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[SGC-16]The Easiest Way To Remember Every Book You Read With Vivian Najib

By Melissa Brown, MD


Get ready to retain everything from the next book you read, keep it organized for your next book club meeting (or just for yourself), and prep like the pro that you are so you can easily facilitate your next book group discussion and each one after that.

Meet the person I’m calling the Book Club Whisperer, Vivian Najib from The Fig Tree Boutique. She’s created a unique Reading Journal that is both beautiful and functional.

After our recording, Vivian and I had a chat off the mic and I twisted her arm (gently) and she shared a discount coupon code for her beautiful Reading Journals–exclusively for the listeners of the She’s Got Content Podcast! You can find that discount code right down below in the section labeled, “Links and products mentioned in today’s episode.”

Don’t Miss Inside This Episode:

  • A unique idea for a gift or lead magnet for your audience.
  • An idea for coaches so you can add more value to your already-existing group coaching program.
  • The one-word simple concept that helps you have a much more meaningful book discussion–whether it’s for book club or for making book recommendations to others.
  • Listen in to discover how we came up with a name for the book awards for Vivian’s community!
  • Introducing The Figgy Awards!

Links and products mentioned in today’s episode:

Vivian’s free gift–15 Questions For Your Next Book

“She’s Got Content” special discount on any digital reading journal (or any other digital notebook, journal, or diary in the shop). Enter code SGC at checkout for 20% off your order! Go to TheFigTreeBoutique.com to check out the selections.

GoodNotes App PDF reader for iPad users

Xodo PDF reader for Android users

Swedish death cleaning–If you’re not familiar with this term, check out this article.

“Shelf help” books–Link to a blog post I wrote about what are shelf help books and how to deal with them.

Donald Miller’s books mentioned:

  • Business Made Simple–60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity, and More
  • Building a Story Brand–Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

About Vivian Najib

Meet Vivian from The Fig Tree Boutique. Vivian is the creator of The Reading Journal –for people who read multiple books a month and want to remember what they read, keep it all organized in one place, and be ready to discuss on book club day.

Downloaded directly to your iPad or tablet, this journal will help keep everything you’re reading organized and in one place.

Customers rave that The Reading Journal has transformed the way they approach reading, especially with the 15 thoughtful questions and brackets to uncover your favorite book of the year.

When she’s not judging books by their cover on Amazon, you can find Vivian Zoom-organizing her friends’ closets, practicing her Portuguese by shopping at the antique market for cool stuff to decorate a house she doesn’t have, or asking Alexa “where is the nearest lazy river”.

Vivian’s Website

The Fig Tree Boutique

Connect With Vivian on Social

Vivian on Instagram

Connect on Facebook

Vivian’s YouTube channel

About Your Host

Melissa Brown, MD – Coach, Author, Speaker, Teacher, and Podcast Host.

After leaving medical practice in 2009, Melissa discovered the online world and never looked back! After coach certification, she began a healthy lifestyle coaching practice online and quickly fell in love with blogging, writing, and content marketing.

Melissa believes that coaches have the power to change the world. Unfortunately, too many coaches get discouraged by the amount of content they need to create for marketing their business and this can lead to overwhelm and giving up on their dreams. There’s such a ripple effect when a dream dies, so Melissa is on a mission to help coaches and solopreneurs overcome the overwhelm when it comes to content creation so they keep those dreams alive.

Your content can impact massive amounts of people and positively change the world. You’ve got content in there inside you; let’s get it out into the world.

Check out these social media sites:

She’s Got Content Facebook group:

Facebook

Twitter

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Get your FREE Never Run Out of Content Ideas Tool Kit/Workbook

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to this podcast. It means the world to me to have you here on this journey! If you got value from this episode, please share it on social media, and recommend it to your business besties.

Please leave feedback or questions about this episode in the comment section below.

