Ep. 68: Recommended reading for leaders

Bobby Powers | Director of L&D, Jitasa

Bobby Powers is a passionate learning and development director, avid reader, and writer. Reading over 70 books per year, who better than Bobby can talk about influential and essential reading for business leaders and people professionals. (Plus, Bobby and Raising the Bar on Leadership host Aaron Levy love talking about books—this episode is peek into some of their favorites.

If you love reading or getting insights from some of our most prominent thinkers, this episode is sure to inspire (and fill out your must-read book list.) There are even some fiction titles included in this discussion for story fans.

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Answered on this Episode

• What tips can help people read more?

• What can business pros learn from biographies of people they don’t like?

• What are some of the most impactful insights managers can have about problems experienced by their team?

Bobby's Book List

1. Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden

2. You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy

3. Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

4. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

5. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

6. The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey

7. Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

8. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

9. The Human Element by David Schonthal and Loran Nordgren

10. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

11. The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Connect with Bobby: LinkedIn

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Find This Conversation

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Full Transcript

Bobby Powers | Recommended Reading for Leaders

Aaron Levy: [00:00:00] Today's going to be a little bit of a different conversation. We're talking to Bobby Powers, a learning and development director, avid reader, writer, and I'm proud to say former Raise the Bar bootcamp graduate. Bobby and I good friends and we talk about books constantly. We go to each other with book recommendations and Bobby is this Avid reader who reads 70 plus books a year and writes up a monthly review of his favorite books in fiction, business, leadership, psychology, you name it.

And as I mentioned, I've known Bobby for years. We've been exchanging book recommendations and we figured why not get on a, an episode and talk about our favorite book recommendations together for leaders and learners. So that's what we did. Bobby comes and share some of his favorite books, some that I love and have read some that I've never heard of.

And already bought, and I'll share a couple of the ones that influenced me and that I love. And so, have fun, dive in and let us know if there are any books, that you love as well.

Bobby, thank you for coming [00:01:00] on and thank you for making some time for this and recommending this conversation., so excited to talk to you with other people. Now, finally listening, we talk about books. I don't know. It feels like every couple of months we're talking about what our favorite books, whether it's through email or at a chat like this.

And so excited to have you on, to share your insights and learnings and favorites with the rest of the Raised the Bar audience.

Bobby Powers: Oh yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

Aaron Levy: Okay, before we do some of the book recs, like how did you get into reading so many damn books?

Like, how did this get started?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, I get that question a lot from friends because I read over 70 books a year and it's become my pinnacle habit that it's something that I preach to everybody. You need to read more. So, all of my friends have been used to hearing me bang on that drum quite a bit.

But yeah, I started out as a young kid. I was really into reading, read a lot growing up and did the Pizza Hut Book It program for anybody that is familiar with that. It was a program nationally in the Pizza Hut ran that you could [00:02:00] earn free personal pan pizzas, which I was really stoked about, or baseball game tickets or free books or a host of other things by reading books as a little kid.

And so, I remember doing that ever since I can remember when I was a little boy and got super into reading and then around high school and college, I completely lost the passion for reading something about all the required reading, the comprehension quizzes, all that stuff. I just didn't pick up a single book for fun for years.

And then I gradually picked up Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink. I think it was my senior year of college. I read that book just on a whim from a recommendation from a friend. And it was the first time I had ever read a nonfiction book. That I thought, Oh, this can actually be really fun. I'm getting a lot out of this.

I'm loving these stories. And then I noticed that all the different topics I was reading about in Blink were things that would come up in dinner party conversations with friends or coming up with chatting with my wife about something, a story would come to [00:03:00] mind. So, it got me into this whole idea of reading specifically a lot of nonfiction because it just seems so life giving and I got so much out of it with these great stories that I had heard.

Aaron Levy: You obviously have gotten into fiction and everything else, because you and I talk about fiction too. We can easily geek out on nonfiction, but you got into I'm guessing the nonfiction bled into fiction as well.

Bobby Powers: It did. Yeah. I think it's the opposite of how most people go. So, a lot of people will read fiction first and then maybe you pick up some nonfiction.

I did the opposite, which was a little weird where I started almost a hundred percent nonfiction and it was just reading all these business and leadership books, psychology books, you name it. And then eventually I realized, oh, there's all these novels out here that I've heard are really great.

