You Need to Read This 2 đź“šBooks đź“š If You Want to Be a Successful Influencer
“When you read the same books as everyone else, you don’t learn anything new.”
If you ask any successful entrepreneur: What is your secret to success? They will tell you: “Read more books.”
When someone asked Warren Buffett what his best investments in life have been. He answered: “books.” 📚📚📚
For Warren Buffett, If you Want to be successful you need to read more than 500 pages per day.
In my case:
I’m 20 years old and I have read more than 100 books.
On average I read a weekly book.
You are free to see the books I’ve read on my Goodreads
And since I started my path as a community manager. There are two books in particular that have been quite useful to me.
Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work
Both books are by Austin Kleon
Steal Like An Artist
The first of the books teaches you how to steal like an artist.
For Kleon,
Good artists copy. But the great artists steal.
Stealing like an artist means stealing ideas from others. It means connecting the ideas of others in a unique way.
It means, imitating the genius of others.
For Kleon:
“If you steal a person, everyone will say you’re a copycat. But if you steal 100 different people, people will say you’re a genius.”
That’s what the essence of the book is about: Learning to steal ideas.
How an artist see the world?
The artist sees the world in this way: first he decides what is worth stealing. Then edit it and go.
What a good artist must understand is that nothing comes from nothing. All creative work arises from what has existed before.
Nothing is completely original. If we free ourselves from the burden of trying to be completely original, we will stop trying to do things from scratch to take on our influences instead of running away from them.
Every Community Manager should take advantage of Austin Kleon’s ideas.
As community managers we should:
1) Steal to the bests
What do they do that I don’t? What can I improve on them? What ideas can I steal?
2) Connect the points:
How can I mix the ideas of these influencers? How to make them not discover my theft? How can I be more original?
3) Be attentive:
For smart stealing, we need to be aware of what is happening around us. What are others doing? What should I be doing?
4) Edit every day:
A good thief isn’t born in one day. You need to steal every day to become someone extraordinary.
Show Your Work
In this book, Austin Kleon proposes to share a piece of your work every day.
It’s useless to steal the ideas of others if you don’t bring your ideas to the public
Artists are the consequence of the constant exposure of their works.
The majority remembers two or three works by Picasso. But nobody knows that he actually made more than 100.
Publishing your work every day is what makes you a true artist.
As artists, we need to understand our audience. We need constant feedback. And the only way to get it’s by publishing every single day.
Our works improve with constant exposure.
Ideas become products only when you show them to others
Otherwise, they will always be ideas.
As community managers. We need:
1) Publish our work every day:
Only with the feedback is that we will know what our audience wants.
2) Lose the fear of failure:
The best way to lose the fear of criticizing our work is to publish every single day.
Constant exposure is what will make you better.
After a while, you will stop pain attention to others and you’ll continue sharing your work.
What can I do to improve as an influencer?
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Henry David Thoreau
If I only had one weekend to design my personal brand. I would spend the time reading these two books.
Austin Kleon is a genius.
He is a genius that we must steal. He is a genius whose teachings we must share day after day.
His books are short. Each one is 100 pages and they are full of images.
If you don’t read Austin Kleon’s books, it’s because of laziness.
Anyway, I can’t force you to read.
But what I can do. Is to ask you to respond in the comments: What do you think of the books?
