Focus On Talents: The Role of Books in Achieving Personal and Professional Success with Nick Hutchison

🎧 In this exciting episode of Pathways with Amber Stitt, your guide on the road to personal and professional transformation, sits down with the remarkable Nick Hutchison - founder of the podcast - BookThinkers: Life-Changing Books, www.NickHutch.com, and a passionate advocate for lifelong learning. 📘

🚀 Join us as Nick shares insightful stories from his journey from a non-reader to a voracious learner, and how books dramatically reshaped his worldview. Discover the power of "Atomic Habits", the impact of mentorship, and how understanding your learning style can revolutionize your approach to success. 

🌈 Nick discusses his colorful bookshelf, the power of environmental cues, and his book "Rise of the Reader."

Amber and Nick deep dive into topics such as:

- The transformative shift from passive consumption to active learning 🧠

- The science behind why monotasking with physical books can be more beneficial than multitasking with digital media 📚

- Practical strategies to combat the infamous 'scrolling syndrome' and focus more on productive tasks 📲

Whether you're a lifelong learner, an aspiring entrepreneur, or someone looking to inject some purposeful action into your life, this episode is packed with actionable advice and heartwarming stories that inspire and motivate.

🔗 **Check Out More From Nick Hutchison:**

Visit Nick's Website: http://www.NickHutch.com to explore his vibrant bookshelf and discover more about his innovative approach to reading and personal growth. Also on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookthinkers/ As well as LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bookthinkers/

📖 **Books Mentioned in this Episode:**

- “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

- “Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss

- “The Millionaire Fastlane” by MJ Demarco

- “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

- “Deep Work” by Cal Newport

- “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell

- “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

- “Rise of the Reader” by Nick Hutchison

- "The War of Art" and "Do the Work" by Steven Pressfield

- "The Life You're Made For" by Heather Penny

💡Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more deep dives and insightful conversations with fascinating guests every week. Share this episode with fellow book lovers and those on their own path to personal development!

👉 **Follow Amber:**

Website: http://www.amberstitt.com

Subscribe: Amber's YouTube Channel

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberstitt_

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-stitt-acp-chfc%C2%AE-cltc%C2%AE-clu%C2%AE-gallup%C2%AE-1b186821/

🎧 Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this book filled journey to unlocking your fullest potential. See you in the next episode! 

And remember, let's take action today!!!🌟

#PathwayswithAmberStitt, #NickHutchison, #AmberStitt, #BookThinkers, #takeactiontoday,

Transcript

Amber Stitt [00:00:00]:
Hello, and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and today we welcome Nick Hutchison, today a very famous podcaster and the founder of BookThinkers. Welcome to the show today, Nick.

Nick Hutchison [00:00:13]:
I am excited to be here. Can I ask you the first question today?

Amber Stitt [00:00:16]:
Ooh. I guess it's only fair.

Nick Hutchison [00:00:19]:
What's the best book that you've read in the last, I don't know, six months to a year? What stands out? What comes to mind?

Amber Stitt [00:00:24]:
Okay, just quickly, "Atomic Habits" would be the quick one. In my mind, I heard it on clubhouse background, COVID timeframe, and it was one of the audibles that was just...I was in the car and I was...every sentence was like, "Yes, okay, that makes sense." So that's the one that does stand out. But I might read one book a week, one business, plus, sometimes one fiction. Just depends.

Amber Stitt [00:00:48]:
That's the one that really stands out to me. The answer should have been your book, though, right?

Nick Hutchison [00:00:52]:
No, no. Any answer is great. Maybe I'll write a follow up to "Atomic Habits" called "Atomic Reading Habits" or something like that, because there are no books that my book gets directly compared to. It's sort of a standalone product. But "Atomic Habits" is very close. In fact, I love the idea in James's book that every action you take today is a vote for the person you're becoming tomorrow, or something like that. And we have agency, we have control. We can take action.

Nick Hutchison [00:01:17]:
And so thank you for indulging my curiosity for a minute. I do love "Atomic Habits".

