How Effective Is Your Writing? Tips for Lawyers to Excel as Authors with Nick Hutchison

Episode Notes

Transcript

Karin Conroy:

This is Counsel Cast part of the Legal Talk Network, and I’m your host, Karin Conroy. When you face a complex case outside your expertise, you bring in a co-counsel for next level results. When you want to engage, expand, and elevate your firm, you bring in a marketing co-counsel. In this podcast, I bring in marketing experts who each answer one big question to help your firm achieve more. Here’s today’s guest.

Nick Hutchison:

My name is Nick Hutchison. I’m from the Boston, Massachusetts area, and I’m the founder of a company called Book Thinkers. So we help authors promote and market their books sort of at the intersection of social media and podcasting. And I love nonfiction books. I really believe in the power of personal development. We also host a podcast called Book Thinkers Life-changing books where I’ve had the chance to interview a lot of my favorite authors. And on top of that, I just published my very first book. It’s called Rise of the Reader Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and Applying What You Learn. So I’m of the belief that if you choose to read a great nonfiction or personal development style book and not change your behavior as a result of reading it, then that’s closer to a form of entertainment than it is education. So I really believe in applying what we learn from podcasts like this, audio books, physical books, whatever the case is. And overall, just a really big fan of what people have written down in the written word.

Karin Conroy:

Oh my gosh, there are so much. First of all, thank you for being here. This is going to be an awesome episode. It may slightly tangential to marketing and what we are normally talking about, but if you are a regular listener, you know that we talk about books every episode, and you also know if you’re a lawyer, that writing and reading, being an author and writing is a major part of your life and career and way of expression. So the title for the show today is How Effective Is Your Writing Tips for Lawyers to Excel as Authors, but we’re also going to talk about reading and what it means to be a good reader, how to pull out that quality information, take that valuable lessons and tips and what the author is trying to give you, but also as the author, how you do that. So lots of stuff to cover. Nick, thank you for being here.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, of course. Can I actually ask you the first question today? Yes,

Karin Conroy:

Let’s do that. That’s the first. I love this. This is exciting already.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, yeah. We’re switching roles for a minute here. So I love to ask this question because we just wrapped up 2023 at the time of this recording, and I’m curious when I ask this question, what comes to mind first? What was the best book that you read in 2023?

Karin Conroy:

Okay, so part of the reason why we talk about books so much and have a book featured in every episode is I read on average a hundred books a year, and I very much balance fiction and nonfiction. So I wanted to talk with you about why you focus on nonfiction specifically, but that is a really rough question. But I think partially because when in the beginning of the year, I always forget exactly if I read it in January or December of the, but I think I’m going to have to say tomorrow and Tomorrow and tomorrow. That was an amazing, amazing fiction book about, I can tell you the plot, but it’s not going to do it justice, but it’s fiction. So I don’t know, have you read that one?

Nick Hutchison:

I have not. No, I have not.

Karin Conroy:

Oh, it’s so good. So it’s already been option. It’s going to be a movie. So whether you read it or not, you can see the movie at some point, but highly, highly recommend it highly. I’m also going to just mention that I’m on Good Reads. This is not meant to be my gathering more followers and everything, but I do review everything that I read there, and that’s where I keep track of everything. Do you do that as well? How do you keep track of what you read?

Nick Hutchison:

That’s a great question. It’s changed over the years so many different times. I mean, one of the original things that I wanted to build was a competitor to Good Reads. Oh,

Karin Conroy:

Why

Nick Hutchison:

For nonfiction? Well, when I first got onto Good Reads, it sort of felt antiquated back in the day. It had a lot of ads and just the color scheme, it wasn’t bright or actionable. It was kind of just like, eh, the

Karin Conroy:

Website is very clunky, especially on mobile. It’s so absolutely full of errors, and I will a hundred percent agree with you on that.

Nick Hutchison:

And when I had first started reading these personal development style books kind of nonfiction, that’s most of what I read, and I’m happy to talk a little bit more about that and explore it with you. But I found that most Good Reads users are either heavy into fiction or it is like a 50 50 split. There aren’t a lot of sort of just nonfiction style readers. And there were some things that I started to do in my own system that I wish Good Reads could do for me. And that’s why I at one point actually attempted to build an app for nonfiction style readers, and that’s a great story about how that failed. I spent a ton of money and time on it, but it was a fun project and I learned a lot.

Karin Conroy:

Well, I do agree that Goodreads has a lot of room for improvement. The thing that they have though is their tie with Facebook. And so they have such a massive network that it’s trying to do something different is really swimming upstream. That’s a huge challenge.

Nick Hutchison:

And they’re owned by Amazon. And so it comes I preinstalled. Yeah, they are. So it comes pre-installed on every Kindle device on integrates with your Kindle. So yeah, they have a big market share, that’s for

Karin Conroy:

Sure. Okay. So tell me your favorite book of last year and how many did you read?

