A few days ago, I shared that a founder friend suggested that I start my book library project with the end in mind—that is, with the desired output. The idea was that since I’m building a solution to a problem I’m experiencing, I’m in a position to produce hypothetical examples of the kind of output this solution could create that would solve the problem.

I've created three hypothetical outputs over the last few days. I wasn’t sure how to approach this at first, but I decided to base it on my journey with this project so it’s somewhat grounded in reality. I started with problems I’ve solved for myself during this journey or am actively trying to solve. For two examples, using problems I solved the old-fashioned way with the help of my notes and highlights from various biographies, I figured out the ideal outputs that would have gotten me to the same results more efficiently.

This was a fun exercise. Having already solved the problems, figuring out how this solution could have helped me get there more efficiently was interesting. What kind of information should it have provided to me? What kind of questions should it have asked me to get me thinking? What stories needed to be shared for suggestions to resonate with me?

I shared these outputs with my developer friend today. Having them to work backward from led to a productive discussion. We narrowed our focus to what must be built to make those outputs a reality. We realized that a structured approach to solving certain problems is required for consistent results. This reinforced the importance of data structure.

This exercise has been helpful and something I want to do going forward when I’m trying to build a solution to my own problem. I’ve got three example outputs that are complete now, and I’ve got another two or three that I want to document before the end of the year.

I’ve had this blog for almost five years, and I’m approaching 1,800 consecutive posts. When I started it, there wasn’t a plan. I was just sharing my thoughts. It was that simple. The design of the blog reflected the simplicity of my goal.  With so many blog posts, some of the simple features broke. They weren’t designed to work with so many posts.

Instead of just fixing the broken features, I decided to do a refresh of the blog. I wanted to make it easier to navigate my old posts and add features that better align with sharing information about books I’ve read.

With the help of Christopher Travers, the following changes were made:

Enhancements

• Related posts – This is the change I was most excited about. There was no way to point readers to other relevant posts. This became apparent when I created a series of posts about a book. Finding the other posts in the series wasn’t easy. We fixed this. A “Keep Reading” section was added at the bottom of the page for each post, showing related posts (if any). I currently use this for posts that are part of a series about the same book. See examples here and here.
• Tagline – My tagline says how many consecutive posts I’ve written and what my blog is about. It’s a quick way to let people know I’m serious and to flex a bit. It’s displayed on the desktop version in the left bar but not on mobile. Most visitors are on mobile and couldn’t see the tagline. This is fixed now. The tagline was added to the header of the mobile version.
• Next/prior post buttons – At the end of each blog post page, these buttons link to the posts before and after the current one. This feature wasn’t built with 1,700+ posts in mind, and it broke. This was fixed, and the design of the buttons was optimized for mobile. You can now easily go to the post before or the post after the one you’re reading.
• Goodreads – I want to share what books I’ve read and what I’m currently reading. For now, the link to Goodreads was a quick way to accomplish this. A link to my Goodreads profile has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner.
• Apple Music – I love music as much as I love reading. My personality is reflected in the music I listen to. I want people to see my other sides—not just books, entrepreneurship, and investing. A link to my Apple Music profile has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner.‍
• Spotify – I want to increase awareness of my podcasts about books I’ve read (even though I haven’t recorded any lately). A link to my podcast on Spotify has been added to the left bar of the desktop version. On mobile, you can find it in the hamburger menu in the top right corner. This is a bit of an experiment. I’ll test this more to determine if I want to link to music, my podcast, or‍of the desktop version. ‍
• Search – Results looked messy. We reduced the maximum number of search results to eight. I’m still not thrilled about this, but it looks less messy now.‍
• Category tags – These are displayed cleanly and designated as hyperlinks at the top of each blog post page. They mirror how the tags are shown on the home page (even though they’re shown at the bottom of each post on the home page).

