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: 46
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 287
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

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

• Read Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, a memoir and collection of famous speeches by Charlie Munger
• Picked three types of output and associated user problems and created a lucid chart to document the process flow to solve them
• Created class diagram showing proposed linkages between various classes (tables) in the database
• Documented the required elements for the UI of the MVP

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Get feedback on the problem, vision, and mission statements from two seasoned entrepreneurs
• Create a concise hypothesis statement  
• Share the draft taxonomy with two people
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred fifty-one 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 material struggles this week

What I learned:

• Creating a class (database table) diagram for all the links between data classes is hard if I try to draw it on paper from the start. It was easier to walk through one class at a time, defining its relationship with other classes and the type of relationship (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many) with each class. AI helped me through this exercise and created a JSON output that documents all the relationships. I then used the JSON output to create the class diagram.
• The UI doesn’t need to be spectacular for an early version of a software product. It just needs to work. But engineers who aren’t full stack want an example of the UI they should build. Finding examples of UIs from other products and asking a developer to clone one of them (or parts of it) is an efficient way to get a developer what they need.
• Categorizing the use-case types that entrepreneurs will want to use the “book library” tool for was a great exercise. Each type of problem can have a specific, repeatable solution. Creating an approach or framework for each problem type was a nice unlock.
• Thinking about the use-case types as one big process and creating a flow process diagram to document it was a big step forward. The document also fostered alignment between my developer friend and me because he could see how I envision the user flow.
• I need to collaborate with people who complement me, especially in marketing. I had a chat with a friend who’s skilled in marketing. We uncovered some low-hanging-fruit opportunities that could be great ways to drive long-term awareness of this tool organically (i.e., not through paid marketing).
• Headway is a bootstrapped book-summary app founded in 2019. It’s rumored to do over $200 million in annual revenue with 30% profit margins (source). It raised $100 million at a $2.3 billion valuation in 2024 (source).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Last year, I added Amazon affiliate links to my blog and podcast for books I shared (see here). Affiliate programs are commission programs. For every person I refer to Amazon who purchases the item I recommended, I get a commission on the sale. These programs didn’t interest me initially. For books, the effort exceeds the reward. Affiliates earn roughly $0.50 on a book sale. But then I realized the true value is in the data. Amazon’s affiliate program is robust, and I can track which books people click on and which books they purchase. I was very interested in the data, so I signed up for the program and started using affiliate links in mid-June 2024.

I have roughly six months of data. Here are the high-level stats:

• Items purchased: 14
• Total revenue generated (for Amazon): $226.05
• Average revenue per item (for Amazon): $16.14
• Total affiliate earnings (for me): $6.17
• Average earnings per purchase (for me): $0.44

I earned about $1 a month from affiliate commissions. My time to implement and execute this was worth more than $6, lol.

But I dug into the data and had some interesting insights:

• No book had more than one affiliate purchase.
• The books purchased were mostly about investors who became entrepreneurs when they founded investment firms: Jim Simons, Ed Thorpe, etc. This was interesting and unexpected.
• I had three international sales in Germany and the United Kingdom. I didn’t expect to have international reach.
• The majority of purchases were of Kindle or audiobook versions. I’m a physical-book person, so this surprised me.

Absent this affiliate experiment, I wouldn’t have known any of these things. So, from an insights perspective, the experiment was valuable. The sample size is small, of course, so I can’t draw definitive conclusions, but it’s still helpful.

So, what’s the verdict on my Amazon affiliate experiment? I’m glad I did the experiment because of the data it provides. I won’t get rich off affiliate commissions on book sales, but the insights are valuable. Now that I’ve got this, stopping the experiment doesn’t make sense. I’ll keep adding the affiliate links to content I share about books.

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: 45
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 280
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

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

• Read T. Rowe Price: The Man, the Company, and the Investment Philosophy by Cornelius Bond
• Created a repository for growth ideas and added several ideas

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Pick two types of output and associated user problems and create an approach and workflow to solve each problem
• Get feedback on the problem, vision, and mission statements from two seasoned entrepreneurs
• Create a concise hypothesis statement  
• Share the draft taxonomy with two people
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred fifty 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:

• There were lots of macro distractions this week (snow in Atlanta, wildfires in California, etc.). I can’t control or impact any of these kinds of things, so I want to do a better job of tuning them out next week.

What I learned:

• No material learnings related to this project this week. This is concerning. I should be learning something every week (if not every day).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Last month, I set a goal for the Christmas holiday (see here). The goal was to write a blog post series on a book I’d read. I’ll get straight to it. I failed. There’s no real excuse. There’s no one to blame. I just didn’t check this box. I view every failure as a learning opportunity, so I looked for the lessons in this one.

I summarize each book by creating a digest, which I use to create a blog post series. I can’t create a quality blog post series without the digest. Creating the digest was the big obstacle to hitting this writing goal. It’s a manual process that requires multiple blocks of concentrated time totaling more than ten hours. I somehow forgot this when I set the goal. Reading is different—I can pick up a book and read a few pages if I have five extra minutes. I can’t do that with writing.

If I want to get back into the habit of creating digests, I need to ensure that I have several blocks of time exceeding ten total hours—or figure out how to use technology for digest creation. I probably won’t consistently have the blocks of time, so I’m aiming for option number two.

A few days ago, I shared the stats around my reading for 2024 and what I learned from the process. I included the total number of books I read and the number of books by month. A few people have asked me for the list of book titles. I can see the value in this and want to share my reading list in an easy-to-consume way.

In a perfect world, I’d have a list I can update weekly as a dedicated page on the blog after I finish each book. That way people could easily see the current list anytime. I did some digging, and the available tools for this aren’t great. Goodreads has a few widgets that can be added to a blog, but I don’t like them.

I’m going to keep searching to see if I can find a tool that allows me to update and share my reading on my blog. I might ask some developers how involved it would be to build a custom widget. Hopefully, I’ll find a solution to this problem.

In the meantime, I’ll manually share my reading list from last year via a blog post. It’s not ideal, but it checks the box for now. Hopefully, I can get that list published in the next week or so.

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: 44
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 273
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

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

• Finished reading John Train’s The Money Masters: Nine Great Investors: Their Winning Strategies and How You Can Apply Them, a biographical anthology about nine public market investors
• Updated draft of taxonomy using learnings from the exercise of creating four hypothetical outputs for users (see here)
• Created a concise mission statement
• Create a concise vision statement
• Created a list of potential new metrics for this weekly email update
• Created a clear problem statement
• Analyzed Google data and generated more title ideas for blog posts and other content types
• Continued linking blog posts about the same book
• Continued updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Pick two types of output and associated user problems and create an approach and workflow to solve each problem
• Get feedback on the problem, vision, and mission statements from two seasoned entrepreneurs
• Share the draft taxonomy with two people
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-nine 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:

• The same issues as last week around being productive. I just didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped to. It was another holiday week, but even so I was frustrated because I felt I should’ve done more.

What I learned:

• A friend is starting a company, so we worked on mission and vision statements together. We gave each other feedback. That wasn’t planned, but it worked out great. He brought a fresh perspective and provided great feedback and edits.
• The vision statement is hard to craft and takes time to get concise. I can’t do it in one sitting. But working on it forced me to crystallize my thinking around how the future could look if what I’m creating is successful.
• I shared what I learned from reading 52 books. See here. A few people asked to see the list of books. I need to figure out a way to publish that list on my blog. Ideally, I’ll be able to easily update it weekly when I finish a book. Goodreads offers a widget that can plug into a website, but it’s pretty bad. I might have to share manually via a blog post for now and figure out another solution that I can update weekly down the road.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

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!