Nick Hutchison:

Well, just like you, I’m at about a hundred books a year. I stopped officially counting a couple of years ago, and we could talk about that too, but I probably read a hundred books last year. And every year I think I have a top 5%. So I’ve read about 500 books over the last 10 years. Some books 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times. Oh, nice. And I probably have a top 5% across all the books, but the book that comes to first was the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson that came out last year.

Karin Conroy:

Interesting. What did you like about this? Because I will say I did not read that, but I’m not a huge fan of Walter Isaacson. I read, oh, really? The one for Steve Jobs, and I just didn’t really connect with his writing style. What did you like about the Elon Musk one?

Nick Hutchison:

I’m a big fan of iconic entrepreneurship biographies, just because for me, when you see how vulnerable somebody like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk has been at so many different points in their career, for me, that gives me hope. It shows me what a human being is capable of doing and that they’re not superheroes. A lot of those biographies, they’re stripping the cape away and they’re showing you what these people are really like behind the scenes. I mean, with the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, I get that feeling of, okay, a couple of kids in a garage can build a trillion dollar company. And with Elon Musk, it’s like, what does it feel like for somebody when three or four rocket attempts in a row all fail and you have hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in a project that’s not working and you’re just a human being? How do you figure that out? And so I suppose what I like about it, maybe not as much the writing style, but just getting that behind the scenes access to somebody so

Karin Conroy:

Large. Okay, so I’m going to ask another question related to this, but real quick, we are going to take a quick break and we’ll be back in a minute. Okay. So the next question I want to ask Nick, is we were talking about writing style and how you like or don’t like Walter Isaacson, but let’s talk more specifically about what makes for really good compelling writing style in general, where the goal is obviously to get the reader to do something, take your tips, do something with those. So with that goal in mind, how do you write in an effective way that works towards that?

Nick Hutchison:

That’s a great question. And before I answer it, I will say, I will answer this question through the lens of personal development, nonfiction, business style writing, because I think that it would be a different answer probably for fiction,

Karin Conroy:

And our audience is lawyers, so that fits better anyway.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, yeah. Okay, perfect. Well, the word that comes to mind first is actionable. So I think that effective writing is actionable. I think that when you read a great book and you take action and you change your behavior, then you continue to tell people about that book. And word of mouth sort of takes off. And so in order to write something that does well over the long term, you have to help people take action. And one of my favorite lines from a great marketer, Russell Brunson, he says, A confused customer always says no. And so if your writing is complex, if you’re not actionable, if you don’t lay things out for the reader, here’s the first step, here’s the second step, here’s the third, here’s all the context in a simple way, then I think that person gets hung up. And sometimes it’s not the reader’s fault that they don’t take action on a book because nobody gave the book, didn’t give them clear instructions, or it was confusing. And so I think the word actionable comes to mind first.

Karin Conroy:

Okay. So while you were explaining that, I thought of one of my top examples for that. Can you give me what your top example for an actionable book is? And then I’ll follow up with mine?

Nick Hutchison:

Sure. Atomic Habits by James Clear. Oh, I love that. That’s the Go-to example, because that book sold 10 million copies. It sold 10 million copies, and it’s still going like crazy. It’s sold 10 million copies because number one, it’s a relatable subject. Everybody wants to take small steps and make massive improvement. But people read that book and then they take action, they habit stack or whatever the case is, and then they lose weight or they build a business or whatever the case is, their relationships get better. And then people say, Hey, you’re looking really good. What’s new? Well, I’ve been going to the gym for two years. How’d you get into it? Atomic habits. And then the word of mouth momentum just keeps going because the book is so actionable.

Karin Conroy:

And it’s the way he’s written it though too. It’s not just like, let me talk. In theory. It’s also at the end of each chapter, it goes through, okay, here’s what you need to do. Here’s these tiny little, the whole idea of atomic habits is tiny little steps that you can take to get you through that lack of inertia to take those steps. So the book is a case study for itself. It’s genius. It’s amazing. The one that I thought of is Profit first because it’s beyond actionable for me, where you can, it’s not just kind of theory and mindset and kind of lifestyle stuff that you see in some of these books. It’s more, I can take this action and I can see it today in my finances. So this is not just like, how am I going to feel different? This is where’s my money?

