0:00 um when we talk about the learning realm on the way to wow show um we really mean becoming a lifelong learner so um you two define a lifelong learner as someone who is self-motivated and committed to gaining new knowledge and skill so how how do how does reading really help someone fulfill this definition how does reading fit into this this idea of being a lifelong learner who are you and where are you going
0:36 what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel this week on the way to wow show we're going to be working in the learning realm of the mental pillar once we get out of school how do we keep growing and learning new things learning new skills ideas etc our guests today jeff brown and jesse wisniewski have written the book it's called read to lead and it's going to be released right about now
1:11 and we're going to talk to them about how reading can help you be a lifetime a lifelong learner but first i'm going to mix myself up a little cocktail this is something i found out about gosh a long time ago i came across a liqueur called pins number one very very british this is a gin based liqueur and so it has a nice fresh flavor and so it's really good to pair with some kind of citrus so a very famous cocktail known as a pims cup which is just really pims and lemonade i like
1:47 something a little bit less citrusy so i make a version of it called a pims rangoon which is made with ginger ale so it's very simple to make you just start out put some get yourself a high ball glass okay put some ice in get your [ __ ] and you know measure out about about an ounce and a half ounce and a quarter ounce and a half of pims pour it over the ice that'll kind of dilute it a little bit then you get your ginger ale
2:22 i like ginger a little bit on the stronger side just fill the glass there the ginger ale see it foams up kind of nice and then typically it's it's garnished with a lemon and maybe a a piece of uh of uh cucumber and there you have it look at that nice that nice color there that's a pims rangoon cheers [Music] jesse jeff welcome to the way to wow show thanks so much for coming on
2:59 pleasure thank you so i'm going to start out read a short biography of each of you and then we'll we'll jump right into the interview uh you know alphabetical order jeff so jeff brown is an award-winning radio producer and personality and a former nationally syndicated morning show host after more than 25 years in the radio and music industries jeff went boss free i like that boss free and launched the read to lead podcast a four-time best business podcast nominee
3:34 jeff has interviewed hundreds of leaders in their industry on the podcast including seth godin simon sinek john maxwell liz wiseman dr henry cloud brian tracy nancy duarte and alan alda and he lives in spring hill tennessee jesse wisniewski is the director of marketing at phone burner and a self-proclaimed bibliophile i i have the same affliction i assure you he has been featured in forbes cnbc make it the muse observer and more he holds a master's degree from gordon conwell theological seminary and and is indeed a minister and a marketing degree from
4:10 marshall university he lives in charleston west virginia with his family and okay so together john and jesse co-authored read to lead the simple habit that expands your influence and boosts your career which is due out from baker books right about now so as i mentioned in the intro we're going to delve into the learning realm of the mental pillar from the perspective of being or becoming a lifetime learner and uh you know gentlemen um you're you're making the case for
4:46 reading so with all of the podcasts and video casts and other media around why should we bother to be reading books well i'll jump in here first and jessie's uh welcome to respond as well uh i believe that uh the chance to sit down and read a book is a chance to have a cup of coffee with the author and the great things about books is it's all in one place it's not a blog post it took 10 minutes to compile or you know a video that maybe took a few hours but but it's a book that took months sometimes years to compile the information so a lot of thought has gone into it and generally a
5:22 lot of vetting has been done before it sees the light of day and i think that's one very significant reason why why books are still important for the brain you know we live in a very much a bite-sized type world these days and i think it's in fact affecting how our brains are working and i think sitting down and reading a book allows you to engage your brain in in you know in a way that you maybe don't do normally or with a a fair amount of regularity and i think there's value in that still and i think they're always there always will be
5:57 oh it's yeah to add to what jeff's saying for me reading is transformative um you know the books you read can't transform you very literally speaking in many ways so like a chemical reaction uh this example we use in the book uh when you add one or more substances together you create something new and each book we read is like introducing a new substance into your life that will create something new so from what you believe to the skills you learn to reducing stress helping you sleep gaining more professional opportunities and literally reading to become a better leader reading itself will transform you
6:32 so you in your book you talk about eight research-backed reasons that reading helps build your careers we have a fairly short format so can you talk about say the the top three reasons that reading helps build your career i'll let you take that one jesse okay yeah there as you said we mentioned eight in particular uh reasons why reading is so powerful when it comes to making us a better leader person so on and so forth one of the first things we talk about in the book is reading can increase your
7:07 professional opportunities there was a study survey done some years ago and i think i believe it was written in the camera called the top my head but they found when they followed a group of teenagers into i believe their early 30s or so that those who read independently were actually more so in managerial positions in their later years compared to those who did not read independently and so there was this one thing about looking at like oh so why would why is reading so powerful what was such a catalyst for these group of people that were surveyed and as you look through all the data that you know uh reading
