Case Against Being a Reader

Igor: Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Welcome back to another edition of the List Building Lifestyle with your host,
Igor Kheifets. Now, this whole idea of recording the podcast while playing video
games is becoming sort of a tradition, but today I’m changing things up and I’m
actually playing FIFA, courtesy of my friend, David Dee, who was kind enough to
download it on his Xbox. Because I don’t happen to own one. Now, the reason I
don’t own an Xbox at this point is because I’ve owned a bunch of PlayStations. I
gave some of those away. One, I literally stabbed with like, a knife-shaped thing,
because I lost a game of FIFA, because I’m a sore loser. So eventually, my wife
and I agreed that it’s best if I did not have that thing in the house. And
incidentally, the moment you don’t own a PlayStation or an Xbox, you have lots and
lots of free time on your hands to do other things.

But anyway, since I am recording the podcast, I thought okay, no harm if I’m
actually playing. And we’re doing FIFA today, so if you hear any background noise,
any crowds cheering, or any Russian swearwords, know that it’s all about the FIFA.
Now, in this episode I want to chat about something that I’ve actually never heard
anyone else talk about, however, that is a very profound part of success when it
comes to improving yourself, or bettering yourself for the purpose of making more
money. And Igor scores. Yes. And this is of course, reading, right?

I mean, if you ever watched any video sales letter or any presentation by a guru,
there’s a good chance you’ve seen one where the guru stands in front of a huge
library and basically implying, “Look at all the books I’ve read, look how smart I
am, look how much I’ve learned and invested in myself,” and sort of encouraging
you to do the exact same thing. Now, on one hand this is a correct philosophy. If
you want to improve, if you want to get better results in life, you should read
books. And I personally, put more value on books than I do on coaching and
information products. Because somehow for me at least, the things I learn in books
stick much, much, much better.

Not to mention that a lot of times information products or mentoring courses for
some reason, they don’t really give you the full picture, maybe. I don’t know, the
book is supposed to give you an idea, right? The book is not supposed to even
claim to give you a system, more like an idea. And that’s exactly what it gives
you. And usually these ideas end up reshaping your life. Now, the problem however,
with books is that once you understand the concept that, hey, if there is a
problem that I have, there’s probably been someone who attempted to solve it. And
if they did solve it, they probably wrote a book about it.

I think Will Smith was the one to say that reading and running are the two things
you need to do if you want to be successful in life, because, I think he said it,
if there’s someone who had the same problem as you and they solved it, they wrote
a book about it. And if you learn to run and not give up, then you’ll never give
up on your way to success. Cool. But what happens is, at least what happened for
me was, as soon as I discovered this groundbreaking idea that I could read my way
to success, the reflex that I had was to simply read as many books as possible as
fast as humanly possible.

Now, this meant to that I’ve committed to reading about a book a week, on a good
week. And that’s challenging, for one. But even when I was able to pull that off,
the problem I stumbled into was the fact that I was consuming so much information
from so many different authors that it sort of became more like a consumption
exercise and not an exercise in achieving success. A lot of that information sort
of mixed up in my mind. And it created paralysis, the paralysis we all know as the
shiny object syndrome, when you’re basically, buying a lot of stuff and maybe,
watching and consuming a lot of stuff, but you’re not necessarily taking a lot of
action.

So, that’s the problem with reading. And this problem cannot be ignored by anyone
who wants to achieve any measurable and meaningful results in their life and their
business. So, what do you do? What you do is, you read selectively, and you stick
to the material within your particular niche. So for example, if you’d like to
master list building, then you stick to books about perhaps, funnels, building
lists, email marketing, and things that are directly related to that. You don’t go
consuming books about the e-commerce revolution, Bitcoin, and all that stuff.
Don’t mix it up.

