Feed Your Mind

Watch the episode here

Episode Topics:

• Filling your brain by reading
• Are you having a self-limiting belief around reading?
• Consuming knowledge by picking up a book
• Reading biographies about people you can model after
• Integrating reading to your life

What’s shakin’? Hey, it’s good for you to be with me today. And today we’re going ALL IN. I don’t know how often you read, but I’m gonna tell you how often I used to read versus how often I do now, because, uh, continuing to fill your brain with new knowledge, new ideas, new creativity is important to your success in life. Not just in business, not just in relationships, but everything all together in life. Continuing to pump your brain, your heart, your soul, full of knowledge and creativity is your key to success. And I’m going to give you some stats today that I’ve discovered over the past little bit here because I, I’ve seen this, right? You see these memes on Instagram, and by the way, share this with as many people as you can because these are some amazing things. And it’s not often that I give statistics on the show, okay? Cuz it, you, you see the memes on Instagram, right? 

It’s like, Hey, Bill Gates reads X amount of books per year. You know, Or Elon Musk reads X amount of books per year. Uh, Steve Jobs read this amount of books per year. You know, Warren Buffet always bumps his head full of this knowledge. It’s an interesting thought because there was an article that I saw, I have a subscription of Business Insider that actually started listing percentages on this. And I started relating this to me now a little history on me in reading, okay? Back in high school, okay? So like, like a while ago at this point, back in high school, I would always get the cliff notes to books because I hated reading entire books. Absolutely hated it. I just did enough, got enough knowledge to pass the test, that’s it, to actually gain the knowledge. And I actually found out, you know, and I still look back at that and think that actually wasn’t a bad idea because he even to today, sometimes I’ll get some abridged versions of something or I love consuming different types of articles as well just to be able to, to fill me up with, with a very specific piece of information. 

But it wasn’t until maybe about four years ago or so that I started really realizing the value of entire books. And I had to just get into a format where I could consume it, because I’m not a dude who’s just gonna sit down and, and just read through a book, you know, read two chapters, all of that. That wasn’t a way for me to do it. And I had to get over this hump myself because I was actually limiting myself just because I said, Oh, I don’t learn that way. It was a self limiting belief that I had by saying, you know what? I don’t read and people who know me really well, but like, what are you talking about? You read all the time. And for me, I’m like, Yeah, I guess you’re right. Because it’s, it’s articles, it’s uh, other things, you know, just different publications kind of in short formats, not these long drawn out books. 

But there’s so much value cuz in these books, I mean, these podcasts, right? They’re, they’re short, they’re compressed in time. They’re, they’re chunked, if you wanna put it that way. But if you stack up a bunch over the course of, you know, a month or a year or whatever, and you start listening to these, they start to build on each other, right? So here’s some stats for you of these millionaires, right? People that are making like 5 million or have a network of $5 million or more, you know, 85% read two or more books every single month for both education and learning purposes. 85% read two or more books per month. That’s insane, isn’t it? And Bill Gates, I know when I look at him, he reads like 50 books a year, so it’s almost one a week for him, which is really like four per month. 

He’s always consuming knowledge. Warren Buffet, I think, is even higher. There’s other people that I know that read around a hundred books per year. You know, it’s no wonder why in Andy Frisella’s program, 75 Hard calls it a mental toughness program. Why do you have to read 10 pages a day of a book in order to just continually just pump your mind and your soul full of good things. I’ll tell you what I do now and how I got through that self-limiting belief. I listened to audio books. I figured out what was right for me. My audio books I actually listen to while I’m working out, because I work out four to five times a week for about an hour at a time. And I pump myself full of this stuff as I listen to it. And then I’m actually even taking notes. 

I take notes during the set on my phone. I’ll pull up the notes app on my iPhone and start pumping things in there. And actually, a lot of things generate ideas even for the show when I, when I listen to these audio books. But then when I sat back and looked at it, I had to reflect on this as I was coming into today to record this. And it’s like, how many do I actually consume on a monthly basis? And then I’m looking back through my history, I’m like, man, it is an average of two. It is an average of two books per month. And I’m saying, I’m like, I’m one of the 85%. That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. And I’ll tell you the two, and it’s kind of split this way sometimes too because here’s another statistic, right? It’s at 58% of these people that are worth 5 million or more read biographies of famous successful people. 

I used to talk a lot and sometimes I do about John Ledger, he was the CEO that really puts T-Mobile on the map. And when I talk about him, some people are like, Oh, you want to be like him? Like, actually, no, it’s good to model after somebody. And that’s a tip for you because if you find a successful person that, that you look up to, that you admire, that’s doing some cool stuff before you’re able to forge your own path on a lot of things, it’s good to model somebody else as an entrepreneur, as a, as just somebody in life. This is why they call ’em role models. And here’s a secret. You don’t have to know your role model. You can just look up to somebody and admire stuff that they’re doing or have done. And then start to model yourself after them. 58% of these multimillionaires read biographies of famous successful people. 