How can I have a really good, clear visual on it? But then give me a system for this and tell me exactly how to set the system up. Tell me what to name this part and name that part. Tell me the numbers I need for X, Y, and Z. And it’s, I’m almost overcomplicating it in my explanation because it’s very clear, it’s very actionable, and it’s short. The book is not like hundreds of pages within the first probably 75 pages. You’ve got it. And so right there, you’ve got formulas, you’ve got an action plan, you’ve got a system. And walking away from that, it absolutely changed the way that I can view my finances where everything sits. And it seems like a simple thing, but sometimes it’s those simple things that make the biggest change.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, I think so too. That’s a wonderful book, and it’s done amazing things for my business. One of the things that people is to set a smart goal for every book that they read. And what’s nice about Profit First as the way that I describe Profit First to people that haven’t read the book is basically in business school, you’re taught that revenue minus expenses equals profit. But Mike Macit teaches you that revenue minus profit, which you’re budgeting for first equals expenses, and you’re forced to constrict your spending after you take your profit dividend. What a great way to leverage Parkinson’s law, which essentially states that every task that you have will expand to fill the timeline that you give it. And so when I read a great book, I bake action into the goal that I have, because SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. You want to give yourself a deadline to take action. So that was a really fast explanation of one of the things that I teach people, but what a wonderful example. You want to make a book actionable and you want it to be super clear to implement.

Karin Conroy:

Yeah. Okay. So what’s the reverse? What are some mistakes that you see people, I’m going to keep interchanging authors and writers intentionally because I think lawyers don’t necessarily see themselves as authors, but I think a lot of lawyers out there, this is a long-term goal that either they want to write a book, but even if that isn’t on your plan, you’re still a writer. And whether you are writing for your blog posts, whether you’re writing for a jury, whether you’re writing for whatever the purpose is, it needs to be done in an effective way so that you accomplish whatever the goal of that writing is. So what are some major mistakes that you see people, authors, writers in general making so that the opposite happens, it’s not effective, and it just sort of turns people off?

Nick Hutchison:

I think that people try to sound smart.

Karin Conroy:

Yeah,

Nick Hutchison:

They legalese, right? That’s what you said before, that legalese language. And I’ve noticed this with the operating agreements and the businesses that I’ve started and other business lawyer communication that I’ve participated in and things like that. It just, you’re using 100 words to say what could have been said in three, not necessarily to minimize liability, but sometimes just to sound smart. And the adjectives are like 40 characters long, and it’s just unnecessary. And one of the first things that I learned as a salesperson in reading books on sales and marketing and communication is that you want to be a surgeon with your words. And the metaphor kind of goes like this, surgeons don’t perform extra cuts while they’re going through surgery because it’s not necessary for the procedure. And salespeople, lawyers, writers of all kind, you shouldn’t use extra language while writing. It’s unnecessary. And I think that sometimes the most effective authors, they are leveraging brevity. They’re short, they’re quick, they’re concise, they’re clear, and they’re writing at a third to fifth grade reading level so that everybody can understand it. And that’s why those people blow up and they sell a bunch of books because everybody can consume the information.

Karin Conroy:

One thing we talk about a lot when we’re taking on a new project, especially if we’re starting with a website, which usually that’s oftentimes where we’re starting, is that oftentimes a website comes in and it’s old and they’ve got this old SEO approach where it’s just crammed with keywords and language, and they think that exactly what you’re describing, they think that it looks, makes them, boost them up, makes them look better. But one of my favorite phrases of all times is that confidence is quiet. So if your positioning aligns with an elite quality, high-end prestigious experience, which many firms do and should have that kind of positioning, you are doing the opposite. You are appearing desperate, you’re appearing like a used car salesman. You are not supporting this idea that you’re confident at all in what you’re saying because when you’re in those networking experiences and you’ve got the guy who won’t stop talking to you, and he doesn’t come across as confident, he comes across as kind of insecure and desperate and needy. That is not how you want your marketing and your website and your sales language to come across. So wherever your writing is, whether it’s a book, your website, blog posts, whatever, it’s important to think about the positioning of what you’re trying to say to that visitor or reader. And then to not come across as needy. I mean, I just can’t imagine a sales situation where overdoing that language and just smothering someone with language would possibly be effective.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, I view it the same way back to that line. A confused customer always says, no, there’s no point in trying to come across as luxurious or complicated for the sake of making a sale, because then you are positioned as a salesperson in the book Who Not How by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, who runs Strategic Coach. He says, there are buyers and there are sellers, and you always want to be in a position of a buyer, even if you are the one selling something, you want to come across as not desperate, as selective as somebody that you need to qualify to work with me. And that positioning isn’t luxurious or complicated, it’s simple, and it’s just I let my work represent itself. Yeah, speak for me.

Karin Conroy:

Yes, yes. Okay, awesome. So how then do you drive engagement? How do you have this language and then get them to do something?

Nick Hutchison:

Sure. Well, one of the things that my agency does, so my book marketing agency is we work with authors to help them create organic social media content that captures somebody’s attention and then gives them a call to action, provides next steps. And again, this is a very simple formula, and I think that it works for writing on a website or writing in a book or whatever the case is, but you always want to start with a strong hook, something that grabs somebody’s attention. Maybe it talks about a pain point or a powerful opinion that they might side with. Then you provide a little bit of value and then a call to action. And that call to action, that next step needs to be as clear as humanly possible. You don’t want to give somebody too many choices, you just want to lead them into one direction. So a lot of times, I think in a book, it might be download this PDF by going to X, y, Z website to get more information. And the goal is to grab somebody’s email and you’re just giving them that one next step. You’re providing value at the same time. And so I think that, again, just to be clear, to be easy to read, easy to follow.

