The Power Of Reading Books: Read More And Move More With Matt Karamazov

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

 

It’s always inspiring how individuals can find motivation and guidance through literature. Matt Karamazov, a fitness model, shares his perspective on reading books as a personal journey and its influence on his life. The books “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” and “Purple Cow” resonated with Matt, helping him develop a resilient mindset and approach life with a growth-oriented attitude in creating a unique identity for himself as a fitness model. He integrated his love for reading books and dedication to staying fit, and he developed a distinctive personal brand that sets him apart from others in the fitness industry. This combination of intellectual and physical pursuits can provide a compelling story and potentially open doors to new opportunities for him. His story serves as a reminder of the transformative impact that books can have on individuals and their ability to shape their paths. Tune in and see how Matt used the power of reading and his journey to design a fulfilling life.

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The Power Of Reading Books: Read More And Move More With Matt Karamazov

Imagine the knowledge you’d have if you read over 1,000 books. That’s what our guest, Matt, has done. He’s going to share with you how he became such a fanatic almost about reading and why he loves it so much then wants to encourage everyone else to start reading as well as moving more. He’s also a fitness model. Enjoy the episode and find out how he combines his two passions.

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Our guest is Matt Karamazov. He’s an enthusiastic, lifelong reader, a business owner, and a fitness model who’s taken to the internet to inspire people to read more and move more. Every day on social media, he shares with more than 100,000 of his followers the magic and power of books and reading, the transformational benefits of fitness and being healthy inside and out, and the once-in-a-universe miracle of being alive at all.

He also teaches self-discipline and the supreme importance of laying out a vision of where you want to go in life and the profound truth of the fact that where you start off doesn’t have to be where you end up. He’s gone through it all from earning minimum wage as a hospital security guard to starting his own record label back to the bottom and now to his level of business success and life satisfaction. He never stopped working, never stopped getting back up, and never stopped reading. Welcome to the show, Matt.

John, thanks very much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

Likewise. I’m very impressed with your Instagram creation and the success you have. Let’s not make anybody wait one second longer. I usually save this for the end, but if somebody’s curious and they need to know, give us your handle on Instagram.

It’s @TheMattKaramazov. It’s fairly simple to find. Just look for the guy in the library holding the stack of books. That will be my profile picture.

What started first, the passion for reading or the passion for working out?

I would have to say reading. I can’t claim 100% credit for that either because my parents and my early influences are a huge part of the reader that I eventually became. I started off well, as most kids do with parents who are committed readers and learners themselves. Our house was always full of books and they took my education seriously. They took my questions seriously and they took me seriously.

They encouraged me to read. They read to me, which is probably the first book that I ever read was read to me. It was just swimming in that water that was how I came to love it. I’m certain that came first, then my father continues to be supportive of fitness and health and all that. He was an excellent hockey player in the ‘60s. We’ve always been active in our house and my mother too. I’ve had both of those things.

You had both reading and fitness modeled for you.

Yes. I’m a big believer in surrounding yourself with the people that you most like to be like or to become. If you spend time with non-readers, you’re going to become a non-reader even if you do read quite a bit already.

There’s been research about fitness and hanging out with people who are fit or people who are fat. The same thing is true. It’s interesting because I noticed once, I was with a group of people who wanted to go out and go grab fast food at 2:00 in the morning. I’m like, “I haven’t done that since college.” People still do that into their 40s or whatever or longer. If you’re likewise with people who are fit, they’re like, “We’re going on a bike ride, want to come?” You maybe wouldn’t have gone on a bike ride without that encouragement. One way or the other, peer pressure influences how fit we are, which is bizarre when you think about it.

[bctt tweet=”Read and move every day.” username=”John_Livesay”]

We don’t rise to the level of our bowls or whatever. We fall to the level of our systems, habits, support group, and peer network, which is important. There’s a somewhat tragic fact that I read in an excellent book by Maryanne Wolf. Her books are phenomenal. They’re all about the neuroscience of reading and how reading develops in the brain or doesn’t. She talks about dyslexia and all that.

In one of her books, Reader, Come Home, which is one I highly recommend, she mentions that in the United States, the National Bureau of Prisons uses 4th-grade reading statistics to predict how many prison beds they’re likely to need in the future. They’re able to take that information and predict how many criminals they will have because of the lack of reading education that someone has.

I also remember the first time I heard somebody say, “If you know how to read and write and you stop doing it after school, you might as well be illiterate.” I went, “Wow.”

The word or the term I’ve heard is functionally illiterate. You can read but you don’t. What’s the difference?

Do you think it comes down to a lack of curiosity for some people?

