My buddy Darren seems to read every business book that gets published. I’m not sure how because I surely cannot. He always seems to have just finished the most recent book to hit the shelves. In fact, I think he finished “Rework” before they finished writing it.
So a couple years ago, I gave up trying. I was reading 3 or 4 books at a time which was ridiculous. So now I read one (maybe 2). I just finished “Outrageous Advertising” and am starting “Crush it”. But giving up on reading every book didn’t mean I was going to miss out. I found something that totally changed the way I consume information.
The Innovations of Rick Raddatz
I’d been a fan of Rick Raddatz for some time when I learned about his newest venture a couple years ago. Having listened to “The Wednesday Minute” every week, I didn’t even “Blink” (gratuitous reference to that best selling book). I was in and haven’t regretted it for a second.
Rick was on a plane looking at SkyMall and all the Executive book summary companies that advertise their “4 page summaries”. He thought. . . there’s got to be a better way. Those summaries are so dry and jam packed with information about the book, you might as well read the book.
And more importantly. . .
You don’t really need a summary of the book, you need a summary of the points the book was making and how you can implement those points in your business. What you need is some practical wisdom applied to the principles. . .
So he created GoBrevity.
In 4-minute videos, Rick faces the camera and tells you exactly what every business book he reviews was about, boiling it down to 4 key insights. He gives you a quick backstory, the goes through the meaningful insights and outlines specific action items based on the key insights. Let me tell ya – that’s enough to get inspired, and the action list regularly becomes a “must do” on my task list. Listening to that alone is well worth the time and money spent.
The Extras
But Rick is a smart guy, so he not only gives you that streaming video on the web along with written summaries, but allows you to download the .pdf summary and the .mp3 of the video. And there’s a great forum to chat about the books should you choose. Imagine how many books you could catch up with on a 1 hour run with your .mp3 player?
A Sampling of the Books
| Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing | Jay Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing |
| Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers | Jim Collins’ Good to Great |
| Bradford Smart’s Topgrading | the classic Think and Grow Rich |
| Jeffrey Krames’ Inside Drucker’s Brain | Neil Rackham’s Spin Selling |
| Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated |
and many more. . . |
Here’s the downside, not every business book that gets published is available. Rework isn’t there yet, but a bunch of other titles just as popular are and he adds a new book each week. So there’s a chance, unfortunately, that the one book you want to read just isn’t there. Fortunately, if you want to read it that badly, GoBrevity allows you to get caught up on all the other books while you do so.
For me, it’s fantastic. I’ve always wanted to read more – I just haven’t found the time. If you’ve read everything already and read a few books per week anyway – it might not be for you. Unless of course you’d like some of that time back to do something else.
You might even lose weight
Oh one last thought. I’ve actually found it to be a good “filter” of sorts. Some of the books he reviews I’ve thought about buying but then realized I didn’t need to. And others, like “Nudge”, I decided I should probably read. I’m a yo-yo dieter and Rick said “Nudge” spoke a bit about the decisions where yo-yo dieters fail. I never would have bought that book otherwise.
Please head over to GoBrevity right now and sign up. Just giving them a name and e-mail will give you direct access to the Jim Collins “Good To Great” summary. You don’t have to check your e-mail for confirmation or anything. Take a gander – I’m sure you’ll be impressed!
And tell me what you think, too.
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