Readers Become Leaders

Readers Become Leaders

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 97 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we are chatting all about maximizing your monotonous tasks. We are chatting about how do we crush out books like you've never done before. Stay tuned.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development. CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 97 of the business development podcast. I hope you all had an absolutely amazing first week back. I know that break can be a little tough.

It's pretty great sometimes, but you know what else is great? Getting back to it as well. So. The first week back for me was awesome. It's been an absolutely amazing, amazing week. You know, we had a great break, but it's always great to just get back to it. And you know, tons of great feedback from you guys over the last little bit.

I wanted to I wanted to also thank everybody. Who has contributed to the EDify top 40 under 40 award that I've applied for this year. Everybody who's nominated me, you guys know, I've reached out to a lot of you and just want to say thank you so much for the overwhelming support. I appreciate you guys immensely.

Who knows whether we win or don't, but it's still fun. It's always fun to apply for fun things like that. And I appreciate each and every one of you, my amazing listenership. You guys are awesome and could not do this show without you. It is January, and as you know, it's the beginning, and I am always on the hunt for community questions.

So, I just wanted to remind everybody, we now have a voicemail feature on the Business Development Podcast website. So, if you guys are feeling up for it, you can always leave us a voicemail. Heck, I want to hear from you guys no matter what. So, leave me messages. I would absolutely love to get messages.

Let me know how this show is affecting you. Let me know if it's good, it's bad. You know, the great things that have happened. There's so many of you who reach out to me and tell me your success stories. Leave me a voicemail of your success stories so we can share them with our amazing, amazing audience. I want to hear your voices.

Leave us a voicemail on the website. It'll be awesome. I'm looking forward to it. And if you guys want, you can also, like I said, leave your community questions there too. So, If you have questions for the podcast, for me directly, please leave them on our website. Obviously, you can also email them, podcast@capitalbd.ca.

So there's two ways, but I would love to hear your voices, so please, leave me some messages on the website. Also, with it being January, And as trying to kind of get some new listeners, get our listenership up. Obviously we have a great listenership, but we're always looking to grow. Please. If you guys are currently not following the show on Spotify or Apple podcasts, go to the top, click that little follow, leave us, you know, a quick rating five stars are always appreciated and allow us to reach further audiences.

I know there's an. there. So please, please, I know our following isn't quite as high as it could be on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And so if you guys want to do us a solid favor and really help us out, it doesn't cost you a dime. Give us a follow on Apple podcasts and Spotify and keep up to date on all the latest episodes.

I would appreciate it immensely. I would like to give a gigantic shout out to Dan Balaban, CEO and executive chair at Greengate Power for the last, last Sunday's episode. It was absolutely amazing having Dan on. He gave us really an insight into what is it like to develop a large scale renewable solar wind project.

So that was super cool. If you missed that episode, go back, check it out. Dan Balaban. It was absolutely amazing. Dan, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for for educating our audience on the renewable sector. That was really, really awesome. I wanted to do a show. I'll be honest. This show has been sitting in my to do list for a while.

You know, as I've talked to many of you, with the podcast. You know, when I first started doing this show, I wrote out a list of about 50 different topics. And this one has been near the end, but it's been sitting for a little while and I've kind of avoided it. But I think that now is the right time. And the reason being is that we are all in that mode looking for the next little great nugget of information.

And I'm, you know, If you guys are like me, and I know a lot of you are, you guys probably crush a lot of audio books. And so one of the things that I really wanted to talk about today is the way that you guys listen. If you're like me in business development and executive, you might be on the road a lot.

You know, I used to spend my gosh, I used to spend. Oh, I don't even want to say how many hours, like it would be ridiculous, frankly, but just to give you an idea, there were years in my business development career where I was putting on probably 50, 000 to 60, 000 driving kilometers every single year, heading to meetings, frankly, all across Canada, all across the provinces.

And during that time, I learned a lot. I learned an absolute ton because I used to listen to audiobooks on these drives. It was kind of like my zen time and the way that I would kind of get caught up. And I wanted to talk to you guys today about maximizing your travel time. I know that there's a lot of you who may be, you know, doing the same thing.

Maybe you're doing, you know, if you live in Canada, there's large distances sometimes between the cities. You know, like the closest major city to Edmonton is Calgary. You And for us, it's a three hour drive. One way, if you're going, if you're going for meetings in Calgary, which is like oil and gas, you know, country, it's really where the oil and gas head offices are for for Alberta.

