202. BookThinkers - Reading Is Not Enough with Nick Hutchison

In today's episode we're harnessing the wisdom found in books with my guest Nick Hutchison, the visionary force behind BookThinkers, a thriving 7-figure marketing agency bridging authors and readers.

We take a deep dive into Nick's personal evolution, from not reading at all, to becoming an enthusiastic reader and how his passion for literature has profoundly shaped his entrepreneurial journey.

Nick has discovered that the lessons learned from travel perfectly complement the knowledge gained from pages, and together they forge a powerful catalyst for personal growth.

With a mission to inspire readers to take action, Nick authored "Rise of the Reader," delving into mastering reading habits and applying newfound knowledge to unlock potential.

Retention starts with intention ~Nick Hutchison

Head over to the full show notes and all the links

From Chaos to Peace Consulting Inc - https://connygraf.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Interview on Reading and Traveling
• 13:58 Book Thinkers' Evolution and Implementation
• 22:03 Take Action, Overcome Fear
• 30:16 Positive Environmental Cues and Personal Growth
• 36:24 Prioritizing Life and Overcoming Resistance
• 48:02 Life Lessons and Wisdom From Others

Transcript

Conny Graf: 0:58

Welcome to my podcast from Chaos to Peace with Conny. I am Conny Graf and your host, and I will explore with you how a few minutes a day can keep the chaos away. And with chaos we're talking about the physical, digital, social, financial, mental, emotional and spiritual clutter that can accumulate in our life and business. In every episode, I want to make you aware how clutter is so much more than you think, how it affects your finances and how clearing your clutter leads to more time, more money and more peace. Let's go Well. Hello, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. I am Conny Graf, your host. Thank you so much for allowing me back into your ears Today. I'm very excited to welcome Nick Hutchison, as a guest to the poddcast.

Conny Graf: 1:54

Nick is a visionary force behind book thinkers, a thriving seven-figure marketing agency bridging authors and readers. He has cultivated a platform reaching over 1 million people monthly and hosts the top 2% global podcast book thinkers life-changing books featuring interviews with renowned authors like Grant Cardone and Louis House, with a mission to inspire readers to take action. Nick authored Rise of the Reader, delving into mastering reading habits and applying newfound knowledge to unlock potential. Nick and I talk about when and why he started his movement of book thinkers, why reading is not enough and implementation is where it's at, and how we can start taking action on what we're reading, what he means by play bigger triggers and how we have to remove the play small triggers. First, of course, we talk about his book Rise of the Reader, when he decided to write the book and why, and then we also talk about his tattoos and the special meanings they have for him and what they remind him of every single day. Okay, without further ado, let's jump into this conversation with Nick Hutchison.

Conny Graf: 3:28

Welcome, Nick. Thank you so much for being guests on my podcast. How are you today?

Nick Hutchison : 3:33

I am doing very well. Can I ask you the first question today? Sure, what is the best book that you've read in the last couple of years?

Conny Graf: 3:43

Sure! In the last couple of years?

Nick Hutchison : 3:46

What comes to mind.

Conny Graf: 3:49

So I would say business book, I would say Traction, forgot the author right now.

Nick Hutchison : 3:57

Gino Wickman.

Conny Graf: 3:58

Oh yeah, exactly. Gino Wickman Traction loved that book. The geek in me loved that book. And then, on a more spiritual level, I loved the unpeddured soul. I finally read that one from Michael Singer, and then I read all his other books he has too. So I'm totally on the Michael Singer track right now.

Nick Hutchison : 4:26

Well, thank you for indulging my curiosity. Traction is a great business book. I've read that a number of times and my business has attempted to implement the EOS system. And then, funny enough, I have not read the Untethered Soul yet, or any of Michael Singer's books, but I own probably all of them because I do intend to read them.

Conny Graf: 4:48

Yeah, listen, I don't know why, but it took me also like I knew about the book before. I think Kindle constantly suggested it to me and I was kind of not paying attention, I don't know. And then one day last winter I think it's about a year ago I just downloaded the sample which is always awesome, right with Kindle and started reading and it pulled me right in and since then I'm like yeah, so that seems to what happens with Michael Singer books. It's really interesting also if you read the experiment something, if you read his book about the experiment, the surrender experiment exactly that's how it's called, the surrender experiment business book actually, because he had a multi-million dollar, huge corporation in the end. So if you read that book, it's very interesting for business insights.

Conny Graf: 5:52

Yeah, so never happened to me that the first question I was asked, but I love it, nick, no worries. But now let me ask you my first question. I usually ask my guests where in the world are you located? Because my audience is international. And then also, I want to know one thing about you that has nothing to do with what we're talking about later. It could be something surprising. It could be something that surprises people like in a twisty way. Whatever you want to share.

