Is Business Book Club worth your time? Start here

0:00You've played this trailer because you're interested in business books, and I get it. You're busy and you want to know if this is worth your time, so let me get straight in and tell you what I'm doing here. Every episode, me and a guest will discuss one book. My guests are entrepreneurs and sometimes investors. The book that we discuss is chosen by them in answer to this question. Which book has had the biggest impact on your business or life? I asked them for three lessons from the book and crucially, what the real impact has been for them. Most of my guests have read hundreds of books. I'm asking for the single most valuable one then the most valuable learnings from the most valuable book and I'm doing this so that you my audience of founders can absorb the best bits from 50 books a year in about 30 minutes a week if you're an aspiring founder who's not yet made the leap or if you're a leader in your business you're also going to learn a lot here so you've got the premise if you're a busy founder I suggest you pick an episode and get stuck in now or if you have a little time and want to know a little bit more about me then stick around for a couple of minutes.

1:07Let's go back to 2019. I was living in London after an incredible few years working as an underwater videographer, a diving instructor, a ski instructor and even a tree surgeon. But for the past year I'd been working in live tv for a sports broadcasting company and I know what you're thinking an unlikely host for the business book club podcast or let's be honest this guy knows absolutely nothing about founding a company or running a business. Now by the time you'd be right. This far in my life I think the closest I'd come to being an entrepreneur was selling sweets to other kids in the playground at school and making copies of CDs that I'd sell to my 14 year old Walkman loving friends for 50p.

1:48No I had zero founder role models and zero founder experience. Yet I had an opportunity. I was about to ride the wave of a rising tide industry in podcasting. Here's how it unfolded. In my spare time, I started my own small podcast, Fascinate Pod. It was something I did to make use of my Monday to Wednesday that I always had off work because no sport was being played. It was an excuse for me to speak to interesting people that I had no right in speaking to otherwise. It was simply for the fun of it. But out of nowhere, an early guest, the CEO of a charity called Drug Science, asked me to produce a show for them.

2:29I figured what have I got to lose, so I called a friend who was a world-class mixing and mastering engineer, because if I was doing this I was going to do it very well, and it needed to sound way better than all the bedroom warrior podcasts that were out there at the time. Interestingly through word of mouth and with no effort at all we quickly got another couple of clients and after a brief discussion with my mastering engineer friend Rich we co-founded Fascinate Productions. You'll meet Rich on a couple of episodes by the way. At this point it's probably worth mentioning that the common route for founding an agency is that someone spends 10 plus years learning an industry then decides that they now have enough experience to go it alone.

3:08But between us we had zero years agency experience, zero years industry experience and absolutely no idea how to run a business. So how did we go from there to a successful exit to one of the Yuko's most exciting health tech companies in Zoe in just five years? You guessed it, books. We stood on the shoulders of giants and internalized the best lessons from a ton of books. Now I've got a belief that if you read the best two to three books on a topic you're 80 % of the way there and the rest comes from practice and iteration. I'll give you an example. Everyone's heard that hiring is difficult but until you've done it you don't really understand.

3:50After realizing and making mistakes firsthand I found the top three books on hiring. Work Rules, Hire With Your Head and my favorite, at who, a method for hiring, which gave me a method for hiring that I've iterated to suit my needs over the last few years. The impact of great people on a business is so big that I think we'd probably still be a struggling little podcast agency had I not read these three books. But Rich and I did this for every single area of our business. We did it to solve the biggest problems and take advantage of the biggest opportunities. I've never experienced personal growth like it.

4:28one last point i have read a ton of books that have seemed really good at the time but i've not taken any ideas away that can be implemented this means little to no impact from the time invested with business book club we end to avoid this pitfall by being very intentional with my question which book has had the biggest impact on your business or life this way my guests have to choose lessons they themselves have implemented ones that are making a real positive difference to real founders and their businesses. So please use this podcast as your way to learn the best lessons from 50 bucks a year.

5:05The actual last thing, can you do me a very quick favor that costs you absolutely nothing and means an awful lot to me? Can you click the subscribe button on your podcast player? I make Business Book Club for you for free and all I ask in return is that you help me get in front of more founders like yourself and clicking the subscribe button helps me do just that. Thank you so much. Every great founder stands on the shoulders of giants. This podcast is the most efficient way to climb up there. Now hit subscribe and I'll see you on the first episode.