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Transcript
Melissa Brown:

Hello there, Content Creators. You're listening to the She's Got Content podcast where it's all about creating content for your coaching business. I'm your host, Dr. Melissa Brown, and I'm here every week to help you get your content out of your head, out of your heart, and out there into the world where that information and your services can impact the most people. Get ready to take notes today and then take action, Content Creators. Let's dive in with today's episode because you've got content to get out there. You know how when book club time rolls around and you're struggling to remember the book, all those golden nuggets and the ahas you got from it, or even if you read it? Well get ready to retain everything from the next book you read, keep it organized for your next book club meeting and prep like the pro that you are, so you can easily facilitate your next book group discussion and every one after that. My next guest, Vivian Najib, from the Fig Tree Boutique, is the creator of the Reading Journal, for people who read multiple books a month and want to remember what they read, keep it all organized in one place, and be ready to discuss on book club day. I met Vivian in a breakout group for a course that we both participated in earlier this year, and we just clicked and I knew I had to have her on the podcast. Help me welcome Vivian to the She's Got Content Podcast. Welcome, Vivian.

Vivian Najib:

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. It's so good to see you again.

Melissa Brown:

Yeah. I just am so excited about this discussion today because I think a lot of the listeners here read a lot. Everybody loves learning. There may be more people here reading personal growth and development books than fiction books, but that's okay. Or maybe there's a little mix of both. So, I'm curious, I bet you're a very, very prolific reader. How many books did you read in 2022? Do you have a number?

Vivian Najib:

I do have a number. So in 2022, people are gonna laugh. I'm gonna say I only read 54 books.

Melissa Brown:

Only?

Vivian Najib:

Yeah, I know. That's why people are gonna laugh. I say only because this year I, well, let me tell you about the last few years. So the last few years I've been reading, gosh, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 books a month sometimes. And I've really felt like I was just consuming them like I was junk food binging on books and it was just too much. I wasn't really taking it with me. It was like in one ear, out the other completely. And so this year I thought, you know what? I'm gonna try to go a little bit slower and try to really, really make notes on the books and really think about the characters and the scenes. And I had these elaborate things going on in my journal of best scene, best supporting character. I had all of these things going on cuz I just wanted to honor the authors, honor the book, honor my own reading time and make it mean more than just reading reading reading, reading, reading, reading.

Melissa Brown:

Yeah. I get that.

Vivian Najib:

That's why I say I only did 54 this year, and I'm in the middle of one that I may finish before the end, so we might be at 55, but I am

Melissa Brown:

Wow.

Vivian Najib:

Completely okay with that because I feel like it was a good reading year for me.

Melissa Brown:

Were those mostly non-fiction or mostly fiction, or mostly non-fiction?

Vivian Najib:

Mostly fiction. Yeah, mostly fiction. I picked up some non-fiction this year, memoirs or um business related sort of things. But yeah, I'm mostly a fiction reader.

Melissa Brown:

Okay. So it sounds like you got your idea for this reading journal because you were binging and probably not remembering a lot of the points that you wanted to remember from the books?

Vivian Najib:

Oh my God. Not remembering anything about the books. Like not even remembering that I had the book. Years ago, I was living in Vietnam taking some time away from work. So I wasn't working. I was basically every day going to the beach reading books. And I don't have any idea how many books I read that year. I was reading like a book a day.

Melissa Brown:

Wow.

Vivian Najib:

Because that's all I was doing was just sitting there reading books. And it got to the point where I was,one, going broke, right? Because I would be on Amazon every day buying a new book and that's not where I wanna be So like Broke is not where I wanna be. On Amazon is actually where, or buying books is absolutely where I wanna be. Broke is not where I wanna be. And then I noticed Amazon, when I'd go to buy a book, Amazon would be like, um, you already bought this book.

Melissa Brown:

Oh no.

Vivian Najib:

And it happened over and over again because I just, I would even read the descriptions of the books, right? The little blurbs. No recollection. Nothing. I had nothing. Nothing was sticking at all. And I was like, this is not right. So, I knocked up a stupid little thing where it was literally just a, let me just write down the author and the name of the book.

Melissa Brown:

Mm-hmm.