Subtractions

• Comment on a post – No one was using this. The open-source software and its hosting were more things to manage (which I wasn’t doing well). We removed the “comment” button at the bottom of each post. I’m open to adding this back in the future if it makes sense.
• RSS – I don’t think anyone was using this. We removed the link to RSS feed from the left bar.
• Contact form – The contact form on the “Contact” page was used only for spam, which was annoying. The form was removed. Readers can now see options to contact me via email, X, or LinkedIn links on the “Contact” page.

A big thanks to Christopher and everyone who provided feedback. The refreshed blog looks cleaner and is easier to navigate.

The blog has turned into something that needs to be maintained. I didn’t do a good job of that in the first few years, outside of adding new blog posts. Going forward, I want to do a better job of maintaining the blog and make more enhancements that make it easier for people to find posts that are valuable to them. If anyone has suggestions on how to make the blog better or easier to use, please do share. Feedback is always much appreciated: Hello at jermainebrown.org

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas!

This past weekend, my developer friend and I chatted with a founder friend about the book library project. This founder has a unique perspective because he’s a self-taught developer, a trained designer, and a self-taught user experience (UX) person. He can take a product from idea to launch by himself—and has done so successfully by scaling and selling a software company—so he has credibility.

I wasn’t sure how the user experience should flow, so I wanted his input. The conversation was helpful, and he made a key suggestion: since the solution is being built to solve a problem that I’m experiencing firsthand, I could start with the output I’d be happy to see as a user instead of starting with the user experience. That is, I could create hypothetical examples of what kind of output I’d want this solution to create that would be tremendously valuable to me.

His point was that we could work backward to determine what the UX would need to create the output. But also, looking at this way would inform what would technically need to be built to create that output. My developer friend and I agreed that’d be a great exercise, so I’ve been working on it.

Doing this analysis has been a great exercise. It’s forced me to think about how the tool will improve my current workflow and, hopefully, that of other users. With so much information in so many books, whittling it down to the key pieces of valuable information in response to a specific question was thought-provoking. Thinking about how information and the connections between it (ideas, people, books, etc.) should be presented and how to do this without drowning myself in information was eye-opening.

I’ve completed one of these, and I’ll do a few more. A big takeaway is that the connections between information in various books make the library unique and valuable. Connections can uncover new insights. New insights help entrepreneurs develop unique solutions to problems or identify the unconventional next action to take given their goals. Today, the people who are able to take advantage of this process are mainly those gifted with a photographic memory, which isn’t me (more thoughts on that here). Showing these connections can’t be done using only text. A visual component allowing people to easily see the connections from a high level and decide where to double-click is necessary.

I’m a big proponent of starting with the end in mind and working backward, but I didn’t do a great job of doing that with this project. My friend pointed out that since I’m experiencing the problem myself, I’m too close—it’s hard to see past the details and stay focused on the big picture. He’s right. His suggested exercise is forcing me to articulate what will add value and how it looks. This will help my developer friend and me reprioritize the features and also highlight shortcomings in what we’ve already built and plan to build.

Sometimes, bringing in a fresh pair of eyes to look at things from 50,000 feet can be helpful. I’m glad my friend made the time to chat and share his candid feedback.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 42
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 259
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Finished reading Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy, a framework book about building a concentrated investment portfolio
• Reviewed data set in Looker Studio
• Experimented with ways to visualize data in Looker Studio
• Evaluated NoteBookLM Plus
• Updated UI sketches based on learnings
• Linked blog posts about the same book
• Updated descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Identified one strategy for titling blog posts based on Google Analytics
• Created draft of process flows for two core functions of the application

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create a list of potential metrics for weekly updates that better reflect this project
• Identify root causes of and fixes for data quality issues
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Analyze Google data to generate more ideas for creating blog post titles

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No struggles this week.

