Hey Y'all,

🍂 Happy October🍂

The fall is upon us, leaves are turning red, and the end of the year is nigh. This can only mean one thing: it's time to finish the year in style! Instead of waiting for the new year to make a new start on something, let’s get ahead of the rest of the world and take charge NOW! Whatever you plan to start or restart then, why not move it up and make the changes right away?

Or, if we take it even further, to quote Peter Thiel on the Tim Ferris Show:

“I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking though not for terribly long. But not until I really started PayPal did I fully realize that you don’t have to wait to start something. So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10 year plan of how to get there, you should ask: why can’t you do this in 6 months? Sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory. But it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself or whether that’s the reality.”

Interesting thought experiment indeed— Why can’t you accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months?

Amen. I’ll leave it to you to brainstorm, and here’s to an epic 6 months! 🔥

Welcome to Issue #8 of the Flyby Book Club!

The last book was a whirlwind tour of entrepreneurship (and money) from a self-made entrepreneur who made his fortune in the publishing industry, specifically magazines! Check out my 20-minute-long review/post if you haven't already.

This month, we'll take a deeper look at how to go about building a business when you don't have much spare capital lying around.

I haven't actually read this book, but have heard it recommended many times, so I'm excited to read it.

( No, it’s not Zero to One, but that’s definitely on the list. We’ll see it here soon, but feel free to read it before if you want. It’s short and sweet! )

The eighth book is …

*drumroll please*

…

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

🍂🍂🍂

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Howdy Y’all!

Welcome to the 7th edition of The Flyby Book.

Can you believe this book club is seven months old already!?

#TimeFlies.

Have you been reading along and noticed an improvement in your understanding of business (and the world)?

I sure have. A lot of it might be subtle, but it all adds up.

Last month’s pick was about rapidly iterating on a product using the lean startup methodology. Check out my 15-minute-long review here if you haven’t already. I may or may not have gone into a tangent about scratching your own itch. Like I said, for me, it’s the only way to fly.

This month’s book is a classic. I’ve read it twice already and keep coming back to it from time to time. It formed the basis of a lot of my thinking about entrepreneurship and business. But it requires reading between the lines a lot. The audiobook is supposed to be great too, so I might give it a try this time.

I’ve heard it recommended by several great entrepreneurs as well. In the spirit of launching Flyby Biographies (more info coming soon; stay tuned), I thought I’d pick an autobiography for this month.

It’s one written by a self-made British entrepreneur worth a few hundred million dollars, revealing everything he had learned towards the end of his life. It’s primarily entrepreneurship focused, but contains some solid life lessons as well. It is as much about “what not to do” as it is about “what to do.”

This month’s pick is for Paid Subscribers Only. So upgrade now if you want to see the pick and read my review later in the month.

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The seventh book is …

*drumroll please*

…

Read more

Howdy, fellow entrepreneurs!

Welcome back to the Flyby Book Club. Each month, I pick an entrepreneurship-themed book for us to read and then share my notes at the end of the month.

Last month’s book was about how to unleash value innovation to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Check out my notes if you haven’t already. It has a bunch of slick graphs in there too! ;)

This month’s book is about taking that philosophy to the market!

This book is on the medium-length end of the spectrum, with almost 350 pages. But.. if you can manage to read just 35 pages a day, you’ll be done in 10 days! That’s about an hour or so of reading a day. Not a bad return if you ask me. My notes will, of course, come later. It takes a wee bit longer to write these up, I'm afraid, but I'll try my best to speed it up too! I’m trying to make each post better than the last. So please let me know if you have any suggestions on what will make these better for you :)

The sixth book is …

*drumroll please*

…

The Lean Startup By Eric Reis

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Hey there, Entrepreneurs!

Last month’s book was The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. A fantastic guide on how to transform a struggling business into one that thrives by embracing the mindset of scale. If you haven't already, check out the review here.

With the bright summer vibes upon us, let’s dive into the cool, deep blues of the refreshing ocean.

This month’s book is about how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant.

The fifth book is …

*drumroll please*

…

The Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne

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Howdy, fellow entrepreneurs!

Last month’s book was about serving the market (at scale) in addition to serving as a full-scale guide to high-speed entrepreneurship. Armed with those insights, we can now take a look at what makes businesses fail and what to do about it.

This one is a shorter book, around 250 pages. So we can aim for 10 pages a day and be done in around 25 days. This way, we can get back on track with the monthly schedule. Gain 5 days per month, and we’ll catch up in no time. Small changes leading to big results! :)

Can you think of applying this strategy of tiny improvements elsewhere?