Nick Hutchison : 6:27

Well, to answer the first part of the question, I am in the Boston Massachusetts USA area. I live about 45 minutes south of the city. This is where I was born and raised. I have bounced around the United States and the world quite a bit. My wife and I have visited 25 different countries, sometimes for up to a few months at a time over the last five or six years. But Boston Massachusetts is my home and, something that's surprising, you know what? I'll say this if I didn't work in the book industry, I would work in the travel industry. I love international travel just as much as I love personal development, books and the whole industry around personal development. I think there's almost nothing better than traveling to a new country and getting to experience a new culture and new foods, new language, and I'm fascinated by the world that we live on.

Conny Graf: 7:21

Yeah, I agree, especially when you can go a bit longer than just a few days, right when you can dive in. So this is a perfect segue to a question that I actually wanted to ask later, but I'm asking it now. So you're like you go on, you read, you, you're an avid reader, but what did you learn traveling that you couldn't have learned reading, maybe?

Nick Hutchison : 7:46

My first solo travel trip was to Buenos Aires, argentina, back in 2019. And I went for five weeks by myself. Now, I didn't know anybody in South America, I didn't speak any Spanish. I just bought round trip plane tickets and I reserved an Airbnb online based on what I had read on some websites of where to stay, and immediately I was forced to embrace discomfort, and not only embrace discomfort, but do it by myself. I think if you're traveling with a partner whether it's you know, your life partner or some friends you can share in the discomfort Meaning. If there's an awkward situation, everybody can share in that experience and laugh it off. But when you're by yourself, it's immediately fight or flight response over and over and over and over and over, and I think that through exposure, you can become desensitized to things that once frightened you, and that definitely happened to me throughout that first experience. But that's what it teaches me. I think that travel just puts you in the environment to learn on your feet, rather than reading about a situation and then applying it later.

Conny Graf: 8:56

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it goes in hand with what you're saying, that reading is not enough, we have to implement. Right.

Conny Graf: 9:05

And it's kind of like the traveling is the implementation of the mind travel that you maybe can do when you read books. And I congratulate you, because most people wouldn't travel alone A, b, they were for sure wouldn't travel anywhere where they don't speak English. It's like my first language isn't English and so a lot of people I hear here in the English speaking world they always say, oh, I couldn't go to Europe, they don't speak English. Yeah, they do, because we all have to, because you guys don't speak any other language, so we all are forced to learn English.

Nick Hutchison : 9:41

So, yeah, that's that's true, and you know, one of my, one of the greatest life lessons that I've learned, which stands in opposition to what I think you learn in the US public education system, is that failure is a good thing. Failure is where all of the growth happens. Failure is where you fail and then you reflect and you iterate, and you change and you try again. That's progress. And so what happens when you're traveling internationally and you're consistently failing multiple times per day but you can't leave right, you're there for five weeks, so you're forced to reflect on the situation, like an issue with a taxi or a failure to get directions, or you don't understand how to give somebody change at the grocery store, you still have to go back and do that again, and so you get to try again and try again, and then you eventually succeed and it's all condensed into this small period of time, right, instead of just reading and thinking about implementing something. So, yeah, I love it. You just fail so often, I think, when you travel.

Conny Graf: 10:41

Yeah, and I bet this has helped you a lot, just in general in life too. Coming back, just this not being afraid of looking like a fool possibly that I think that's what a lot of people are are fearing, right, although I think it's sometimes easier when you're abroad to look like a fool than look like looking like a fool at home.

Nick Hutchison : 11:00

Yeah, yeah, I think so too.

Conny Graf: 11:03

Yeah, so I know about you. You have now this amazing business around books and you wrote your own books and everything. But I know about you that you were not a reader, but eventually you started reading. Did you want to share with my audience how you started reading, because I think that's a good context for what we're talking later?

Nick Hutchison : 11:23

Absolutely so. As you mentioned, when I was growing up I was not much of a reader, I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic. So all of the joy and the success that I had was not in the classroom, it was on the sports field, and that sort of behavior of choosing not to read and choosing not to pay attention to my academics it stayed with me through most of my college experience. But everything changed for me when I took an internship going into my senior year of college at a local software company and my boss at the time, kyle. He recognized some unfulfilled potential, I think he he saw that I was like a young 20 year old know it all. I was kind of cocky, a little bit arrogant, but I had a lot of room for improvement, and so he recommended that I start listening to podcasts and that's where my love for personal development started.

Nick Hutchison : 12:14

I was commuting one hour each way, five days a week, to this internship, so 10 hours in the car that summer and so I started to listen to business podcasts and personal development podcast shows like this to you know all about all different subjects where a host would interview a series of guests and then those guests would talk about what they did to become successful in their own right, and so many of those people gave at least some credit for their success to the books that they were reading.

