Books

Reading 200 Books A Year Changed My Life

It All Started by Reading Medium Articles

I love writing.

But I love business even more.

In 2019, I decided to set a goal to read 200 books a year. This came out of a thought I’d developed in late 2018. I was tired of living in poverty.

I decided some time ago that I understood full well what it meant to live in poverty, since I had done that successfully while living in Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 70s. Yep, nailed that.

I had moved to New York, created a career for myself with IBM. That career began in 1982 and ended in 2009. A 27 year run — it was a good run.

When I got laid off, along with thousands of others during a stealth layoff (my own term I described at the time for a strategy they employed) — I believed at that time I would have no trouble finding the next job. After all — I’d worked for IBM! That had to carry some cachet, right?

I remember thinking, and even saying out loud — No worries! I know how to be poor. I can be that again if need be.

Be careful what you wish for. Be even more careful of what you idly pronounce. The universe is always listening.

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts were, you would never think a negative thought.” — Peace Pilgrim Mildred Lisette Norman

But I was mistaken in my optimism about the job market. The thousands of IBMers that were let go that year were put out into a business environment that was extremely competitive — even hostile.

All of us were left with no really helpful or significant assistance into that brave new world. We’d really been isolated, immersed in a corporate culture that kept us tied to the company mission. We lived and breathed IBM. Luckily, I’d had a backup plan for just such an event.

To survive, I put myself 100% into my own business. It was an online retail sales shop — that started with a tiny product — a polar express bell with my own custom packaging.

The project started with a school outing. My son’s elementary school put out a call for chaperones for their trip to the movie theater to see The Polar Express, which opened in 2004. This was 5 years before my layoff at IBM.

After seeing the movie, and swearing I’d never travel in a yellow school bus ever again, the thought came to mind, “wouldn’t it be great to gift my son a bell for the holiday?” That thought also came to the minds of every other parent who saw the movie that year.

Hallmark created a bell in a package. It was being bought and scalped on eBay for hundreds of dollars.

I came up with the idea to create my own version. Hand decorated, elf painted boxes and a high quality bell that I would source and manufacture. I’d sell it on eBay and etsy. It was wildly popular, and prices went through the roof. The demand was tremendous.

That was the beginning of my business. Elf Works Lane. Still doing business to this day.

It evolved into a store front. It kept us going financially for years. The bell business, to my surprise, grew 10 times each year. The traction was insane.

All our revenues came in during October through December. The holidays were brutal. I was usually the only person to be able to keep up with the pace of fulfillment. At our peak, we had a staff of 10.

But we weren’t poor. We were doing well. Cash flow was better than when I worked for IBM. Things were great until I got involved with amazon. The money was terrific. But over the years, their metrics became harder and harder to manage for a small home business. There were other factors too that made hooking up with amazon the worst decision of my life. But I’ll save that for another post.

Once I put my product on amazon, everyone in the world could see it. I began to see fierce competition. And once some Chinese companies saw it and started to imitate, it became almost impossible to compete.

I did manage to compete though, by introducing a new model and new packaging each year. That kept us going for several more years. Until I just BURNED OUT.

Burn out is real and it is not pretty. It not only exhausts you, but it can lead to depression if you don’t have a strategy to deal with it.

I was exhausted. And I had NO strategy.

I coasted by for some years. Rented out rooms in my home with AirBnB, cooked for guests, cleaned houses, and was able to just barely scrape by with the bills. Started to manage other property owners’ homes, and that helped.

I started writing on Medium in 2016. A friend introduced me to some of the writing there. It was a salve and a panacea.

I remember reading an article about how feasible it really was to read 200 books a year. I agreed with the analysis and that it was possible for me to do it. And with audio books, even easier. I had stopped reading years ago while I worked with IBM. I was too exhausted at the end of each day, and had enough of books slapping me in the face as I drifted off to sleep. Corporate life takes a serious toll.

Shortly after reading that Medium article, I resolved that poverty really wasn’t a thing I wanted to return to ever again. I started studying the habits of the most financially successful people in the world. Their simple habits seemed so simple — could this be real?

Are their habits simple because they have the money to allow for such a simple life? Or did the habits come first?

I kept reading.

I concluded that the habits must always come first. And they ARE truly simple.

I was able to see with clarity that my reading habit was the single most important habit on my list of simple habits. That and five others, would change my life.

Are you ready to make a move out of mediocrity? My new book readers’ mastermind group might be for you.

Join Nanci Arvizu and me as the group begins meeting on June 15th.

Keep informed. Sign up for my free newsletter to get access to book assignments and receive invitations to the masterminds.

Read more from Susan:

Susan Brearley is a brilliant strategist, a published book author, writer, seasoned editor, essayist, occasional comedy writer, and an accidental poet. She’s the happy collector of between 1 and 20 top writer badges on Medium, on any given day.

She is Chef, Elder and Program Director at Elf Works Lane Retreat Center, where she coaches people, helping them create the life they were born to live, on the planet we all want to live on.

She is currently based in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York.

Stay in touch. Become a part of her Mighty Network. We bring together amazing womxn leaders who inspire each other, so we may each lead the way into living the lives we were all born for. Transforming lives through indigenous ways, in community.