Amber Stitt [00:01:22]:
Well, I guess it's fair to say to you that you might be a little bit of a book nerd. Is that okay to say that about you?

Nick Hutchison [00:01:27]:
I would say so, yeah. Now, if you told me that when I was in high school, I would have said, "What the heck?" But these days, I fully embrace my nerd qualities.

Amber Stitt [00:01:35]:
Now, let's talk about your bookcase, because anyone that follows Reese's, Reese Witherspoon's Instagram, there's so much of a rainbow color palette happening here. And it's like, if I could have a huge library, that's what I would do. But you're the first guy that I've seen really knock out a huge one, and I noticed it on NickHutch.com. That's your website, correct? Where you have an awesome video. That's where I noticed it the first time, and I was slightly jealous, so I didn't know. Did you and Reese talk about this? Did you guys put this together?

Nick Hutchison [00:02:06]:
No. I'm not sure that Reese knows who I am just yet. Maybe she does.

Amber Stitt [00:02:10]:
But maybe we should tell her about you.

Nick Hutchison [00:02:12]:
Yes, I think we should. Definitely a fan. And I bought this house with my then fiance, now wife about a year ago. And when I was transitioning my bookshelves from where they were prior to this house to here, I said to my audience, "How would you like to see my books arranged?" Because I had this entire book thing put in on an entire wall, and I put it up to a vote, and there were a bunch of options available, but people said by color. And so I've had it this way ever since. And it definitely pops. Like, when you walk up into this space, you're like, "Whoa, that's pretty cool."

Amber Stitt [00:02:46]:
But there is something to be said...Not everybody loves walking in and having this, like walking into a Barnes and Noble. There's a favorite smell of mine, which is paper and books, and that seems a little weird sometimes to people. But I love a hard back book, and I want it to go on my shelf, but then when you run out of shelf space, you almost look like a borderline hoarder. So you have to find this delicate balance. But I like that you can celebrate all the...They're almost like living, breathing entities to me, is how I feel about books. I just had to give a shout out to your aesthetics, so I appreciate that.

Nick Hutchison [00:03:17]:
Well, thank you so much. There's a concept that I write about in "Rise of the Reader," called play bigger triggers. And it's this idea that if you surround yourself with positive environmental cues that reinforce the person you're becoming, you're more likely to take action. And so my environment has all of these. You could call them souvenirs. You could call them trophies. You could call them play bigger triggers. I have all of these objects in my environment that remind me of the things that I've worked on and overcome and learned.

Nick Hutchison [00:03:47]:
And it's hard not to feel successful and feel like you just want to go out there and crush the day when you're surrounded by so many books.

Amber Stitt [00:03:54]:
I love how you say that. Now, you talked about it wasn't always this way. What was the transition point for you to just jump in? I don't know that...Do you love reading an actual book? Is that your best way of receiving information?

Nick Hutchison [00:04:07]:
Yes, it is, but it wasn't always that way. So when I was growing up, I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic. And that behavior of I'm "too cool for school". It sort of carried with me through most of my college experience as well. But when I was going into my senior year of college at the University of New Hampshire. I was going for a business degree. I took an internship at a local software company. And my boss at the time, Kyle, he recommended podcasts.

Nick Hutchison [00:04:35]:
So that's what I started with. I think he saw some unfulfilled potential in, like, a young 20 year old sort of arrogant, know-it-all, sales guy. And he said, "Hey, you should check out some of these shows on your commute to and from the office." And so I did. And over time consuming so much of this content, I realized that so many of the successful people that I wanted to be like, they had either written a book about how they did it, or they gave at least some credit for their success to the books that they were reading.

Amber Stitt [00:05:04]:
Yeah.

Nick Hutchison [00:05:04]:
And so I just sort of had this moment, it was at 20 years old where I realized that if I was deliberately choosing to ignore that advice, then I was deliberately choosing to live under my potential. And I was a little too competitive, I think, to accept that. And so I went to my local Barnes and Noble, and I learned to love the smell. Now, I love the smell, but I really didn't read prior to 20, you know. And over the last ten years or so, I've consumed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these books.