7:44 improves your decision-making skills so that's in a couple of ways uh right so for instance if you're facing a specific problem or challenge in life or work whether it be as a as a man or woman or a husband or wife or employee or entrepreneur you can probably find the answer to whatever problem you need to solve within a book or you could probably find somebody who's wrestled with a similar challenge uh to help you figure out what how can i resolve what i'm going through uh reading all in decision making helps you make better decisions overall so as you accumulate wisdom from what you read to the actual act of reading itself uh
8:20 what psychologist calls now i'm not a trained psychologist but after studying and learning you know talking about this stuff they will talk about cognitive closure so reading help which is a thing of saying that uh we tend not to like ambiguity and we might have a tendency to make quick decisions in order to fight away any sort of vagueness and sometimes those quick decisions could be uh maybe irrational or not the best ones but when reading they find in studies that we can become more comfortable when we're presented with different opportunities or decisions to make and whatever we're facing with life or work and uh just being better able to actually make a decision in the moment
8:55 uh when actually comes to uh leading or as we you know title the book or jeff's podcast read to lead uh reading is powerful in that uh specifically you can learn specific leadership skills from leadership books to biographies but then also what they find in different studies is that reading helps us to be more empathetic and which is just a significant leadership uh characteristic so if we are better able to empathize with people we work with or work for or who work with us that's going to put us in a better position to be able to lead them well and whatever work we're doing and so from professional opportunities
9:30 decision making and just being able to read to become a better leader and whatever work you're doing i would say those are three the top ones that come to the surface you know it's it's interesting one of the most famous readers and i think people don't know he was was general george patton who was terrible in school but was really in many ways self-taught and it was almost all through reading so uh it's it's a very very very powerful tool so um what what kind of book should we be reading well i would say start with um something
10:05 you're interested in i think if you start with something you're interested in or want to learn more about you're never going to be bored reading that's been the case for me and in my career early on in my career i realized that though i was terrified of public speaking that was a skill i was going to need to cultivate and so i began reading books about how to do that better not just how to deliver a talk effectively but how to create compelling slides how to get over the fear of public speaking i mean there there are as many different books on that topic alone as as you can dissect a public speaking as a topic uh you know how to get booked
10:40 and paid to speak that's one i've read more more recently so decide what it is you want to learn more about what it is you're interested in maybe it's something having to do with your vocation or your industry that a skill that you want to hone at one point in my career that was getting better as a marketer and so i began reading marketing books and as you start to um apply what you're learning experiment with what you're learning you'll find that at least in my experience the things that don't work people tend to forget but the things that do work uh will get you noticed in in a positive way
11:16 should we be reading fiction i know jesse has some opinion opinions on it absolutely uh fiction is wonderful for our creativity i think did you you disagree with that jesse or yeah no to add to what jeff is saying yeah okay no not at all uh to add what jack was saying yeah by co-authoring so um when we talk about the learning realm on the way to wow show we really mean becoming a lifelong learner so
11:52 um you two define a lifelong learner as someone who is self-motivated and committed to gaining new knowledge and skill so how how do how does reading really help someone fulfill this definition how does reading fit into this this idea of being a lifelong learner well as as i was saying earlier i think um and you mentioned the friend um or not friend but patton who was self-taught uh and didn't do well in school i was very uh similar to that i hated school a
12:27 school educated out of me the desire to want to read because i was always having to read things i didn't enjoy but my career didn't really uh take off uh with any real sort of uh notoriety if you will until i began making that a regular practice so i found that as i did that more and more and got to the point where i was reading you know a book a week i didn't start out that way but when i when i got to that point i was a more as jesse alluded earlier more well-rounded leader a more well-rounded husband human being co-worker uh boss
13:02 every aspect of my life was impacted in a wonderfully positive way just by taking on that single habit with consistency and with intention thoughts on that jesse yeah and to uh yeah one of the things we talked about is in the book is what you'd like your career depends upon it or your business if you know your entrepreneur is that when you look at the data in terms of the transitions people go through new jobs to even the longevity of a company
13:38 and how long it may or may not be open is that you see that there's a lot of changes taking place and how frequently people may be going between different jobs maybe even switching industries so as when you when you take a look at that in the magazine the economist some years ago they talk about lifelong learning is today an imperative just because the way things are changing and there are many ways we can learn and get ahead whether that's obtaining an agree a degree maybe pursuing a certificate but we think based upon what the science and the data says about the benefits of actually reading that reading books is arguably the most affordable flexible way that we can
14:14 improve ourselves personally and professionally um so the books we read may not appear on our linkedin profile or within our resume but the benefits we reap from what we read will in terms of what it's and enables us to to do in whatever line of work rather in the example general patton and leading you know army uh to leading a business to becoming in jeff's example a better public speaker one example i shared was uh was learning to be come better in content marketing which is a pretty nice type of marketing thing but you typically find answers to problems or uh solutions to challenges
