Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Steve Cunningham | Why Reading More Books Doesn’t Make You A Better Leader

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Steve Cunningham is on a mission to dispel a persistent myth: that to be successful you just need to read more books. Truth is you don’t need more knowledge… you just need the right knowledge that you can apply to your business and life.

That’s where Steve’s Readitfor.me comes into play. He distills best-selling business and self-development books into impactful 12-minute text, audio, and video summaries. Instead of wading through a sea of books, you can choose topics to help you achieve specific goals and learn from the world’s top experts in those areas.

As Steve puts it, he focuses on behaviors, actions, and results – not knowledge. Tune in to get all the details on his process, the results, and more, including…

  • The two different types of growth mindset 
  • How to find the best book to solve your current business problems
  • Why you can read the right book… at the wrong time
  • The must-read business book that most entrepreneurs hate
  • And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Ryan Englin: Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. I'm your co-host, Ryan Englin and I'm here with Jeremy Macliver today.

Jeremy Macliver: Welcome back, everybody.

Ryan: So I'm really excited about today's guest because there's this perception out there that you need to continually learn inside of your business. And while that may be true, that's not always going to be the thing that gets you results. So he actually runs a company where he takes best-selling business and personal development books and turns them into 12-minute videos and audios so that we can get the most impactful parts out of these amazing books. I want to welcome Steve Cunningham to the show today. Welcome, Steve.

Steve Cunningham: Hey, guys, thanks for having me.

Ryan: Now you own a company called Read It For Me, where you actually create these amazing book summaries so that we can get all the impactful information out of these books. But there are some things about your industry, some myths, if you will, that aren't exactly true. And you're looking to break those down. Can you share one of those myths with us and then unpack it for me?

Knowledge Isn’t Always Power

Steve: Yeah, I think one of the biggest myths in our industry, and I think just in general, is that more knowledge equals more results. And, you know, you can't hop on the internet or LinkedIn or Instagram without seeing quotes about how CEOs read 52 books a year and, you know, you got to read the books that Bill Gates is reading. And what ends up happening is people tend to consume a lot of information and then because it's not relevant to any particular problems that they're experiencing in their business or personal life, they don't do anything with it. And so, and I've seen this problem occur in fortune 50 companies, I've seen this occur in, you know, solo entrepreneurs, and everywhere in between.

And what I've found, and our service, I need to take us on a quick detour. When we initially started our service, we thought it was going to be a service for people who wanted to be successful someday. And what we quickly found out is that the people who were signing up for a service were people who are already very successful. And what those people did over and over and over again in their career was four the specific things. One was get clear on where they wanted to go. So setting goals or, it's just what do you want. And number two, what that creates problems that get in your way. And then three, they create action plans to get rid of those problems. And then four, they look at the results and they tweak things and they just continue to do that over and over and over again. And where the knowledge part comes in when they identify a problem and then they go seek out information to solve that problem, which is the, almost the exact opposite of what most people do. They try to start with the idea and then they go search for a problem.

And so that is a huge problem in the learning. It's infected every large company on the planet that everybody focuses on knowledge and not on behaviors and actions and results. And so what we're trying to do is give people the tools to use knowledge in the right way, which is to solve problems that lead to your goals.

Ryan: Wow. So that, I love what you said is that people get the knowledge and then they go look for a problem. And I think I see that a lot out there. Talk to us a little bit more about that. Like how do you know if that's where your mindset is with reading books and everything else versus I've got these problems and I'm going to go find some solutions and then actually resolve it. How do you see that show up?

Steve: I think most people don't actually see it show up, which is the problem. And I think it goes back to how we learned when we were growing up. We were just presented with ideas and we, our job was to read it, remember it and at some point, regurgitate it. And so that's just kind of how we learn now. We get, you know, instead of a teacher telling us what to read, it's the internet and it's social media influencers. It's very easy to get distracted by those things and I think what if you, those people who are very successful, not the people who take pictures beside fancy cars and on yachts and like, not those people with the people who've actually built a business, they'll tell you that well, I got very clear and where I wanted to go, that presented me with some problems to solve.