You also want to sort of make sure you’re consuming books by authors that have
similar, if not identical, point of view. Now, of course, you say, “Igor, what’s
the point? What’s the point of reading things that are basically, re-iterations of
the exact same thing from different authors?” Well, the point is that you never
really remember or internalize anything from the first exposure to the material,
anyway. So by reading books that are pretty much saying the exact same thing
maybe, in just a slightly different way, what you’re doing is you’re reinforcing
what you’ve learned in order to be able to better implement it in your life and
your business.

Now, the other thing that happens is, a lot of times it takes more than a couple
of exposures to really understand what, the meaning of things. There’s quite a few
things in my business that I’ve only grasped several years after I was, got first
exposed to the knowledge. And oftentimes, that “ah-hah” moment came by kind of
reading the same thing, but it’s sounding a little bit different. Just coming at
it from a different angle. Again, so, when we talk about internalizing things, and
really registering what you’re learning, repetition is not a bad thing. And
repetition from a different angle is probably even better than that.

The other thing you have to remember when it comes to reading as well, is that as
you go, you change. And everything you perceive as a person is internal. In other
words, nothing that we see or understand in this world is actually the way it is.
Most of the times, it kind of goes through a series of filters in our mind and we
perceive it through existing biases that we have, right. So for example, if I have
a bias that says, “All Russians are drunks,” there’s a good chance that’s all I
will see pretty much, all day long.

Now, what does that mean to you as far as reading? Well, what it means is that
when you read a book today, you kind of understand it a certain way, and you
maybe, internalize a good 10% of it. But when you reread the same book a year from
today, when you are a different person, especially if you’re continuously striving
to change and improve yourself, then what happens is, you all the sudden learn new
things. All the sudden you realize that you’ve missed quite a few golden nuggets
that just didn’t register the first time.

Now, since that’s the case, it really serves you to reread the exact same thing
several times with an interval in between those instances. For example, if you
read a book about copywriting, and you go into the real world, and you write some
copy, you run a few tests, you see what works, what doesn’t work, you build a few
funnels, and you fail miserably, and then you reread the same book, all of the
sudden simply because you have real-world experience to base your comparisons to,
you will be able to learn much more from the exact same book you’ve already read.

Again, makes perfect sense when I probably, say it out loud like that. But it
really doesn’t register, it didn’t register with me the first time I started
reading. And I really wish I understood that, because I read books such as
Predictably Rational when I was just starting out, which is a great book about why
people, well, not really why people do things a certain way, but just how stupid
people can get and how irrational they can get when it comes to making decisions,
and especially buying decisions. But there was no way for me to internalize even,
I don’t know, 15% from that book, simply because I did not have the real-world
experience to base my comparisons on, etc.

So, by rereading the book later, I have learned a lot. Even though again, by
picking up, when I was picking up the book, I already knew that I read it. So, my
point with this podcast episode is very, very simple. It’s very easy to get stuck
in the pattern of consumption. It’s very easy to figure out that, “Hey, the secret
to success is just learning, and learning, and learning.” But it’s not. It’s
really not. It’s not about learning and learning. It’s about application,
application, a little bit of learning, but then back to application, application
again. Because you always learn from your own mistakes more than you will ever
learn by reading a book.

Again, you have to balance this out and remember that it’s not to say that you
don’t learn at all from reading. It’s just most people are incapable of learning
from reading because they A, either don’t really even understand what they’re
reading in the first place, or, they simply do not have a way to internalize it
through just simply reading about it. They really need that real-world application
in order to benefit from the knowledge that they get in the book.

So, that pretty much concludes today’s episode of the List Building Lifestyle.
Thank you so much for tuning in, and now that we are finishing it up, I’m leading
2 to 1 against Manchester City, which of course, is not the way it happened
recently between Manchester United and Manchester City in real life. But that’s
why we’ve got video games, so we can do things that feel good. So anyway, have a
good one, stay perky, and keep on marketing. This is Igor, and I’m out. Bye.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Make sure to subscribe on
iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode, because who knows? Just one
conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. And don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of The Wealthy List Builders Survival Guide at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival. This is Igor Kheifets, and until next time
we talk, have a good one.