Karin Conroy:

I’m just going to underline that sequence because I think people assume it’s much more complicated and that’s where it gets messy. But so what you described is first a hook. So explain those pain points, and you should know what your client’s pain points are when they call you, the things that they’re coming to you for, why they need you. So a hook that may or may not have some pain points or something that’s going to pull them in. And then the value part is where I think a lot of people really miss the boat. They are not necessarily providing value. They’re just like, Hey, I’m here, call me. And it’s like, okay, what’s the middle part? Give me a reason. Tell me why I should call you. Give me some value. And then the clearer call to action, not this complicated, click here and then click on my profile and then click over here and then fill out this 47 step form to get to me. You don’t want to put all those speed bumps and hurdles in their way. That’s it. Three steps, hook, value, call to action. I just wanted to underline that. I feel like, like I said, people get it really messy, overly complicated, and that’s where you lose people.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, I think so too. And I suppose I’m not classically trained as a website marketer or website developer, but I think that if you have too many items in your nav bar and every item has 25 dropdowns, it’s like there are a thousand different destinations for prospective buyer to go onto that will distract them from the impulse that they originally wanted to fulfill, which was probably to schedule a call with you or get pricing or start some type of conversation. And it’s almost like you’re intentionally setting up roadblocks for yourself if you lead people to anything else. And I think in most scenarios for lawyers or really anybody, any type of person writing content online, it’s like one call to action, don’t have too many choices available for people because they will get confused. I mean, it’s how the world works and it’s how these internet sites work.

Karin Conroy:

I’m going to quote a book from years ago way in the history of when I first started doing websites, I think this is when they were still HTML, Seth Godin wrote this book, and this is going into the archives called The Purple Fez, and I love all of Seth Godin’s books, but this is the one I quote the most, the concept of how to design a layout. And this works the same for websites as well as any kind of media that you are trying to convey some kind of message. But he says, imagine that your visitor is a monkey and you give them one banana. You don’t give them a pile of bananas, you don’t give a banana over here and a banana over there and a banana in the footer, and you give them one banana because they are a monkey and their attention is short and easily distracted. And so you give them one banana on each page. You can have these things that we call secondary calls to action, but they are clearly less important, lower emphasis in both the design and the look of it. But just think about the one banana on each page that you’re giving your visitor and keep it simple because it’s, it’s easier to make it more complicated, I think both in writing in books and websites and life in general.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, Gary V is a great metaphor too. Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Oh, what a lot of people, when they show up on social media or as they’re writing blogs, they show up and they just throw a right hook, which is a call to action, buy this, set up a call, buy this, whatever the case is. But he says no. When you’re in a fight with somebody, you throw a jab and a jab, you sort of see how your opponent reacts. You’re getting to know them a little bit so that by the time you throw a right hook, it will connect where it’s supposed to go. So a jab is providing value when you show up, whether you’re writing a blog or it’s on your website or whatever the case is, you just jab for a little while, provide as much value as humanly possible, build a relationship, get to know that person so that by the time you throw a right hook, they’re bought in. They love what you’re offering. They’re like, this person’s been providing so much free value for so long. Yes, I’ll set up a call or whatever the case is. So yeah, if somebody jumps on your newsletter, don’t immediately send them a five email cadence that just says, buy in the subject line of every automated email. Provide genuine value for a little while.

Karin Conroy:

Yes. Okay. So I want to transition to talking about being a reader. And I know you talk a lot about having better reading habits and how to do that. And we talked really briefly before we started recording, and I talked about how after my grad school, after I graduated, my brain was just fried and I just couldn’t pick up a book for a few years after that. And then we had small kids Once again, I just did not have the space or the time, but eventually I started reading again. And so can you talk about how to, and this kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier with Atomic Habits too. Can you talk about what you speak of in terms of how to get that inertia going? But then also what are some good reading habits that you recommend for people as they’re reading?

Nick Hutchison:

Well, in your situation, burned out from law school where you have your nose in books every single day, and then having small kids, I mean, that’s probably as crazy as it gets, right? But when I do meet people that tell me, Hey, I don’t have enough time for reading, or I don’t really, I’m not much of a reader. I normally start by asking the following question. I’ll say, if I paid you $10,000 to read a book by the end of next month, do you think you could do it? And they’ll kind of say yes. And then so they’ve fallen into my trap, right? Because now we can agree that it’s not a question of whether or not you can read, but it’s a question of whether or not you value reading enough to prioritize it over maybe some of the other things that you’re doing in your schedule.

