Bite-sized tips for curious leaders & learners every other Sunday

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🔥 Inspiring Quotes

⛽ Articles to Fuel Lifelong Learning

​6 Ways to Remember What You Read​ Do you have trouble remembering & acting on the books you read? Try these tips.

​No, Introverts Shouldn't Try to Become Extroverts​ Society implicitly tells us that extroversion is good and introversion is bad, but that's misguided. Here's why.

📚 Books Worth Your Time

​Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller​ Nonfiction: Business, Marketing I've read a lot of marketing books, but this one immediately became my favorite. Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, executive, or writer, Miller's framework is a powerful way to break down the story you need to tell.

​Amp It Up by Frank Slootman​ Nonfiction: Business, Operations, Mgmt Frank Slootman was a hard-charging CEO at Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. I've heard him on podcasts and always appreciated his candor. In this book, he unpacks the principles that led to his career success.

​The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis​ Fiction: Drama, Literature, Chess You're probably familiar with the Netflix series based on this book (if not, go watch it). The series is fantastic and so is the book. I grew up playing competitive chess, so this one was especially fun and nostalgic for me.

🧑‍💼 Quick Leadership Takeaway

🗣️ "All learning is dependent on feedback. The faster the feedback, the faster you can learn. Thus, in many domains, the individual, team, or organization with the fastest feedback cycle is the one that wins."
-James Clear

For the past month, I've been writing an 18-page guide on How to Overcome Impostor Syndrome.

I gathered insights from 25 managers across 6 countries and distilled them into a free guide for all of my readers. (You'll find it below.)

Anyway, I officially launched that guide on LinkedIn last week, which was exciting.

The day after the launch, my buddy Jeff asked if he could give me some feedback about the guide.

I’m not one to shy away from feedback, so I told him I’d love to hear it.

Jeff gently told me the guide I created was well-written, but the graphics were poorly designed. (And he was 100% right. I created it myself and I’m not a designer.)

I thought about his feedback for the next couple of hours.

It stung because I had been so excited about this new thing I created (with the help of all the managers who contributed, of course). But I knew in my gut he was right.

Jeff is a senior marketer whom I not only adore as a person but respect as a writer and thinker. If he thought the graphics needed work, they needed work.

So I quickly set out to fix my mistake. Within a couple of hours, I had hired a designer on Upwork to re-do the entire guide and make it look WAY better than my half-assed original version.

And within 48 hours, the designer had whipped up a new version that I could offer with more pride to my readers.

I share this story with you for two reasons:

1. I am sooooo thankful to have friends like Jeff in my life. We all need a Jeff. It’s easy to pat someone on the back and make them feel good. It’s way harder to lovingly tell them, “Hey, I think this could be better.” Without Jeff’s courage, I would have a worse product.
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2. One of our most important (and challenging) jobs as leaders is to accept feedback and learn from it. I know as much as much as anyone how much it sometimes sucks to hear feedback. I’ve been working to become a better receiver of feedback for many years, but it’s still challenging for me. Experiences like this reinforce how important it is for me to be receptive to feedback.

What about you?

• On a scale of 1-10, how well do you receive feedback?
• Tougher question: what score would your team members give you on that question?

This week, I encourage you to vulnerably ask 1-2 people for feedback to continue building that important leadership muscle.

🥸 You're Not a Fraud. I Believe in You.

As I mentioned above, I finished creating my free guide on impostor syndrome, and I'm so excited to share it with you!

Huge thanks to all of my friends and readers who contributed stories and tips. You can download your free copy here or simply click the image below.

By the way, it would be a HUGE help if you could tell one fellow leader about this guide.

If you know anyone who recently became a manager or wants to become one someday, tell them to visit the page below to download their free copy:

​www.bobbypowers.com/impostor

🤝 Someone You Should Know...

I recently got to reconnect with a dear friend from college, Jess Hershey.

It's always interesting reconnecting with friends from previous chapters of life because you never know how time will change someone.

In this case, the experience has been such a joy because Jess is doing some incredible and inspiring things. For over a decade, she and her team at MOCA have been helping entrepreneurs stay intentional in their businesses by working sustainably and avoiding burnout.

She's also formed a free online community of entrepreneurs who meet every month to solve each other's business challenges. I attended this week's Zoom meetup, and it was energizing and thought-provoking.

If you're an entrepreneur or online creator who wants to build a long-term, sustainable business alongside fellow well-balanced founders, check out MOCA.

👇 Helpful Resources

Visit me at BobbyPowers.com for more articles and book reviews about leadership, self-improvement, and productivity.

You can also access high-res PDFs of my 1-pagers & cheat sheets here.

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