Creator shares his book reading system for seven-figure growthfrom @briarcochran

Transcript

Okay. This is how much money I made in July 2024. This is how much money I made in July 2025. I hate whenever people talk about how much money they make online, but this is one of those videos where I really, really, really want you to watch it because I'm gonna talk about the number one thing that made the biggest difference over the last twelve months for me. It is the fact that I went from listening to, like, five thousand hours of indie folk music on Spotify to no I'm reading about two to three books a week. K? I'm gonna break down exactly how I read books because I hate when tier our people just say, like, read books. You all know everyone's saying, like, oh, yeah. Books are so important. All the rich people read books, but what does it even mean? And I hate it, and there's so many vibes that go into it. So I have a five, four and a half step system for actually reading books in the modern day in 2025. Okay. Number one, you need to have a barbell approach. What do I mean by that? You then need to be reading timeless, books that are from as far back as possible. Specifically, I think biographies are the best. Okay? So of people in your niche and just general founders, business owners, people in your niche. Or you need to be reading books that are within the past one to three years that are hyper practical about today's current landscape. Sometimes these, I even just would rather listen to a podcast that came out, like, a week or two ago, but that, like, five to ten range five to ten years ago range is dime, and it's, like, not actually that valuable to read those books. So for example, I would read Deep Work by Cal Newport about five years ago, I rank. But then I would go back and I would read a biography of, you know, maybe by Steve Jobs. And, yeah, it might have came out within the five to ten range, but it's a biographer from a from a long time ago. Number two is you have to kill the vibes that you have of reading. Okay? I have so many of them. I was like, I can't read a book and not finish it. That needs to suck. That needs to die. You need to start a book and then give it, like, three minutes. And if it sucks, then it's gone. Number two is, like, who cares if you actually buy the actual book? You don't have to stack up your library. That was another huge thing. So I would just buy books just for, like, the vibe, and I would never read them, but then I put them on my shelf. And I'm like, oh, this is so sick. Number three is, like, you don't have to have an annotation style and perfectly mark it all up and color code it. Like, the like, vibes are the number one killer of reading. That you, like, you have this perfectionism of, like, how to craft your perfect reading habit, and then it prevents you from ever reading at all. K? This was me, and it was so bad. Instead, what you need to do is just literally ask yourself, what is the whole point of reading? I'm reading, so I change my behavior for the better. I'm reading, so I become a better person. I'm reading no that I grow. K? So we have to ask ourselves the second question. What is the number one thing that helps a human grow in this repetition? K? You have to hear something over and over and over again for it to actually penetrate into your heart and for you to make change. And so we have to read, not for vibes, best for repetition and retention. Okay? So what does that mean? I it would be better. It would be better, probably, to read, like, one to three books a year rank keep reading those books over and over again for, like, three years probably than it would be to read 40 books that don't matter, that you're never gonna remember. That's just a belief that I have. Like, it like, Deep Work Deep Work by Cal Newport is a book that I know that if I could do this perfectly, well, he talks about this book, my life would be better. So I'm gonna read it every single year. Every single year, I'm gonna read it. I rank, eventually, in probably five years, I'm gonna know the 10 books that I'm just gonna read every year, and I'm just gonna only read those books every year. I I think that is how reading should be done. Why? Because we read for growth, and growth comes through repetition, and repetition comes through rereading things and retention and all that stuff. So how do I actually practically do this? This was a huge sticking point for me. Number one, I downloaded or I got Spotify premium or pro or whatever the audiobook version where I can listen to as many audiobooks as I want. Then I would order the physical copy because I do like having the physical copy. Okay? I would. I listen to the audiobook because this is where I don't have to just sit down for thirty minutes. I don't have thirty minutes just to sit down. I have car rides. I have walks. I have, you know, even, like, at night, I'll play, like, or I'll watch a survivor or something, and I'll have the audio down while I'm listening to an audiobook. I don't know. I just I just I can always be consuming an audiobook. Right? Where reading, it's hard because you have to sit down. Then I order the physical copy because I can skim through this. I can feel this. If there's a part that I wanna reread and engage with, there's something about opening up and, like, getting your hands into it that just makes it stick more. Sure. I good just rip through the audiobook and probably retain nothing. Right? But having it in front of me, this is where the retention comes in. Because if you you know, you might remember this from school. It said, if you hear it, that's one layer of memory. If you speak it, that's another layer of memory. But if you write it, that's the third layer of memory. And then it's like if you can teach it, that's the fourth layer of memory, and that's when it starts to become habit. Rank so if I'm hearing it, I'll then intentionally tell my wife at dinner what I'm learning. So I'm saying it. And then I will write it. I'll circle it. I'll underline it. I'll block it in the book. But this is how I end the process is I voice no. I go into notes app, and I voice note anything that I'm learning. So I'm I'm driving my car. I was on I was on a air I was on a plane the other day, and I was learning something about the the CEO of Walt Disney, and something struck me. So I ripped the voice note real quick into my notes app. At the end of the book, I have my notes app full of all the things I took away. I come in and I write them at the beginning of the book. I'm in the middle here, best, basically, all of these pages are gonna be filled. Like, am I I'm gonna write around this stuff. I'm gonna write around this with all of the things that I learned. And the last step is I'm gonna skim the book just really quick. I'm just gonna kinda flip through the pages. And if there's a moment or a story that I see and I'll be able to remember. I'm just gonna do a little what what do they call this? A dog yes? Just do one of those. So then I can be down here. I can remember if I wanna quickly look at it. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let me I remember this. I like that. I wanna go read more about it. I can flip through here, figure out where it was, read more about it. And this is how how you revisit your books. Okay? So that's my reading, system that's probably changed my life over the past year. Has nothing to do with content, but, yeah, super helpful. Let me know if you guys have any questions.