So if we can get to that point where we say, okay, I want to start reading, but I don’t really know how to get that process going, then I recommend the following process, which is instead of trying to find time to read, just replace a little bit of social media in the morning, maybe a little bit of Netflix in the evening with reading a great book. And I’m not a robot. I’m not like delete social media, never watch Netflix. I think that being entertained is amazing, but if you can just replace a little bit of it in the morning, like 15 minutes of scrolling in the morning with reading a great book, and maybe just the first 15 minutes of your Netflix in the evening, all of a sudden that’s a half an hour a day. And if you’re just starting out and you’re not a lawyer, that’s probably 20 pages a day. If you’re a lawyer and you’ve been reading for years and years, it’s probably even more. But at 20 pages a day, five days a week, that’s a hundred pages a week. That’s a book every two or three weeks just by replacing a little bit of social media and a little bit of Netflix with reading a great book.

Karin Conroy:

So during Covid, this is kind of when I started my reading habit back up, and I did that and I also was using some habit trackers, things that were kind of, for me, my brain really works with streaks of keeping me in a streak of things me. So I started literally with 10 minutes a day. And the other thing that I was super opposed to and then changed my mind on was a Kindle. And I really believed I needed a hardcover book. I do still love the feeling of a hardcover book and sitting there and turning the pages, but what a hardcover book doesn’t have that the Kindle does is it’ll tell me how much time I have left in that chapter, in that book or this section or whatever it is. So I can pretty quickly see, oh my gosh, in 10 minutes I can finish another chapter.

And in usually about three to four hours on an average book, I can finish a whole book. So you can pretty quickly do the math and how many books you could probably finish in 10 to 15 minutes every day. And I’m not here to promote this for any selfish reason. I don’t care if anybody reads more books personally. I just know what a difference it makes in your life and your brain and just your neurological processes to do these. This is not just for your knowledge and all of that. It’s so good for your brain.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, it really is. In today’s world of instant gratification and doom scrolling and everything like that, I think that one of the main benefits of reading that people don’t pay attention to is that it’s focusing on one thing at a time at the expense of everything else. And you’re developing the ability to perform deep work and stay in one task, and then that skillset is then transferable to the work that you do on a day-to-Day basis. And obviously it’s increasing your vocabulary and fiction has its role in boosting your creativity and all sorts of things like that. And nevermind the fact that a lot of these non-fiction personal development style books, they’re literally condensing decades of somebody else’s greatest life lessons into days of consumption. It’s one of the greatest life hacks that’s ever been made available to us. I mean, you can solve almost any problem or build any skill that you want for $20 or less in a few hours of your time. And so yeah, reading, I mean, it plays such a great role in my life, obviously. Yeah,

Karin Conroy:

The only thing I was going to add to that is that I have figured out between Libby and my libraries. I don’t buy books either, so all of my books are through the library too. So I save thousands of dollars a year by having these kind of systems set up so that I’ve got a constant flow of great books sitting on my Kindle. So reading super critical. What are some good tips that you have for how to extract? Let’s just kind of keep it in the nonfiction lane, because that I think applies more to what we’re talking about, but let’s assume we’re reading some great nonfiction books. You’re talking about how you’ve got all of these decades of distilled information. What are your tips for taking that information and actually making it more actionable as the reader from that side of it?

Nick Hutchison:

So let’s do a slightly deeper dive on the smart goal idea before you choose to read a book, because I think that this is such a key piece that most people are missing. Most people just pick up a book. It was maybe recommended to them. They saw it on a list somewhere, social media, a mentor

Karin Conroy:

Podcast, they

Nick Hutchison:

Start podcast, yeah, heard it on a podcast, and then they just start reading it. But instead, slow down. This only takes a couple of minutes and set a smart goal. So when I sit down to read a new book, and let’s say this book promises to solve a problem that I’m currently experiencing, we could use Profit First as the example. Instead of just diving in, I’m going to say, let’s build a smart goal, something that’s specific so I know exactly what my goal is for the book. Something that’s measurable. The measurable piece is so important because you need to know whether or not the book helped you achieve that goal. Attainable something that’s realistic, relevant, meaning you’re emotionally connected to it, that’s going to help you stay in the book, finish the book and take action on it because it’s helping you solve a problem or build a skill or satisfy a curiosity. And then time bound again, we’re going to give ourselves a deadline to take action. So for Profit First, I might set a smart goal that kind of goes like this, find and implement at least one way to retain more profit in my business by the end of February.

Karin Conroy:

Nice. I love that.