Vivian Najib:

And tick it off when I read it. It was a nothing burger of a journal. And then over the years it's evolved and evolved and evolved and I've just been using it myself. And loving it. And I don't never even told anyone that I had it. It was just my little thing I was doing. And I had a customer send me a message one day and say, Vivian, have you thought of doing a reading journal? Because if you made a reading journal, I would definitely buy it. And so I was like, Ooh, hey, I actually, I could make a reading journal and it's something that I actually really like. So that sort of started the whole process of did some research to see, I know what I like in my reading journal, but I'm just me. Right? What do other people like? What kinds of spreads and what kinds of trackers and what kinds of whatever would people want if they were gonna do a reading journal? So months and months of researching, we went through about, oh gosh, three, four, maybe five different drafts of a reading journal out to beta testers until we finally, in end of October this year. I was like, all right, I think this is it. This is good ,and this is something that I want out there for people to have. So just before Thanksgiving, we put it out in the world and the customers are really loving it. So it's exciting to me. They're all excited about the book brackets to choose their favorite books of the year. They're excited about filling up their libraries. I'm getting such great feedback from it, so it makes me super happy and I myself am excited to get started filling in for 2023. It really, as one of my customers said It has changed the way I'm gonna read books in 2023. And that is absolutely what it did for me too. It changed the way I read books. Especially this past year, right? When I was like, I'm just in one ear and out the other. No, no.

Melissa Brown:

Absolutely. This past January, 2022, I started in my group coaching. We started reading a book a month and discussing it.

Vivian Najib:

I think that's awesome.

Melissa Brown:

They're all personal growth and development books or business related books or books about messaging or copywriting. And sometimes I would wait till the last minute to read it because if I read it at the beginning of the month, I wouldn't remember it to discuss it. Having something where I could actually write down what I wanna remember. Well, one of the little tricks and tips that I used to use, and I still do it, is an idea John Maxwell gave. And that is to take the inside cover of your book, and this doesn't necessarily work if you're reading it digitally or if you have an audio book, but to take the inside cover where there is nothing written and write your notes inside there. What I'm finding are people don't want to mess up the book, but I think it's a great way for somebody else to pick up the book and say, oh, someone else wrote down some really cool nuggets here and putting the page number for those nuggets too, so you can go back to it.

Vivian Najib:

So you can find it. Yeah

Melissa Brown:

So yeah.

Vivian Najib:

The thing that I hear all the time from readers who go to book club are two things. One, like you said, they either wait until the last minute to read the book and then they don't finish it. They're scrambling to get it done in the last 10 minutes before book club, cuz they're like, oh crap, we gotta talk about this and I'm only on chapter four. I don't know. Or if they do take notes and remember it, their notes are everywhere. And they make no sense. So your idea of keeping the notes in one place is what people need. People are like, I've got notes on my phone, and then I've got a note on a scrap of paper in my planner, and then there's a notebook by my bed that I've scribbled things in. You cannot be running around your house trying to gather a bunch of sticky notes before book club. It'll make you crazy.

Melissa Brown:

One of the things that I've discovered with my little system of writing notes in the book is if you misplace that book, you're kind of sunk.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah.

Melissa Brown:

So I love your idea of having a digital journal to write down all the ideas. My books sometimes disappear in my house because my husband is kind of a neat nick and he likes things in its place, and if I leave a book laying around in another part of the house other than my messy office, it may disappear. So that's why I'm saying I know from experience that that book could be misplaced. And therefore all my notes all of my notes go. So I love that idea. Your journal, is it printable or is it only in the digital form?

Vivian Najib:

So it is a pdf that you download. You could print the pdf and write on it that way. Easy peasy. It's designed really though to be downloaded and used on your iPad or your tablet with a PDF annotation app, like Good Notes is popular with iPad users. I use an app called Xodo because I have an Android tablet. And I just this morning actually I got a question about whether you can use it on a laptop and the answer is yes, you can, but you need to use it or on your desktop, whatever. But you still need a PDF annotation or editing app. Adobe Acrobat can be that app. You are able to use it across the board. You can print it. It's a pdf.

Melissa Brown:

Okay.

Vivian Najib:

It's just a pdf.

Melissa Brown:

So it's accessible pretty much everywhere then.

Vivian Najib:

Everywhere for anyone, for any reason.

Melissa Brown:

I love that.

Vivian Najib:

I love it. The whole digital thing really changed the way I work really, because I used to have just so many notebooks laying around, like a lot of people do. I'm a notebook fanatic and I like to keep lots of notebooks, physical notebooks. Right? All my life I've been like this, and it just gets to be so much, clutter, but it's not clutter cuz it's your entire life in these notebooks. Right?