And then from there, they went out and they seek information to solve those problems. And it's really, just in time type of scenario. They're learning the right things at the right time. And I think if trying to think of some ways that this might show up for people. If you're reading a book and you're highlighting it and taking notes and trying to Well, I gotta remember this for later, that you were on what we call a knowledge path. And it's a dead end. If you're hunting for, when you're reading a book with a clear problem in mind to solve, then you know that you're on what we call the action path, which is that goals, problems, actions, results.

So I think it has a lot to do with what your mindset is, when you're reading a book. And I was thinking about this last week, there's a lot of talk about mindset. And there's, you know, the fixed mindset and there's the growth mindset. But what doesn't get talked about is the, you know, those two kinds of growth mindset people. You can be growth-minded and still be on the wrong path and consuming information over and over and over again without doing anything about it. So I think the next logical step is to equip people, and especially small business owners, with the idea that you want to be on the action path. And yeah, I'm trying to think of the best way to articulate that. No one's asked me that question before. So I'm just thinking aloud.

Jeremy: That's great. I think of my favorite book, Traction by Gino Wickman. And, you know, I read it, when, and I remember when I read it, that you're exactly right. I wasn't highlighting. It was going back to work the next day and changing things. I was on the flight with another leader, we were flying to a conference. He was reading is like, Hey, you got to read this. It completely changed a ton of our business. And someone's said don't you wish, you know, you would have known about that book when you were first starting 10 years ago. Now? She said, No. I'm glad I got it right now because if you'd give me 10 years ago, I'd have read through like, well, that's pretty cool. I should use some of that stuff.

But I wouldn't have actually, I wasn't far enough long. I like those books when I start to read them that I feel their pain. Like they start telling a story I'm like, Well, I blew that one. And then they give me the answer. So what's a tip, like, you know, you have, you've read tons of these books and you've gone through this. How do I take this and say, Okay, this is my challenge and I want to go find the book that's going to help me with that? What's a good process for us to function like that?

Steve: Well, I think the first step is just to sit down. And I don't want to continuously just bring it back to these four steps, but it's hard for me not to. So first is you got to get very clear on what you want. And so, you know, as an example, Traction is a great book for people who want to run an orderly business that can grow, and that doesn't have systems in place in order to allow it to grow. But that's not what everybody wants. Some people want to be an author and a speaker. So Traction is not a good book for them to read. And so step one is decide exactly what you want. Do you want to be a solo entrepreneur for the rest of your life? Do you want to have a large business that employs thousands of people? Do you want something else? So that you get very clear on. Well, here I am today not having what I want. What's standing in my way? And so just write down a list of your problems. And sometimes they're not clear at the moment. And sometimes you'll have to just figure them out as you go.

I would take a running list of problems that are standing in my way, rank order them in order of importance, and then go find who's the world's top expert on x. And so what we've done in our platform, there's not an infinite number of problems that people have, and especially entrepreneurs. And so we've gone and boiled them down to the big buckets and then we go out and we find the world's top three experts on that topic and we summarize their books. So a good way, you know, even if you're not using a service like ours is take those problems, go find the world's top experts on those things and read their books. And that'll get you, you know, 90% of the way there to the best thinking on solving that particular problem. So for something like what you were struggling with, obviously, which was, you know, creating order in your business, there's a few books that would work. Traction is one of them.

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is another one and the E Myth is another one, which is the, you know, solving the problem of we're a small business and we want to get larger. And that requires systems and so those books solve that problem. And then just keep doing that over and over and over again until you get what you want. And it's the problem with that for most people, especially knowledge workers is that it's a very, it's an unsexy process. But it's the only thing that actually works. And so that's what I would suggest people do.

Ryan: I love the way you break that down into those different steps and just really looking for the experts for the problem you're looking to solve. I remember mine was a different book that was impactful for me. I was about three years as an entrepreneur, and you just mentioned the book. Everybody kept telling me, you got to read E Myth you got to read E Myth you got to read E Myth, and that's like, yeah, we'll see. And then something happened in my business. It was actually a business partner split. And I was sitting here going, is this really what I want to do? Do I really want to be an entrepreneur? And I remember getting the E Myth And it was one of those books that I just consumed. And I was like, I'm changing this and I'm going to think about this different and it was, had it shown up early in my business, just like Jeremy said, I would have been, eh, it's good information and I don't know really how to apply it.