Amber Stitt [00:05:29]:
We've talked about this a little bit on my show. I take people through 5 Steps. Sometimes we get to just one with a guest. But ultimately, I want people to feel that they can have success at any age, any generation. I've talked to you about that. And if you look at the greats and you study the greats and maybe you want to make some money, you study the people that are very wealthy and successful. There is a common, I think, a commonality. Like you mentioned Tim Ferriss in his book, the Titans, Book of Titans.

Amber Stitt [00:05:57]:
He's got these...

Nick Hutchison [00:05:57]:
"Tools of Titans"

Amber Stitt [00:05:58]:
Yeah, I think meditation was another one that was key. And I know that in your book you talk about wellness and wealth. Can you expand a little bit on what that's meant to you in your life?

Nick Hutchison [00:06:10]:
Yes, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you what. When I first read "Tools of Titans" by Tim Ferriss, he says somewhere, I don't remember if it was in the beginning or the end of the book, that out of all the high performers that he's studied and analyzed, some huge percentage of them gave some credit for their success to mindfulness, to some type of daily meditation, or mindfulness practice. So just in my own experience, I started to practice meditation six or seven years ago on a fairly consistent basis. I mean, I've tried all sorts of things, from sensory deprivation, float tank meditations, to, like, literal neurofeedback devices that you wear on your head that help you train yourself to forget thoughts, to just sitting down, you know, for a few minutes. And I love mindfulness in meditation. One of the biggest areas of improvement that I've experienced over the last ten years has been an improvement in emotional intelligence. I have more space between an input to my brain and my reaction.

Nick Hutchison [00:07:08]:
I can process, I can operate from a place of logic and not emotion. And that is a direct result of the time that I've spent being mindful in meditation, journaling, gratitude practices. So, in my book, the first half is all about strategies for mastering your reading habits and applying what you learn. The second half details over 100 things that I've implemented from the books that I've read, and it's broken down into three sections. Similar to Tim's book, I have health, wealth, and happiness. So I give the reader all sorts of tips and tricks and recommendations and all sorts of documented experiences that I've had implementing the things that I've read from these books, which is really cool. And I put it in there because I wanted to prove to everybody I'm not just somebody here talking book philosophy.

Nick Hutchison [00:07:55]:
Right?

Amber Stitt [00:07:55]:
Sure.

Nick Hutchison [00:07:55]:
I'm optimizing for action, and that's the thing that I care the most about.

Amber Stitt [00:07:59]:
I want to come back to that, but back to what you were talking about with the segmenting of the book, I think that can help people that might not love to read, but then can take little bite sized nuggets. And I think that's what I found with "Atomic Habits", is I said, anyone can just take a sentence or two and give application back to emotional intelligence. I did look a lot into Travis Bradbury's work about a decade ago, but then, as a high input person, I love to learn. And so I did Gallup StrengthsFinder Certification®. That's a little bit of something that I do on the side, but I love to read a book. Like I said, the hardback. But then my husband is opposite learner. He didn't understand why I'm getting extra alphabet soup behind my name, and I'm grabbing all these books.

Amber Stitt [00:08:39]:
But then when he joined my business not too long ago, when we did some Kolbe Index™ and StrengthsFinders® and a few other things, we learned his learning style and what he's really good at, and we're laughing because his form of learning is completely different. Let's just celebrate that and not be upset about it. And it was like, "Okay, now do you see?" And so we have a common ground now, and I have found that along the way. And so I know that it's been different for you in different parts of your life as well.

Nick Hutchison [00:09:04]:
Yeah, I mean, as we talked about, I was not much of a reader growing up. Today. I love physical paper books, you know, 80%...Here's the science, at least that I've read...80% of the inputs to our brain are visual. 80%. So reading a physical paper book, like being fully immersed in it, is an act of monotasking.

Nick Hutchison [00:09:22]:
And you're leveraging your strongest ability to organize and retain information, which is your visual input. Monotasking is the act of focusing on one thing for an extended period of time. Cal Newport calls it "Deep Work". And so, yeah, I love reading physical paper books. And by the way, I just did my Clifton 34, 36. Which one is it?