I should check those out too. So, I've been slowly working my way through top 100, top 200 books, lists of all time and reading novels that friends recommend, and now I'm just all over the map. All kinds of random stuff.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. So, I kind of went the same way. Got more into reading post college and read a lot of, [00:04:00] the business books and like was soaking it all in, as a young professional and someone who's interested in behavior change, like reading all these books and finding it applicable to every part of life. It was super interested in that. I think I got a little burnt-out nonfiction. I was like, Oh, I need to, I like reading, but I need to do some other type of reading.

And so, I, that, that was my carryover I find it though, very interesting, the balance of the two. So how do you balance as you're reading so many books? The fiction versus nonfiction, like how do you structure that? Or does it just happen naturally? Like, Oh, this is the next book I'm reading.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. So, what I realized after a few years of reading is that whatever book I was reading, so like a nonfiction book at the time, for instance, I would sometimes feel like reading that book and sometimes not feel like reading that book. And so, if I wasn't digging that nonfiction book that day, I would then go watch TV or do something else.

But then I started to think like there are all kinds of different books out there. Why don't I just read two or three books at the same time? And if I don't feel like the nonfiction book, maybe I'll feel like the fiction one. So, I started to do that. And now for, I don't know, five or 10 years straight, [00:05:00] I will read one nonfiction and one fiction book at the same time.

So, if I feel like one great, if I don't, I have the other one and I can jump over to, so it gives me a good substitute that's also personal development related. And I've been really amazed that almost any time, day or night, I feel like reading one of those two books.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. That. So that's so interesting.

You do that., I fell into a groove a couple of years ago of at night reading fiction. Cause my brain's off. I don't want to think about work. I like want to get immersed in a story. And then in the morning, when I read over my coffee It's like work related or something adjacent, right?

 Some sort of nonfiction book. And that's my breakdown. It's I'm going to be more interested in turning my brain on with some work-related stuff, and then I'm gonna be more interested at night turning my brain off. Fascinating.

Bobby Powers: I've realized that it helps me read a lot more and probably helps you read a lot more to have two or three books going at the same time, because then you always have something.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. You're not trying to slog through. I think the balance is not having more than three books because then you're like, which one do I want to go to? Or am I really interested in this [00:06:00] one? I'm currently in the midst of three and that's a fine number right now.

Okay let's get into the meat of this. As you were thinking about this conversation, what are some of the, your favorite reads that you thought about from a, from a leadership perspective, from leaders and learners, that would be fun.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, so a couple of the ones that came to mind that are ones I don't hear recommended very often.

One of those is a book called Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden, who is the old UCLA Bruins basketball coach. And Wooden on Leadership is, I think, the best leadership book I've ever read. Just like you, I've read dozens of different leadership books, and that book specifically doesn't just talk about the tactics of leadership.

It talks about the social people side of leadership of loving your team. And he uses that word love very intentionally. You need to love your people, whether you're leading a basketball team, whether you're leading a coaching organization, whether you're working as a manager of [00:07:00] any random business out there, you have to have that deep appreciation and care for your people.

And so that book really hit me. I read that for the first time, maybe 15 years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. And it's one I want to continue to revisit throughout my life. So that's one big one.

Aaron Levy: That is that one is one of my all-time favorites as well.

 I couldn't recommend it a greater, the analogy between sports and the workplace, you can make some strong correlations there with the different egos that you're managing and that it's not about the outcome. It's about the process. I think one of my favorite lines from that is how he

 Worked on them in preseason on how they roll up their socks and you're like, what? And then he described if your socks are loose, then you're going to get blisters and you're not going to be able to perform at your best. And my goal as the coach is to help you perform at your best. And this is one of the elements to help you perform at your best.

And I was like, God, that has said so many corollaries to the workplace is like our role as managers and leaders to help people perform at their best. And what are the things that enable them to be at their best? Yeah, I [00:08:00] love that book. Oh, this is so fun already. Okay. Next one I'm ready for.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. The other one is actually a book about listening. It's called You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy. So, she's a journalist and the book are about listening. Sure. But I think it's one of the most powerful books about leadership because a lot of true leadership is listening to your people, learning from them.

And so, as a journalist, Kate Murphy has gotten the chance to interview all of these super successful people in different fields. Everyone from, star athletes to multimillionaires to you name it. And she talks about how she's constantly amazed interviewing these different celebrities and stars that so many of them will tell her at the end of an interview.

I haven't been truly listened to in years. The way you ask questions, the way you gave me space to talk. I feel like I haven't had that. And Murphy explains that it's just so jaw dropping for her because these are the People at the top of their fields that you [00:09:00] would think everyone wants to listen to.