14:50 within whatever books you're finding to read so for someone who you know didn't like school um and and maybe as a result of that also then you know didn't gain a love for reading how does how does where does the spark come from to to start reading yeah that's a great question it reminds me of that what's that phrase when the student is ready the the teacher or master appears or something
15:25 like that um i i first had personal development type books presented to me when i was in my early 20s and it didn't take didn't stick i wasn't mature enough i wasn't ready for them yet but fast forward ten years i'm in my early thirties and a boss i worked for a leader i was privileged to to to be on his team um presented me with books from seth godin uh purple cow john maxwell books pat lincione books jim collins book good to great at that point
16:00 i was ready when those books were presented to me i was ready i was hungry i was ambitious i realized that there were people around me i was in an environment where i was surrounded by people better than me and i spent a few years kind of floundering around places where i liked being the the best at what i did and i got comfortable in that and i wasn't growing but then i found myself in a workplace where suddenly i was being challenged and it and reading became a requirement for no other reason than to just be able to keep up uh and then i just found it became something that i fell in love with
16:36 over time yeah for me the spark very much came through a relationship in that i was in my early 20s did not grow up with a love for education didn't necessarily do well in school never read a book outside on my own initiative until i met a girl who is now my wife and she liked to read so for me we were going on our first date and i wanted to find a book to read so that way i could have something intelligent to talk about and so i remember the first book i purchased uh was sun tzu the art of war
17:14 and i read through it and i recall that being again the first book having read on my own it was to me it was archaic and difficult but i was dedicated to finding at least two to three things from that book to read to share with her during our first dinner date and i can't say that that book in and of itself you know led to a lifelong learning and all of that but it was definitely the spark in my first introduction to reading books in my early 20s which then years later looking back i found myself reading a lot more afterward but i have my wife to thank for reading my first book he's got 4 000 books now
17:50 oh okay i think we have some other side's library i wish you you you two could have seen the production team when you said that because every guy in the place started laughing and shaking his head and our production manager who's the female on our staff basically went like this so we're getting close to the end i i want to ask you one more question this is a question near and dear to my heart please you you talk about the math equation a person can do to determine how many books they'll read during the rest of
18:25 their lifetime can you just real quickly kind of go through what that is and why that's important yeah absolutely so the math equation we share in the book is actually from a video uh max joseph was uh putting together a documentary uh describing his challenge with reading books so he's interviewing a gentleman by the name of tim urban and so the math equation is this so actually let me pause there for a second so tim was encouraging max that like hey i'm gonna help you realize how little you're reading and then if you just follow this equation you're gonna have a
19:00 you know fomo you're gonna have a fear of missing out on reading so many books available because if you do this equation you're gonna realize you're not gonna actually read that many books by the end of your life so basically it's like what is your life expectancy minus your current age multiply by the number of books you read per year which then equals the number of books you will read in a lifetime so at that point whether it was for max whether it's for me whether it's for you or anybody listening or watching tuning in to this is hey when you take a moment and step back and examine how many books you're reading right now
19:35 are you happy with that equation does it make you sad do you feel like you're missing out and that's the opportunity to take a take a moment reflect and if you're happy with it then great more power to you but if it's something that highlights like maybe i should spend a little more time prioritizing reading or maybe i should really better understand the benefits of what i may or may not be missing out on uh so that is uh the big thing there that we encourage readers to do is just just take a moment walk through that equation figure out how much you may theoretically be able to read in the lifetime and then from that point decide how you want to proceed do you want to read more if so awesome pick up more books make it a priority and read more
20:11 books jeff did you want to add something not really i think jesse covered it uh quite effectively i know for me that that that that the outcome of that equation i'm thankful to say is is going to be a fairly high number because i reach fairly regularly so so so my number's a big one i think i got that going for me yeah oh okay i got the i got the wrap-up sign um yeah you know at my age unfortunately the number is not nearly as large as i'd like it to be i can tell you having already done the math but well gentlemen uh i really appreciate
20:46 you you coming on the way to wow show talking about um why we should read and and and what it's what it means in terms of becoming a lifelong learner thank you so very very much pleasure thank you kevin i don't know if you've been following this but it seems more and more companies are not requiring a college degree anymore big companies like google and ey as well as home depot and other
21:21 companies like that so where are we supposed to learn the skills the knowledge the ideas to move ourselves forward i think our guest today jeff brown and jesse wisniewski they have the key we need to read to lead we need to re-to lead ourselves others our families and we need to read for our own souls i would argue it's good for every aspect of us as human beings
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