This summer, I set a goal of creating 100 podcasts about books I was reading. It forced me to start tracking my reading in a spreadsheet. It’s nerdy, but it was necessary because every week, I read a book, wrote a blog post series, and created a podcast series about each book. The spreadsheet helped me keep everything organized. I paused the latter two after the summer because they were too inefficient and time-consuming, but I kept updating the spreadsheet and reading a book a week.

I looked at the spreadsheet as I was reflecting on the books I read in 2024. I figured I’d share some stats and learnings.

High-level stat for 2024:

• Books read: 52

2024 breakdown by month:

• January: 0 (I did read, but I can’t remember what books)
• February: 2
• March: 6
• April: 6
• May: 7
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 3
• November: 5
• December: 5

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading two books a week was too aggressive. I tried it in the March–May period, but I wasn’t absorbing as much of what I was reading or making as many connections. I was focused on finishing the books, which isn’t why I read. The pace was too fast, so I reduced it to a book a week, which feels more sustainable.
• Sharing what I learned from my reading was the big unlock. It took my learning and thinking to another level. Writing a blog post series and recording a podcast series forced me to identify insights and organize and communicate my thinking. The key tool in that process was creating a digest of each book, which was an extraction of the information I found important in each chapter, along with my insights.
• E-readers, such as Kindles, are great devices, but I prefer reading physical books. I highlight and add notes about insightful sections and ideas in the books. Those highlights and notes are trapped in each book, so finding and using them later is difficult. See here for more. As I’ve read more, this has become a painful problem. Trying to find something sometimes means reviewing several books’ notes and highlights. Experiencing this pain led me to several feature ideas for the “book library.”
• Reading a book is simple—but learning from what I read is more involved. It’s inefficient and involves lots of steps. The process of sharing what I learn from my reading is complex. It’s hard and has many steps and lots of moving pieces. This realization led me to add several more feature ideas to the “book library.”
• The value in reading lots of entrepreneurial biographies is that you’re exposed to the best ideas and experiences of entrepreneurs, and you can pull from them when you’re faced with a problem. The challenge is that this requires a great memory or knowing exactly where to look to quickly find something you’ve read. I don’t have a photographic memory, and I don’t always remember where I read something. I want to make it easy to find what I’ve read, which will be a big part of the “book library” MVP.
• My best ideas in 2024 came from piecing ideas together from various books. Making those connections was a great way to build upon what other entrepreneurs figured out. Solving a problem by building upon the knowledge of others rather than starting from scratch led to my having better ideas. I’m not an idea guy, so this was perfect for me, and I want to do more of it going forward. I don’t think this has to be completely manual and inefficient. Figuring out how to solve this and incorporate it into the “book library” is challenging, but I think it can be done, and I’m excited to figure this out because it’ll be a huge unlock for myself and others.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2024!

2/26/25 Update: I finally published a list of all 52 books. You can see the list here.

2/27/25 Update: I created a searchable list of all the books I’ve read, and I’ll be updating it weekly. See here.

I’ve been thinking about my 2025 uncomfortable summer challenge (see here). I’ll definitely do something related to writing. I want to stick with my theme of reading mostly biographies and sharing what I’ve learned from them with others. A few other things I’m considering:

• Copywriting – I want what I write about books to have a fun voice and structure that capture and retain the reader’s attention. I could commit to learning more about copywriting and experimenting with my writing this summer.
• Newsletters – I’m curious to experiment with sharing content in an email newsletter format. This would force me to learn how to capture and retain subscribers.
• Social media – I want to share more of what I’m learning on X (formerly Twitter).
• Digests – Last year I created a summary—a digest—of each biography used for a blog post series. The process was haphazard. I want to refine how I create digests and what’s included in them. It’d be great to have consistently formatted digests for all books.[LS1]
• Connections – Biographies detail connections among people, books, companies, etc. But it’s hard to understand that those connections exist without reading the book. It’d be cool if I could visually show the connections—maybe include a relationship map as part of each blog post series.

I’m still thinking through this challenge and what I want to do exactly, but these are my thoughts from a recent brainstorming session.

I’m excited to nail down exactly what I’ll do, and I’ll share it with you once it’s solidified.

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Last week I shared that I was behind on one of my goals (see here). I’ve been consistent in hitting my reading goal: a book a week. But I haven’t been as consistent this month in updating the books section of this site so others can see the books I’ve read.

I aimed to fix this by adding all the books I read in April to this site by this past Sunday. I’m happy to share that I’ve checked that box. Now my plan is get back on schedule and add new books as I complete them every Sunday.