Melissa Brown:

Yeah, the whole world is going to more digital education, more digital memories. It's just the wave of the future. And I myself have stacks and stacks of journals, notes that I took at meetings or journals that I've written. And occasionally I do go back and look things up in them, but for the most part, they haven't been indexed. It's just stuff.

Vivian Najib:

But it's stuff that's important. It's your life.

Melissa Brown:

It is! I can't get rid of it. No, I can't. I can't get rid of it and I don't wanna get rid of it. But, there is this thing about Swedish death cleaning.

Vivian Najib:

Yes.

Melissa Brown:

Or what have you. Well, then I think my kids will probably, they'll have a record of my life looking through some of these journals. Hopefully they will and not just pitch them.

Vivian Najib:

Hopefully they'll at least flip through it for a minute, you know?

Melissa Brown:

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So with all those books that you're reading, are you in book clubs now currently?

Vivian Najib:

I am. I am in two book clubs, one virtual and then one where I actually, it's in the next town over from where I live. So it's an actual physical book club. And I've been in a lot of book clubs, some of them more successful than others.

Melissa Brown:

Do you take turns being the facilitator for the book club or is there one person who is the facilitator?

Vivian Najib:

The one where I actually travel now, it's one woman who's always the facilitator and she does I think a nice job. The other one that's online, it's more informal cuz it's just like me and a bunch of friends and so nobody facilitates. We all just talk, because we're all friends. But I've been in some where it's been both ways. Where if you chose the book, you are the facilitator, where it's just one person all the time, and where it's nobody. And all three of those ways can work.

Melissa Brown:

Absolutely.

Vivian Najib:

I've seen them all work. And I've seen them all fail.

Melissa Brown:

Yeah. I've been in all of those different formats as well. When we started reading a book a month in my group coaching, initially it was me. We kind of voted. We looked at a different list of titles that everybody threw out that they would like to read. I have a term, I didn't coin this term, but there's something called shelf-help. As opposed to self-help. Shelf help books are books that sit on your shelf. You buy them because you intend to read them and they sit on your shelf, but you don't read them because you didn't get to it yet. And I have a bunch of shelf help books that I wanted to get through this year. So I started out like, let's read this one, or let's read that one. And at some point during the year, we read a book and I, and now because I don't have my journal I don't remember which book it was, but I remember reading that book and having the thought that it would really help each person who participates in my group coaching to choose a book and for them to facilitate the discussion. So somewhere probably mid-year or a little later we switched. Each group member picks a book and they are the facilitator for that month. We read during the month, and then the second Tuesday of the following month is when we actually discuss that book. It's just worked out that way. So this month we're reading a book by Donald Miller, the Story Brand book.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah. Oh, you're reading the Story Brand one?

Melissa Brown:

Yes.

Vivian Najib:

One of my books this year was the, um,

Melissa Brown:

Business Made Simple?

Vivian Najib:

Yeah.

Melissa Brown:

We read that last month. We're doing Donald Miller two months in a row.

Vivian Najib:

Well, he's got stuff to say that's great.

Melissa Brown:

He's got good, good stuff. Really good stuff. You probably don't have the shelf help because you read so prolifically that you're probably reading all the time and if you get a book in your hands,

Vivian Najib:

I've got a digital shelf help. I've got a digital shelf of books cuz I just, whenever someone recommends something, I pop the cover into my journal and think, all right, I'm gonna go, when I get a minute, I'll go buy and read that book. So I got all these books that I'll never, ever read. Just because nobody has time for all of it but I don't wanna lose it. It's a good recommendation. I wanna read it.

Melissa Brown:

Go back and say something about that. You said you popped the book cover into your journal. Tell us about that.

Vivian Najib:

Oh yeah. So it's a digital journal and on my tablet, like you just gave me a recommendation of a book, right? You're doing that book for your book club, so I go to Amazon.com. I find the book on Amazon.com. I copy the image of the book cover, and then I just paste it into the library page in my digital reading journal. And then the cover is there. And when I go to buy the book or I go to read the book, I can just copy it onto my book review page. And I've got what the cover of the book looks like so that if I go to the library with my tablet or I go to a bookstore with my tablet, I have on my library page, all of the books that I wanna read with the picture of the cover. So I can literally walk around with my tablet and that library page and find the books cause the covers

Melissa Brown:

beautiful

Vivian Najib:

are exactly the way they look in the bookstore.