What I learned:

• I need to do a better job of articulating the problem I’m trying to solve. I pitched it several times this week in different ways, and I wasn’t happy with my performance. I need to make it shorter and to the point.
• I need to do a better job of crystallizing the target user’s profile.
• Focusing on features that add value for a small group of people who are already passionately reading biographies is more important in the early days than trying to add value for people who aren’t reading biographies. The value proposition will be clear to them. Targeting them will be easier. They can also be early champions who convince the nonreaders.
• Sketching out the technology’s process flow—how it works—was a valuable exercise and helped me understand more of the specifics of the technology.
• Solving a problem for yourself can make it harder to build a solution that brings value to others.
• Looker Studio will help me evaluate the quality of our data. It isn’t the right tool to use as a dashboard to present the data externally to users.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Today, I caught up with a founder friend who sold his software company for a few hundred million dollars. As entrepreneurs do, we started talking shop about business ideas and what each of us is working on. I pitched the idea of the “book library.”

I’ve talked to him about this project as it’s evolved throughout the year, and he’s been skeptical each time—rightfully so, because I wasn’t clear on many things. Today was different. He listened as I described the MVP I was building. He immediately got it. He had some great questions and great feedback.

One big point he brought up was that though entrepreneurs often have hair-on-fire problems and want ideas about how to solve them, there’s also a desire for ideas about the tactics of executing solutions. He gave an example: needing to reduce burn. The solution could be to significantly reduce the workforce (which he’s done). Most entrepreneurs don’t do that often, so they’d want to understand the nuances of executing the reduction in a way that treats employees as well as possible. To fill this tactical knowledge gap, most entrepreneurs learn from others who’ve recently made a reduction or botch it and learn from their own mistakes.

His points were valid and got me thinking. There’s a difference between tactical learning and strategic learning. Tactical learning involves learning what’s working in the current environment. And tactics are constantly evolving. Strategic learning is about learning the concepts and frameworks that solve problems that all entrepreneurs encounter. Strategies do evolve, but they tend to be more timeless. The bid ideas around marketing haven’t changed in decades, but how those strategies are executed continuously evolves. Marketers advertised heavily in newspapers forty years ago, but today it’s Google and Facebook.

I wasn’t aiming to provide entrepreneurs with a library of tactical wisdom. I feel like many resources, such as YouTube, make tactical learning accessible. But my friend got me thinking. The application of wisdom is a big thing entrepreneurs struggle with. Am I overlooking an opportunity to bring massive value to entrepreneurs by not including tactical wisdom? I’m not sure now, but I want to think about this more, with an open mind, during the holidays.

In 2023, I set Thanksgiving and Christmas reading goals: to read an 800-page book and then a pair of books that totaled about 700 pages. I didn’t hit either goal deadlines; I finished the books a few days late. But I did finish them, so I was happy!

In hindsight, I was ramping up my reading in a major way and then developing a daily reading habit. That set me up for 2024, during which I’ve read one book a week on average and started my book-related personal project. I had no idea this would happen when I set those goals in 2023, but I didn’t see much downside and went for it.

I want to repeat that this year by setting a goal for Christmas (setting a Thanksgiving goal slipped my mind)—but not reading. I want something challenging but different than reading. I want to get back to writing blog posts series on books I’ve read and creating podcasts from those series. Hopefully, I can form a habit that will be useful in 2025.

Some background for context: I did blog and podcast series over the summer. For example, see the Ted Turner series here and here (episodes 98–103). Writing a series of blog posts about a book required that I create a digest of the book, which took a ton of time. Recording and editing the podcast did too. It wasn’t sustainable, which led to my stopping after my summer experiment. Over Christmas, I’ll have more time.

My goal this Christmas is around writing. I’ll create a blog post series (five or six posts) about a book I’ve read, which means I’ll need to create a digest too. I’d ultimately like to create a backlog of blog post series and podcasts I can publish on a schedule. I’m not sure how I’ll do that, but creating this blog post series and parking it for future use seems like a good place to start.

That’s it. That’s my Christmas writing goal. Wish me luck.