I’m gonna give you the two books that I’m currently in right now, literally for this month. I’m listening to ’em simultaneously on Audible. It’s the app that I use. The first one is The Power of One More by Ed Mylett. It’s a new book, the audio book. I was waiting for this sucker to come out, right? The paper version of it was released a couple months ago, but the audio book just released just a couple of weeks ago. The audio book was trailing the actual release date of the regular paper publication. And the, so if, as I look back through my history, I saw that one book was typically about mindsets, which that’s the, the, the power of one more would fit into that from Ed Millets. And then another one, it’s like, I’m actually reading about people. No kidding, like I’ve read about Abraham Lincoln and right now the other book that I’m reading, which is freaking amazing, is called The Wisdom of Walt. 

It’s all about Walt Disney. And in there there’s a, there’s like some, there’s some mindset stuff, but just hearing some of the creative ways that he was able to do business and get these amazing big things accomplished, start feeding me full of ideas that I’m like, Oh, well, that, well, maybe I could do this. And it’s not exactly like he was doing, because obviously what I’m doing is not building the biggest theme Parker in the world or building this huge media conglomerate, right? What we’re doing is building a public cybersecurity company and hopefully trying to keep people safe, a lot of people, and also bringing the truth to the world is a personal mission of mine. So as I started to read this book, it’s like I got Ed my lead on one side, I got Walt Disney on the other side. I have a mindset book and I have a biography right now that I’m reading. So like, dang, I fit into that 58% too. I’m one of those stats as I’m reading through this. And then, the other one is 63% listened to educational audio books during their commute to work. 

How cool is that? You know, I don’t have a long commute to work, but then I started thinking it’s like, wait, I’m on a plane a lot. I am freaking out a lot. And the other day, wifi really sucked. WiFi’s pretty spotty on planes. So it’s like, actually I was on a plane that had no wifi coming back from a small city. And what did I do? I popped in my AirPods and I started listening to the audio book and like that, that is my commute. My commute is on a plane. I’m like, dang, I’m part of that statistic too. 63% consume educational audio books in their commute to work. Remember I was talking about the 10 minutes or the 10 pages a day as part of 75? Hard because 88% of these multimillionaires read 30 minutes or more each day. 

That’s every single day. That’s how they get to this. Right Now, that’s an average. Remember what I was talking about, how I work out four to five times a week and that’s when I consume these things. I don’t do this every single day because that’s not my rhythm. However, I’m still at like four to five hours a week of reading or audio books or whatever, that kind of consumption, just consuming these entire books, 51% red history books. I think the Wisdom of Walt qualifies for that. And 55% read self-help books. That’s the mindset of books that I was talking about. If you wanna level up, the first thing you have to do, whatever it is, is freaking read. And I’m gonna challenge you to just get one book a month right now. That’s it. Just one book a month. You don’t have to do two like these multimillionaires, right? 

But you’re gonna be able to, to start this pattern right now. Maybe it’s not 30 minutes a day, but this is stuff that you have to set aside with intention. And the best thing that I’ve always found out for me is attaching this to something else. So maybe there’s a time at night that you have that you like to wind down. I know a lot of people have this, right? They like to wind down. It might be time to just jump off of social media for 30 minutes and replace that. Or you know what, if you’re, if you’re scrolling through reels or, or just catching up on people’s statuses, what, whatever it is, maybe have an audio book going at the same time because you’re still gonna listen to that and you’re gonna get drawn into that. You know? Or you could, if you eat breakfast consistently, every single morning Breakfast by me has always typically been by myself, right? 

It’s time for me to reflect. Usually during that time, again, I attach things right? But that’s when I catch up on industry news. That’s when I catch up on what’s going on in the, in the media and, and seeing what’s going on in the world. Because I have attached one thing that I find important to my success and my knowledge, my information, my passion, and I’ve attached it to something else that I’m already doing, that I know that I do. That’s the best way to build a habit, is to find something that you’re already doing, that you’re consistently doing that’s good, like eating and then attach something else to it. I’m sure so many people listening to this right now or watching this right now have picked up a book and started reading it while they’re eating a meal. 

It’s so simple to do that. And you think that it might be difficult, you know, to get the one book in a month, but not if you attach it. It’s so easily done when you attach it to something that you’re already doing. If you wanna be on your way to a multi-millionaire, this is just data. This is just the truth. These are just facts. And we’ll put the article in the show notes too, because this is just how people consistently move forward. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with reading per se. It has everything to do with continuously feeding yourself more knowledge, more creativity, more ideas. Because then, then you’ll start to think that things are possible. Whatever it is that you want, whatever it is that you started to dream of at one point in time, you should go back and listen to that episodes too. Those dreams only die when the dreamer stops dreaming. This is what’s gonna allow your dream to become reality and allow you to start taking action because you’re gonna see that things are absolutely possible cuz you would be surprised. I guarantee you, if you think that your situation is unique, whatever you’re going through right now, you will be surprised. I guarantee it because I know I was a decade ago to think that you are unique in what you’ve gone, gone through, what you’ve been through, what you’re going through right now. I’m sorry to bust your bubble. You’re not that special. 

You’re special as a human, but what you’re going through, there’s been humans on this planet for thousands of years and somebody’s been through it already. And the beauty of that is that you can pick up a freaking book and see how they dealt with it to spark some creativity and give you some insight and some hope to get through whatever it is you’re doing right now and to go after what it is that you really want and to go ALL IN.