Brad Smith, founder of Hot Pepper Studios, and Travis Boersma, president of Dutch Bros. Coffee, share their recent reads.
Brad Smith, founder of Hot Pepper Studios, and Travis Boersma, president of Dutch Bros. Coffee, share their recent reads.
Brad Smith
Founder, Hot Pepper Studios
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Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls “I love to read short stories before bedtime because they don’t require a big investment in time, and — quoting Benjamin Percy from Esquire magazine — “a short story is a precisely cut diamond … [and] because it is short, can forgivably push boundaries, take risks.” David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls is his latest collection of essays, each story reading like a scene from a film, a moment in time. Often hilarious, bittersweet and surreal, his stories transport the reader to awkward moments with family, and his peculiar obsession with French dentists and squat-style toilets in Beijing.” |
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Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now “Public libraries exist because, in my opinion, most books do not merit re-reading. Douglas Rushkoff’s books are always an exception. In Present Shock, Rushkoff delves into the idea that we are all in a state of “always on” — connected to our cell phones and technology to the extent that we live our lives in multiple time zones, without a clear sense of narrative and purpose. A master of synthesizing complex ideas into contextual clarity, he develops terms that define our digital speed-freak lives: digiphrenia, overwinding, fractalnoia and apocalypto. Some may feel anxious or fearful for the future from Rushkoff’s sharp warnings about our current state of being, yet isn’t there a calm that comes from knowing and understanding our predicament? Read it and see.” |
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Travis Boersma
President, Dutch Bros. Coffee
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Unlimited Power “This [book] gave me the ultimate success formula and is part of the fabric of Dutch Bros., but it can be applied in anything in life: Know your outcome, take massive action to get it, ask yourself if the action you’re taking is working and, if it’s not, change it until it does. My brother Dane and I sat down on the living room floor of his mobile home back in ’92, and we not only read about that formula, but we set limitless goals: one-, three-, 15- and 20-year goals. And today, I’m proud to say, we’ve achieved almost every one of those. It’s about having the mindset that you never arrive. I feel as though if I were to arrive, that could lead to complacency, which could lead to failure. Anybody great in this life has had mad passion and never stopped. Athletes, musicians, artists, business owners, entrepreneurs — it was always driven by constant improvement.” |
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Think and Grow Rich “The focus on faith and specific measurable goals and the countless examples of people who had achieved greatness was fantastic. I’ve read it twice, took tons of notes, and it has paid great dividends. It was written in the ’20s, and ‘rich’ had a different meaning than what it means to us today. It wasn’t so much monetarily driven as about being rich in life, how our capacity for learning and contributing to others may provide happiness. “The notes I took from those books have value beyond what I could ever describe. By writing all the notes down and referencing them continually, it helped etch them in my mind, and now I think they’re part of me.” |
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