Melissa Brown:

I love that idea.

Vivian Najib:

Now it's never what was the name of that? Like I'm at the library going, oh, what was that book? I can't even remember what the book cover looked like. Like how do I know? I don't know the author. I don't know. Whatever. The card catalog, what's going on at the library? I don't know. So having it, the book cover in my reading journal, it's like there.

Melissa Brown:

That is brilliant. That's like one of the things that I recommend for content creators is anytime you get a spark for an idea for content to write is always pop that into your container, your content container, because you're never gonna remember it when you're sitting in front of the computer looking at a cursor that's blinking at you. So you want to pop it into a container. That's beautiful, that you get a recommendation for a book, or you see a book someplace where you're reading along or you like an author and you wanna read another one of that author's books. Pop it into your journal. You got the picture and you know that book. That is the book that you wanna read. At some point. You don't have to read it next, but at least you've saved it in the journal.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah.

Melissa Brown:

So I'm also very curious about your brackets. Tell us about your brackets.

Vivian Najib:

Oh, My God, my favorite thing in the journal. Favorite thing! Yes. So you know, like March Madness in the US.

Melissa Brown:

Yes.

Vivian Najib:

You've got the brackets that everybody's got. It narrows it down to from whatever, 58 or however many there are, all the way down to two. And then you have your winner.

Melissa Brown:

That's for basketball, right? Basketball.

Vivian Najib:

That's for basketball. So I did the same thing with my books. And so I've got a book bracket for fiction and for non-fiction, but it wouldn't have to be, it could just be whatever. And so sometimes I cheat, right? But the idea is, is that I choose the best book of every month and pop it into the slot. So there's 12 slots at the top of the bracket.

Melissa Brown:

Okay.

Vivian Najib:

One for every month, the favorite book of every month. But like I said, sometimes I cheat cuz there are months that I read, like three great books and months that I read some that are like, eh.

Melissa Brown:

Right.

Vivian Najib:

So sometimes I cheat and it's not the best book of January, the best book of February. I start with 12. And then I pick between January and February, whichever book I like better drops down. And then I pick between March and April and then that book drops down and then I pick between January and April. Like it just keeps dropping down in the bracket until I'm down to the two final books of the year. Which one do I like the best? It's a completely unscientific,

Melissa Brown:

But I love it.

Vivian Najib:

Way of choosing the best book of the year, but it's super fun. So I've got that bracket, which I love. But then my favorite, favorite thing is not a bracket really. It's like the Academy Awards of Reading. I have this thing where it's like all year long. So at the beginning of the year, I have to choose what my categories are gonna be. For 2023, I'm choosing five categories that I'm gonna choose a best of for the year.

Melissa Brown:

This is completely customizable? Anyone who has the journal, they can create their own academy awards.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah.

Melissa Brown:

Or Oscars.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah. Create your own. Even if you don't have the journal, create your own, cuz it helps you as you're reading books and you're thinking through them. You're just paying more attention because, you know, is this gonna be a contender for one of the awards? So for 2023, I'm going with, best main character because that's always a good one. Best supporting character. What else did I choose? Funniest scene, I think.

Melissa Brown:

That makes sense.

Vivian Najib:

What's the other one? I can't remember it.

Melissa Brown:

Plot twist?

Vivian Najib:

Plot twist is a good one. I've got most magical setting if you like reading that kind of stuff. Scariest setting if you're into like horror and things like that. And then I also chose like best poem because one of my goals for next year, I wanna try to read some more poetry. I don't read much poetry. So I've got my categories and then every month, as I'm reading a book, I gotta keep this in my head, right? Does this scene qualify for best scene or is it the most romantic scene, or is this the best meet cute, right? And then I get to, at the end of the year, do my Academy awards. I love that. That's by far, my favorite thing about the Reading Journal and my favorite thing that I do every year because it's fun and it's weird, and it also, it really does help me when I'm reading the book cuz I am paying attention to characters and scenes and plots and what happens and it makes the books more enjoyable for me and more memorable for me. And way easier when it comes to book club or just discussing the book with people, because I have this in my head and I'm like, oh my God, when Yinka did when she started sitting on that sofa and whatever? And I have the scene in my head, right? Because I have paid attention so that Academy Awards thing, I need to think of a better word for it. The Book Club awards? I don't know. Cuz it's not the academy, it's the Fig Tree Boutique Awards. I don't know.