Amber Stitt [00:09:42]:
Do you remember any of that?

Nick Hutchison [00:09:43]:
Oh, I could pull it up if you want. Yeah, you know what? I have a friend who's also a certified coach. We haven't done a deep dive on it yet, and he was telling me that my number one, it was the least likely to be your number one. Let me...I'll look it up.

Amber Stitt [00:09:57]:
That's actually interesting because, yeah, there's a generational where the younger generation is now. It's not that they're not high achievers. They're less focused on, more that competitive. It's more humanitarian. It's got to be purpose driven more than us just maybe surviving and having high competition to make money. So that'll be an interesting one.

Nick Hutchison [00:10:14]:
Do you want me to read you my top five, or ten? Which one?

Amber Stitt [00:10:17]:
You could just do top five.

Nick Hutchison [00:10:19]:
Okay, so number one is "Command". Number two is "Learner". No surprise. Number three is "Activator". I care so much about action, so not another surprise. Number four, "Responsibility". And number five, "Self Assurance".

Amber Stitt [00:10:32]:
You got "Command" and "Self Assurance" in the top five, so he's laughing about it. Now, for the audience, you and I have some similar..."Activators" are really going to giddy up and get things done. We also can be impatient. So when you learn about that self awareness, I know that being impatient is great for my clients. With my insurance transactions, I want to make sure that I'm being super proactive. I'm not going to be waiting around to get things done. You know, you talked about the podcast, and like your previous boss was saying, listen to these podcasts, and you kind of made fun of that person you were back in the day, but you just had this confidence about it and it wasn't intentional. But what "Enneagrams" make fun of when it comes to "Cliftons" is that we're almost like the lap puppies, just excited about who we are.

Amber Stitt [00:11:11]:
We don't try to fix what we're not. Where "Enneagrams" really get into the details of how you act when there's some emotion and things happening. But that "Learner" does not surprise me. And back to your book. You were saying in your second phase of your book, I think you talk about stopping the scroll. And when you're talking about that book in your hand and that mono..., what's the term that you used?

Nick Hutchison [00:11:30]:
Monotasking. The opposite of multitasking.

Amber Stitt [00:11:34]:
Monotasking. And I'm just laughing because can people really stop the scroll? And you've done some of the work to put the book together and I don't want to give too much away. We'll all just take this with grace. Is there anything that you would like to share at the human level right now where people are just guilty of multitasking? Is there anything without giving too much away about your book?

Nick Hutchison [00:11:52]:
Yeah, no, of course I can. And I could share a whole bunch of things that have worked for me in the book. I talk about this kitchen safe timer that I have. Funny enough, I actually knocked it off my standing desk last week and it broke. So I need to order a new one. But it's literally this little timer. And you could dial it up to an hour, or 2 hours, and you take your phone and you drop it in and you press lock and your phone's gone.

Amber Stitt [00:12:14]:
Oh yes, I think that was on Shark Tank, or something.

Nick Hutchison [00:12:17]:
It was. Yeah, they were on Shark Tank. And so I use that. I also have this great app on my phone called, One Sec, onesec. One Sec. And when you set it up, you could do this for any app. I do it for Instagram because that's where I get caught scrolling. And so what it does is it puts a space between the actions.

Nick Hutchison [00:12:36]:
So when I actually. I'll do it. I just transferred iPhones. We'll see what happens if I click. It's not going to work right now, this is a new iPhone as of today. But when I click Instagram, this One Sec app pops up as an intermediary and it makes me take a 15 2nd pause. There's like a breath thing on the screen.

Nick Hutchison [00:12:54]:
And then it asks you, do you actually want to use Instagram? And so, and then it keeps stats. So I looked last week and it stopped, I don't know, in the last couple of months, month or whatever, it stopped over 2000 Instagram sessions.

Amber Stitt [00:13:10]:
Wow.

Nick Hutchison [00:13:11]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:13:12]:
So isn't that funny?

Nick Hutchison [00:13:12]:
So those are things that I do to stop the scroll as much as I can.