I think so. There are influences, for sure. We live in an attention economy. Attention is the new oil, essentially. You wanted to get rich in the last century. You owned oil companies. The century before that, it was railroads, but in this century, if you want to get rich, you have to command attention. Big businesses now are fighting for your attention, pulling you away.

Whenever you’re trying to pull yourself away from your phone, there are 1,000 software engineers on the other side of your screen trying to stop you. There are incentives that people have, big ones to prevent you from reading. You have to fight against that, and how do you even do that? There’s a lot of stuff working against you.

We were joking, but it’s true. Part of what you do, because it’s one of your assets, is showing yourself with your shirt off because you’re a fitness model. Tell us about that journey. How did that happen? Did you find a lot of other models reading, or did they think it was odd that you were into reading?

It’s never been negative. Not surprisingly, I’m going to mention two books to answer your question. One is by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who turns out to be a brilliant businessperson. He’s doing well. His book is called How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. I listened to the audio version years ago. What he says is, “It’s so much harder to become the top 1% in one thing, but it’s a lot easier to become top 10% in two things and build your career at the intersection of those two things.”

What he said is that there are plenty of people who are funnier than he is, but he’s pretty funny. There are plenty of people that are better artists and cartoonists than he is, but he’s pretty good at drawing. He combined those two things and now he is an exceptionally lucrative and rewarding career in every sense of that term by being 10% in two things and combining them.

The other book is Seth Godin. He’s excellent as well. It’s called Purple Cow. The whole idea is standing out. You’re not going to mention to a friend of yours that you saw a white cow or brown cow. Everybody sees those, but if you see a purple cow standing in the field, you’re going to mention that and you’re going to tell some people. If you’re building a product, designing a career, and if you want people to pay attention to you, which is more important now than ever in a business sense, you’re going to want to be remarkable. You want to be a purple cow. I found combining books and fitness to make yourself into a purple cow.

Those two things don’t usually go together. A bookworm is not usually a fitness model.

[bctt tweet=”Attention is the new oil.” username=”John_Livesay”]

It’s a scroll stopper. You scroll down, it’s the same different, and that gets people to stop.

I love it. This concept also that your promise on your Instagram is to gain wisdom and strength. You mean it in the little word of strength. Also, there’s a stoic character strength implied there, I believe.

Correct. My reading has informed everything that I do, all the decisions that I make, and my ability to empathize with people. That’s a scientific fact. There’s so much involved in using books to design the life that you want to live. The world is more confusing than ever. It’s moving faster than ever. I’m still coming to terms with AI and incorporating that into my business. However, I’m behind that. It’s almost impossible to keep up. How do you do that? Wisdom, you can’t be dragged along with the current. You have to take a step back. Holding a book is like holding a handful of silence. You need those spaces within the day to make sense of things and where you’re going. It’s so critically important.

That’s a great soundbite, holding a book is like holding a handful of silence. I’ve never heard anybody say that before.

I can’t take credit for it, but it is something that I say a lot.

The irony is you’re making a career and a business out of having a huge following on Instagram, but you turn it off and read a book.

You have to. There’s no other way. I’m not always successful at this. Who is? After posting something on Instagram, I try to pull myself away and do something else because you can get it.

As you said, the algorithms. It’s so funny you were talking about AI. I saw a post you made about using AI to create art, which a lot of people I don’t think are aware of. You and I were talking about the respective libraries in Austin and Halifax and how beautiful they are as a piece of architecture. When I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, it was another building. There was no design to it. Now, to see it become this place of awe almost, that translates to the feeling of all the knowledge that’s in all those books in one place.

I stayed at a Library Boutique Hotel in Manhattan. In each hotel room is a bookshelf with books all color coded. You’re in room 405 and they give you the code. It’s a Dewey decimal system as if you’re going to an old school library. That retro, everything old is new again. It’s quite interesting to see that concept of, “How do you feel about people consuming books audible versus reading them?”

I listen to a fair amount of audiobooks. Brian Tracy, the personal development legend, I don’t even think this is his term. I think he’s borrowing from Jim Rohn or something. He says, “You can turn your car into a university on wheels.” I still remember that. I started off reading Brian Tracy years ago. You can do that with anything. There’s value in pulling away from everything like doing the dishes with no music. Nothing, just you and yourself. There’s value.

At the same time, sometimes you can do certain things and combine them. Multitasking is usually a horrible idea. It doesn’t work. You’re switching from one thing to another. There are switching costs involved in that. It diminishes your brain power, but you can do certain things. You can wash dishes or go for a walk around the block. You can do all these things and listen to books at the same time, especially if it’s read by the author. In some of my best reading experiences, I read Steven Pressfield’s memoir, Govt Cheese, which is a phenomenal book. The title makes sense. He explains it in the book.