So if you're going to, you know, to Calgary, from Edmonton to Calgary for a meeting, you're probably driving six hours in that day. Well, I don't know if you noticed, but a lot of your audio books, they're six hours long. You can literally crush a book. In that travel time, if you're doing that jaunt from Edmonton to Calgary or vice versa.

And so I just wanted to talk to you guys today about, are you maximizing your travel time? You know, if you are doing drives like that, are you just listening to the radio? Or you know, you're listening to maybe maybe just some entertainment or something. There's nothing wrong with that. But this is an absolutely amazing opportunity to crush out books.

And I'm going to be the first to tell you guys. I have not been great in my life at sitting down and actually reading books. I don't know why it's never been something that's absolutely driven me. Maybe it is because my mind is always moving, you know, a hundred miles a minute, but historically I have not been great at sitting down and Actually, you know, reading a book, frankly, before I got into audio books, I was probably only reading maybe two books a year.

And I know that's horrible. I know some of you guys are like, Kelly, come on. I know. I get it. I get it. I'm also saying Kelly, come on. But Yeah, I never used to. I never used to read a lot. And you know, I got into my business development career and I had an absolutely amazing, amazing boss. And, you know, I talk about him a lot on this show.

I don't know if he listens much, but when I first got into my business development career, I worked for an inspection firm. And it was a relatively new inspection firm and my boss at that company was, you know, like most entrepreneurs, very, very hungry for knowledge. And so he was crushing out lots and lots and lots of books.

I remember I think I'd been there probably about a year, maybe two years, and he kind of pulled me to the side and said, Kelly, do you read much? And I was like no. I was pretty embarrassed to say no, I didn't read much. And at that time I really didn't, you know, I listened to the radio or I watched TV or whatever else, but I typically was not doing a lot of like self help, if you want to call it that.

I wasn't doing a lot of reading even though I definitely knew that I should. And I remember him kind of sitting down and saying, Kelly, you know. I know you're driving a lot, like you're back and forth from Calgary with me like probably twice, twice a month, three times a month, if not four times a month, like you were basically going on a trip to Calgary almost every single week.

Have you ever heard of Audible? At the time, I was like, yeah, I've heard of it, but like, I've never listened to an audiobook, I don't know what you're talking about. And he pulls up his eyes, he's like, why don't you just try it? Like, just download the Audible app, try a couple books, I'm gonna give you some suggestions, and I want you to try to start listening to books.

Well, something happened in that moment, you know, like, heck, maybe we could even call that, you know, what led to this show. The reality is, I fell in love. In love with, with audio knowledge at the time podcasts, you know, I, I probably wasn't even listening to podcasts. I'll guaranteed. I wasn't listening to podcasts at that point, but what I fell in love with at that time was, was reading, but like having somebody read it to me because I'm a multitasker.

I like to do things. I like to, I like to do things, but I like to do things and listen. And that was what I learned about myself in that time was that, yeah, I kind of suck at physically reading books, but I love listening to books while I'm driving, while I'm shoveling snow, while I'm doing landscaping or yard work in the summer.

Frankly, when I'm pretty much doing anything, I like to listen to something. And that was in those moments that I really, really fell in love with audio. I fell in love with learning and I kid you guys not in that year. And the subsequent years I went from probably reading one or two books a year to crushing out probably 15 to 20 in a year like that was, that was incredibly, incredibly common at that time where I was, I was just listening to audio books all the time.

And basically I've achieved like almost all the major listening. Milestones you can get on your little audible achievements board. I've listened to an absolute ton of books. I would say that probably more recently, I've been listening to more, more podcasts and stuff, but I think, you know, as, as I start to do that, I like to cycle it out and get some books in there as well.

I would not, I would not listen to books the way I did without that boss. So I, I owe him immensely. And yeah, it's, it's one of those things where It really turned me into the power, the power of the spoken word, right, the power of, of a podcast, the power of, of reading, reading a book or having a book read to you.

Let's talk about the advantages. The reality is I've listened to some absolutely amazing books that absolutely changed my life, led me on this trajectory that we are on with you guys today. You know, I've talked about a couple of them. There's two books specifically that really spoke to me and that, you know, I tell all of you guys to listen.

And one is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The information in that, yeah, it's like a hundred year old book. The information in it is just as relevant today about humanity and how we are as people as it was back then. And so the information in there, even though old is absolutely relevant and totally, totally works for developing great relationships with people.

The other one, who, you know, we have actually had the author grace us on this show, is The Like Switch, by Dr. Jack Schafer, and that's an absolutely amazing, amazing book on human psychology, how to read body language great you know, how to have more success in building relationships with people, and, yeah, they're, they, they changed my life, and they were two audiobooks that I just would have never listened to if I hadn't have Gotten into the habit of listening to books on those drives.

