they'll realize only in hindsight that they should have done more, and they'll come to a company like mine, BookThinkers, that has a big audience, and they'll say, can you get my book in front of your audience? I'll pay anything because nobody bought my book and it's super disappointing. So as I continue to build this business, I try to get earlier and earlier in that process.
What can we do in advance of a book launch to guarantee a little bit more success? So today there are three core services that BookThinkers offers. Number one, we do short form video content.
So we'll help an author turn their book into 50 or 100 Instagram reels, TikToks, YouTube shorts, etc. So that they can start to build an audience in anticipation of their launch.
And we try to structure these videos with a strong hook to grab attention, some meaty value, and then a call to action to pre-order or purchase the book only when it's necessary. And we'll fly out to an author, we'll bring the cameras, the lighting, the scripts, the whole nine yards, and we'll help them start to build that social media community in anticipation of a launch.
Number two, we do podcast booking. So I heard James Clear on a podcast earlier this year say that the reason he thinks Atomic Habits was so successful is that over 100 podcasts went live during his launch month.
So BookThinkers offers that as a service. If we have enough time, we'll place an author on up to 100 podcasts in anticipation of their book launch that will all go live around the time their book comes out.
So think about what that does for an author. They can sell copies of the book to all the podcasters and their audiences, but they also get this huge SEO boost and all these additional books that get purchased as a result of them being interviewed on podcasts.
If each show goes out on five or six different platforms and backlinks to their website and their Amazon account, that's a ton of attention, all within a very focused short period of

time.

And then number three, we do book reviews.

We have an audience of over 150,000 nonfiction readers, most of them on Instagram, and they're

looking for a new book recommendation every day.

So if something fixes a problem they're facing or helps them develop a skill that they're looking to develop and we put it in front of our audience, we can move a lot of books that way. And so we'll get book posts going out that generate pre-orders right on launch day, a little bit post-launch to get that extra hype that they're looking for because platforms like Amazon have algorithms.
And if you can generate a lot of attention up front, then it will kind of carry itself for a longer period of time as well. On top of that, social media management, a bunch of other book-related consulting.
But those are some of the things that we help to do. We help to get earlier in their process and build the platform, have the audience, the podcast go live, and then get other people like BookTh you know, our platform to post about them.
Oh, that's awesome. I, so you aren't doing any of the, you're not also like a publishing house kind of thing.
You're, you come, we would come to you. If you're, if you're an author, you would go to you guys after you've got a book deal, you're, you're, you're, that's locked in, you're in the writing process or you're towards the end of the writing process.
And then you come and say, Hey, here's, here's the concept. Here's the book.
Here's what we're doing. Here's the audience where we want to go after.
And then you guys come up with a plan for actually getting that book to try the early traction that you need to drive up rankings and stuff. Yeah, exactly.
And another issue with that process that you just mentioned is that these publishers or self-published authors, but these publishers and PR companies, they typically don't touch social media. They really stink at it.
And so very early in my journey, a lot of these big publishing houses, they'd be sending me business because their process stops the minute the book comes out. But the author wants to sell the book for years to come.
So there's a disconnect. They don't do any social media coaching.
They might provide some digital assets or something for the author to push. These publishers are also kind of like VCs.
They'll place 20 bets. One will take off and they'll forget the other 19.
And that one will pay for the other 19 that they neglect. And so these authors who sign these publishing deals, they realize the publishers don't help them at all.
And so at the very least, they'll say, well, go talk to book thinkers. They'll help you.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. And your podcast, you've interviewed some really amazing authors,

amazing thinkers, celebrities, all kinds of stuff. I mean, that's got to be pretty exciting

to be able to pick the brains of all these people and really dive into these topics that they've become experts on either through their own research or their own experiences. Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. The podcast came from popular demand.
We just had a lot of authors starting to follow us that I looked up to and I was like, whoa, these people are accessible. And I have follow-up questions after reading their book.
So why not document that conversation and share it with everybody? So yeah, I've been blessed to interview so many of my favorite authors and all of these people, I mean, for the most part, they just want to positively impact the world. And so if I can put them in front of my audience and they can share what they're teaching and why they wrote their book, I'm happy to be there for that conversation every time.
Yeah, that's pretty tremendous. So obviously you're the guy here.
You read books with intention. How do you pick your next book? How do you think through what the next book is that you're going to read? There are a few different ways that I approach that question.
Number one, I'm paid to read a lot of books. I'll just say that up front.
So that has an influence on what I'm doing. Which is not a bad career.
I mean, that's not a bad gig. That's not a bad gig at all.
No, we're pro-capitalism here on the show. So it's all good.
But that's not a bad career at all. Yeah.
And you know what? The BookThinkers team, my company, we have 10 people on my team now that help support the authors we work with. So a lot of them get to read these books and work with these authors behind the scenes.
So it's freed up a little bit of my time. But I'm always looking in two places first.
Number one, is there a pain that I'm currently experiencing on a regular basis that I could overcome if I was a little bit more educated? And so alleviation of pain. The other thing is developing skills.
So where would I like to be a year from now? And what's holding me back? Where am I the bottleneck in achieving something a little bit bigger and better? Lead generation is a great example. Bookthinkers is not great with paid advertising.
And we only use one of the lead mechanism, lead generation tools that Hormozy highlights in here. So it's like, that's a skill that I want to get better at.
So I'm going to read about it. Those are the first two places that I look.
Some other things, popular books are typically popular for a reason, and they come up in conversation just like this. And so I like to read a lot of the bestsellers.
There are a lot of them, so I can't get to all of them, but popular books are popular for a reason. If I'm attending a conference and I know there's a speaker that I want to interact with or something like that, I'll read their books.
So I have a better foundation of knowledge to apply what I'm learning to. So that's another place that I go.
Or I ask the people that I want to be like, like, what books are you reading? Because I want to get inside of their minds and replicate their behavior. So books are typically a big of that too yeah i i definitely i have found it hard when you interact with somebody and you want to talk about books or something you've learned or picked up and you run into people who don't read it's you know i i hate this about myself because i you know it feels judgy but i'm kind of like judging them immediately when they don't, I'm like, wait a minute, you've never heard of, you know, Ryan