Nick Hutchison:

And so that’s specific. I know what the goal is. It’s measurable. By the end of February, did I implement at least one way to retain more profit in my business? That’s attainable. I didn’t say save a million dollars next month, just find and implement one thing. I’m emotionally connected to it because of I’m a business owner and I care so much about having that extra money for a thousand reasons, and it’s time bound by the end of February. And so you’re going to love this, and we will modify it a little bit for Kindle. But what I do with my smart goal is I write it on the inside cover of the book, and I review it every time I read another chapter because our brains have that reticular activating system like the natural filter. And so I’m sharing my goal with the book, find and implement at least one strategy for retaining more profit in my business by the end of February. And it’s almost like everything else melts away and just those actionable strategies jump off the page. Nice. And then at the end of the reading experience, I can determine what do I want to implement? What one or two activities is going to lead to most of the change I’m looking for?

Karin Conroy:

That is so good. So I do a lot of highlighting with my Kindle, and I know there’s a way to add notes that I don’t really do because I don’t know, I just haven’t really done that. But is there a way to add a note like that on the overall book, or does it have to be tied to a certain page basically? I guess my question is, is there a way to do that on the Kindle?

Nick Hutchison:

That’s a great question. So let’s say I consume a hundred books a year, 20 to 25 of them are audio books, maybe two or three year Kindle right now. And the rest are physical paper books. I think that with a Kindle on page one, you can add a note. You don’t need to highlight anything. It could be your intention. And then I know that Kindle has the ability to export your notes and highlights, and so you could then export all of those potential actions that you might want to implement, review them quickly and say, which one or two of these things do I want to implement? Because again, not every action from a book is created equal, which is one of the reasons I advocate reading the entire book before you choose what to implement, because something on the next page might be twice as effective and take half as much time. So again, I’m always looking for what can I get out of this book that’s the most effective?

Karin Conroy:

Well, and I mean, to be fair, most business books, no business book knows your business unless you wrote it, obviously true. So for most business books, what I find is going to be a big chunk where I’m like, this doesn’t relate to the kind of work I do or the clients I have, or whatever. But this other 80% probably does. And so I think it’s important to kind of recognize that because I think a lot of people get into a book and they find one little part that doesn’t, doesn’t really relate to their work, and they shut the whole thing down because of it. It’s like, well, you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater there. Let’s just say that there’s some valuable stuff. There’s some things that are for a different kind of business, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad, it’s just not for you.

Nick Hutchison:

I mean, I hired on my team, just to give an example of this, I hired on my team an operations manager, and he came from the coffee industry. I mean, he ran his own coffee shop. And I thought, okay, how is this going to be relevant to the customer service experience that Book Thinkers has with our authors? And he said one of the things that, just to give an example, he said one of the things they would do in their physical coffee shop, they would bring somebody water before they would ask for it. So they always knew maybe five minutes after somebody was given their coffee, they’d come over and get a cup of water. So they were instructed two minutes after somebody was given their coffee, go bring them water. How do you anticipate somebody’s needs so that it just feels like, wow, these people are really on top of it. And then we took that philosophy, we adapted it to our business, and now we do a bunch of different things using that same kind of philosophy again in our book marketing business. So it’s just like, yeah, even if it’s not related to your industry or business specifically, you can always adapt and kind of change things around a

Karin Conroy:

Hundred percent. I take a lot of inspiration from, we stay at nice hotels. The whole hospitality industry in general does a lot of great things to just make people feel good and feel comfortable. And I think that can be applied to any kind of a customer service experience. You just have to be a little creative with it. Take some ideas of, and I think it’s a lot of what you just described, anticipating needs, knowing that, okay, I’ve gone through this kind of a project before. I know that at this point they’re going to want X. So let me one step ahead predict that. So it is time for the book review, and I’m going to ask Nick for his favorite book that he recommends to all lawyers to have on their bookshelf. But first, we’re going to take a quick break. So we are back. It is time for the Thought Leaders Library. So if you are a longtime listener, you’ll realize that we’ve just come up with a fancy new title for our library. It used to just be called the Library now it’s called the Thought Leaders Library, but we have a whole website that has curated collection of books that all of our guests have recommended. And Nick, what is the somewhat controversial book that you’re going to recommend today?

Nick Hutchison:

The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris is one of my all-time favorite books. And I have used that book to take a lot of action my life, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite books. But I’m so curious to hear your experience with the book because not everybody loves it.

Karin Conroy:

Yes, it is a little divisive. And here, my Vieth with the book is, first of all, it came out ages ago. Do you know what year it came out? I don’t even know. I want to

Nick Hutchison:

Say, I think it had its 10 year reunion one or two years ago, so it’s probably 11 or 12 years ago.

Karin Conroy:

That sounds about right in terms of when I first read it. So first of all, it’ss a little dusty in my memory, but at the time it felt a little simplistic. And my Vieth was that he over, he called it a four hour work week, but a lot of it was basically hiring an assistant to fulfill a 40 plus hour work week. So I dunno, I think at the time it just seemed a lot of just like we’re just going to offload our work to a virtual assistant. What do you love about this book so much?