And yet even they have struggles with people shutting up, asking questions, and just listening and learning from them. And so that book was just one of those books that leaves you gobsmacked at the end thinking, Oh, wow, I make so many of these different mistakes. And it's such a great non intuitive book because there's so many trite listening tips out there of, don't interrupt people or don't be on your phone as someone's talking or all that stuff.

She essentially skips past all of those and says, that's how to not be a bad listener. I want to talk about how to be a good listener. I'm going to give you real tips and substance. And I just thought it was phenomenal. It's 10-out-of-10 book for me.

Aaron Levy: I love that. You're a bootcamp graduate yourself and you know that the very first skill we talk about is listening.

And yeah, it's such an important tool that is powerful in so many different ways because most people suck at it and we don't practice it enough even, those who do practice it, we could probably be use more practicing of it. Love that. Okay. What else [00:10:00] is on your list of interesting ones that, our peeps would love?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, for sure. So, a lot of the things I read are not just listening and learning from great leaders, but trying to learn lessons from people that I think are complex or negative leaders in different ways. So just like there's a common adage that you can learn as much from a bad boss as a good one. I think.

Sometimes reading biographies of different leaders, good or bad, you end up picking up all of these interesting skills and tips you can incorporate in your own leadership. So, a few different biographies I've read recently that are about complex, flawed people that have good and bad elements to them were the recent Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson that I know a lot of people have seen on the shelves.

If you haven't read it yet, I encourage you say what you will about Musk, regardless of what your politics are, regardless of what you think about his work with Tesla or SpaceX or anything else. Fascinating human. Who has done a lot of good in the world and done [00:11:00] what I would say is a lot of bad in the world.

And so, I thought the biographer Walter Isaacson did a really good job of painting in shades of gray of saying, these are things that Musk has done really well. These are also a lot of sketchy stories from his past that make you a little bit surprised that he's become as popular and successful that he has.

And then you get to choose as the reader, you get to decide, how do you feel about this person? Have you heard much about that book or read anything from Isaacson in the past?

Aaron Levy: I've read from Isaacson. I am a big fan of his, but it's also like a little dense too. And so, I get stuck and I find if I get too stuck in a book, I'm like, I'm going to be reading this for four months.

And then, I'm not going to get through it. So, I started Musk and I was like, okay, I probably will end up picking it up again and reading it another time. Cause I couldn't get through it, but I loved, like I loved his Jobs. And I think Jobs is probably another one of a flawed leader.

Who did some really amazing [00:12:00] things in terms of creativity and in terms of leadership. But also had, some significant flaws that you want to learn from not doing. And I think that the tricky thing with Steve Jobs is those lines are a little bit blurred because we have this idea of a leader is like the visionary who demands perfection from everybody.

And that's a great leader. It's no, that was also some of the downside of what held him back and why he. Got jettisoned out of Apple and why things didn't work. And there were other people that had to withstand that., there was potential missed. So that one's always tricky for me.

But I think that's fascinating that you pick people to learn lessons from that maybe, you don't agree with, or that's a really interesting take.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. In the Musk book specifically, there's so much that I read in that book that I thought I can learn from this in a positive way, like his work ethic, his drive, his passion for changing the world is unmatched.

And I thought those are leadership skills I want to emulate myself, but then the way he treats his staff, the way he runs meetings, all these different things about how he treats people. [00:13:00] I want to run the opposite direction, but I could learn lessons from the bad boss elements of him too. So, you mentioned Steve Jobs, who I think is another character that falls in the same camp.

I think the best book on Jobs I've ever read is a book called Becoming Steve Jobs. It's a book that's way less well known than the Walter Isaacson one, but I think it's better told and it's more nuanced. So, it's yeah. Co-written by two authors, Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. Hopefully I'm pronouncing those correctly.

But yeah, those two, one of them was a good friend and colleague of Jobs and did a really good job of explaining what Jobs was like as a human. There are so many stories that are really overinflated about Jobs and you hear all these like black and white perspectives on he was great with this.

He was bad with this. This book, I think talked about the nuance of, you know what? Sometimes he was really good at this. Other times he was really bad at this. Here are examples on both sides. Yeah.

Aaron Levy: Have [00:14:00] you read the book Thinking and Bets or any books by Annie Duke?

Bobby Powers: I, yeah. I, it's funny. I was about to mention her in a little bit.