Amber Stitt [00:13:16]:
That's interesting because we as business people have to market and also provide community and thought leadership to everybody. But it's almost like you're challenging this responsibility, which you and I have, some overlapping top ten. We won't go into that today. But you got to be responsible and take authority in the work that you're doing and then the work that, you know, you're going to be kind of outside of the business. And so with your coaching, do you tell your clients that they need to be maintaining some sort of balance here between apps or maybe auto schedulers?

Nick Hutchison [00:13:45]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I believe that all of us are capable of doing more, and you have to manage distraction in order to achieve more. You need to focus your work and so, yeah, absolutely. I've got all sorts of other tips and tricks for managing relationships with, you know, scrolling and social media, because at the end of the day, those are short term dopamine hits. I mean, yeah, there's no Instagram or TikTok video that we've scrolled through that has ever had any type of lasting impact on our lives. But every single book we read is serving our future self. Like, we are better off for decades as a result of those books.

Nick Hutchison [00:14:25]:
And so, yeah, it's a little bit of delayed gratification. You know, I write about the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and all sorts of things that you can use to delay gratification and serve your future self. Like, be kind to that person who you're building. Be kind to that person who's gonna look back in five years and say, "Hey, what the heck were you doing?" You know? Or, "Hey, thank you so much for reading those books." Right?

Amber Stitt [00:14:47]:
Could you share with the audience where you've seen almost like a transformation between their learning style and applying after maybe one of your exercises that you do? What I really want to nail down is even though people might be different, they might not have your top five, and there's other people that are successful out there, there is a pathway to excellence, and it involves that work within. Is there anything you'd like to share? You've just seen this "A-ha" moment with a client where within the exercises, or things that you provide between your coaching and book, that it's just like, you gotta tell the story.

Nick Hutchison [00:15:19]:
Yeah, I mean, there are so many things that come to mind. I'll make a couple of statements, and then I'll give an example. So these books behind me, they condense decades of somebody else's lived experience into days of reading. Sometimes I joke, like, yeah, I'm 29 years old, about to turn 30. But if you include all the books behind me, I'm thousands of years old. Because a book like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a great biography, details his entire life from a to z. Trillions of dollars of business decisions available for $20 in a few hours of your time.

Nick Hutchison [00:15:51]:
Like, there's no better opportunity than that.

Amber Stitt [00:15:53]:
Tracking it. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Hutchison [00:15:55]:
And you could read a book and choose not to implement it and nothing changes. Or you could read a book and choose to implement it and everything changes, and there's a book to solve every problem that we've ever experienced. Our human experiences are not very unique, despite the fact that we want to think they are. About a hundred billion people, 100 billion people have lived before us. Millions of them have documented their greatest life lessons that may have taken them 30, 40, 50, 60 years to learn in the form of a book. And thousands of those books literally detail how to overcome the same problem that you're currently facing. Speaking to the audience, like, doesn't matter what you're facing. It could be diet and nutrition related.

Nick Hutchison [00:16:33]:
It could be an existential life crisis. It could be about your purpose, or your business, or your personal finances, or insurance. Like, there's a book about it. And if you choose not to read it and you choose not to implement it, then you're choosing to prolong your pain and to take this even further. Like, if you're experiencing some type of pain in your business, or personal life on a daily basis, over the next 30 years, if left unchecked, you'll experience that pain almost 11,000 more times. Right? 365 times 30. And so why not stop? Like, take a little inventory, understand the problem that you're facing. Find the solution.

Nick Hutchison [00:17:10]:
Could be "Atomic Habits", could be "Rise of the Reader", could be any other book out there, and use it to change your life. I'll tell you a quick story. This will take a minute or two, but this is a really cool one. My wife and I were on our honeymoon this year. We visited a couple of countries in Europe, and we were in Croatia in a small city called Dubrovnik. So Dubrovnik only has, like, 30,000 people by itself, but we were outside of Dubrovnik in this kind of, like, little coastal area. I don't know, 500 people lived there or something.