Nick Hutchison:

Well, when I first read the book, my first time reading it was probably 2016, I was a recent college graduate working a full-time software sales job in a literal cubicle and Tim in the beginning of the book, he starts talking about how reality is negotiable and we can design lives that are uniquely fulfilling to us, and we don’t have to follow society’s guidelines about college for four years, then get a job, buy a big house, get in a bunch of debt, climb the corporate ladder until you’re 65, and then maybe you could travel. And I really resonated with that message. So I took a lot of what Tim taught us about 80 20 analysis and things like that. And I started to automate a lot of what I was doing in my job. And then I took it remote, and then I started traveling the world, and then I started to build my online business. So totally a different experience. Still to this day, don’t have a virtual assistant, but I do use his framework of automation, delegation, elimination, and the constant 80 20 analysis and energy audits on my calendar to find people on my team that are uniquely positioned to enjoy the things that I don’t like doing and offload it all. Now, I work far more than four hours a week, but I only do things that I enjoy. And that’s sort of the main lesson that I got from the book.

Karin Conroy:

I think that’s so interesting because I got a completely different lesson and I’ve had a virtual assistant ever since. So that was the main takeaway from me was, yes, I absolutely need a virtual assistant because for similar reasons to what you were describing, there’s a lot of administrative stuff. There’s also things that are just not my strength. And I got this out of the StrengthsFinder book as well. It was done by Gallup where you figure out done where you’re really, I’ve done my 34. Yeah, so what are you really good at? And then don’t try to boost your weaknesses, boost your strength, and then find other people to fulfill those weaknesses. And that I thought was kind of a nice light bulb moment for me where it’s not like you don’t need to or want to be. Well-balanced in every possible strength under the sun.

There’s no time in your day to do all of the things. So instead, you focus on what your strengths are, but similar to what you’re describing, and then find team members or my assistant or whoever it is who is going to do all that other stuff, that is their strength as well. And so the quality of all of the work coming out of all of us is at its peak. But the 80 20 rule, I will say, I think basically with this book, he’s kind of the OG when it comes to living a different kind of a life than that nine to five. So I will say that he nailed it and he really did get a lot of people to think differently about what matters and how they want to spend their time. And should it be in a cubicle like you were describing? Who wants that? I don’t think anybody wants that.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah. I think Tim’s message, a lot of the criticism that I hear sometimes it is that it’s overly simplistic. A lot of people say that it’s not realistic to design your own life and live on your own terms. And I mean, after reading that book, I literally went to Argentina for five weeks by myself and I started to build my online business. And one of the things that I think everybody listening can resonate with and that everybody should try is go back a couple weeks in your calendar, look at your entire calendar and mark items red that drained your energy tasks or items that you had to do yellow if it was neutral and green, if it brought you energy. And then find ways to automate, delegate or eliminate anything that was neutral or took your energy away from you. So that’s kind of like my version of the 80 20 these days is that I want to enjoy the passage of time. That’s what I optimize for, and I can build a business. And what’s unique about delegating things to people is that it’s all relative. The same things that I’m offloading that I hate doing bookkeeping and accounting, other people love doing that. I know, and

Karin Conroy:

I can find people.

Nick Hutchison:

I know there’s

Karin Conroy:

Crazy people out there.

Nick Hutchison:

I know. Yes.

Karin Conroy:

And I’ll support you in this idea that I also cannot imagine doing the nine to five and this idea of it not being realistic. I support that It is absolutely a realistic lifestyle to work virtually and have the kind of life where you can support whatever it is that you want. If it is all kinds of travel, world travel, if it is just spending time with your kids and having a life balance, or maybe you’re taking care of elderly parents, whatever that thing might be, to have a better balance. I think that’s one thing that we don’t, especially Americans do not do well. We’re trying to do basically four or five different kinds of roles all the time, every day. And that’s not realistic. That’s the part that is really not the kind of life that anyone can live. And at some point, some piece of that’s going to give, and maybe that’s your job. Maybe you get fired because you’re trying to support you keep all these other balls in the air.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, I think so too. And Tim’s book, definitely, it sold a lot of copies, I’m sure initially because it has a flashy title that promises something that it’s the

Karin Conroy:

Hook that you were talking about. It’s got a hook.

Nick Hutchison:

But I think then when people dive in and they’re like, oh, he’s not actually talking about only working four hours a week, he’s talking about doing the highest leveraged work possible so that you can grow your business and delegate everything out. And he does talk a lot about virtual assistants, and I kind of gloss over those parts of the book as I reread it because the sites that he references are outdated now. And again, I’m not using, I have a team around me. We’ve got 10 people on our team now, but they’re not virtual assistants. But it sounds like you’ve had a great experience with the virtual assistant piece, so maybe I should revisit that.