Yeah. So, I love Annie Duke. She's so great. She's

Aaron Levy: I'm listening to her next book, Quit but I would say, as you were talking about some tangential, right? The, as the connection I made with that is the Elon Musk book is learning from things that, maybe you don't want to emulate and also some that you do.

And Thinking in Bets is one that's not like maybe very typical business book

Aaron Levy: because she's a psychologist and also a gambler, but just like the way she talks about human decision making. I was like, okay, yeah, we're changing some of the things that we do at Raise the Bar tomorrow because of that I think she made an analogy of, if you make a bet that has a 90 percent chance of winning and you lose because the wrong card flops on the river, the last card in poker that flops, does that mean you won't make that bet again?

And again, was like, no, I'd make that bet every single time within, 90 percent chance of winning. And yet we as [00:15:00] individuals in the workplace or in the world, we say, Oh, it didn't go our way. So let me not know. That was a mistake. I screwed up. It's no, my process was right. The outcome just has, it’s multifactors which drive it and it's not just what I did.

So absolutely. Went on a little tangent, but that book is fascinating.

Bobby Powers: Oh, I love that topic. And that phrase that she puts on it too, I think is really interesting. She calls that resulting, looking at the result and then saying, because it was a good result, I think it was a good decision. If it was a bad result, I think it was a bad decision.

And the example she gives that stands out to me, because I live in Seattle. She talks, I think she opens the book by talking about the Seattle Seahawks. Playing against the Patriots in the super bowl and the infamous call by coach Pete Carroll to throw for a touchdown, whether on the two-yard line or whatever, just about to score.

And he throws instead of handing it off to Marshawn Lynch, the running back, and it ends up getting picked off. Seahawks lose the super bowl. And she looks at that decision and she says resulting [00:16:00] is the mistake of saying, how did the decision turn out? Ultimately, what was the outcome? And if it was a good outcome, it's good.

If it's a bad outcome, it's bad. But if you look at that play and that specific play call, and if you were to run that simulation 1000 times. It actually is a really good play call. It was the right decision because it caught everybody in America off guard. And yet it ended up not paying out that one time.

So just like a gambler, like you said, I try to think about that as I make decisions leading a team or if I'm at the casino with friends playing blackjack, that, that kind of situation, we're putting these decisions and I want to make the decision that's right. The majority of the time out of a thousand.

And if it doesn't turn out right this once, you know what, that's okay. I can live with that.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. I love that. Okay. Give me what else is on your list. Or what's popping in mind as we're having this conversation.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, for sure. Another one I don't hear people talk about as much. This is a little bit older book.

People are probably familiar with the book, the One-Minute Manager. But there's another [00:17:00] book out there by Ken Blanchard called The One-Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. Have you ever heard of this one before?

Aaron Levy: I'm going to look it up right now. I don't, I'm not recognizing, but I'm a visual person. So maybe I'll have to see it.

Tell me.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. So, The One-Minute Manager Meets the Monkey is a really short, very quick read. But it completely changed the way I think about delegation. So, the entire core of the book is the idea that as a leader, you have a team of people, let's say you're just leading a team of 10 people, and all of those 10 direct reports that you have, they each have monkeys on their back, they have problems that they need to be solved.

And It's in their best interest to come to you, their manager with all their monkeys and to say, Hey, Aaron, I've got this horrible problem to solve. I've got this monkey on my back. I want to give it to you, solve my problem for me. And if you're not careful as a manager, you become a zookeeper of other people's monkeys.

You take on everyone else's problems. [00:18:00] And if you do that, it ends up not only burning you out like crazy, as you would probably expect, but it develops this tendency in your team. to not solve their own problems. And you're essentially coaching them implicitly, that if you have anything that makes you blanch, that you don't know an immediate answer, come to me and I'll fix it for you.

I'll do it. So, you train your team to essentially not develop, not learn how to Solve their own problems, do their own work. And so that's something that we train all of our brand-new managers at my company, Jitasa, we train people on that right out of the gate is that we want you to learn about you can almost call it reverse delegation as a manager is team members, delegating things to you.

giving you their monkeys, you have to be really mindful of that and very careful that you're not taking on other people's problems too much. So, the Genesis, that book essentially is pivoting from taking over those problems to assisting people with their [00:19:00] problems. And the language we use there is really key that if I'm working with a direct report and they come to me with a problem, they say, Bobby, can you do this?