But I was at that pain point where I was looking for the information I needed to break through it. And it was after reading E Myth twice, actually, that I said, this is exactly what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. And that book really did change my life. I did do a little bit of highlighting and notetaking but I put all of it right into action. So for people that are struggling to find that, those subject matter experts, your platform does that. Is that what I heard you say?

Generating Revenue, Leadership, and Personal Development

Steve: Yeah, for not enough for every problem under the sun, but certainly, and especially for small business entrepreneurs. So we've done that work in quite a few different areas. One area which is always the most important part for small business is sales and marketing. So generating revenue. So we've gone out, identified all the problems that most people face when generating revenue, and we've created those competencies in the system and the books associated with those competencies. The second bucket is around leadership. So, you know, developing a team. That's always one of the things standing In your way from going from a solo entrepreneur or a micro business to something much larger.

And the third one is a bucket that we call personal development, but it's essentially like managing yourself. And being an entrepreneur, the hardest thing to manage is yourself. So those three streams tend to capture most of the problems that entrepreneurs will face, and it's not all of them, but it's the majority of them. And so we've categorized all those problems and put them in the right place so that when those problems come up, you can dive in, get an overview of what the world's top experts have to say on those subjects. And, you know, let you pick and choose which ideas you're going to implement, but at least allow you to solve the problems that you face as they come up.

Ryan: That's great. So you've read a lot of books and you've summarized a lot of books. What's the most interesting or impactful book that you've read.

Steve: The book that you I think ticks both of those boxes for me is Principles by Ray Dalio. And it's most people that I know who are entrepreneurs hate that book. And I think it's because the, well, first a little bit of background. Ray Dalio runs the world's largest hedge fund and he started in his apartment. And he describes his process of going from, you know, that apartment to being one of the wealthiest people on the planet, running the world's largest hedge fund. And he describes exactly how he built all of the systems around himself to get to where, he has this kind of like you take Traction or the E Myth and like, how do you build one of the world's largest companies using that kind of an approach?

And for that reason, it's a very unsexy book. It's a very unsexy approach. But I think it has a lot to say to everybody who wants to get more of what they're looking for in their life. And so that would be a book. If you're listening to this and you're going to go read the book, I suggest you read the portion in the beginning, which describes the process that he followed because most people hate the book because the second and third half, or parts of the book. Really go into like, here are the principles that are very helpful to me and they don't remember that what he tells you to do is to go and find the principles that are helpful to you. So it's kind of very similar to what we're calling the action path. And he just created his empire brick by brick by solving problems that showed up in his way. So that was very influential to me. I know it's very, it's a very popular book as well. But that would be the one book I would suggest folks read to get more of whatever it is they're looking for.

Ryan: That's great. It's a long book. Is that correct? It's a pretty big one?

Steve: It's a pretty big one. But like I said, the part that I would want you to read if you're going to go buy it is in the first portion of the book. So the later parts of the book was, yeah, the later part of the book are things you can dive in and out on and you don't have to read it like you would a novel.

Ryan: Oh, cool. So you said sales and marketing, is that one of your most popular categories?

Steve: It's, yeah, certainly one of the most popular categories. And, you know, like I said, you know, especially for the folks who are smaller businesses, you know, generating revenue is always problem number one, two, and three. So those typically find those books are where you're going to find answers to that problem.

Ryan: Got it. What are some of the most popular books that you have around those? You could share some titles with our listeners, maybe put them on the action path if that's their top three problems right now.

Steve: Yeah, I think one of the things that, if I was to recommend one book it would be Predictable Revenue, which tells the story of the one of the employees of Salesforce. And he took their outbound sales organization from zero dollars to 100 million dollars and he describes exactly how he did it. And it was good old fashioned cold outreach and hard work. And you know, there's obviously a lot of tips and tricks on how to build a system around it. So, you know, if it's like what are, what is the E Myth or Traction for sales, that's Predictable Revenue, is probably the book that I would start with. You know, the other books that I suggest would be around prospecting.

So there's a kind of a companion book to Predictable Revenue called Predictable Prospecting, which is just about that one portion of it. Fanatical Prospecting is a great book as well. And so those typically are the places in the sales and marketing funnel that smaller businesses struggle with. They're typically pretty good at closing deals once they get people's attention. But creating a structure, a structured approach for sales and marketing is one of the most impactful things you can do as a business owner.