I was chatting with a friend about how many books the “book library” MVP would need to include to be useful to entrepreneurs. He was thinking thousands or tens of thousands. However, I think it’s much less than that if you consider the number of books a person can read on their own. I’d imagine the average entrepreneur would get value from the MVP if a few hundred or even as few as one hundred books were included.

Let’s look at some numbers to demonstrate this, using my experience with this project as an example. Since February of this year, I’ve read 50 books, mostly biographies. By the end of the year, I aim to read 52 books, 1 per week on average.

Assuming I keep up that pace indefinitely, here’s how many books I’ll have read over various periods:

• Year 1: 52
• Year 2: 104
• Year 3: 156
• Year 4: 208
• Year 5: 260
• Year 10: 520
• Year 15: 780
• Year 20: 1,040
• Year 30: 1,560
• Year 40: 2,080
• Year 50: 2,600

I could read about 2,600 books at the absolute most, and that’s over 50 years. Even cracking 1,000 books would take me 20 years. And that’s reading a book a week, which my friends and family think is aggressive.

So, let’s say a founder reads half as fast: 2 books a month, or 26 books a year. Take all those numbers and cut them in half: 4 years to reach 100, 19 years to reach 500, and 38 years to reach 1,000.

Considering these figures, I think the “book library” could be hugely valuable to myself and other entrepreneurs. If I could use this tool to access the wisdom in a few hundred biographies to help me overcome hurdles, that would be the equivalent of several years of reading a book a week to acquire the same wisdom (assuming I remembered all of it). If the library included 1,000 books, it would be like accessing 20 years of reading.  

I love reading. It’s my favorite way to learn. But it’s not a time-efficient way of learning. Reading is powerful for entrepreneurs perpetually short on time and always looking for solutions to pressing problems, but it’s not a time-efficient problem-solving tool.

I’m excited about the value this tool can offer to entrepreneurs. It could be a great learning and problem-solving tool for entrepreneurs—and one that’s time efficient. It doesn’t need thousands of books to be valuable when it launches. A few hundred or even a hundred could give entrepreneurs access to the wisdom they would otherwise have to spend several years reading books to acquire.

Reading is valuable and something I plan to do as long as possible. I don’t want this tool to replace reading, I want it to complement it by pointing entrepreneurs to the right information in the right book at the exact time they need it.

I’ve been playing with NoteBookLM for six months or so. I’ve been really impressed with the product since its launch. Using your own documents as AI’s only source to pull from to answer your questions is powerful. Citations to AI’s pinpoint sources are provided in the responses, so you can fact-check. It’s like having a second, more powerful brain, which I love.

The product took off like wildfire when Google rolled out the audio overview feature, with which you can create a podcast featuring a conversation between two people based on the notes you upload. Last week, the company released a paid version, NoteBookLM Plus, for $20 per month and NoteBookLM Plus enterprise for large companies. Many other updates were also made.

One of my action items on this week’s accountability update is to evaluate the updated product and paid features. I’ve been playing around with it this week, and overall, I’m impressed with the updates. I think Google has a smash hit on its hands with this product. It’s going to bring personalized AI to the masses.

One thing I’ve been looking at hard is the UI update. The screen is divided into three sections: sources, chat, and studio. Sources and chat are straightforward—just what they sound like. Studio allows you to access the functions you can use to generate content (such as audio overview).

I wasn’t sure what to make of the UI at first glance. But after playing with it, I like its functionality. Because it shows the three-pane window on one screen, the product is much easier to use. I don’t have to switch between screens. I can minimize or expand each section as needed. And I can choose to expand information from all three sections if that’s helpful to my workflow.

The UI might not win style awards, but it wins on function. I think the NoteBookLM team is on to something with this new UI, and I bet we’ll see more AI applications borrow from it.

In case you’re interested in learning more about this UI change and seeing the UI in action, here’s a tweet from one of the founding NoteBookLM team members.