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:

• I’ve been struggling with what the taxonomy should look like. I’m not really sure why this has been hard.
• I wanted to get more things done this week than I did. It was a holiday week, but I was still frustrated.

What I learned:

• Dedicating time to craft a concise problem statement felt like an important step forward. I should have done it long ago. I didn’t define the problem early enough at my first company, which caused unexpected issues later that were painful to correct.
• The problem is the highest level of thinking and the priority for every company. Everything revolves around the problem being solved. The vision, mission, values, etc. all become easier to define when the problem is clear. If the problem isn’t clear, there can’t be clarity on anything else. The problem is the foundation and compass for the business.
• I’ll craft the vision, mission, and values next. Doing these at the same time feels very natural now.
• Creating examples of outputs the book library will generate was another great exercise. It helped with alignment and prioritization. Thinking through what needs to happen to achieve each example was thought provoking. See more of my thoughts here.
• The quality of the database data is heavily influenced by the process used to parse and classify it. There needs to be a defined approach. Without one, the results aren’t consistent and quality isn’t great.
• People don’t understand what you’re doing when you say “AI.” When I use “natural language computing,” things click and people get it.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

I’ve been struggling to articulate the problem I’m solving with my “book library” project. It’s critical to clearly state the problem in such a way that people will understand why it’s worth solving. When you can do that, people are more engaged and want to hear about your solution. But I wasn’t doing it, so I had to fight to keep people’s attention. And this was when I was talking to friends, not strangers, and I wasn’t asking them to use or pay for the solution.

I decided to use the holiday to review all my notes and start crystallizing the problem in a clear sentence. Creating a problem statement is something that sounds simple, but it’s been hard for me in the past. Getting to a concise statement is usually a process of refinement and wordsmithing. In the past, I’ve done it alone (with no success) or with a group of entrepreneurs as part of a retreat.

I didn’t want to do it alone and had no planned retreats, so I decided to use Google Gemini and ChatGPT as thinking tools. Both offer mobile apps that allow you to speak your thoughts instead of typing them. For this kind of ideation exercise, I wanted to capture my thoughts as they were flowing, so speaking was key.

I chose to use two models because no model is perfect. They all have strengths and weaknesses. But I’ve found that feeding my thoughts to both, reviewing their outputs, incorporating the outputs into my thinking, feeding my updated thoughts to both, and repeating that loop has worked well. I also ask each model to rate and give feedback on the output from the competing model. Together, this created a rapid iteration cycle, something I can’t normally do alone.

After many cycles, I’ve finally landed on two versions of what I think is a clear problem statement. I feel pretty good about both, but I’ll get feedback before I make final decisions.

Clearly articulating the problem sounds like an obvious thing that all entrepreneurs do, but many don’t have clear problem statements, which causes lots of issues down the road.

A few days ago, I shared that a founder friend suggested that I start my book library project with the end in mind—that is, with the desired output. The idea was that since I’m building a solution to a problem I’m experiencing, I’m in a position to produce hypothetical examples of the kind of output this solution could create that would solve the problem.

I've created three hypothetical outputs over the last few days. I wasn’t sure how to approach this at first, but I decided to base it on my journey with this project so it’s somewhat grounded in reality. I started with problems I’ve solved for myself during this journey or am actively trying to solve. For two examples, using problems I solved the old-fashioned way with the help of my notes and highlights from various biographies, I figured out the ideal outputs that would have gotten me to the same results more efficiently.

This was a fun exercise. Having already solved the problems, figuring out how this solution could have helped me get there more efficiently was interesting. What kind of information should it have provided to me? What kind of questions should it have asked me to get me thinking? What stories needed to be shared for suggestions to resonate with me?

I shared these outputs with my developer friend today. Having them to work backward from led to a productive discussion. We narrowed our focus to what must be built to make those outputs a reality. We realized that a structured approach to solving certain problems is required for consistent results. This reinforced the importance of data structure.

This exercise has been helpful and something I want to do going forward when I’m trying to build a solution to my own problem. I’ve got three example outputs that are complete now, and I’ve got another two or three that I want to document before the end of the year.

I’ve had this blog for almost five years, and I’m approaching 1,800 consecutive posts. When I started it, there wasn’t a plan. I was just sharing my thoughts. It was that simple. The design of the blog reflected the simplicity of my goal.  With so many blog posts, some of the simple features broke. They weren’t designed to work with so many posts.

Instead of just fixing the broken features, I decided to do a refresh of the blog. I wanted to make it easier to navigate my old posts and add features that better align with sharing information about books I’ve read.