Ryan: Absolutely. You know, you said something that Jeremy and I talk about a lot. It doesn't matter how long you've been in business, it doesn't matter how big your company is, everyone has the same problems, there's just a different scale and different impact. And so I think, especially with all of the things that are happening right now, there are a lot of people out there that are being challenged in their business. And one of the ways we're being challenged is financially as entrepreneurs. What are some good financial books that you've read that really talked about managing the profit and loss side of the business? Revenue is great, but if you're not profitable, and you don't have cash, I mean, that leads to lots of other problems. What are some books you could recommend?

Steve: Yeah, you know, I think you've highlighted probably one of the holes in our libraries around, you know, financial management. It just hasn't been a category people have brought up very often, and maybe it's a function of they don't know they have that problem until it's way too late. So I think that, I think I'm going to add an action item to my to-do list, which is to go find some books on that topic and put them in our library.

Ryan: Do you guys have Profit First in your library?

Steve: I don't believe we do. I don't believe so.

Ryan: That's one of my favorite books around just thinking about the money in my business. And I know it's been really impactful for a lot of people. But, you know, you've got a lot of amazing books on there. There are some of the books that I have listened to, and I listened to it 2, 3, 4 times because there's just so much action items in it. And you're so succinct in the way that you deliver the stuff. I remember telling my wife that I went on a hike and I listened to a book three times on the hike and she's like, What do you mean, you're listening to a book three times? You didn't, you weren't gone that long. And I show her your summaries and she's like that's cheating. And that was like, Hey, I got all the best stuff out of the book in 12 minutes. So some people might call that cheating. I call that being efficient. So, but

Picking Out the Gold Expediently is Far From Cheating

Steve: I think that you brought up an interesting point. I was talking to somebody earlier today, who was, you know, hearing about us for the very first time he was someone who's already been very successful, sold numerous businesses. And his exact comment was, you know, some people might think this is cheating, but I don't think it's cheating. But some people might think it's cheating. And I, what I found is that the people who think it's cheating are typically, fall into two buckets. And I mean, no disrespect to these types of people, but professors at universities and people early in their career who are not successful yet. And the people who don't think it's cheating are the people who are already very successful. So I think that says as much as you need to know about whether or not this is cheating. It may or may not be cheating, but it's certainly going to help you get better results in whatever business challenge you're looking to solve.

Jeremy: So I found it to be leveraging, not cheating to go get the 12-minute version of it. And there's, from time to time, there'll be one of those like, wow, that was like pure goal all the way through. That's what I need right now. That one, I'll go get the full version, and then I'll process through that one. And honestly, if I go for the 12 minutes, I'm ready to go to the actual hardcopy pages where I'm like, folding over dog-earing it, bring it to work. So I don't find it cheating, I just find it as I could skim through that many books, I could get the gold nuggets, I can change and move stuff. And then those, you know, like when I may not, remember when I hit Profit First for the first time. You know, it's like, Whoa, let me slow this one down a little bit. I need a month or two In this book, not just 12 minutes. So that's how I see it.

Steve: Yeah, and I think you're, you hit the nail on the head. When you're actually approaching it like I've got an important problem to solve and you get the first 12 minutes of the book and you're like, that's exactly what I need, your most likely next action is going to be to go to buy the book. And so what we're doing is giving you enough to get started in solving that problem. And then, you know, there's going to be other things you should do in order to get into action on those things. Like, you know, buying the book, or if you've got enough resources, go take a class with the expert, or even potentially hire that expert to come in, work on that problem with you. So it if you're just kind of browsing content, that's probably not going to happen, but that's what most of our customers who approach learning that way say is I'm more likely to buy the book then I was previously because I'm focusing in from, on a problem first.

Ryan: That's fantastic. So, we've talked a lot about your service but let's get specific on it. Let's share it with our listeners. What is your service? How does it work? How do they find out about it? How do they learn more?

Steve: Yeah, so the service itself is the way most people understand it quickly is it's kind of cliff notes for business and personal development books we take best selling business and personal development books, turn them into 12-minute audio, text and video summaries. And the video summaries are great for teams that want to get together and review a book together and collaborate on how they're going to apply it to their business. And how they can find out about us, they can go to readitfor.me. And I think we're going to put together a special offer for your listeners. And so I think I'll just blurt out a URL right now and we'll have this live by the time they show up. It'll be readitfor.me, READITFOR.ME/bluecollarculture.

