An obsession with learning is one of the most common traits of successful leaders, sportspeople & entrepreneurs.  This week I’ve heard how two global entrepreneurs have leveraged other people’s experience to grow their businesses through an obsession with reading.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos is an avid reader.  Tony strongly encouraged  all of the early Zappos employees to read key books from the Zappos library.  These days Tony continues to read and Zappos now holds classes on those important books for it’s staff. ‘Pursue growth and learning’ is one of the core values that Zappos’ famous culture is based on and they sure seem to be living it.

The quote ‘learn before you earn’ is a catch cry of Brad Sugars (he’s got a lot of sayings!).  Brad, founder of ActionCOACH who reads one non-fiction book every week, reckons that unless you first learn how to play a bigger game, you’ll never pull it off. Over 15 years, Sugars claims to have read more than 1200 books.  

I too have a goal to read a book a week, but I haven’t been hitting it.  I definitely need to lift my reading consistency.  How about you?

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**This post is from the 2012 series ‘What I’ve learnt this week’. If you’d like to receive these and other Culture is Everything posts in your email, subscribe here.