If you want to see the books I added, take a look here.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 59
• Total blog posts published: 378

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Continuous Discovery Habits, a framework for understanding and building what customers will pay for

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create an opportunity solution tree for this project

Asks:

• If you can get me an invitation code to Manus, please let me know!
• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred sixty-four was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No struggles this week

What I learned:

• Copywriting Course is a great service for getting feedback on your messaging for a product if you already have product–market fit.
• Google’s search algorithm changed about a year ago. Google began prioritizing blog content over other content types, such as lists.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week.

Last year, I wrote a few popular blog posts on biographies I’d read. Traffic to the blog increased, so people apparently found them useful. Since then, I’ve been trying to be more intentional with the blog. One area several people pointed to as a weakness was email capture. They said I was getting more people visiting the site, but they weren’t likely to read my new posts or come back to the site—unless I gave them a reason or reminded them. Capturing their email would give me a way to keep a reader I’d acquired engaged with (or at least aware) of my new material.

Email capture wasn’t something I ever thought about when I created this blog. People could enter their email address and be notified of new posts, but email capture wasn’t a priority. I never looked at the stats around how many emails I was capturing.

After hearing the same thing many times, I added a new feature a few months ago. A pop-up asking people to subscribe was added to the bottom of the site. Subscribers are notified of new posts.

The messaging in the pop-up was never really optimized. It was a placeholder to test whether the feature worked correctly. I’ve been learning about copywriting and am eager to put that knowledge to use. Today, I decided to adjust the pop-up message. I made some mistakes and broke some stuff, but it’s updated now.

This will be a process of iteration and experimentation, which is best done with data. So, I began tracking more subscription-related data. I can now experiment and see how effective changes are. I think these small experiments will be fun, and I’ll learn a lot.

If you have thoughts on this pop-up feature or the messaging, I’d love to hear them (criticism welcomed too). Write me at hello(at)jermainebrown.org.

The last month or so has been busy. Hitting my goal of reading a book every week has been harder, but I’m doing it. But I’ve slacked off in a related area. Earlier this year, I added this section, which shows the books I’ve read, to this site. My intention is to update that section weekly when I finish a book. I’m missing the mark in April—I haven’t added the books I’ve read this month.

I plan to fix that this weekend by adding my latest books. I aim to have the books added to my site by 12 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Last year, I set a goal to create 100 podcast episodes about the biographies I was reading. That challenge was uncomfortable, but it led to unexpected learnings. And it led to a new habit of reading a book every week (I’ve been doing this for over a year), my software idea, and other things.

I want to set another goal for this summer. It needs to be uncomfortable but directionally congruent with my current interests. I want something that will force me to grow by pushing me to the limit. Something I can focus on intensely with an end in sight.

I’m not sure what it’ll be, but my gut is telling me I should do something related to writing. I’ve been reading a lot about newsletters, copywriting, persuasion, etc. This challenge could be a good way to put everything I’ve learned to work.

I’ll think about it more, but another summer challenge is likely to be in my future.

This week, I had a long conversation with an entrepreneur who owns retail stores. The conversation centered on how tariffs are impacting her business. Most of the items she sells are imported from China. The only other countries with manufacturing capabilities are also subject to high tariffs, albeit lower ones than China. So, shifting to other countries wouldn’t solve her problem.

This entrepreneur traveled to the West Coast to understand how her wholesalers are planning to react. It wasn’t good. Some are raising prices to reflect the full tariff amount. Others plan to close up shop and walk away (after decades in business).

This entrepreneur’s wholesale costs will more than double, and she will likely have to double her prices. The challenge is that she doesn’t think her customers will be willing to pay double. She figures that revenue will decline regardless of what she does; the question is how much.

She also shared that she’s now considering starting other businesses. The possibility of her retail store failing for reasons beyond her control is real. It’s forcing her to be open to new opportunities in other industries to pay the bills.

I don’t know what will happen with tariffs. I suspect lots of entrepreneurs are rattled and thinking about plan B. I’m curious about what this will lead to. We could see a burst of entrepreneurial activity. When entrepreneurs’ backs are against the wall, they’re forced to do their best work. With tons of them facing this situation at the same time, some good is bound to come out of it.

I caught up with a founder who shared an update on his fundraising. The story stuck with me because of how the tariff turmoil is impacting him. That’s not something I anticipated for technology companies raising from venture capital firms.

He’s raising a $1 million round and had a lead investor committed for $500k. He was deep in diligence with a few other firms to fill out the rest of the round. Then, the tariff turmoil hit. All the investors in deep diligence simultaneously pulled out. His lead investor has notified him that it will pull out too if the remaining $500k isn’t raised within a tight window.

This founder went from seeing his fundraising go from a clear path to completion to complete uncertainty because tariff and stock market turmoil rattled the investors he was talking to.

This story was surprising to me since this founder is early stage, but it was a reminder. The tariffs and stock market turmoil they caused are prompting uncertainty, which will show up to entrepreneurs in all sorts of unexpected ways.