Let's talk a little bit about efficiency, right? You know, I talked to you guys briefly about, about me and wanting to kind of multitask and multitasking is not always great. We'll get into that a little bit later here, but there are certain tasks where listening to an audio book is really great. I listened to audio books at the gym.

I listen to audiobooks well, like I said, when I was doing landscaping or while I'm driving, or when I'm shoveling snow, the, the secret really is with tasks that are kind of mindless, if that makes sense. And I'm not saying that all you guys at the gym are doing mindless tasks, but it does sometimes you can get into your routine.

And if you know what you're doing, you can definitely focus in on, in on, you know, the spoken language. And at the end of the day, that is what you need to do. You need to be listening to audiobooks and educational programs. Even this podcast in a situation where you can give it more of your attention than the other task that you are working on.

If the other task that you are working on is taking up most of your attention, then listening to an audiobook during this time will not be beneficial to you because it's very hard to, to stay focused on it and to be able to retain all of that information for you. But, you know, in certain tasks, like I said, like maybe driving on a highway on a long trip.

Or if you're, you know, shoveling snow, or if you're, you know, just mowing the lawn, or whatever else you're doing, these are great tasks to put on an audiobook and just listen and learn. And here's the benefit. You would be doing that task anyway. Now you're learning a new skill and doing that task. You're multitasking, and I think that is truly An advantage, a gigantic advantage versus people that are physically reading books.

And, you know, I would argue that people who listen to audiobooks, no question, typically crush out more books per year than somebody who's physically reading because you were just able to listen in so many different scenarios than what you were able to do when you sit down and physically read a book.

So, I definitely, in my mind, I much prefer it. You know, everyone to each their own. If you like physically reading a book, there's nothing wrong with that. And I'm actually going to get into a point here where that can be beneficial for you. I would say that listening to audiobooks wherever you can, whenever you get the opportunity to do so, will only give you a gigantic, gigantic advantage over people who are not.

Some of the best, you know, information that I've learned throughout my life, I've list, I've learned through listening to audiobooks. So, highly, highly, highly recommend. I do want to talk a little bit about how to do it better, though. You need to be able to mix in fun listens. There is such thing.

There is 100 percent such thing as getting audio booked out, self helped out. And I don't want any of you guys to fall into that trap. And, and I, and I mean that even with the business development podcast, I really do. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not separating this out from any other self help thing that we ultimately do.

I know it's entertaining. I know we do entertainment stuff and we talk about all a wide range of subjects, but even this show, I would say kind of falls under that self help realm. And what I've found in my life is that I can get self helped up or self helped out. Definitely. Definitely one of those things that can happen to me.

And so what I've learned to do is, in my, in my joy of, of learning audiobooks and like, how much I love them, what I also realized was a little trick. And the trick that I'm going to tell you is this. If you are listening to audiobooks, listen to a self help book. You know, implement whatever it is that you want to learn from that particular book, but instead of jumping right into the very next self help book, what I want you guys to do is find a book that's just entertainment.

Can be fiction, can be non fiction. Make it fun. Make it fun. Make it something that you're like, oh man, like, like for instance for me, I love listening to Stephen King. I absolutely love listening to Stephen King. Some of those, some of those books, you know, like The Stand or It are absolutely amazing.

My gosh, guys. If you guys want a challenge, crush out IT It's like 40 hours. The audio book is like 40 hours. And I can say proudly with my hand up that I've listened to that entire audio book. And it's amazing by the way, if you guys have only seen the movies, you need to go back and you need to check out the book.

It, it is so much better. There's probably 40 percent in the book that is not in the movie. So if you love the movies, you'll love the book. I would highly recommend you go back and listen to that. But. What I'm trying to suggest to you guys is don't get self helped out. Find a way to incorporate self help with entertainment in your audiobook selections, and it will make you more effective.

It'll make you want to go back and listen to your audiobooks. You can definitely get to a stage with audiobooks if you're just doing self help book after self help book after self help book, where it frankly just starts to feel a bit like a job. And you need it to, you need to keep it fresh and fun. And so, yeah, my recommendation to you guys is to swap it out.

Make sure that you are doing self help, but then you are also moving into a entertainment side of it. You know, I'm sure there's lots of books you guys have come across. You're like, oh, it'd be great to read that. Friggin listen to it. Listen to it. Buy yourself an entertainment book. There's nothing wrong with it.