Nick Hutchison : 12:42

And so I heard the same names over and over and over and over and over again. So many people give credit to the same books for starting in their journey, and I just I can articulate a better today than I could back then. But I just had this moment where I realized if I was choosing not to read, then I was also choosing to live under my potential, and I was far too insecure but also far too ambitious to accept that. And so I started reading. I went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore and grabbed about 10 books, and the rest is history. I've been reading an average of 50 or 60 books a year ever since.

Conny Graf: 13:19

Yeah, wow, yeah, I'm not quite up there. Well, yeah, I probably am I don't always like it depends. I keep track of the business and non fictional books, but I read in between some fiction and I don't keep track of those, so might be up there. What? What got you to start sharing this on social media? Because I know you then started sharing on social media what you're reading, like not everybody that starts reading starts sharing on social media, so what got you this idea in your head?

Nick Hutchison : 13:54

Well, at the, at the risk of telling a long story, I'll try to abbreviate it. There were a few things that happened. At number one, my friend Alec and I. We were both entrepreneurial. We both ran our own house painting businesses when we were in college, and so we both wanted to start businesses. When I graduated, we didn't really know what.

Nick Hutchison : 14:15

So one of the books that we read was thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hill, and Napoleon Hill in that book introduces the reader to the concept of a mastermind, the idea that when multiple people are in the same room focused on the same problem, almost like this, third mind gets created. So one plus one is really equal to three, because there's this almost like magical force of momentum and intention working with you. So we wanted to try it out. We started meeting on weekends, right. So now I'm a senior in college, I've just started reading, and we're meeting on weekends and we're talking about business. Like, what businesses could we start when we graduate?

Nick Hutchison : 14:54

And we knew that businesses are started to solve problems, and so we would journal about every single problem we could find in our day to day lives, any little inconvenience that maybe somebody would pay for a solution to, and one of the problems that I presented one weekend was that everyone was asking me the same questions about the books I was reading, and it was sort of a minor inconvenience to respond and tell everybody the same things every time they asked about these books, like, what were your favorite takeaways from rich dad, poor dad, or should I read the total money makeover?

Nick Hutchison : 15:29

Or why does everybody love the seven habits of highly effective people? Because I was really advertising to my friends and family that these books, they're the missing link between where all of us are today and where we could go. And so the first iteration of book thinkers was actually going to be a mobile application that could help people organize their biggest takeaways from the books they were reading, reiterate them within the platform and then share them with everybody else. Now, that did not come to fruition, but in anticipation of building the mobile application, we wanted to have an audience to sell it to, and so I thought well, let me start to understand the industry a little bit better, let me start to share the books I'm reading on social media as a way to build an audience to sell this app into. The other thing was that not many of my friends or family like, although I was talking about these books, they weren't really reading them. So I wanted to connect with like minded people.

Nick Hutchison : 16:27

I wanted to get out there on the world of social media, of Instagram, and see who else is reading these books and what other subjects am I maybe ignoring or not paying attention to. And I'll wrap up this story by saying that when I first started posting about the books I was reading on Instagram, there was no such thing as Bookstagram or Book Talk as it exists today. People weren't posting about books. I couldn't find a single account on the planet that had more than a few thousand followers that was into these subjects, and so I never could have imagined what it's grown into today. But you know, those were some of the reasons that we started.

Conny Graf: 17:04

Yeah Well, since you're hinting, share with us what it like evolved into. So how many followers you have now. I think it's a seven figure business now, if not multi seven figure I don't remember, sorry.

Nick Hutchison : 17:18

Yeah, so on social media we do a million impressions a month. We have about 200,000 followers, 150,000 on Instagram and another 50,000 on the other platforms. As I started sharing the books I was reading, the mobile app didn't come out, but authors did start to reach out to me and they'd say, hey, nick, I love your book reviews. Can I pay you to review my books? Well, of course you can. Awesome, right, I'm reading for free and so I would follow those clues. Right, if there was an inbound demand for something. There are probably other people out there who could also use a paid book review that aren't reaching out and then I would get involved in these authors' businesses and I'd say, hey, what else can I help with? And so try it.

Nick Hutchison : 18:00

All sorts of different services at the intersection between social media and podcasting and books, and most of them failed. A few things worked really well. So kind of fast forward back to today, our agency. I've got 10 people on my team. We support hundreds of authors a year. We do short form video content for them, where we fly out and turn the book into video. We do podcast booking, where we place authors on shows to talk about their books, and then we still do book reviews and a whole bunch of other stuff behind the scenes. But yeah, you're right. You know, over the last couple of years we've done seven figures in business and it's it's growing to be something that I never anticipated.