Melissa Brown:

There you go. The Fig Tree Boutique Award Fig Tree.

Vivian Najib:

It's my own boutique personal awards, but I love it. Just cuz it's just mindful reading.

Melissa Brown:

Yes.

Vivian Najib:

That's how you have great book club discussions is if you're reading mindfully and so that's why you take notes. Right? That's why you scribble things. That's why.

Melissa Brown:

Well, you've got your brackets where you're coming up with the best book of the year and you've got your Figtree Boutique awards that are sort of like Oscars.

Vivian Najib:

Yes.

Melissa Brown:

They could be Figgys. They could be Figgys.

Vivian Najib:

They could be Figgys. Oh my God, the Figgys!

Melissa Brown:

Figgys-The Figgy Awards.

Vivian Najib:

Oh I love it! The Figgy Awards. You're on to something.

Melissa Brown:

Yeah! Hmmm.. Do you write blog posts about that? So are you like teasing,

Vivian Najib:

Well, I am now!

Melissa Brown:

Are you teasing your audience about what's to come about the Figgy Awards or the best book of the year?

Vivian Najib:

Yes.

Melissa Brown:

Is that something

Vivian Najib:

Yes, absolutely. And this is stuff any content creator could do as well. I love reading book quotes.

Melissa Brown:

I do too. I love that.

Vivian Najib:

When people on social media share book quotes, and I feel like that's the kind of thing that is great to do when you're reading a book. If you've read something that's like, wow, people should hear this. Put it out there, put a blog post. Right now I'm actually, because it's the end of the year and it's Christmas, I'm working on a little magazine that I'm gonna send out to my subscribers that has just on social media I've been doing an Advent calendar. I call it my book-vent calendar.

Melissa Brown:

Oh!

Vivian Najib:

With quotes.

Melissa Brown:

That's cool.

Vivian Najib:

That I've had in my journal from books that I've read this year. So I've been doing it every day and I'm just gonna put it all in a magazine and send that out to subscribers as just like a little gift that they can flip through. Because everybody likes to read book quotes.

Melissa Brown:

Yes.

Vivian Najib:

Some of them are really, well, all of them I think are really, really good. But especially if you were doing like a business one. Can you imagine getting a magazine full of 25 or 30 or 50 of the best quotes about your business in books that you read.

Melissa Brown:

Okay. Content Creators! Did you just hear that bomb, that truth bomb there? Oh my gosh, what a great idea. So yes!

Vivian Najib:

I would love to get something like that.

Melissa Brown:

That could be a lead magnet

Vivian Najib:

If you do, send it to me.

Melissa Brown:

That could be a lead magnet. That could be a little gift.

Vivian Najib:

It could absolutely be a magnet.

Melissa Brown:

A loyalty gift to your readers. Oh, that's a great idea. Vivian, you just are so full of such wonderful tips and ideas. I love this idea of your journal, and I think it really holds a place for coaches, for solopreneurs. And, and here's an idea for all you coaches out there. If you've got a group coaching, a mastermind group and you wanna actually add some flavor to it, create a book club within and discuss a book every month or more often if you are a prolific reader. But for me, I think it's been very doable to do this once a month. And Vivian's journal might be the way that you're gonna be able to keep everything in place, keep yourself organized. You'd mentioned that you're doing this gift for your readers, for your audience, but you also have a gift here for our audience. Tell us about that.

Vivian Najib:

I do. So two things that people are always talking about when it's time for book club. They don't remember the book, but even more than that, once they get there, they're not sure how to talk about the book. Or your worst fear is it's gonna be six people on a Zoom call going; yeah, I liked it. Yeah, it was good. Where no one's really talking. So I've got 15 questions for you to ask your next book. It's 15 questions for fiction book and 15 questions for a non-fiction book. It's just a quick little guide. It's one page with the questions that you can actually print and fold and stick it in your book and use it as a bookmark.

Melissa Brown:

Oh, I love.

