It’s Saturday night. All my friends are out partying. They invited me too. But I didn’t go. I had to complete writing this blog post about the most interesting and amazing phase of my life.
So a few months back, I developed a book summary website. We write summaries of non-fiction novels and put them on our website. The summaries are for people who lack the time or motivation to read the entire book. Read on to find out our story…
I have always been passionate about starting my own company. Last year I graduated as a marketing major. I had a lot of ideas while I was in college. But I would spend most of my time stressing over them in lieu of making them perfect. And while doing so, I would lose interest and drop them. This happened until I met a person smarter than me who told me that, “Idea is 10%, Execution is 90%”. That is when I decided to drop all the ideas except (as you rightly guessed) the idea of making a book summary website and decided to execute it.
How I turned my habit into a startup company
I am an avid reader. I read self-help more than fiction. I have always had this habit of making note of important points while reading so that I can refer to them whenever I need. This saves me the trouble of going through the entire book again while I am implementing the teachings given in the book. And trust me, this one habit has helped me solve a lot of both – personal and work-related problems.
The idea of creating The Book Summary House struck me while I was talking to my local librarian (from whom I rent most of the books I read). He was worried about people missing out on valuable insights given in books just because they didn’t have enough time to read or were not habitual to reading books. I thanked him and immediately ran home to research about it. While researching, I came across a video of Bill Gates where he is talking about taking notes while reading books. That is when I realized the power of this simple habit. I got in touch with my reader friends and their friends through social media and found out that many of them are keen on sharing the insights given in the books they read.
I dug in more and found out that there are a few websites that are doing exactly the same thing that I had thought of. They write book summaries and put them on their website. But they were all subscription based (you pay them to read their summaries). I decided to keep my website free and avoid such subscription method as my purpose of making the website was to distribute the precious knowledge hidden in books to everyone.
Fast forward to today and I already have uploaded quite a few summaries on the website and people are loving them. This is how I turned one of my habits into a successful startup company. Do follow us on Instagram and be a part of our journey.
In the end, I would like to share few things that I learned in the process of starting The Book Summary House.
- As I mentioned above, focus more on execution rather than the idea. Do not spend time in making the idea perfect. You will learn a lot more while executing which will help you better your idea.
- Keep Learning. Take up online courses. Read. You can find loads of information about any topic on the Internet. Connect with leaders in your industry. Seek their advice about complex problems. There is no shame in asking for help.
- There would be days when you would be stuck. You might feel that you are heading nowhere. Persevere. It is the key. The most important lesson that entrepreneurship teaches you is perseverance. Stay strong, I promise you will sail through all the mighty waves of challenges.
Lastly, I am always, always enthusiastic and ready to talk about marketing. If ever you want to discuss about your new business idea or marketing strategies for it, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers!