Introducing the Liz and Ryan Book Club
Celebrating the Everyday, Friday Favs //
Good morning and happy Friday! We hope you all had an AMAZING week and have some fun plans for the weekend! One of our favorite hobbies is reading. We LOVE reading a good book while snuggling up close under a cozy warm blanket. One of the reasons we love to read is that it inspires creativity in our minds. For the most part, we end up reading books about business, entrepreneurship, life, etc. Ok, Ok, we admit it, Liz does have Fifty Shades of Gray downloaded on the iPad too. :)
A few weeks ago, we were chatting with some close friends and were sharing some ideas we learned from reading. We recommend a few books and and chatted a little while longer about why we loved each one and how it has helped our relationship, lives, or business. And then we thought, wouldn’t it be fun to create a Liz and Ryan Book Club!! At first the idea sounded stupid, until we started reading Richie Norton‘s new book, “The Power of Starting Something Stupid.”
How many times have you had an idea only to have someone else tell you that it was stupid or wouldn’t work out? How many times have you thought, if only I could turn this crazy idea into a business and an AMAZING life? For us this happens all the time! In fact, starting our business was definitely a stupid idea that we had. More recently, starting our AMAZING Marriage Project was definitely another stupid idea. But as Richie shares in his book, “stupid is the new smart.”
We are so excited and honored to be able to kick off the Liz and Ryan Book Club with The Power of Starting Something Stupid. For now, we will just be sharing some of our favorite books and some of the advice we’ve learned from reading them, but who knows, eventually our stupid idea could turn into something as big as Oprah’s Book Club! :)
When we met Richie earlier this month in Punta Cana at the What If Conference, immediately we were inspired. He shared his heart with us and passion for taking what most people often consider stupid ideas and turning them into thriving businesses. Richie shared a few pieces of advice from his book, but the one that stuck with me the most was this, “Will I Regret it When I am Eighty?” This thought has definitely been our motto over the last year. In life, there are so many things we put off because we are afraid. The fears and excuses can be limitless: We don’t have enough time, We don’t have any money, People will say our idea is stupid….
But when we started applying the question “Will I Regret it When I am Eighty” to our lives, those fears and excuses suddenly don’t make a lot of sense anymore. Why wouldn’t we start doing more of what we love and less of what we don’t? Richie calls this The Bezos Test. In The Power of Starting Something Stupid, Richie shares the story of Jeff Bezos. Jeff’s story is often a familiar one that many of us have. It goes a little something like this:
“Jeff had a secure, well-paying job, a job that made him happy. By a societal measure, the guy had it all. Everything, including a wickedly stupid idea.”
Jeff’s stupid idea turned out to become Amazon.com. When he took his stupid idea to his boss at the time, he was told that the idea would be good thing to start for someone that didn’t already have a job, not someone like him. Instead of listening to the advice of his manager, Jeff asked himself, will I regret not pursuing this dream when I am eighty? The answer was yes. So he quit his job, took out a loan from his parents and begin working on his idea that would eventually revolutionize e-commerce and how things are sold on the internet. Can you imagine the internet without Amazon.com?
The next time you have a stupid idea, take the Bezos Test and ask yourself, “Will I regret it when I am eighty?”
This is just one of the many AMAZING pieces of advice that Richie shares in The Power of Starting Something Stupid.
From the moment we picked it up, we were inspired. The book pushes us to “Crush Fear” and make all of our big dreams a reality. Instead of looking at our ideas as stupid, more often then not, our ideas are actually smart ideas.
Another one of my favorite sections in the book is what Richie calls START, the five actions of the new smart. START stands for Serve, Thank, Ask, Receive, Trust. By applying these actions in our lives, jobs, businesses, and ideas, “we create an unyielding foundation for future success.” How awesome is that?
We are so excited to share Richie’s Book with you all. It is released March 5th, but don’t wait, head on over to Amazon.com to preorder your copy right now!
So here is the next part of our stupid idea, we want to know who is interested in being part of our Liz and Ryan Book Club? Have ideas of books we should read? Or have thoughts about how we could make the Book Club more AMAZING? Interested in participating in a live chat to discuss the books in our book club further? We’d love to hear from you, leave a comment below. And because we love hearing from you all so much, we will be giving away a copy of Richie’s book to one lucky person that leaves us a message!