Conny Graf: 18:42

Yeah, but I love that. I especially love that if, because you didn't start it with that in mind. So I kind of love how it morphed into this huge big thing which which helps the readers and helps the authors and gets you paid for doing what you love. Right? I read somewhere that you love what you're doing, or you're very happy doing what you're doing. Yeah, so best outcome you could even imagine right To do what you love to do. But you want to go back to when you said reading is not enough, you need to implement. So get us, give us some ideas on how this has evolved. How did you start implementing what you were reading and what are you doing today when you want to implement?

Nick Hutchison : 19:30

I remember reading Rich Dad, poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki for the first time. That was the first book I picked up out of the 10. It was the first book that I decided to read and I had no idea what to do with the book. I just started reading it and then some things are so interesting that I started circling them and I wasn't really much of a social media guy back then, but I'm sure I posted a few pictures like can you guys believe that this is out there? And as I continued to read and as I continued to think about this mobile application and change things, I started to build systems.

Nick Hutchison : 20:04

I started to read about how other people built systems. Authors like Tim Ferriss, who wrote the four hour work week and a number of other books, would talk about how he would take notes on the inside cover of each book and then write the page number so he could have an index of his biggest takeaways right inside of the book. And one time I saw a video where somebody said he removed his television and replaced it with a bookshelf and for every book he finished then he would go back to three or four other books and reread his notes. And so I started to play around with all sorts of systems over time, and before book thinkers became my full-time thing, I went full-time with that software company that I was interning at, and I remember I was on a business trip one time with my boss, kyle, who recommended the podcasts.

Nick Hutchison : 20:49

We were in Chicago and I remember we had just flown in and we went to the hotel bar for a drink and we're just kind of catching up and I was telling him about all the books I was reading and the notes I was taking and the things that I was choosing to implement. And I remember he told me he's like, nick, most people your age they don't read books. If they do read books, they probably don't take notes, and if they do take notes, they probably don't actually take action on what they're reading. And so he said you've got something special here, like you should really double down on it. And so I started again to focus more and more on systems, kind of thinking about traction by Gino Wickman. It's important to have a set of systems. We don't rise to our potential, but we fall to our systems, and that's what I was focused on yeah, yeah, james cleared.

Nick Hutchison : 21:37

And yeah, james is so great too right, every action you take today as a vote for the person you're becoming tomorrow, and all sorts of good concepts like that. Yeah, and so anyway, today what I optimized for is action. I think reading 52 books for the sake of reading to 52 books, that's a vanity metric. We're not reading for the sake of reading, we're reading to implement and change our behavior. Napoleon Hill says that action is the real measure of intelligence, and I think it's true. I think when you take action, you create progress, and when you create progress, you improve your life and you get closer to that thing that you're searching for Totally.

Conny Graf: 22:18

But so many people don't take action because go back to what you were saying we are afraid of failing, right, and I don't know whether you ever get rid of being afraid of failing, but I think you become a tolerance, like you said to. You become kind of a tolerance of failing and you don't mind looking like a fool anymore. That much yeah.

Nick Hutchison : 22:43

Yeah, and I think eventually you realize that failure is part of the process. And when you accept that it's part of the process, it doesn't surprise you anymore. And when it doesn't surprise you, then you can operate from a place of logic and not emotion. So if you're planning not to fail and you fail, you'll react negatively and emotionally. But if you're planning to fail and you just know that it's part of the process, then when it happens it doesn't surprise you too much.

Conny Graf: 23:13

Yeah, yeah, and just factor it in, like you just said, and also like there is that quote you probably remember it better Something along the line the success you only reach success through the failures, or something along that line, and I forgot who said it. Oh my God, put your day probably too.

Nick Hutchison : 23:32

So now I've got a great quotes like that, but I agree with it entirely.

Conny Graf: 23:36

I know, and I'm trying to keep them all in my head, and it doesn't work. So now, of course, you started reading. Then you started connecting authors with readers. Then you started helping out authors. Now you're an author yourself. So take us through that process. When was the idea born that you needed to write a book? Now too.

Nick Hutchison : 24:00

Well, over the last few years I've answered hundreds and hundreds of very similar questions from my community hey, nick, how do I choose the right book? Or why should I be reading in the first place? How do I take great notes? How do I take better action? Why do I forget everything I read? And I would answer every single one of those questions because I want to be of service to my community. It brings me a lot of fulfillment, like genuine impact comes from helping other people answer questions.

Nick Hutchison : 24:28

But I also realized that I was underserving those same people in a lot of ways. I mean the format with which I was responding, like an Instagram DM or a quick email. I mean that didn't give the full picture and then also it's a flash in the pan. I mean people read the DM, maybe they choose to take action, maybe they don't, but it's not a physical object in their space. So a few years ago actually three years ago I was presented with an opportunity to write a book by a partner of ours called Book Launchers Book Thinkers, book Launchers, similar names and they help authors write books help people write books, I should say, because they're not authors yet and they said hey, if you ever want to write a book. We'll help you out with the process and we'll put an ad in the back of the book, but we'll comp some of our services If you ever want to write a book. And I thought you know what. I think I should write a book because that will help me step into the shoes of my clients and understand the process a little bit better. And I've read so many books on so many different subjects that I've now realized I don't think everybody should write a book unless they have something unique to say. There are 10,000 leadership books, 10,000 books on general business culture. There are definitely very unique things about each one, but it's hard to stand out from the crowd if you're writing about something that's already been written about. So I thought to myself well, I'm not going to write a book unless I have something really unique to say.

Nick Hutchison : 25:55

And I kept answering those questions and kept answering those questions and I realized there was no resource out there for people who are getting into the world of business and personal development that answers some of these common questions. So I reached back out to them and I said I have a book in mind and what's funny is at first I wanted to write it in the form of a parable, a fable, an allegory, a fictional story where a young guy named Nick gets introduced to this world of personal development and a series of mentors come along the way and recommend books. But I was told, allegories don't sell. You've got to write this as a traditional nonfiction book. So, anyway, to make a long story a little bit less long, I started writing about three years ago and I went through periods of time where I had massive execution and I would write chapters in a week and then I would go for months without writing anything.

Nick Hutchison : 26:50

So people would continue to ask me these questions and I would continue to think man, I wish I just had this book available. Mj DeMarco, who wrote the Millionaire Fast Lane he would always drive around in his Lamborghini and when people would ask him, hey, what do you do for work, how'd you get a Lamborghini? He would just hand them a copy of the Millionaire Fast Lane and say here's how I did it. And I always envisioned myself having that moment of, hey, how'd you interview this celebrity or how'd you grow your business, and just be like, here's how I did it. And so, finally, here we are, three years later and it's finally available for people.

Conny Graf: 27:25

Yeah, this is really awesome, and a lot of people say that a book is like a business card on steroids.

Nick Hutchison : 27:34

Yeah, it's a business card that you don't throw away.

Conny Graf: 27:37

Yeah, exactly that too. And so, since you're in this book launching and author and reader world, you probably have heard Alex Hormozzi saying how many times he wrote his book. I think he said something about 20 times over he wrote his book. Was it the same for you that you kind of like rewrote it and rewrote it, or was it more like I heard other authors talk about how it was more like a download, that it just came down almost finished already?

Nick Hutchison : 28:08

So I was somewhere in the middle. We just interviewed well, I would say, just interviewed. We had Alex Hormozzi on our podcast a few months ago and he's a brilliant mind. I didn't by the end of the project.

Nick Hutchison : 28:23

I was so burned out with the book that I didn't want to rewrite it and rewrite it. I mean, I had the aspiration of simplifying the language to a third or fifth grade reading level, like Alex did. But I knew that what I had today was 90% of the way there and that 90% being available today was better than the 0% that was available today. And so what's great about self publishing, which I decided to do, is that my book can consistently be updated over time. So I chose the minimally viable product approach where, if you're not kind of like cringing a little bit when people consume it, you waited too long. I have a lot of respect for Alex, but I decided to just get it out there. On the other end of the spectrum, today we interviewed Steven Pressfield for the third time and he talks a lot about that concept of downloading.

Nick Hutchison : 29:18

So, he'll receive information from what he calls the muse and he'll download something stream of consciousness right out of the paper and it's finished, and I think that's cool too.

Conny Graf: 29:29

I think that is extra cool. But yeah, all always, not always, but all ways are awesome. Right it just I was interested to hear how it was. For you, I want to ask something about you talk about PBT, play bigger triggers, and then about PSTs, which are the place small triggers. So tell us how this came about. And you also say that we have to get rid of some PSTs to get to the PBTs.

Nick Hutchison : 30:01

I love it. Yeah, and you know what's funny is this concept when I was writing the book was a small piece of the book, but I'm thinking my next book might be called play bigger triggers, because this seems to really resonate with people. So the concept started with Evan Carmichael, who is an author, friend, mentor of mine, and the only time I guess I've heard Evan reference this is that he keeps a bag of Doritos behind his desk because he always has a craving for Doritos, but he keeps it unopened as a reminder that he can overcome his vices. It encourages him to play bigger. Now, that was the original concept. Okay, but I started to think about it in a different way. I started to think about neuro linguistic programming, the idea that we run thousands of thoughts a day automatically through our brain and most of them are negative because the news is negative and social media is negative.