It's frankly going to actually make you more effective because if, if you don't get self helped out, you'll be able to move from. Self help book to entertainment book to self help book to entertainment book. Not only are you going to crush out probably 20 books this year, but at least 10 of them are going to be self help books or, you know, business books that will bring benefit to you, your business, your personal life, your business life, and you are only going to be better for it.

And at the end of the year, you're going to look down and it's going to say, congratulations, you crushed out 25 to 30 books this year. And somebody who just typically reads probably only going to crush out about five. So. My recommendation is definitely do it. It will change your life. Start to maximize all of these travel times, maximize the situations where you're doing monotonous tasks and make sure that you guys are crushing out audio books or yourself help during that time.

And yes, obviously I love it. When you guys listen to this podcast, I appreciate each and every one of you, and I do hope that in between your audio books, you guys find a little bit of time to listen to the business development podcast. You guys know I appreciate you, but I do want you guys to crush out some books this year.

I want you to crush out some books this year because there's so many good ones and so many of them now are available on audible and one of the things that I want to talk about about audible that's so great is that if you go to the bookstore and you buy a book you're typically paying cover price you're typically paying whatever 25 30 40 bucks a book audible is super cool because if you get an audible account you typically get one credit per month and you get a discount on all books that you buy so one free book every month of any price type like that's the cool thing you get a hundred dollar book on audible you for your one month credit, no matter what that is.

And I think you only pay like, I can't remember the exact pricing, but I imagine it's not much more than about 14 bucks a month for your, for your audible credit. And then you're going to discount on all future books. And then audible does something really cool where you can actually buy three extra credits.

And I think it's like a flat fee of like 40 bucks. So basically you can get books at like half price and like any book you want for the most part. in Audible for a really, really great price. And I, I'm not affiliated with Audible. I just, I think it's a great program. I think it's a great system. And I would highly, highly recommend them for all of your future audiobook needs.

All right. I just wanted to move into some tips for success. Okay. Obviously I get it. It's, it's audiobooks. It's not like, it's not rocket science, but there are some tips that I can provide you guys that I think will give you guys. A better shot at success here, okay? So tips for success, I want you guys to finish books in a reasonable time.

Stay committed, okay? If you guys start a book on a trip, I get it. Sometimes you get out through that trip and you're not quite done. You got two or three hours left in that book and maybe you're like, Ah, well I'm done my trip. What I want you guys to do, Is just give yourself those two, three hours. You know, don't just put that book down, you know, listen to it when you're, when you're having a bath, listen to it when you're shoveling walks or listen to it, you know, when you're doing some yard work, but we're at the gym, right, but stay committed.

If you guys are six hours into a book, by the time you're done, this trip, finish it, finish it, make sure that you take the time and finish it in a reasonable time. The problem is if you don't finish it in a reasonable time, you forget. Maybe what some of the backside of the book was, or maybe some of the things won't come together and the ideas can't be formed fully.

Okay. So what I really, really want you guys to do is that if you start a book, stay committed to it. We talk about this in business development all the time, right? We gotta stay committed to the process. We gotta stick to the process, and we got to we have to shine through. And so what I want you guys to do is stay committed.

If you start a book, finish it in a reasonable time, like within a week or two. Okay? Get it done, get it done so that everything is still fresh and you're not missing anything. Number two, don't listen while going to bed. Yes, I have made this mistake multiple, multiple times, and I don't remember anything because by the time I fall asleep, I miss 30 minutes, 15 minutes.

God knows how many minutes all of these apps have a sleep function. But please, please, please stop listening to audio books while you were going to bed. Unless that's frankly just the thing that's putting you to sleep and you don't really care about the content. Because if you care about the content, you will miss it.

You will not retain it. Do not, do not do this. This falls in with kind of any tasks that, that require more attention than listening to the book. Okay. Number three, use other opportunities like snow shoveling, yard work. Mindless tasks, right? We talked about this, guys. Mindless tasks. Those are the best times to listen to an audio book.

Whether you're doing that, like I said, whether you're kind of driving on a long trip, whether you're doing snow shoveling, whether you're doing yard work you know, working out, whatever it is you're doing, relaxing any moment where you can, you can devote more time to listening to the book properly than the other task you were doing is a great, great candidate.

Number four, Audible is a great place to get your books. Subscriptions are well worth the cost. We've already went over this, guys. Audible is where it's at for your audiobooks. The subscriptions are worth every penny. That is where I recommend that you guys spend your money. Number five, if you do not like the narrator, return the book immediately.

Guys, I don't care what book it is, if you can't stand the voice of the narrator, It is going to be useless. You are not going to get the information in the way that it is designed to be received, okay? Not all of us like narrator voices. I've returned multiple books, because I just could not get past the way the narrator talked.