Amber Stitt [00:17:40]:
Croatia is like that sleeper country that...my friend's Croatian...and she goes, people just don't almost ignore it. And it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Nick Hutchison [00:17:47]:
It really is. It's the best of Italy and Greece, but for half the price. Like, it really is. I mean, I believe that. So it is a sleeper. So check this out. My wife and I see this restaurant kind of across a bay, and she says, "Hey, I want to go get a drink at this bar, this restaurant." So we walk over, and on the way there, we walk past another restaurant.

Nick Hutchison [00:18:05]:
She says, "Hey, we should make a reservation here for tomorrow night." And I said, "Oh, of course. Like, we'll come back on our walk back, we'll make one." So we go, we have a couple of drinks, we're having fun. It gets late. We start the walk back, and the restaurant's closed. And she's all bummed, like, "Oh, well, you know, we'll have to come back tomorrow." And I said, this is, I don't know what you want to call it, the command, the activator, whatever.

Nick Hutchison [00:18:24]:
I said, "No, let me just go inside, see if there's somebody still here cleaning up. And I'll just ask." So I go inside and I find somebody who's cleaning a table. I said, "Hey, my wife and I would love to make a reservation for tomorrow night. Can I please make a reservation, please?" And he looks up and he's like, "Yeah, sure. By the way, I'm a huge fan." I'm like, "A huge fan of what?" And he's like, "BookThinkers, man, like your business."

Nick Hutchison [00:18:45]:
I was like, "Oh, my gosh, of course. Like, now I need to hear the details." Of course. I thought he had no idea who I was, but of course he did. And so he starts talking about all of the book recommendations I've made through our platform and through our social media, all these really intricate details of things that I've shared on podcasts. And he had never reached out, he had never sent us a message, never emailed us. Like, nothing.

Amber Stitt [00:19:06]:
Oh, my gosh.

Nick Hutchison [00:19:08]:
He went on a ten minute rant about all of the things that we've done for him, and it was just, it felt so good, you know, to hear the impact. And one of the lessons there is that impact isn't felt unless you get feedback sometimes. Like, I didn't know that I was positively impacted. This guy in the middle of nowhere in Croatia until he told me about it. But it was, yeah, it was such a cool thing. And he was. All these recommendations and strategies from our content that he was talking about. It was so cool.

Nick Hutchison [00:19:35]:
Like, it was one of the best moments that I've had while traveling. So anyway, that's what came to mind. Yes, we did. We went back the next night and he wasn't our server, but he ended up covering our meal, which was so fun. And then I got his favorite author, MJ DeMarco, author of the Millionaire Fastlane and a few other books, to sign some books and send them to me, and then I sent them to him. So it was cool.

Amber Stitt [00:19:57]:
Ah, I mean, that's like, you do this because of, or maybe you didn't notice, but once it happens, you're like, oh, my gosh. And I wrote something down. You mentioned something about age, and I want to almost close up our episode with this and we'll link up your information about your book and where people can find you, of course. There's a thing that happens, especially in my industry, financial services, where a lot of people brag, or it's authority build. If you say, "I have had this many years of experience on the job over a decade", and I've said that I've grown up in the industry and I have over ten years myself. But how many minutes did you spend on the work? And it can go back to the personal development you've been talking about, because the amount of knowledge that you've poured in, you've explained that anybody can do this. There's so many resources, and they can start with your podcast, going to your website as one example. But you're seeing how this is affecting globally, and it can feel like, oh, you know, that's wild.

Amber Stitt [00:20:52]:
But like, your story, the information that you're trading with people, the communication, all of that is so important and kind of makes the world go around. I know that sounds a little cheesy, but it goes back behind you. Like, we start talking about the wisdom that comes from behind you on the bookshelf, then you're in the middle of it, and then you're pushing that forward. And I didn't really think about that when I was thinking about prepping for today's just talking with you. But, like, this is like you're living and breathing for people that are starting something new. Get into the work, whatever that work is, whatever you need to study, read, have those conversations, because it's about the minutes on the job. I don't think it's the years.

