Last week, I finished reading Roy Thomson’s autobiography, the second book I’ve read about him in the last month. I found another biography about him, and I’m considering reading that, too. Last month, I read a biography about Felix Dennis, the second book I’d read about him.

I initially resisted reading more than one book about an entrepreneur, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Some material may be repetitive, but subsequent books usually contain new information too. Multiple books provide multiple perspectives on an entrepreneur’s life and get closer to a 360-degree view of that person’s journey. Reading too many books about a person would yield diminishing returns, but right now, my gut tells me that two or three books about a person is likely a good number.

I’ve also changed my thinking about how I record information about entrepreneurs I’m studying. Before, I thought in terms of books. Each book was an individual record, and I created a digest for each book. This meant I could have multiple digests about a single person. But now I’m thinking in terms of people. I need to consider how I want to capture the information. Ultimately, I want to do more than create blog posts and podcasts with these digests. Do I create one digest per person and add information from multiple books? Do I keep creating one digest per book? Or do I do something completely different?

I’ll be thinking about this question more and getting perspectives from people with relevant data management experience. In the meantime, I might experiment with my digest and blog post formats a bit.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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: 28
• Total book digests created: 12
• Total blog posts published: 154
• Total audio recordings published: 103
• Average digest length: 5.69% of the book’s length
• Average recording length: TBD

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 1
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 6
• This week’s digest length: 7.28% of the book’s length
• This week’s recording length: 17 minutes

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

• Read Roy Thomson's autobiography
• Finished creating a digest of the biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Had one additional feedback session
• Edited and published an audio podcast series about Ted Turner’s autobiography

Content changes:

• Tweaked the introduction to the podcast a bit

What I’ll do next week:

• Read Claude Hopkins’s autobiography
• Write and publish blog posts about Roy Thomson’s autobiography
• Create a GPT using one of my book digests

Asks:

• Introductions to developers with deep experience in AI large-language models or working with big, unstructured data sets

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

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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 notable struggles this past week

What I learned:

• “What would they do in my situation?” is a question entrepreneurs always ask themselves when they’re learning about or speaking with other entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are constantly trying to determine what actions they should take to solve business problems.
• The blog posts and podcasts were helpful in the early part of this project. My energy shifted as I realized they’re ways to share the information I’ve compiled on entrepreneurs. I’m more excited about compiling information on entrepreneurs and figuring out how to make it easy for others to use it.
• I’ve been conducting feedback sessions on the podcasts I’ve created. They’ve been really helpful, but because of my shift in focus, I don’t need to do them as frequently.
• If you want to build an app, you can verbally describe what you want and AI can write the code for you.
• ChatGPT has a privacy setting that prevents it from training its models on content you upload to ChatGPT. You can make this and other privacy requests here.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Happy Labor Day!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!

‍

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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: 27
• Total book digests created: 11
• Total blog posts published: 147
• Total audio recordings published: 97
• Average digest length: 5.56% of the book’s length
• Average recording length: TBD

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 1
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0
• This week’s digest length: 9% of the book’s length
• This week’s recording length: no recordings this past week

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

• Solidified what product I want to build related to this project—very excited about this!
• Read the biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Finished creating the digest for Michael Bloomberg’s autobiography
• Had one additional feedback session
• Recorded audio podcast series about Ted Turner’s autobiography

Content changes:

• No recordings this past week

What I’ll do next week:

• Read Roy Thomson’s autobiography
• Create a digest of a biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Write and publish blog posts about the biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Edit and publish the audio podcast series about Ted Turner’s autobiography
• Complete two feedback sessions

Asks:

• Introductions to developers with deep experience in AI large language models (LLMs)

Week two hundred thirty-one was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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 material struggles this past week

What I learned:

• Michael Bloomberg’s strategy is fascinating. His mission is to provide accurate data and analysis of that data to help people do their jobs. The various media platforms are distribution methods that make people aware of Bloomberg and point them back to his main product, the Terminal. Bloomberg’s data and analysis make Bloomberg’s media content unique. This strategy has me looking at my project from a different perspective.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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: 26
• Total book digests created: 10
• Total blog posts published: 140
• Total audio recordings published: 97
• Average digest length: 5.3% of the book’s length
• Average recording length: TBD

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 1
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0
• This week’s digest length: 5.5% of the book’s length
• This week’s recording length: no recordings this past week

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

• Read the autobiography of Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P.
• Finished creating the digest of the Roy Thomson biography
• Had two additional feedback sessions

Content changes:

• No recordings this past week

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Create a digest of Michael Bloomberg’s autobiography
• Write and publish blog posts about the biography of Jack Kent Cooke
• Record, edit, and publish an audio podcast series about Ted Turner’s autobiography
• Complete two feedback sessions

Asks:

• No asks this week

Week two hundred thirty was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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 material struggles this past week.

What I learned:

• Some steps in creating digests are tedious and repetitive. Using technology to help with them would materially reduce the time required to create each digest.
• Interesting fact: Dave Ramsey’s company will generate over $300 million in revenue this year.
• To publish a podcast series on a book every other week, I should spend the first week preparing and the second week recording, editing, and publishing. The preparation week leads to more valuable insights.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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

Metrics (cumulative since 4/1/24):

• Total book digests created: 9 (+0)
• Total blog posts published: 133 (+7)
• Total audio recordings published: 97 (+5)
• Recent digest length: no digest completed this week
• Recent recording length: 12 min (+0)

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

• Read the biography of Roy Thomson, founder of what became Thomson Reuters
• Began creating the digest of the biography of Roy Thomson
• Had two additional feedback sessions with podcast listeners

Content:

• No material changes

What I’ll do next week:

• Read the biography of either Michael Bloomberg or Jack Kent Cooke.
• Finish creating a digest of the Roy Thomson biography.
• Write and publish blog posts about one book: roughly five posts
• Record audio podcast about one book: roughly five recordings
• Publish audio podcast about one book: roughly five recordings
• Complete three feedback sessions

Asks:

• No asks this week

Week two hundred twenty-nine was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

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 material struggles this past week.

What I learned:

• It takes much more work to turn an excellent entrepreneurial journey into a compelling blog post and audio podcast series that resonates with others if it was captured poorly in a biography. Sometimes it’s worth it, and sometimes it’s not.
• Newsletters are another way to distribute what I’m learning from books.
• I’ve learned in feedback sessions that most listeners multitask when they listen to the podcast. Therefore, sometimes they don’t make connections between what I’m sharing from a book to their situation. When I talk with them individually, I make the connection for them, and it changes their perspective on that podcast series. I could do a better job of connecting the dots in my recordings. I could share examples from my experiences or hypothetical ones. That might kick-start listeners to generate their own ideas on how to apply what they’re hearing.
• Reading and digest creation are habits I need to do daily because they build the library. A high-quality library is the most valuable component. As the library expands, its value increases.
• I need to consistently capture my insights, personal experiences, and links to stories of other entrepreneurs in each digest.  

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!