Ryan: Awesome. Awesome. That's fantastic. I've really enjoyed it. I've learned a lot about your philosophy when it comes to reading books, the way we consume books. Do me a favor and sum up those four steps again.

Goals, Problems, Actions, Results

Steve: Yeah, so the first step is, and most of these are not around reading but it's around how you approach the process of learning. So number one, get very clear on your goals. Get clear on what you want, whether that's growing a huge business with thousands of employees or you want to stay a profitable solo entrepreneur or somewhere in between, but it's get very clear and what you want. Then step two, that's going to present itself with some problems that are going to be in your way from getting what you want. Then go find the world's top experts on that particular problem and create an action plan based on what they suggest you do. Go do that and then finally, review the results and reflect on how it's going and then tweak as necessary. And then just never stop doing that. So it's goals, problems, actions, results.

Jeremy: And Is that how you help teams? So, say that again, let me process that, goals, actions, before, one more time?

Steve: Yeah, goals, problems, actions, results. So you set it, you set your goal, that's going to automatically create some problems standing between where you are today and where you want to go. Then you go create an action plan to get over it. And part of that process is finding the world's top experts on solving that problem and applying what they've learned to your situation. And then reflect on the results, which is a step that most people in organizations skip. So did this actually work for me? And how do I do it better the next time? So if you just keep doing those four things over and over and over again, you're going to eventually get to where you want to go.

Jeremy: I love that methodology right there because sometimes I'll see teams that they have like flavor of the month or book of the month type concepts and I almost cringe when I see that they have their, whatever, their book meeting because it's just like they read a new book, they get a whole bunch of new ideas. But most of the time when I see a team doing that, they're not getting as much action as a team that's way more decisive. And, you know, I remember making the goal a while back, that sounds almost ironic, was before I knew about Read It For Me was to actually read less books. I'm like, if I just read four books a year but I actually implement four books a year, I will be a lot better off than reading 52 books and implementing nothing. So I love that path that you have there. Now where, give us one more time the URL. Where can our audience go to get your service?

Steve: It's readitfor.me/bluecollarculture. So we're gonna have a special offer up there for listeners of the podcast. And if you don't mind, can I mention quickly about how some folks are using this with their teams? Because you're right. There's a lot of challenges, people create book clubs, and they typically don't work at all and eventually fizzle and fail. And I think it's because of, you know, what you mentioned, it's the just getting, sending out a series of books and getting together and talking about it is, you know, that's what we would call the knowledge path. You're just reading something, you're trying to remember some ideas and then you're regurgitating it in a meeting to look smart. And so we actually created a structure for how folks can work through this. And they, it's still centered around a book but the book is only there to give something for people to show up to and create a general theme for the meeting.

So we get people together, you can use our service to get your team together, over Zoom or in person. And we ask them to answer some very specific questions which would follow that action path. And so the questions they want to answer inside of this call or meeting would be what problem are you trying to solve? What's at stake if you don't solve it? What concept or idea do you believe will help? And what specific action steps are you going to take and when will you do it by? And what we always tell people is the center of these sessions should not be the book. It should not be anything except what problem are you trying to solve?

Don't shoehorn, you know, don't invent a problem because you're going over the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Create your most urgent problem and then see if there's anything from that book you can pull out that will help. And that mindset shift has helped many, many organizations and individuals get the full power of group learning which is getting feedback from your peers about what you intend to do about a problem. That's a hyper engaging format for people. And it also has the benefit of being the most important thing that you could be doing right now, which is solving your most important problems.

Ryan: Oh, that's gold right there. Thank you for sharing that. I love those questions. And those will be in the show notes. So you guys could start using those questions if and when you decide to implement a book club. Steve, I've enjoyed our conversation a ton today. I've learned a ton, which is great. And I just love the way you think about processing knowledge and actually getting the most out of it. And that website again was readitfor.me/bluecollarculture. So go check it out, learn about this amazing service. And best of luck to anyone implementing a book of the month, getting their teams involved. And Steve, thank you so much for creating this amazing service. Really enjoyed it today.

Steve: Yeah, thanks for having me guys. I appreciate it.

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