Nick Hutchison [00:21:25]:
I agree. Yeah. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book "Outliers", he calls it 10,000 hours. You know, you become a master when you've dedicated 10,000 hours to something. And you're right. It's not about the years. It's about the actual work. Another one of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield, that's his whole thing.

Nick Hutchison [00:21:42]:
"Do the Work". It's just about the work. Nothing else matters. It's only about the work. I think he has a book called, "Do the Work", but he has a great book called, "The War of Art", which is about overcoming resistance and giving...

Amber Stitt [00:21:53]:
I just got goosebumps. My grandmother, I talk about her on my show. She's 93 next month. She gave me that book so long ago when I was writing a first chapter in a co-author book, and it just didn't sink into, like, "Oh, my grandmother had this interesting author, and it's a small, like, little interesting book." But now that I'm in with a lot of these authors that speak to each other and there's, like, this thought leadership club that we have somehow, indirectly, that book pops up a lot and I forget his name. But I know the cover of the book, and I know how it felt when I read it.

Nick Hutchison [00:22:22]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:22:22]:
Funnt you say that.

Nick Hutchison [00:22:22]:
He's amazing, I'll tell you what, he's become, I kind of say this jokingly, but not jokingly, almost like a grandfather figure to me. We've interviewed him a few times on our podcast. I've got to spend a lot of time with him. We got to go out and visit him at his house in Malibu last year. And funny enough, I posted a piece of content about him today on my personal Instagram. He's just such a good guy. Like a really good human.

Nick Hutchison [00:22:44]:
But talking about "do the work", that's his whole message.

Amber Stitt [00:22:47]:
Well, I see my grandmother here soon, so I'll share that with her.

Nick Hutchison [00:22:51]:
Yes, please do.

Amber Stitt [00:22:52]:
Well, awesome. I'm so happy to finally get to meet you, and we'll let everyone know how to find you through the description boxes and really appreciate you giving time today. Before we wrap up, I'm sure you've mentioned this on other podcasts, but outside of your book, anything, like within the last couple of weeks, that's just like a new favorite author, book, nugget, do you want to share before we wrap up?

Nick Hutchison [00:23:13]:
That's a good question. In the last couple of weeks...

Amber Stitt [00:23:16]:
Or, it could be your favorite still of all time.

Nick Hutchison [00:23:18]:
Well, I'll give a new one. There's a book that I read recently called, "The Life You're Made For" by Heather Penny. She's an executive leadership coach. She asks a question right in the beginning of the book. It's something like this? Like, "When was the last time you actually checked in on your dreams? And are you trending towards them?" Like, are you caught in the chaos of the day to day? Are you actually working, doing the work to create the life that you know you're capable of living? So sort of a pause to take inventory and work on your life instead of just in your life. So many people get caught up in the day to day, the chaos. They have no control. And every once in a while, there's a book like that that comes along, and it helps you sort of look from a third party perspective, like a macro perspective on your own life.

Nick Hutchison [00:23:59]:
And then there's so much valuable information in that book about what she calls the 3 C Framework and the first one's clarity. And I've spent a lot of time going through her exercises and working on clarity. I think clarity is one of the most underutilized and underrepresented opportunities for growth in all of our businesses. I mean, if you can communicate exactly what you want to the universe, the universe will conspire to assist you. But it takes clarity. You can't just be throwing things in every direction. You need to be focused. And so that was a really good realization, I think, and some really good work that I did from that book.

Amber Stitt [00:24:35]:
It's almost like you're recharging your dream batteries. Like, you have to go back and say, "Hey, where were we starting?" And, like, "Big Magic" with Elizabeth Gilbert. If we're not letting, those thoughts could go somewhere else if we don't take care of them. And always just do that checkpoint for yourself. So thanks again, Nick. I really appreciate you being here.

Nick Hutchison [00:24:52]:
Yeah, appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Amber Stitt [00:24:56]:
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Amber Stitt Show. For more information about the podcasts, books, articles, and more, please visit me at: www.AmberStitt.com. Until next week, enjoy your journey at home, and at work. Thank you for listening!