I’m a mega geek and one of my all-time favorite things to do on vacation is to sit in a hammock and make my way through book after book 🙂

But as an entrepreneur, I’m sure you know how challenging it can be to find the time to indulge in your favorite hobbies!

So to make sure I create time for this hobby of mine, I’ve come up with a plan…

I’m committing to reading 2 awesome business-building or mindset-enhancing books every single month (no excuses!) and here’s the exciting part…

I’ll be creating a short video review for you where I’ll give you my top 3 biggest takeaways from each book.

This means I’ll do ALL the hard work of reading hundreds — if not thousands — of pages and then I’m going to share the most important gold nuggets with you!

To kick things off, I’ve chosen an extra special book for my very first review… Steve Kamb’s Level Up Your Life (you can purchase it on Amazon here). 

I’m super stoked about this 2-books-a-month commitment and I’d so appreciate your thoughts on each video review I share with you. Your feedback will help me make the next book selection and review even better for you!

Here are my 3 biggest takeaways from Level Up Your Life.

Takeaway #1: Collecting Underpants

My first top takeaway from Steve’s book is around something lots of entrepreneurs can relate to…

It’s about preparing and preparing and preparing to do something but never actually taking action.

Steve calls this problem, “collecting underpants” and the term comes from an episode of the wildly popular animated sitcom, South Park.

In the episode, a bunch of gnomes spend all day and all night collecting piles and piles of underpants.

When someone asks them why they’re collecting underpants, they say they’re doing it for profit.

Here’s the thing…

The gnomes know they’re collecting underpants, they know it’s for profit but they never get ‘round to the “how” of it — how are they going to get from piles of underpants to profit?

As a business mentor I see so many people spending hour after hour, week after week, year after year collecting a big ‘ole pile of underpants — usually by endlessly researching different strategies, tactics and technology platforms — that they never do anything with!

It doesn’t matter how much information and knowledge you have and how much expertise you have… if you don’t go out there and take action, you’ll end up accomplishing absolutely nothing.

So don’t wait until you have all the information and knowledge. Don’t wait until your pile of “underpants” is as high as Mt. Everest. Don’t be the gnomes of South Park.

Make things happen. Take action and do it now.

Takeaway #2: Call to Adventure

The second game-changing insight I got from Level Up Your Life is based on Joseph Campbell’s mythic story structure from his book The Hero of a Thousand Faces.

The key concept here is we’re all heroes — potentially superheroes — in the story of our life 🙂

I know it’s easy to say something like “Be The Superhero To Your Tribe” which is the tagline here at Live Your Message, but it’s another thing entirely to actually live that each and every day.

In the book, Steve explains that your ability to morph into another character — someone other than yourself — can give you the confidence you need to achieve anything you want.

And so he asks readers to choose an avatar or alter ego.

I chose Mystique from the X-Men comic series. Why? Because she has the power to shape shift! She can transform herself into anyone she wants within a few seconds.

I feel like this is what I need to do as an entrepreneur every single day.

Sometimes I’m just working at my desk with extreme focus.

Sometimes I’m this “personality” in front of the camera.

Sometimes I’m onstage talking to a crowd or I’m working 1:1 when I’m consulting or coaching a client.

I need to move through multiple roles quickly and I really want every single role I play to feel natural and fun for myself and for the people I interact with.

To add to the alter ego/character piece Steve says — and I love this — that you can do just about anything really well when you make it feel like an adventure.

When you put your “adventure cape” on and you approach life and business using avatars and alter egos, the most mundane tasks become extraordinary and exciting.

You get to elevate who you are and really step into doing things outside of your comfort zone

Joseph Campbell figured out that all stories are essentially about how every one of us begins in an Ordinary World and then we have a Call to Adventure and you can either heed the call or refuse it.

If you decide to heed the call, you’ll start on a journey that will change who you are and potentially change everyone around you.

So, if you can look at your everyday life as a series of Calls to Adventure, all of a sudden resistance melts away and you’re excited to do things that felt mundane or boring or just plain difficult.

The next thing you know, you’re achieving so much more on a daily basis and moving toward your goals and your dreams so much faster than you believed you could 🙂

Takeaway #3: 10 Epic Quests

My third top takeaway from the book is about going on a quest or rather a series of quests.

Steve talks about how we’re all deeply driven to challenge ourselves to grow and expand and rise up to our highest potential.

This isn’t necessarily about growing by leaps and bounds but about aiming for incremental progress so every day, we’re a little bit better than the day before and we’re improving in all different areas of our lives.

And to make this happen, Steve has created an epic quest structure where he’s categorized 10 “quest-ing” areas. You can have more than 1 quest going in each area. (Steve has 5 quests running in each category!)

Here are the 10 quest-ing areas:

1. Physical Quests
2. Mental Quests
3. Fun Quests
4. Work Quests
5. Adventure Quests
6. Courage Quests
7. Freedom Quests
8. Master Quests
9. Gratitude Quests
10. Legacy Quests

First, we have Physical Quests. It heads the list because health and wellness is absolutely  critical. When your body is not healthy, it’s hard to get through any of the other quests.

Next, we’ve got Mental Quests which is about expanding your mind and your thinking. Mental Quests are about challenging yourself mentally and intellectually.

Then there are Fun Quests, which I love.

Lots of us do the same thing for fun over and over again. For instance, maybe you go to the same bar for drinks every Friday night. If this happens to be you and you don’t want to be living inside a rerun of Cheers Fun Quests can get you to do something different in your downtime. You’ll be stretching yourself outside your comfort zone even in the area of fun which is awesome 🙂

Then we have Work Quests or if you’re an entrepreneur like me, you can call these Business Quests. This category is pretty straightforward — it’s about taking things up a notch (or 10!) and going for bigger, bolder goals in your work or business.

Next up we have Adventure Quests. This is about traveling and seeing the world. There are literally hundreds of countries you can visit and Adventure Quests are about exploring these exciting, new realms.

No. 6 on the list is Courage Quests. This is where you do things or take part in activities that you wouldn’t normally do. It’s about having that nervous, kind of scared feeling — like when you have to speak onstage — but doing it anyway so you can build up your courage.

Then there are Freedom Quests which are about designing your life and business so you can do what you want, when you want, where you want and with whom you want to experience true freedom.

Master Quests take a lot longer to accomplish — maybe years or even decades. Examples of Master Quests include getting married, buying a house or even flying around the world in a hot air balloon. These are basically quests you want to complete before you die (knock on wood!)

Next up, Gratitude Quests. These are all about giving back and helping other people, whether that’s donating cash or time or whatever it happens to be so you can show gratitude for all of the amazing things you have in your life.

And finally, we have Legacy Quests.

These are the things you want to accomplish that are based on your legacy — the things you want to be remembered for. Great examples include writing a New York Times best-selling book, recording an album that gets at least 10,000 downloads on iTunes or setting a record that’s recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Imagine what would happen in your life and business if you consistently complete 5 quests in each of these 10 quest-ing areas?

I guarantee this — everything will change! When you’re constantly leveling up as a human being, life becomes a game you can win… life becomes an Epic Quest of Awesome!

You can use Steve Kamb’s book to uplevel your business or your entire life… either way, I highly recommend checking it out 🙂