Karin Conroy:

Well, and honestly, as you were speaking, I’m like, I think I need to revisit the way I feel about this book in general. I think it’s the title. I think that’s what my Vieth is, and it’s that it’s this hook and really selling you on this idea of a four hour work week, but there is a lot more content and quality there that is sort of supplementary to this idea of a four hour work week. It’s almost not quite the right title. It’s more like, live this better life or don’t do the nine to five. And I am not a good title person, obviously, but the four hour work week is more just to pull you in and kind of rethink the the nine to five sort of.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah. And that is one problem with the personal development industry or whatever you want to call it, is that now with Amazon, KDP, anybody can put out a book. And so titles, in order to be competitive, they just get crazier and crazier and crazier. And in my book, Raz of the Reader, I give an example, it’s like, would you rather read a book that says Make a million dollars next year, or a book that says, make a hundred million dollars next year? And it’s like, well, I mean on paper, the a hundred million sounds better, but that’s not realistic action. And so people, they just try to want up each other to sell more and more and more and more, and it gets a little bit crazy.

Karin Conroy:

It’s a race to the bottom. I want to spend a minute really quick. You mentioned your book and it absolutely lines up with everything that we’re talking about. So especially when we were talking for that brief kind of middle section about being a good reader. So can you tell us real quick about your book, rise of the Reader?

Nick Hutchison:

Sure. Strategies for Mastering Your Reading Habits and applying what you Learn. Again, over the years of building my community, I’ve just received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the same questions. How do I choose the right book? How do I take effective notes? How do I implement and retain more of what I’m learning? And so everything that I’ve learned about how to effectively retain and implement information is in that book. And I also give a hundred examples of things that I’ve implemented from the hundreds of books that I’ve read and talk a little bit about my experience implementing them and were they effective and I sort of bucket them in health, wealth, and happiness related habits. Nice. Yeah, it’s a little blend of both reading strategies, but also things that I’ve used to make more money to be happier and to be healthier,

Karin Conroy:

To keep it actionable,

Nick Hutchison:

As actionable as humanly possible.

Karin Conroy:

Awesome. Well, obviously you’ve got all the tips for not only how to be a good reader, but how to translate that into being a good author. So I would expect that you’ve got the tips about being a good reader, but that it’s written well enough so that it’s actually interesting and people follow up and have that good takeaway. Okay. So Nick, what is one thing that works?

Nick Hutchison:

Reading when your energy is at its highest? Oh, interesting. So people tell me all the time, they’re like, Nick, I try to read these books, but then I fall asleep. I’m like, well, when are you reading the books? And they’re like, well, after a long day of work. And then I have dinner and I put my kids to bed, and then everybody’s running around, and then I watch Netflix for a while, and then I try to read and it’s like, no wonder you’re falling asleep. So for me,

Karin Conroy:

That’s so obvious, but that is exactly what everyone reads.

Nick Hutchison:

I know.

Karin Conroy:

I feel like nobody, I’ve never heard anyone kind of put that together before. I love it,

Nick Hutchison:

And that’s why I decided to mention it because it’s so obvious, but everybody ignores it. So check this out. Here’s my reading schedule. I wake up in the morning, I go on a walk with my dog, so I’m sort of getting the exercise endorphins flowing. I’m getting sunlight, I’m starting to move my body. Then I go to the gym really quick again, exercise, endorphins flowing. I have my first Sipp of caffeine, so my brain starts to fire up, and then I read, and it’s like you can’t fall asleep when it’s mid-morning and you’re full of exercise, endorphins and caffeine. Right. It’s impossible. And so if reading is important to you, shift it in your schedule. Find a time during the morning or during the mid-morning to read and you can’t fall asleep.

Karin Conroy:

Oh my gosh. I love that. That was a great takeaway for me because yeah, I do tend to read in the evening exactly like what you described, and I will often jolt awake because I’ve fallen asleep while I was reading it. I still do get quite a bit of reading done, but yeah, I didn’t really put it together. I mean, it’s so obvious that it’s at the end of the day and whatever, but it is kind of a nice, I do find it calming and a nice way to end my day at the same time. Me too. Yeah. But I think that for me is more when I read fiction. And so if I’m reading nonfiction, it makes much more sense to do what you’re describing where I really want some solid takeaways. This is a different kind of reading to me, it’s more functional reading. And if that’s the case, then it does make much more sense to do it when your energy is high, obviously. Yes. Awesome. Okay. Well, Nick Hutchinson is the founder of Book Thinkers, both the website, the podcast, and then your book, rise of the Reader. We will link to all of those things on the show notes, and thank you so much for being here.

Nick Hutchison:

Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity.

Karin Conroy:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Counsel Cast podcast. Be sure to visit our website at Counsel Cast dot com for the resources mentioned on the episode and to give us your feedback. If you enjoyed this episode, I would appreciate if you could rate and review the podcast on Apple and subscribe to your favorite podcast platform. See you on the next one.

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