With the help of Christopher Travers, the following changes were made:

Enhancements

• Related posts – This is the change I was most excited about. There was no way to point readers to other relevant posts. This became apparent when I created a series of posts about a book. Finding the other posts in the series wasn’t easy. We fixed this. A “Keep Reading” section was added at the bottom of the page for each post, showing related posts (if any). I currently use this for posts that are part of a series about the same book. See examples here and here.
• Tagline – My tagline says how many consecutive posts I’ve written and what my blog is about. It’s a quick way to let people know I’m serious and to flex a bit. It’s displayed on the desktop version in the left bar but not on mobile. Most visitors are on mobile and couldn’t see the tagline. This is fixed now. The tagline was added to the header of the mobile version.
• Next/prior post buttons – At the end of each blog post page, these buttons link to the posts before and after the current one. This feature wasn’t built with 1,700+ posts in mind, and it broke. This was fixed, and the design of the buttons was optimized for mobile. You can now easily go to the post before or the post after the one you’re reading.
• Goodreads – I want to share what books I’ve read and what I’m currently reading. For now, the link to Goodreads was a quick way to accomplish this. A link to my Goodreads profile has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner.
• Apple Music – I love music as much as I love reading. My personality is reflected in the music I listen to. I want people to see my other sides—not just books, entrepreneurship, and investing. A link to my Apple Music profile has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner.‍
• Spotify – I want to increase awareness of my podcasts about books I’ve read (even though I haven’t recorded any lately). A link to my podcast on Spotify has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner. This is a bit of an experiment. I’ll test this more to determine if I want to link to music, my podcast, or‍of the desktop version. ‍
• Search – Results looked messy. We reduced the maximum number of search results to eight. I’m still not thrilled about this, but it looks less messy now.‍
• Category tags – These are displayed cleanly and designated as hyperlinks at the top of each blog post page. They mirror how the tags are shown on the home page (even though they’re shown at the bottom of each post on the home page).

Subtractions

• Comment on a post – No one was using this. The open-source software and its hosting were more things to manage (which I wasn’t doing well). We removed the “comment” button at the bottom of each post. I’m open to adding this back in the future if it makes sense.
• RSS – I don’t think anyone was using this. We removed the link to RSS feed from the left bar.
• Contact form – The contact form on the “Contact” page was used only for spam, which was annoying. The form was removed. Readers can now see options to contact me via email, X, or LinkedIn links on the “Contact” page.

A big thanks to Christopher and everyone who provided feedback. The refreshed blog looks cleaner and is easier to navigate.

The blog has turned into something that needs to be maintained. I didn’t do a good job of that in the first few years, outside of adding new blog posts. Going forward, I want to do a better job of maintaining the blog and make more enhancements that make it easier for people to find posts that are valuable to them. If anyone has suggestions on how to make the blog better or easier to use, please do share. Feedback is always much appreciated: Hello at jermainebrown.org

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: 42
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 259
• 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 Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy, a framework book about building a concentrated investment portfolio
• Reviewed data set in Looker Studio
• Experimented with ways to visualize data in Looker Studio
• Evaluated NoteBookLM Plus
• Updated UI sketches based on learnings
• Linked blog posts about the same book
• Updated descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Identified one strategy for titling blog posts based on Google Analytics
• Created draft of process flows for two core functions of the application

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create a list of potential metrics for weekly updates that better reflect this project
• Identify root causes of and fixes for data quality issues
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Analyze Google data to generate more ideas for creating blog post titles

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-seven 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:

• I need to do a better job of articulating the problem I’m trying to solve. I pitched it several times this week in different ways, and I wasn’t happy with my performance. I need to make it shorter and to the point.
• I need to do a better job of crystallizing the target user’s profile.
• Focusing on features that add value for a small group of people who are already passionately reading biographies is more important in the early days than trying to add value for people who aren’t reading biographies. The value proposition will be clear to them. Targeting them will be easier. They can also be early champions who convince the nonreaders.
• Sketching out the technology’s process flow—how it works—was a valuable exercise and helped me understand more of the specifics of the technology.
• Solving a problem for yourself can make it harder to build a solution that brings value to others.
• Looker Studio will help me evaluate the quality of our data. It isn’t the right tool to use as a dashboard to present the data externally to users.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

In 2023, I set Thanksgiving and Christmas reading goals: to read an 800-page book and then a pair of books that totaled about 700 pages. I didn’t hit either goal deadlines; I finished the books a few days late. But I did finish them, so I was happy!

In hindsight, I was ramping up my reading in a major way and then developing a daily reading habit. That set me up for 2024, during which I’ve read one book a week on average and started my book-related personal project. I had no idea this would happen when I set those goals in 2023, but I didn’t see much downside and went for it.

I want to repeat that this year by setting a goal for Christmas (setting a Thanksgiving goal slipped my mind)—but not reading. I want something challenging but different than reading. I want to get back to writing blog posts series on books I’ve read and creating podcasts from those series. Hopefully, I can form a habit that will be useful in 2025.

Some background for context: I did blog and podcast series over the summer. For example, see the Ted Turner series here and here (episodes 98–103). Writing a series of blog posts about a book required that I create a digest of the book, which took a ton of time. Recording and editing the podcast did too. It wasn’t sustainable, which led to my stopping after my summer experiment. Over Christmas, I’ll have more time.