The language I use translates, whether it's my problem and I'm taking it, or if I'm helping you with your problem. And we want to do the latter whenever possible.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love that also the lens that you're coming out of those books that you might not have heard of before. What's let me ask you, have you read the book, The Human Element by Loran Nordgren?

No. Okay. That is, that's a must read must read it's Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal. It's a more recent book. Loran's a good friend and he's a professor at Kellogg and another friend sent me the book and I started reading it. It was immediately engrossed. Yeah. And they look at the language that they use and sometimes language is such, such a thing that just triggers in a good way.

What are the fuels? which accelerate decisions or actions to happen or behaviors to happen. And what are the frictions which hold back [00:20:00] human behaviors? And they look at the full scope of fuels and frictions around different decisions about what gets somebody to act or take action what gets, A whole population to take action on the type of beer that they buy or the type of shampoo or all of it.

It's one of those fascinating books on human behavior and helps you really think about navigating. I think even just like navigating change management in a really meaningful way and looking, asking yourself some questions that we ought to ask ourselves when we're Changing something big within our team or an organization or a process.

That is one I do not hear enough people reading. Top five human behavior books I've read in the last five years.

Bobby Powers: Wow. Yeah. That's high praise. I'll have to check that out. That's wonderful. That's great.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. All right. Let's, give us a couple more.

I want to hear, at least one or two more.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Another one, this one was popular like 20 years ago or so. And I've gone back to it and reread it multiple times is a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. [00:21:00] And it's a book that I don't think a lot of people think of as a leadership book, but to me, it's such a core leadership pillar because it's all about communication.

So, it's written by these two brothers. One has more of a background in marketing. One has more of a background in psychology and they join their powers together to talk about how do you make ideas stick in the mind of an audience? And so, to me, it's a book that's right up my alley for doing learning and development.

That's my day-to-day job. But it's also great for anyone who is a teacher, anyone who's a politician, anyone who's a salesperson, any of these different roles, we all have to communicate ideas. And I would say a leader's core job is to get ideas from your noggin or the company's strategy plan into someone else's noggin and communicating those ideas through stories and simple, powerful analogies is what this book is all about.

So, I loved that book and it gives a simple formula for success [00:22:00] and communication. It seems like you've read that one.

Aaron Levy: It's the sticky formula. And yeah. And even that, I don't remember all the steps in it. But like simple unexpected, there's some there's some things that, that stick in my brain.

Yeah, it's funny. Cause anytime we bring out a new team member, Raise the Bar. Whether you're managing people or not, it's about like, how are you communicating your messages? How are you even to the emails you're drafting? And even if you're sending it internally to somebody else, the way you structure, the way you make the ask being clear, all of those things are elements that are really important.

And so, I find that Made to Stick as a really good book in the way like, Hey, think about how you present, you're always selling your idea or your concept. You're always trying to get someone to take some sort of action, whether it's to respond with a yes or no, or whether it's to give you more information or whether it's to help you get the monkey off your back, whatever it is, if I'm coming to Bobby and I'm coming with a monkey, there's ways that I can set myself up for Bobby to really help me.

And there's ways that I can set myself [00:23:00] up for Bobby, not to help me so much. And made to stick. I agree. It helps with that so much. That's such a good call out.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. It's a great book. It's one that I go back to a lot for anytime I'm trying to help someone with public speaking tips or general communication or leadership, like we're talking about here.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. Okay. What's another.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Another book that I really got a ton out of was Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. So that's one that I know was a big bestseller when it came out. Fantastic book, because it's about exactly what the title says. He talks about the difficult things as a leader, the difficult things, managing a workplace.

He starts the book by saying the majority of people, they talk about the easiest elements. of these tough problems. I'm going to talk about the toughest decisions that ever hit your desk if you're a CEO, if you're a manager. So how do you actually execute a layoff? How do you communicate well with people around [00:24:00] some difficulty like that?

That book was the most raw, honest look at what leadership is like that I think I've ever read. And Ben Horowitz, for anyone that's unfamiliar, he started as an entrepreneur himself. He created a couple of businesses that then ended up selling for multi millions. And then he became a venture capitalist.

And so, he co runs the firm Andreessen Horowitz with Mark Andreessen. So, there are two of the most well-respected VCs. So, he's a

Aaron Levy: Pretty credible source.

Bobby Powers: Very credible. Yep. So that was another one I got a lot out of, but yeah, I would love to hear some of your top recs too. Anything else I should add to my list?

Aaron Levy: Yeah. I was at my aunt's and they were moving from the house they'd been in for 50 years to a condo and they were like, take what you want.