And I'm sure there's some of you like, Kelly! I can't get past the way you talk. And I'm sorry. But, the reality is, is that if you cannot stand the way that the book is being narrated, you are not going to be able to give it the amount of attention that it needs to get the information. So, just return it.

Maybe that's a book that you want to buy physically and read. That would be a good a good reason to buy a book physically and read it. Is if, you know, you got the audible and the narration isn't, isn't up to par, it's not the way that you, you like it or it hurts your ears that's definitely one that you want to return the book immediately and they do, they, they're really good.

You can get your credits back pretty much immediately if you buy a book and you don't like the narrator, so don't worry about it, you're not hurting anybody's feelings, just return the book and get maybe a physical copy, okay? Number six, listening at faster than one time speed is okay. I used to laugh because I had a couple of listeners to my podcast.

He would reach out and say, Kelly, I love listening to your show. And I always listened to it at like 1. 5 or two X. And I was like, how do you do that? And then I got, and then like, to me, it seemed like bonkers that you could actually listen at those speeds and still pick up the information. But when I do my show editing for our transcription, I actually listen to our show at three times speed.

So it is definitely possible. And I have nothing bad to say about that. If you guys want to listen to a book at one times or two times speed, you know what? As long as you can understand what they are saying and you're getting the information out of it, there's nothing wrong with it. And you can crush out books twice as fast.

So there you go. No issues there. If you want, listen to books at faster than one times speed. Number seven, use a wishlist to keep good books on your mind. This is great, right? You're going to come across, especially if you're using audible, you're going to come across, you know, books that you're like, Oh, that looks amazing.

When you see a book that looks amazing, just click it, click add to your wishlist. And the next time you got a credit, go to your wishlist and just pick your next book. Cause it'll be like five or six books in there that you want to listen to, and it'll keep you motivated and keep you wanting to come back and listen.

So yeah, use a wishlist to make you make you more successful. And number eight, if you really, really like a book, do not hesitate to buy a physical copy to come back to. I do this for the books that I absolutely love. I will buy the Audible book, and especially if it's a self help book, I will, I will sometimes buy the physical book and why?

Because it's easier to pull out a physical book and find like a specific chapter or something that you want to read again or if you want to make notes than it is obviously to go back into an audiobook and find it. So for your most favorite books, don't hesitate to buy a physical copy. It will, it will help you.

And my last tip, my bonus tip of the day, if you are someone who enjoys listening to things to get yourself to sleep, get yourself a bedtime podcast. Hopefully not this one because I want you guys to learn from this show, but find one that you guys can listen to for background noise. I, I'll give you some recommendations.

My favorite bedtime podcast is the box of oddities with Kat and Jethro. They are absolutely amazing. Their show is so good and they have like 500 episodes. If you haven't gotten to them yet, it's going to take you like probably a year and a half plus to catch up. So feel free. A box of oddities is great.

Another one that I absolutely love is a podcast called scared to death. It's absolutely amazing. Dan and Liz as you guys can tell. at night or when I'm kind of just doing my own thing. I have my own entertainment podcast that I love. So feel free to check those out. Implement these ideas and go from a handful of books a year to 15 or 20 and watch your world.

Turn around. All right. I want to chat briefly about some of the things that we're doing here in 2024 on the business development podcast. You guys have probably heard the commercial that we have at the beginning of some of the shows, and we are now offering coaching business development coaching, whether that's individual or with teams.

If you guys are running into some challenges for you have either an individual challenge that you would maybe just like some feedback on, or if you guys would like to implement a process at your company and want us to work with your team, we do now offer business development coaching at capital business development.

So feel free to reach out if you guys are looking for anything like that. And then obviously guys, thanks again. Everybody who has, who has submitted for us a nomination for EDify Top 40, under 40, that is still open. Guys you know, if you're hearing this and you guys wanna submit for us, please do.

Obviously, it's Kelly Kennedy. I'm 35 and you guys can use the podcast@capitalbd.ca for the email if they ask for an email. But I would appreciate it immensely if you guys did send us a nomination. Once again, that's Edify Top 40, under 40 for 2024. Shout outs this week. Colin Harms, Rodney Lover Tegan McEachern, Ken Gee, Peter Hurd-Watler, Jan Psyk, Zach Cross, Ben Spangl, Shelby Hobbs, Massi Akrour, Jayson Chakkalakal Amin Samji, Kapir Kalra, Priyanka Pandey, Paul Holah, McKinley Hyland, Don Murray

and Rikin Bhavsar appreciate you guys immensely. Until next time, this has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.