David Goggins narrates his own books. He had in that chapter nine of his book, Never Finished, which is another fantastic one, just sold a million copies. His mother joins him on the audio version. They were in an interview in chapter nine, I believe. In the print version, it doesn’t show up. You’d have that portion of it. I read or listened to a bunch of Eric Thomas, the speaker or the motivational speaker. I love him. I’m listening to one of his books now. It can be a completely different listening versus reading experience. I take notes on every single book that I read.

[bctt tweet=”Audiobooks are real books.” username=”John_Livesay”]

How do you store those books? Are they in a journal or are they digitally taken notes?

They’re digitally stored. I have them on my Patreon. They’re all in Google Drive and they’re searchable too. It makes me nervous. There’s nothing wrong with this, but when they write in the margins of their books and highlight passages, what if there’s a fire? You move and the moving company misplaces the box and you’ve lost all of these notes.

You can do that if you like but, as I said, that makes me a little bit nervous. I take notes on everything. Speaking of audiobooks, I find it a little bit harder to take notes on audiobooks because I’d have to pause the book and rewind it or pause it every few words to take down the notes. It’s a little bit harder. If I expect to take a tremendous amount of notes on a book, I’m more likely to read the physical book as opposed to listening to the audio. That’s one of the things that I would mention. I believe the audiobooks are real books.

How many total books have you consumed, whether it’s Audible or reading in your lifetime, or since you started taking notes on them?

I know exactly. Since 2014, 1,179. One thing to say about that, and I will be the first to say this. The number that you’ve read doesn’t necessarily mean all that much. It’s a vanity metric through and through. I’ll be the first to admit that. One of the things that I find is it is very motivating to track, especially because I keep a list of all these finished books. That list is about 25 or 26 pages long. I can look back on that list and scroll. It’s a huge sense of accomplishment. I read all those books and I’ve got these thousands of pages of notes on all these thousand-plus books.

Your brain becomes almost like an AI because if you can retain it, you can start recommending a title in a book and give a quick sound bite from the book or something you’ve learned. Do you find one author that entices you to want to read all their books or at least look at other ones?

That’s how I find out about an awful lot of books as well, especially in the beginning when you don’t know what books are out there. You’ll find a book that you love and you’ll see an author mentions somebody else in their book. I used to read and listen to a lot of Wayne Dyer years ago. I love Wayne. He’s fantastic. He mentioned Alan Watts a lot. He referenced Tao Te Ching and all these books. I started reading them a lot based on his recommendation.

Alan Watts is phenomenal. He is one of my favorite writers ever. You go from Alan Watts, then you realize that he was friends with Christian Murdy. Christian Murdy is one of my absolute favorites, then you move on to him and it builds on itself. You had no idea when you started reading Wayne Dyer that this other guy, Christian Murdy, existed and you built that network of associations in your mind.

Do you have specific genres when you have read this many books? Do you read horror movies? Do you read comic books? Is it metaphysical, self-help, business, or I-don’t-read-finance books? Do you find yourself specializing in the genres of books?

Not really. I have certain go-to favorites. The way I usually choose what to read is by whatever problem that I currently have or whatever I’m trying to get better at. That’s a good filter for reading. If you run a business and you’re having trouble converting leads into customers, read something like $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi, which is one of the best books on offer creation that I’ve ever read.

If you’re having that problem, that book is going to solve it. If you’re trying to improve your relationships or whatever, there’s a book for that. There’s a book for every single problem. No matter what problem you ever faced in your entire life, there’s someone else who has solved or faced a similar problem and has come at least a little bit of a way towards solving it and they’ve written about their experiences in a book that you can read almost literally for free, which is astonishing on a level that’s stupid.

Now I imagine you read a lot of fitness books.

One of a guy named, Joe Manganiello, the actor. He was in not Twilight. He was in something. It’s something vampire related. Possibly True Blood. Anyway, he’s got an excellent book that I read years ago called Evolution and he inspired me quite a bit in terms of what fitness, health, and being in excellent shape can do for you. I haven’t even looked at my notes from that book in years, but one of the things that he said in the book is, “Earn your sleep each night.” I try to go to bed completely exhausted in every sense. You can twist that a little bit in a negative sense. I don’t mean wearing yourself to the bone every day.