Nick Hutchison : 30:57

And when we're growing up, we're told no eight times. For every time we're told yes, and so a lot of this programming is just inherently negative. But if your environment is positive, if it consistently reinforces positive belief systems and you're consuming it all the time, your neural pathways will start to default to more positive outcomes and thinking. So that's how I took Evan's Dorito bag and then I sort of morphed it into my own idea, and so today I focus a lot on positive environmental cues. Everything from the ornaments on my desk to the artwork on my walls, to the books and trinkets behind me, to my tattoos, to the t shirts that I wear to the have everything is focused on positive neuro linguistic programming. Play bigger triggers. They trigger me to play a bigger game.

Nick Hutchison : 31:48

And you know, I heard somebody say and the idea for playing smaller triggers came because I saw a video once where somebody said removing negative self talk is much more powerful than implementing positive affirmations like one removing the negative is a much bigger gain in terms of life satisfaction and fulfillment than just adding positive ones on top of the negative. So I thought, well, you know what a lot of people probably have negative triggers all around them a clutter desk work environment, a negative friend who's consistently sending them bad content. You know social media feeds that are full of people that make you feel inferior and insecure. And by removing those that's, I think, a bigger, a bigger positive gain in terms of overall life satisfaction. But then adding the play bigger triggers on top of it, it's kind of like a two for one. It's better, it's compounding.

Conny Graf: 32:45

Yeah, I love that explanation Because I saw you wrote that one of the PSTs could be to have a clutter desk and, as you know, I help people with clutter with mental clutter, emotional clutter, physical clutter, digital clutter and I think what you just described is to me is, if you start removing these, this clutter let's just call it clutter you create the foundation for the, the, the, the, the PBT's, for the playing bigger triggers and you make a really solid foundation. And actually what all you talked about it reminded me to. I just read and it's an older book, I believe, from Dr Benjamin Hardy, willpower doesn't work, and he talks in that book a lot about how the environment shapes us and how when we're and with environment it doesn't just mean the physical environment, also what people you surround yourself with, what neighborhood you're living in, what city you're living in, what country you're living in, right, so it's very interesting. So lots of my, my brain cells are firing.

Nick Hutchison : 33:54

Yeah, well, I'll tell you what I purchased the domain, the website domain of play bigger triggerscom, because I envision, one of the things that I'll do in the next couple of years will will be to build out a clothing line or a series of desk trinkets that you can purchase that reinforce positivity and positive behavior. Because for a while, like I went on Amazon one time and I bought five shirts that said think big and I would just cycle through them all week, monday through Friday, while I was working, so that every time I went into the bathroom or saw myself in the mirror on a zoom call, I was reminded to think big and it just, thousands and thousands of inputs over the course of weeks puts you in a better headspace. Yeah and so, yeah, who knows, who knows what it will evolve into?

Conny Graf: 34:40

Yeah, we will all see where you're going with this is going to be interesting. So you mentioned already your tattoos. Did you want to speak about them a bit, because I know they have a special meaning for you, especially the one memento Maori is very important, so let's speak about that one.

Nick Hutchison : 34:57

Yes, I have. I probably have close to 40 tattoos now. Most of them, the vast majority of them, are positive, forward thinking concepts that I want to consistently remind myself of, and so I see them all the time. Memento Maori is Latin and it translates to remember you're going to die, essentially, and the idea here originally came from the book that top five regrets of the dying by Bronnie Ware.

Nick Hutchison : 35:25

So Bronnie is an end of life palliative care nurse. She helps people in their last weeks, maybe days before they die, spends a lot of time talking to them, and she realized that most of these people had regrets, major life regrets, and unfortunately they were too old or incapacitated and they couldn't take advantage of life anymore. So they just had to live with that regret. And the number one regret was that people live lives based on other people's expectations of them instead of their own, and I just feel like the average person today in this instant gratification society. They think they're going to live forever. They're always going to do it tomorrow. They think of them themselves tomorrow as Superman or superwoman, like ready to do it, but tomorrow, and I think tomorrow is the enemy.

Nick Hutchison : 36:12

I think today is where all the magic happens, and so this tattoo reminds me, although I'm only 29 years old. If you include the books behind me, I'm thousands of years old, but I'm only 29 years old. But I think about death every day, and the average person doesn't. But what it does is it helps me prioritize my time. It makes it so that I use my time wisely. I get the most out of life, because I don't want to end up regretting not having done more with the one chance that we're given and life is precious. Like this is my vitality.

Nick Hutchison : 36:44

This is my life, and I don't want to waste it, so that's why I got this one tattoo.

Conny Graf: 36:48

Yeah, I love it and you know most, like you just said, most people, especially young as you, they don't think about that. I unfortunately had to deal with death at the early, early age, like my dad died when he was 46, I was 20. So since I was, I'm older than 46 now. So I always say I live on bonus time and you want to make sure you're not wasting your years, and it's sometimes hard when, when you're not confronted with death, to actually grasp the concept.

Conny Graf: 37:22

The other thing is, too is like, like you just said to the, our whole society, the school system, everything is set up that we fit in this box and in this mold and the minute you talk about death, most people turn pale and stop breathing or something. So I love, I love how you're already there at 29 and don't have to become 70 or 80 and start regretting. Yeah, that's really beautiful and that's also something that we can learn from books. Right, it doesn't always have to be business, it can be like that. That's such an important book that she wrote about the regrets of the dying.

Nick Hutchison : 38:01

Yeah, I remember we interviewed Robert Green a while ago. Robert Green has written a number of great books and we were talking about the subject of mortality on the podcast and he made a good point. He said in today's society, we've pushed death to elderly care facilities, to hospitals. We try to sanitize reality. We're not around animals dying, we're not around people dying, and when we are, every once in a while it's very scary, it's shocking, it's kind of like failure, it's disruptive, it's emotional trigger. But if you go back a few hundred years ago, your family members died in the home, your pets and animals. You killed them in order to eat, and so death wasn't surprising. And yeah, it's weird how we've sanitized it today.

Nick Hutchison : 38:51

And I think, if we bring it back to our conscious self, then we take better action and we actually live better lives. It's kind of like discipline equals freedom. It's like thinking about death actually creates more life.

Conny Graf: 39:05

Yeah, I could get on a soapbox on that, because also like you just said, people had to kill their own animals if they wanted to eat, and these days, just one example is, most people don't even know how horrendous it is for the animals in the meat production, which is such an awful word because these are all animals. So that and the other thing is too is like yeah, you said we're just pushing people that are dying away, out of out of sight. We don't want to know that. It's also the whole thing is about staying young, being young, looking young. People go at length to get surgery to look like half their age. What for this is? Yeah, this is crazy. So that's why I'm saying I really think it's amazing that at 29 years old, yeah, so so I have another question. You say I think I read that in your book, but now I'm not sure anymore whether I was in your book or not.

Conny Graf: 40:06

But the strangest part about the resistance we face is that it comes from within. We create our own resistance. They're not forced upon us and they don't exist. When we're gone, again, death. When we're gone, they don't exist. So what have you found? Because a lot of people fight with resistance, they kind of know what they should do. They also kind of know they would want to do something else, but they're staying stuck because of resistance and I know Steven Pressfield talks about the resistance too in his books. So what have you found for yourself to overcome, because I'm sure you still feel resistance sometimes and it's a human condition, right? So what have you found to overcome this resistance and the fear of change? What works for you, or what would you suggest people should do to overcome it?

Nick Hutchison : 40:54

Yeah, kind of like the failure discussion that we were having earlier. Once you realize that resistance, it's never going to go away, it's just part of the process, and you expect it to be there every single morning when you wake up, the resistance is there. You want to go back to bed. I mean Marcus Aurelius was writing about struggling to wake up and get out of bed in the morning 2000 years ago and his personal journal meditations, and so it's a problem that will never go away. It is going to have it.

Nick Hutchison : 41:22

But you have to realize that it is part of the process. And once it is part of the process and it doesn't surprise you and you're aware of it and you name it, like Steven always says, resistance with a capital R, like it's a noun, it's a proper noun, it exists, it's a tangible force, just like gravity. I think the awareness of resistance, naming it, calling it out in the morning, saying I can't believe resistance, you're trying to keep me in bed today, like that, gives you the power to overcome it. Now it will be there the next morning. And your resistance to writing, to working on your dreams, to taking risks, I mean resistance can represent itself in all different types of ways. You know I was kind of joking with Steven today. Actually I was saying, you know, resistance seems to get a little bit weaker towards the beginning of the year. Everybody sets these New Year's resolutions.

Nick Hutchison : 42:14

Everybody starts taking big action, the gym fills up, but then resistance reminds everybody that it's still there, and it's pretty powerful by the end of January, when everybody forgets their New Year's resolutions and stops working. So how have I overcome it? I think the best solution so far for me has been momentum and external accountability. So two quick words on each. For momentum when you're feeling good and you have positive energy and things are in motion, you're constantly taking action Is your default, you have a bias for it. Then it's easier to overcome resistance, because resistance likes it. When you just sit there and think the second part, let's see. I said momentum. What the heck was the second part, accountability.

Conny Graf: 43:03

you said External accountability.