And obviously I went to the bookshelf. I was like, okay. And I took a book that seemed interesting called The Art of Possibility. And then I started reading it and I just fell in love. It's by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. Benjamin Zander [00:25:00] was a conductor for the Boston Philharmonic.

And Rosamund is a psychologist. And it's like the combination, they almost each write a different chapter. And it's this amazing combination of a conductor's job is to do this. But it's so much more than that. And it's getting people in sync and getting people working together and getting people in flow and dealing with egos and how he did that.

And then the psychology perspective of it. And the practices and the little tips, it was so good that in the middle of reading it said to my team, Hey, do you guys want to do a book club? We wanna do a book club on this. And we all did a book club on it. Because I wanted to hear other people's perspectives and how they interpreted those stories that are coming from, if you're not in the world of music and I can't clap to the beat if you paid me to.

 It's, that's so far out of my wheelhouse. But hearing how you get a collection of people together to create something beautiful was inspiring. And also just like a lot of fun nuggets and lessons. So that was a really fun, fun read. [00:26:00] 

Bobby Powers: Oh, that's great. That's another one I need to add to my list.

Yeah, as you were talking about that, it reminded me of, I heard a leader one time use the analogy of, as someone who's leading an organization, like in an orchestra or a symphony, for instance, you're not the one that's playing the instruments. You're not playing the violin. You're not playing the cello, but you're playing the orchestra.

You're the one that's conducting the entire thing and making sure that it all comes together. So, I love the idea of learning from someone who's actually conducting, who actually has done that kind of role before, because you have to get the best out of everyone in those instruments.

Aaron Levy: And just like the creative ways and different stories that they did and I think when he Was teaching he said one of the activities he didn't care about grades Obviously he cared about how people learned and he said to get your A you have to write what this class has contributed to you and what you've learned and how you've grown and how you've evolved to get that I like write a letter to your future self And It was like, I was like, Whoa, what a powerful activity.

We always talk about writing a letter to your [00:27:00] future self. That's not a new idea, but like assuming that your future self has gotten the A in this class, how have you evolved? And I, there's so many little nuggets that I took from that. Okay. I, we've talked a lot about a lot of business books and gone in a lot of different directions, and we haven't talked about Adam Grant probably intentionally because his books are super popular and they're super good. Like Adam Grant’s books, all of them. I read them as soon as they come out. So, I'm glad we didn't just touch on all Adam Grant. Cause we could have done a whole podcast on that.

What's one of the most recent fiction books or not recent, just in the last, I don't know, five plus years that, that you just Enjoy. It doesn't have to be your favorite. It doesn't have to be the best. Just one that pops ahead. You're like, Oh, this one just makes me happy.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. One of my favorites recently is a book called The Circle by Dave Eggers.

 It's all about social media taking over the world, essentially, but it's told through the lens of this fictional company that a young college grad goes and works at this company and starts learning [00:28:00] about essentially how the company is run and how pervasive all of technological tools are in taking over everyone's lives.

And so, it's a book that I thought was just a fascinating read. I loved reading it just from a pure fiction perspective, but it also touched a lot of different things that I'm passionate about of how I view technology, how I want to harness the benefits of it. I want to be really cautious of the detriments of it.

And I think all of us need to be mindful of not being controlled by the devices that we have in our pockets.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I read a book. That's been on my radar because I really liked Dave Eggers book. I'm big into coffee. And so, I read his book, The Monk of Mocha.

Bobby Powers: Nice.

Aaron Levy: Yeah. And it was just this like fun, great reading.

I just, he's a really interesting, I just like his style. Okay. Great. This was a total blast. This was everything I'd hoped it would be, which is a jam session on our favorite books. And maybe we'll have to pick a time in, another year, to do it again. Cause this was so much fun jamming about books.

And hopefully for those of you [00:29:00] listening, this is a little bit off of our beaten path, but. Worth it. And hopefully you got one or two books to take and or add them all to your list, but definitely one or two, that you're excited to read. And, hopefully you'll share if you read one with Bobby and I what you liked about it.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, absolutely. And you can connect with me at bobbypowers.net. I send out a monthly newsletter with book recommendations and articles and quotes that really jumped out to me. So yeah, I would love to connect with anybody on there, hit me up and we can share recommendations together.

Aaron Levy: Awesome. And we'll put that in the show notes.

Thank you, Bobby, for your time. This was awesome.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Thanks Aaron.