holiday. Like you've never heard of, you know, insert whoever, you know, fairly, but, and they'll

be like, Oh, I don't really read. I don't have time to read.
And I'm like, wait, I don't have

a great response for that. Are you, are you speaking English? I'm sorry.
I'm struggling

with what you're saying to me right now. Hold on.
You don't read books. Like you're an adult.
I don't it. So what's your response to that? So here's a good one that you can use.
If somebody tells you they don't have the time to read, ask them this. If I gave you $10,000 to read a book by the end of next week, do you think you could do it? And they'd be like, well, of course I could do it.
I'll read five. So it's not a question of whether or not you have the time to read.
It's whether or not you assign enough value to it. Because you'd read if you were getting paid, but you're not going to read for free.
So now let's talk about why it's valuable. And so I think that's a way to kind of like redirect them.
I can't read. I don't have time to read to like, oh, well, why should I be reading? You know what I mean? Yeah.
So one of my missions, there's something I say all the time here on the show is that health is a competitive advantage in business. And I try to stay fit and healthy.
I eat healthy. I'm currently on day 12 of 75 hard.
That's right. Oh, good, man.
I've done it a few times. Yeah.
So it's, you know, and I try to, what I try to do too is share because I'm in my forties. I try to show people like, look, like just because you hit 40 doesn't mean that you have to all of a sudden just get a dad bod or a mom bod and kind of give up.
Like, you know, prioritizing this stuff has benefits beyond just the way you look or whatever. And, and I, and a lot of the, a lot of my social media content tends to be around, you know, like the emotional aspects of leadership, et cetera.
Um, and how we, how we kind of put ourselves not necessarily in a leadership tactical sense, but in the right mindset and whatever. Okay.
So, you know, I get the same thing because people will be like, wow, you, you work out twice a day. And I'm like, well, that's just cause I'm currently doing 75 hard.
I don't do two, two workouts, although I may, it hasn't been very difficult. But it's like, this is the difference between me having energy to the end of the day and not.
This is the difference between me feeling, you know, feeling good about myself and not. This is the difference between me being anxious or me getting rid of that anxiety.
You know, and I'll literally list out these different things. And I'm saying like, if you could get rid of all your anxiety for the day, would you go to the gym for 45 minutes? Would you go for a walk? All your anxiety.
At 3 p.m., when you're normally, your head is just filled with pounding anxiety for everything that's happened in the day and everything that's going to happen in the rest of the day. And if you could just take 45 minutes out, would you change that? And it's funny.
People don, people don't think about it that way, right? They think they're like, they just, they don't want to engage in these things. They just want to acquiesce to the easiest path and you can shake.
I think I keep trying to shake trees and it's funny who falls out and who doesn't. Um, but it's like every once in a while, something will click for somebody and all of a sudden you'll see them post on social media about being on a treadmill.
And I'm like, fucking yes. I'm like, that's doing it.
You know what I mean? But we will just, we will just fall into that. Whatever the easiest path is just so easy for people to do that.
And if I feel like if they don't see it, if they don't hear it, um, they blind to what's possible. And that's not a good thing.
Yeah, here's another wake up call for people. If you're experiencing a pain on a daily basis, personal, financial, health related, whatever it is.
If you're experiencing a pain on a daily basis, over the next 30 years, you will experience that pain 11,000 times. So what if by spending $20 and a few hours of your time, you could read a book about overcoming that issue, deal with it, and never experience that pain again 11,000 more times? So just like you're saying, when you think about it, a book condenses decades of valuable information into days.
A book like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson condenses a trillion dollars worth of business lessons into a $20 book. You can't beat it.
So many of us think that our pain, our lives, our problems are unique to us. But the fact is 100 billion people have lived on this planet.
Millions of them have written books. Thousands of those books probably could help you overcome the same issue that you're currently dealing with.
Yeah. That's it.
That's why I love these books so much. Yeah.
Books are also a thoughtful gift. They are a way of sharing information.
They're a way of building community. They're a way of giving people hope.
There are so many things that, you know, I had someone in my life who shared a book with me recently. Um, and you know, it just, it was like such a reminder, one of the relationship I have with that person, but also it was really good framing.
It was like right at the perfect time. They knew that I was kind of dealing with something.
And then this kind of helped me narrow that thing. It solved that problem.
It put my brain in a really good space. I know it's on the, this is the reference shelf right here.
This is the ones I go to over here. This is like the active working library.
That one over there is kind of a different library. And, you know, it's, they're just an important part of, I think, our society.
They're an important part of growing a community, of growing with other individuals. People, like, a good way that I will kind of see somewhere where someone is at in relation to my own mentality is I'll reference Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life.
And if someone has read it aware of it, and or doesn't start gagging when they hear it, then I know like, here's a good chance you're like, kind of like me, you know what I mean? And we can post that book the other day. That's funny.
To me, after the Bible, it's the next best book on how to live your life that's ever been written in history. I, it, uh, in 2017, it, it, it course corrected a lot of very, very bad habits that I had and bad relational habits that I had.
And, um, you know, I, I think that book to me, it's like the Bible and then 12 rules for life. Like if you're, you know, as far as like filter systems for how to live a prosperous life, taking out the religious aspect of the Bible, because some people get all fucked up about that.
Just the lessons, the life lessons in the Bible and then 12 rules for life. That's how it goes.
And that's how high I rank that book. But I don't put that on other people.
Just like you can use books as reference points for or anchoring systems for relationships and stuff. And they're just such an important part of our world.
And I think far too often we dismiss them or, like you said, make excuses for not having the time when we all know that we have the time. We just don't make it.
Yeah. Check out the following math.
This is what's mind-blowing to me. And I'll follow up that $10,000 question with something like this.