My goal this Christmas is around writing. I’ll create a blog post series (five or six posts) about a book I’ve read, which means I’ll need to create a digest too. I’d ultimately like to create a backlog of blog post series and podcasts I can publish on a schedule. I’m not sure how I’ll do that, but creating this blog post series and parking it for future use seems like a good place to start.

That’s it. That’s my Christmas writing goal. Wish me luck.

I was chatting with a friend about how many books the “book library” MVP would need to include to be useful to entrepreneurs. He was thinking thousands or tens of thousands. However, I think it’s much less than that if you consider the number of books a person can read on their own. I’d imagine the average entrepreneur would get value from the MVP if a few hundred or even as few as one hundred books were included.

Let’s look at some numbers to demonstrate this, using my experience with this project as an example. Since February of this year, I’ve read 50 books, mostly biographies. By the end of the year, I aim to read 52 books, 1 per week on average.

Assuming I keep up that pace indefinitely, here’s how many books I’ll have read over various periods:

• Year 1: 52
• Year 2: 104
• Year 3: 156
• Year 4: 208
• Year 5: 260
• Year 10: 520
• Year 15: 780
• Year 20: 1,040
• Year 30: 1,560
• Year 40: 2,080
• Year 50: 2,600

I could read about 2,600 books at the absolute most, and that’s over 50 years. Even cracking 1,000 books would take me 20 years. And that’s reading a book a week, which my friends and family think is aggressive.

So, let’s say a founder reads half as fast: 2 books a month, or 26 books a year. Take all those numbers and cut them in half: 4 years to reach 100, 19 years to reach 500, and 38 years to reach 1,000.

Considering these figures, I think the “book library” could be hugely valuable to myself and other entrepreneurs. If I could use this tool to access the wisdom in a few hundred biographies to help me overcome hurdles, that would be the equivalent of several years of reading a book a week to acquire the same wisdom (assuming I remembered all of it). If the library included 1,000 books, it would be like accessing 20 years of reading.  

I love reading. It’s my favorite way to learn. But it’s not a time-efficient way of learning. Reading is powerful for entrepreneurs perpetually short on time and always looking for solutions to pressing problems, but it’s not a time-efficient problem-solving tool.

I’m excited about the value this tool can offer to entrepreneurs. It could be a great learning and problem-solving tool for entrepreneurs—and one that’s time efficient. It doesn’t need thousands of books to be valuable when it launches. A few hundred or even a hundred could give entrepreneurs access to the wisdom they would otherwise have to spend several years reading books to acquire.

Reading is valuable and something I plan to do as long as possible. I don’t want this tool to replace reading, I want it to complement it by pointing entrepreneurs to the right information in the right book at the exact time they need it.

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: 41
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 252
• 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 rereading Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Way, a biography about Warren Buffett’s investing framework and psychology  
• Linked popular blog posts written about the same book using related lists
• Updated descriptions of popular blog posts
• Identified a method to compile a founder’s journey from multiple sources and communicate it digestibly
• Received feedback on my draft taxonomy
• Received input and ideas from a developer who built a project like the “book library” MVP
• Identified technologies that can help with building challenging features
• Completed code to parse data according to a schema and populate database fields (my developer friend led this effort)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create a list of potential metrics for weekly updates that better reflect this project
• Review data set in Looker Studio
• Experiment with ways to visualize data in Looker Studio
• Identify root cause and fixes for data set quality issues
• Evaluate NoteBookLM Plus
• Update UI sketches based on learnings
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Generate ideas for a methodology for creating blog post titles using data from Google on top-performing posts

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-six 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:

• Matching to existing data sets that have unique identifiers is a good way to start building a database about people and companies from scratch. It reduces the number of duplicate records.
• This summer I published 100 podcast episodes about autobiographies and biographies I was reading. To learn, I wanted to get reps quickly. To prepare for those episodes, I distilled the books into a series of blog posts. Analytics show that my series on Ted Turner, Henry Singleton, Ed Thorp, and Jim Simons are the most popular. I have 1700+ blog posts, but most visitors are for the blog post series I did this summer. I need to do more of this kind of post.
• Looker Studio is a good business intelligence tool to easily display data, especially from a database.
• Many of the AI thinkers are open to chatting about new projects. I cold emailed one of them, and we chatted this week. He was open to sharing how he built his latest project and even showed me his database. Builders like connecting with other builders and sharing their projects. Cold outreach works. I’ll do more of this going forward.
• Some AI models trained on books without permission by using the infamous Books3 data set (article).
• NoteBookLM released a paid tier and an enterprise version this week via NoteBookLM Plus (article). This could be game changing and get people more comfortable using their own source documents with AI, especially for learning.
• NoteBookLM also released the audio interactivity feature. You can listen to a podcast generated using the source documents you uploaded and interrupt the podcast mid-play to ask it questions (article).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!