I’ve read a lot of books on insomnia and things like that. They all talk that sleep is about recovery. If there’s nothing to recover from, no wonder you’re having trouble sleeping. I love that idea. I see the connection that there are a lot of mental health reasons to stay fit or, as you said, move. Get outside and take a walk. It doesn’t have to be this marathon where you’re sweating to death.

You have different fitness goals depending on your marital status. That’s a real thing. Also, your business goals. This is more superficial, but it’s a social reality. People will take a look at you and they’ll make certain snap judgments about you if you have this baseline level of physical competence that you display. This confidence comes with being healthy. That’s an energy that speaks for you as well.

It’s very interesting because a lot of people over-index in one area versus another. A lot of fitness instructors don’t have any money and are struggling. There are a lot of successful business people who are out of shape and they look like they’re one heart attack away. The ability to combine both gives people a sense of, “It’s not leaking out. It’s not visible.” If you’re overweight, it’s like a first impression thing.

There’s all the prejudice that goes along with it and a lot of self-loathing that goes with it. My weight’s gone up and down in my life. I know what that feels like. I remember a friend of mine getting gastric bypass surgery and losing weight from it. I said, “How do you feel now?” She wasn’t thin, but she was thinner than she was. She goes, “I hate myself a little less.” I was like, “How sad.”

My feeling is that you shouldn’t work out because you hate yourself. I say you shouldn’t. Feelings aren’t wrong. You might feel that way, but ideally, you wouldn’t feel that way. Ideally, you would work out because you know how good it makes you feel. You do it because you love yourself. You want to take care of yourself.

That brings up an interesting concept, which is the difference between internally motivated and externally motivated. When I was working with Lexus, when they were launching their car in the US, they said, “We’re competing against BMW and Mercedes.” Those brands have been in the US for decades longer than us. We don’t have any brand awareness at this point, yet we’re trying to get people to buy our car instead of those.

We have to go after internally motivated people. You could drive a BMW because you’re an agent in Hollywood and you have to wear an Armani suit and drive a BMW. That’s what the part of the package. That’s external, but there are all people who drive BMWs because they like the way it feels. They appreciate the workmanship and whatever. They’re not trying to impress anybody with it.

I thought, “That’s so true on so many different things.” You can be working out to try and compensate for self-loathing, “I’m never good enough.” You look at your own body. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, we were talking about that before the show, admits that he never was ever satisfied with his body. Some people go, “I kept trying to work on it.” I’ve watched documentaries on models having worked in the fashion business. The same thing is true. You look at this gorgeous picture and everything is perfect.

They say something wrong that you don’t.

They remember they felt fat that day or whatever. I’m like, “My God,” or they can’t live up to that. They feel, “If I’m not at this perfect age anymore, I’m no longer lovable or attractive.” Moving through all of that, going back to Wayne Dyer, it’s not letting anything outside of ourselves define our self-worth.

It is hugely important. It is something I steadfastly believe, I don’t think you have to do anything extra in order to be valuable as a human being like infinitely so. There’s nothing you have to do or achieve or become other than yourself. There’s another excellent book. I can’t help myself from dropping these recommendations. It’s On Becoming A Person by Carl Rogers, the depth psychologist. He’s a brilliant man. His idea of unconditional positive regard and that’s how he approached all his clients. That’s how I try to approach everyone as well. You don’t have to do anything. It’s unconditional that you regard people in a positive light. It’s such a better way of moving through life.

We want that from our partners, friends, and coworkers. How can we give it if we haven’t given it to ourselves first? You help authors who have a new book coming out. My first question is, how do you help authors get the word out and get this attention as oil for their new book? It’s a crowded field. Every book is competing with everything from TikTok. Not to mention the other books. Unless you’re Michelle Obama coming out with a new book, you may have a little trouble breaking through it. You have figured out a nice formula. You were kind enough to do it for my book, The Sale Is in the Tale. Tell us what you do and some of the outcomes. If you have a little story about that, that would be great.

Your book was easy because it’s good. I felt good about sharing it. That’s a big thing for me. I can make a lot more money than I do now.

You’re staying your own integrity and your brand. You’ve built up trust with your followers for that.

They’re not stupid. If you recommend a bad book, they’re not going to trust you. Trust is hugely important. It will be even more important in the future than it is now. It’s everything now. Trust is big. The authors that I work with already know quite a bit of this stuff. It’s not even my nature to condescend to people who assume that they don’t know what I know. What I do is share what I know about positioning yourself in a remarkable way to avoid being lost in the noise.

There are so many books being published every day. A lot of them are marketed in a lazy unoriginal way as well. It’s fantastic news for authors because it’s incredibly difficult to stand out. It’s not going to happen just because you wrote a book. Nobody cares. At the same time, you’re competing against this level of average. It’s a pretty low bar. When people’s attention spans are going down, they’re not willing to put in this extra level of work.