So if you replace 15 minutes of your morning Instagram or TikTok scrolling and the first 15 minutes of your Netflix or HBO in the evening, not the whole thing, I'm not a robot, but just the first 15 minutes.

In 30 minutes of reading a nonfiction book, even as a beginner, every day, you'll probably read about 20 pages. You do that five days a week.
That's 100 pages a week. That's a book every two or two and a half weeks.
That's over 20 books a year by replacing a low impact activity like Netflix or social media with reading a good book. And when I say this, it clicks for people sometimes.
I can't even remember the main characters in shows that I really enjoyed six months ago or 12 months ago.

That's not serving the future version of Nick Hutchison, right? But that book, oh, I'm still using that book. And that book I will use for the rest of my life, like 12 Rules.
That example that I had about if something's happening on a daily basis over the next 30 years, it's going to happen 11,000 times. That came from beyond order, which is a Jordan Peterson's follow-up to 12 rules.
So I'm using these things all day, every day. Serve your future self.
Put 15 minutes in your morning and 15 minutes in your evening and watch your life change. Yeah.
Dude, I have enjoyed our conversation so much. I think that what you're doing, I also love the marketing hook to the book is you can't read another book until you read this book because you won't get as much out of it.
I love the marketing hook there as well. It kind of wedges yourself in.
You have to buy it or otherwise all the other books will be less valuable. But no, I think it's tremendous.
For everyone listening, obviously you can just go to Amazon and pre-order. I'll also have links in the show notes and stuff.
Where else can people get at you if they want to learn more about what you're doing? We'll have the Instagram linked up and all that stuff. But just give everyone the shout outs for where they can connect with you.
One of my favorite things to do is play this book matchmaker role because that's a way that I can provide impact. So if anybody listening or watching today wants a custom book recommendation from me, just go to that Instagram link that's in the bio or the show notes and send me a DM.
Tell me about a problem you're facing. Tell me about a skill that you'd like to develop.
Tell me about something that you're interested in learning. and I'll probably ask a couple of follow-up questions, but I'll make a book recommendation.
And what I try to do, a little spreadsheet system for this, is I'll try to follow up and hold you accountable to reading the book. Did you read it? What'd you think? What was your intention? Are you taking action? What's the result? Because this is what it's all about.
This is why I'm here. I believe in these.
And I'm happy to do that for anybody that wants a custom book recommendation. That's tremendous.
Dude, I think I love the work you're doing. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of books as well.
I'm glad that we share that. I'm glad we also share the former kind of sports goon mentality when we were young.
Because I also had that. And that you're an appreciation or you have an appreciation for Jordan Peterson.
But I uh i wish you nothing but the best i hope your book absolutely crushes i'm glad we had you on

everyone listening go get rise of the reader highly recommend it and uh dude wish you nothing

but the best Thank you. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.
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