Lesson #1 for (prospective) entrepreneurs: Get the most out of books and apply valuable lessons directly to your business!
Summary:
What I learned for the last few months which turned out to be really really helpful is note-taking. But it's not just about "writing down everything they say." You've got to read fast (efficient enough so that you can save your precious time), and pick and highlight only the most important points/tips that you can apply to your business. And the next day, you take notes on them, read through your notes one more time, and start connecting valuable lessons to your business plan.
Details:
Let me give you an example.
Every night, before I go to bed, I enjoy my own little "reading time." I usually read a book for an hour or two. Let's say that yesterday night I read the marketing book called All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I would only skim through important points and skip trivial examples. Most business books are actually filled with A LOT of examples, and if there are examples you think are not really related to your business, you may want to skip them. (You've got millions of other books to read, so you've got to read fast!)
I find a sentence written in bold saying something about how customers buy what they "want," not what they need, implying irrationality and subjectivity of people's purchase behavior.
I like this sentence because it makes me think about consumer behavior: How do I make my customers "want" my products? How do I know what they want? How would this affect my future social media marketing plan?
The next morning, I wake up, get my breakfast, and then I would take out my note, write "by hand" sentences that I highlighted the previous day. It helps to write down the title of the book at the top of your note "really big" so that you can look it up later more easily. This step actually makes me skim through the book again, which refreshes my memory. Then I read my notes that I just wrote, one more time, this time rather slowly. It helps to read out loud. You are reading them so that you can remember valuable lessons forever.
Then I take out another note of mine which has my business plan written down. I compare two notes to see if I can apply the tips to my business plan. If I were to build an e-commerce website like Gilt, I would think about something like: "let's make my e-commerce website invitation-only and flash sale only, really exclusive so that people would die to buy my products. I would use celebrity marketing, ask a young celeb to advertise my product on his twitter page so that his fans would buy my products to look exactly like that celeb." Your business plan now has more insights included in it. Insights you gained by thinking hard about what successful business people said.
There is no point of reading business books if you are not going to remember any of them a day after you finish reading them. You don't want to miss any of the valuable lessons. You should pick out points that you want to think hard about for the next several hours or days. You can set your own "think time" later in the day, but remember, thinking hard is the most important part of the process.
Especially for the 20-something, young entrepreneurs, and those without mentors or resources, business books can actually help a lot. They give you real insights coming from really successful people. But unless you are ready to really "absorb" their points, it would be a waste of time.