A dumb phrase that I say a lot is it’s never crowded along the extra mile. That’s from Brian Tracy. It’s true. You don’t have to do much to separate yourself a little bit. If you make that extra effort, things can happen. It’s not about doing the hard work and the creative work, but it’s about doing it every single day for a long enough period of time, extending your time horizon as well.

On a long enough time scale, everyone gives up. Most people give up. As unflashy as it is, one of the easiest but best ways to succeed is don’t stop. I’ve been hosting and getting better and consciously improving my craft every single day for years before anybody ever heard of me. It all compounds and you don’t stop. You keep iterating and trying to improve and evolve. Things will happen. I try to teach authors that and share that with them.

What a great resilience level. It applies to fitness, writing a book, and life.

It also goes back to what we were talking about before about your pure network. Some of my posts are better than others. People like them. There are so many people who are doing fantastic, original, wildly innovative things online. I’m like, “I wish that I could do that or I wish I thought of that.” Some people would think that’s a bad thing. There are already people doing this. They’re inspiring you with their example. They’re showing you what’s possible. You can’t steal that from what they’re doing or steal their exact thing but you can use it. You can take what they’re doing well, improve what you’re doing, and create your own signature style over time.

I noticed even myself running my books on storytelling in sales that there have been a lot of people who’ve written books on sales, but no one has my story and my experience. Everyone has their own take on something. It doesn’t have to reinvent the mouse trap. It can be 10% different that will appeal to you and somebody will resonate with the way you’re saying it versus somebody else. Don’t be so obsessed about worrying about how many books you sell. Instead, worry about why you want to do this in the first place because it’s going to be more work than you anticipate usually.

Someone said, if it’s easy, everybody would do it. Many people have a dream of being an author like they have a dream of having a six-pack if you’re a guy. All of those dreams come true. At the end of the day, you go, “I’m still me. I wrote a book. I have a six-pack. Do I love myself anymore? Am I any happier? Did something magically happen?” Probably not.

Wherever you go, there you are.

That journey concept as opposed to the destination is the process. Any last thought, quote, or book you want to recommend before we say goodbye?

I’ll lead in with a Naval Ravikant quote. The quote itself is, “Read what you love until you love to read,” which is against the idea that there’s a specific reading list of books you must read before you turn 40 or whatever. There’s no list. Nobody can tell you what to read or what’s going to be good for you. You have to make your own decisions, and you can. Read what you love until you love to read. There are no wrong answers. There’s another quote too like, “The child who reads Harry Potter will grow into the teenager who reads The Catcher in the Rye and he’ll become an adult who reads Crime and Punishment.” There’s no judgment. Another quote I love goes, “If you didn’t come from a family of readers, make sure that a family of readers comes from you.”

I love that one. That’s one of my favorites. I have a bunch. On my website, I’ve got my reading list. All the list of books that I told you about, it’s all there. It’s listed with a few of my favorites. There are people you can draw from. As we said earlier, choose what you read based on the current problem that you’re facing. That’s an excellent filter.

Also, someone you admire. Most of the people who have done things of consequence, who are out there inspiring people, they’re readers. It’s no coincidence. A lot of them have spoken publicly about the books that have formed them and shaped their own lives. You take someone that you admire and you find out what books they’ve read, then you maybe start there.

Also, if people want to work with you one-on-one, you have a very limited space for that where you’re helping them either both get in shape mentally and physically and get their goals to come true. You certainly have modeled that. Anybody that’s going to be a good Sherpa, it’s you. I highly recommend people check that out if that’s of service to them.

Thank you so much, John. I appreciate that.

Give us the handle for your Instagram and we’ll send as many people there as we can.

It’s @TheMattKaramazov on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and all that. My website has my reading list, my recommended books, and all of that. I also have a newsletter that I send out each week. It’s called The Reading Life. About 2,000 people get it. All of my best book recommendations as I read them are there, including books that not a whole lot of people know about. I try and mention it first.

You’re curating everything for us. It’s fantastic. Your website is your name?

Yes, MattKaramazov.com.

Thanks, Matt. You’ve been a great guest.

Thanks, John.

 

Important Links

• Matt Karamazov
• @TheMattKaramazov – Instagram
• Reader, Come Home
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
• Purple Cow
• Govt Cheese
• Never Finished
• $100M Offers
• Evolution
• On Becoming A Person
• The Sale Is in the Tale
• Twitter – Matt Karamazov
• YouTube – Matt Karamazov
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

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