Vivian Najib:

Yeah, very cool. Right? Or if you're already a digital journal kind of person, a digital planner person, I'll give you a sticker with the questions that you can just stick in your notebook or journal or planner to use.

Melissa Brown:

I love that. This is great.

Vivian Najib:

Just a quick little guide that's gonna give you some strategies for thinking about and reading, like I said, fiction versus non-fiction. It's gonna give you the number one thing you can do to be ready for book club and when you need to do it, and it's gonna help you just tweak just a little bit, the way you read, that's going to make every book you read more memorable and discussable so that you have things to talk about at book club so you can go deeper into the book. And have ideas in your head about what kinds of things you're gonna be looking for and paying attention to when you read so that you can take the lead in discussions of certain topics or you can go deeper into conversations about the topics. And they're questions that you can use with every single book you own. So they're not like the questions at the end of the book for book club, right?

Melissa Brown:

Right. Right.

Vivian Najib:

Some you go, you see that sometimes.

Melissa Brown:

Generic.

Vivian Najib:

These are questions you can use for every book.

Melissa Brown:

Okay, beautiful. I love that. So Content Creators, we're gonna have that link to get the free gift from Vivian in the show notes. So make sure you head over to the show notes to get that link and get your free gift. Listen, make sure you get on her list so that you can get those book quotes too. Awesome. Well, this has just been so amazing, this discussion today Vivian. Tell everybody your website, where people can find you, and what's your favorite social media platform where we can find you, too.

Vivian Najib:

All right, you can find the website and the reading journals at thefigtreeboutique.com.

Melissa Brown:

The home of the Figgy Awards!

Vivian Najib:

Home of the Figgy Awards. Oh my God, I'm totally doing this. You're gonna, yeah. Go to the website. You're gonna see all kinds of stuff in the new year about the Figgys. We'll all have to wear our gowns when the awards are announced. Right. We can all get together with our gowns on.

Melissa Brown:

Oh, I hope it's not just a Fig leaf

Vivian Najib:

Oh boy. That's going in a whole other direction. Gowns. We need gowns.

Melissa Brown:

Okay. Gowns. Gowns, okay.

Vivian Najib:

You can find me on Instagram, but I'm really starting to move into YouTube. So this coming year, you're gonna find a lot more book related information from me on YouTube. And so that's youtube.com/ @thefigtreeboutique

Melissa Brown:

okay. I'll make sure that we get all of your social links on the show notes so people can get in contact with you and can watch you on YouTube. Awesome. All right, well, thanks again, Vivian. This has been great and thank you so much.

Vivian Najib:

I've had so much fun!

Melissa Brown:

Thank you so much, Content Creators, for being here, and we will see you next week. Bye for now. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the She's Got Content podcast. I hope you got at least one nugget to take action on this week. If you got value from today's episode, I would be so grateful when you leave a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts. It only takes a second and it really helps me get my message out to impact even more people so they can in turn, keep the ripple going. If you're listening on Apple Podcast and leave a review of the show, it would really make my day, and you just might receive a shout out on the show as my Content Creator of the week when I read out your review. And last but never least, if you want an endless supply of just right ideas for content you can write about for your blog post, your emails, your videos, podcast episodes, all the content things, then you wanna head over to my website at shesgotcontent.com/content and pick up your free workbook, Never Run Out of Content Ideas. Look for that link in the show notes today along with the other links mentioned in today's episode. Until next time, Content Creators, you've got an audience waiting to hear from you and you've got content to share with them. Stop being the best kept secret and make a bigger impact when you've got content out there in the world.

This blog post may contain recommendations for products, services, and events. In some cases, the links provided are affiliate links. That means that if you click on the link and then buy a product at the site recommended, you won't pay a penny more and the author may earn compensation as a thank you. You can be assured that any of the promoted products have personally been used by or researched by the author for you and found to be high quality before being recommended. 

About the author

Dr. Melissa Brown's career journey has always had an element of teaching. After retirement from clinical pediatric practice, Dr. Brown has taught and mentored as a healthy lifestyle coach, author, and speaker. She currently teaches solopreneurs and coaches how to stop being the world's best-kept secret. Her mission is to help you: Create great content. Impact people. Change the world.

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