Nick Hutchison : 43:05

Yeah, if you wake up in the morning and nobody's waiting for you at the gym, it's easy to go back to bed. But if somebody else is waiting for you at the gym and you have 15 minutes to get there, you're out of bed in two seconds, and so I think, having other people in your corner to hold you accountable to living your best life, taking the path of most resistance, I think that's very useful as well. We have this weird thing you've probably seen there are studies where people are more likely to give their pets medication than they are to take their own medication, and so that's accountability. So I'm a bit of a geek.

Conny Graf: 43:42

so that is actually one topic that I'm reading and researching a lot is why the hell do not swear too much. Can we not keep ourselves accountable? We're running for other people. Oftentimes we're even running for strangers we don't even know, but when it's about us, we're not doing it. And I mean, like this baffles the heck out of me.

Nick Hutchison : 44:08

So yes, yeah, me too, and I don't know why it is, but you may as well use it to your advantage by having people push you, you know.

Conny Graf: 44:15

Yeah, exactly. So usually around this point I'm asking my guests what is one thing people can do right now, one small thing to implement what they just heard in our conversation. But I mean, we talked a lot about that already. So I want to twist this question around a bit and say, okay, what, since you're started with reading, what book would you suggest people need to read right now other than yours? Yours, that's a given. What other book you think like that gets them out of their resistance, out of their complacency, out of out of into moving?

Nick Hutchison : 44:59

I recommend the compound effect by Darren Hardy.

Conny Graf: 45:02

Okay.

Nick Hutchison : 45:03

The underlying message there is that small steps in the right direction, repeated for a very long period of time, will lead to positive outcomes. It's the idea that how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? How do you change your life? One percent improvements. But you mentioned James Clear and atomic habits. The compound effects came 10 years earlier. Very similar set of subjects, a little bit less focused on habit creation, a little bit more focused on the math behind compounding efforts. But I love that book because it teaches people you don't have to take these big, giant, scary leaps to create change. If you take a little 1% improvement in your health or your personal finances, your business, your relationships, your headspace, whatever it is, and you consistently look for that 1% improvement day in and day out, you are a wildly different person a year, five years from now and it's not scary to take a 1% step. So that's the book that I recommend for people the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.

Conny Graf: 46:09

Yeah, I love it. That's why I always say like a few minutes a day keeps the chaos away. It gets so much pushback on that, but it's even scientifically proven. So love your book recommendation. But now let's talk. Where can people find you? If they're now intrigued by book thinkers by wanting to read your book, where would you send them and brag a bit about your business and your book?

Nick Hutchison : 46:34

Well, if anybody has listened to the conversation today and they're thinking, okay, Compound Effect, Rise of the Reader, I get it not really for me, but I still want to read. Dm me, direct message me on Instagram at bookthinkers, and tell me about a problem that you're facing or a skill that you want to develop and I will provide a custom book recommendation to you based on your own intention, not mine for you and it's one of my favorite things to do is play this book matchmaker role and provide custom book recommendations and act as your accountability partner. I will make a little note to follow up in 30 days or 60 days to see if you've read the book and what you thought about it, and that is available to everybody that's listening or watching today. And as far as everything else, there are links in the bio that we have on Instagram?

Conny Graf: 47:24

Yeah, and in the show notes definitely.

Nick Hutchison : 47:25

And in the show notes to our website. If you're an author and you want to get more exposure for your book, hit me up. If you are a reader, there are a bunch of other resources available, including the book and stuff like that. So, yeah, that's where people can go.

Conny Graf: 47:40

Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome offer too that they can DM you. So would you say, instagram is your favorite place where they can meet you? Okay, awesome.

Nick Hutchison : 47:48

Yeah, yeah, that's our biggest community. Like I mentioned, we have about 150,000 followers on there, so you'll get some cool content and you can engage with some like-minded people. In the comment section, there's always thoughtful conversations going on.

Conny Graf: 48:00

I will go check it out for sure. Okay, so before we wrap up, do you have any last words of wisdom? Or did I maybe not ask you something that you expected me to ask or that you wished I would have asked you?

Nick Hutchison : 48:15

No, I will say some final words of wisdom. Just that life doesn't have to be so hard. Other people have figured it out and they've documented their greatest life lessons. They've condensed decades of lived experience in today's, and it's available for $20 in a few hours of your time. So don't try to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to learn from your own failures. You can learn from the failures of other people from the comfort of your own home, and you can use what they've taught, what they teach you, to solve problems and live a good life. So that's my kind of final message to everybody.

Conny Graf: 48:50

Thank you so much, nick, and thank you for taking the time being a guest on my podcast and sharing your wisdom and your knowledge.

Nick Hutchison : 48:57

Yeah, thank you so much, Conny. I appreciate the insightful conversations.