This Week’s BIG Idea
How do you learn to learn? I realized that one of the reasons why I’m an avid reader is because books help me solve problems. I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about the best way to present what I do on the website. The result is a redesigned homepage that looks simple but took hours to design. After reading the first couple of chapters of the book DotCom Secrets, I started thinking about traffic. In the book, Brunson says that there are three types of traffic: the one you don’t control, the one you control, and the traffic you own. The idea is to use the homepage to turn both the traffic I control and the one I don’t and turn that into traffic I own.
According to the author, you own traffic when those people are loyal customers who are willing to buy from you. The idea was to turn the homepage into something that features a promise, an attractive image, and loads as fast as possible. Now, I’m summing that up in a few sentences but going from a traditional blog homepage to what I have now took hours of planning, brainstorming, and trial and error. Although I’m no designer and I have to admit that the homepage could look better, I’m more than happy with the results.
The point of all of this is that I was able to achieve most of those things with the concepts that I learned from books. I learned to learn. I believe that you can learn almost anything using books. You can read books about history, politics, philosophy, cooking, and the list goes on and on. Books are one of the best ROI because by spending a few bucks, you have access to answers to most problems. In fact, the oldest the problem, the oldest the solution. So the point is, for every problem out there there’s a solution in the form of a book. You just have to find one that focuses on the same problem you’re trying to solve.
What I’m Working on
Lately, I’ve been trying to spot the books that have the potential to make the most impact. This goes back to the idea introduced above, that of learning to learn. Everyone who reads non-fiction books regularly knows that the order in which you read certain books makes a difference. Sometimes you read a book that packs a lot of information about a certain topic, but because you had read that before, it doesn’t feel as important. So what I’m trying to do now, is look at my TBR and spot the books that I know will have the most impact in different areas of my life, finding the game changers and reading them first.
What I’m Listening to
I recently started listening to one of the latest episodes of Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive podcast. Although I enjoyed the episode, I didn’t take that much from it. So I started wondering about the few podcasts I’m subscribed to. To be clear, this is a great podcast and one of the best ones in the self-development department. I just haven’t really found a productivity podcast I love and that I’d listen to every episode. So I find myself listening to loose episodes here and there whenever there’s a guest I like. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I wish there was a podcast I really liked that I could listen to on a weekly basis.
What I’m Reading
- $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi: this is one of those big books that kept coming up, so I finally set aside some time to finally read it. The book teaches you, as its subtitle says, to make offers that “people feel stupid saying no”. It covers every angle about making a Grand Slam Offer. This book’s for entrepreneurs and business owners mainly, but others can benefit from it too. Expect a summary on the site soon.
- DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson: I talked about this book extensively in the introductory paragraph of this week’s newsletter. I knew nothing about the author and his business before reading the book, but DotCom Secrets is true to its name. Additionally, I soon realized that this is part of a trilogy, so I’m really looking forward to summarizing this book and then reading the remaining two. I don’t want to go into specifics for now, but I highly recommend this one.
What I’m Watching
I recently came across this video from Thomas Frank about work-life balance. Some people say there isn’t such a thing and that pursuing balance is almost impossible. I often wonder if achieving balance is something we should strive for. That said, I found this book educational.
This Week’s Quote
“One of the fundamental rules of marketing is that ‘a confused mind always says no.'”
Russel Brunson
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