The fourth book is …

*drumroll please*

…

The E-Myth Revisited - By Michael E. Gerber

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Welcome to Issue #3 of the Flyby Book Club.

Quick Update— I’ve moved the monthly book picks into their own section now. This means if you don’t want to read along and get these "book pick” emails every month, you can unsubscribe just from this section. You’ll still get my book notes at the end of the month. Those are part of the main newsletter.

Right. Back at it. Last month’s book was about the call to entrepreneurship, paired with a bunch of inspiring case studies. Check out the 8-minute-long field report in case you missed it.

This month's book is about the science of serving the market at scale and a NO B.S. shot of entrepreneurship wisdom. It will guide you through the various aspects involved when walking through the entrepreneurship desert and building your product and mindset.

It’s also #1 on my list of Top Three Books for Living an Unconventional Life and a great one to read if you want to learn what it takes to get there. I’ve already read it twice over the years, so this will be reading #3. But that’s the real secret here— Re-reading the books you’ve found invaluable solidifies the learnings and lets you look at things with fresh eyes. As you grow over the years, you can read books you’ve read before and see things from a fresh perspective and gather new insights you might have previously missed. You might have agreed with one part during the first reading, but now that you know better, you might realize that you’ve grown passed certain parts and don’t really agree with them anymore, or perhaps discover something you had overlooked entirely before. Either way, you’ll be able to zoom out and zoom in again as needed and refine your thought process.

This book is an almost 450-page-long brick of entrepreneurship gold, so we can move the finish date to the second week of May (The last one took me a bit longer to write, but we’ll try and catch up with the months later in the year with a shorter book or two).

With about 30 days left, that would make it 15 pages per day. Probably 30 for me if I wanna get the report done on time…yikes!

The third book is …

*drumroll please*

…

Read more

Hey fellow entrepreneurs!

Thanks for all the great feedback and replies on the first post of the flyby book club. Since this format seems a hit, I’ll continue going with it.

The last book was about being remarkable and integrating this philosophy into the core of whatever it is you are building. That is, building a solid brand that makes it easier for you to grow without requiring extensive marketing budgets.

This month’s book will be looking at a bunch of remarkable brands and how they got there from start to finish. This will give you an even better idea of how to build products that stand out and stand the test of time.

As usual, I’ll do a post at the end of the month with my own thoughts.

This book is a bit longer, with 320 pages. But we also have more days (28 this time, thanks March!). So, by the time everyone starts reading the book, it would be about 12 pages per day.

If you want to know the average time commitment you are looking at, it would be about 24 minutes per day. The average reading speed is 250 words per minute, and on average, a book has about 500 words per page. So that would make it about 1 page every 2 minutes.

But… you could always just read faster and ditch average! 🚀😊

The second book is …

*drumroll please*

…

How I Built This by Guy Raz

See you on the other side!

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Welcome to the Flyby Entrepreneurship Book club. 

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ll be starting a book club to ensure we all (including me) read at least one high-quality entrepreneurship book a month regardless of whatever else is happening in the world. You are, of course, welcome to read more or ignore this altogether and carry on with whatever it is that you were doing.

This is a read-along type of book club. Over time, it might evolve into something more and I might also increase the frequency based on your feedback. Let me know if you have any thoughts using the feedback form at the end of the post.

I’ll pick one entrepreneurship-themed book every month that aligns with my vision, strategy, and philosophy, along with providing some reading tips. You can read along at your own pace and apply the lessons to your own products or goals.

At the end of the month, I’ll write a post detailing my thoughts on the book, relating the lessons to my own experience. You can also just read that instead if you weren’t able to read the book or were reading something else during this time.

The first book is a shortish one since it’s a shortish month (I’m looking at you February), and this is the first in the series. So let’s start by making it easy.

There are about 160 pages in the copy I have, and there are about 20 days left.

So this would make the math quite satisfying with exactly 8 pages per day.

That’s it.

Aim for reading 8 pages per day (well.. you might need to adjust this based on the edition you have and the date you start reading, i.e. pages divided by days. So it might be 10 or 12 by the time you read this and get the book, but same concept).

Doesn’t matter how you get there or when you read (bonus points for being creative here). If you reach that point, you can either stop right there or keep going if you feel like it.

It’s totally up to you.

The first book is …

*drumroll please*

…

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Here we go!

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