Entrepreneurship Expert: How To Build A $1m Business Without Hard Work!

so every business from the smallest. startup to the largest corporation in. the world has five fundamental Parts if. you want to create a business or. interviewing for your first job or. interviewing for your first big. promotion understanding this is a. superpower it's so exciting and fun Josh. Kaufman the world famous business Expert. entrepreneur and best-selling author. Renown for his practical approach to. mastering business productivity and. Rapid skill acquisition this is the.

foundation of every business plan that. has or ever will exist so Step One is. value creation find those important. unmet needs and then focus on meeting. those is this enough of a problem for. you to pay money to solve it how do you. find out if there's a big enough market. for your idea the easiest best thing to. do is just step two then marketing and. humans have five drives the drive to. acquire to bond to learn to feel to. defend and the more drives that you hook.

into the more attractive the business. offer is going to be so what is step. three the third part of every business. is the fourth part is particularly. important which is and the fifth part is. what a lot of people struggle with but. I'm here to help you so the fifth part. is Josh The Narrative out in the market. is you have to do 10,000 hours to learn. anything you're telling me it's actually. 20 hours is the key yes or 40 minutes a. day for about a month so how do I do. that then the best way to approach this. is to start with that's the secret.

congratulations Dio gang we've made some. progress 63% of you that listen to this. podcast regularly don't subscribe which. is down from. 69% our goal is 50% so if you've ever. liked any of the videos we've posted if. you like this channel can you do me a. quick favor and hit the Subscribe button. it helps this channel more than you know. and the bigger the channel gets as. you've seen the bigger the guest get. thank you and enjoy this episode. [Music].

Josh why why why did you write a book. called the personal MBA it's a world. class Business book that sold almost a. million copies so far it's a real iconic. book in the category but why why did you. feel compelled to write that book. because I can tell by the thickness of. it it took you a long time it did so. there must have been some sort of. personal motivation that was pretty. strong to write that book sure uh a. couple of things um curiosity.

and persistence and I was solving my own. problem um so one of the things that. that happened is right after school I. got a job at a big company and I was. working with a lot of people who had. just graduated from top 15 business. programs um I got this job straight out. of undergrad I had no idea what I was. doing and I really wanted to learn like. what what are what are we doing here. what is what is business how does it. work what's important to know what.

what's not important to know and so one. of the things that I tried to do with. the personal MBA um and and one of the. the reasons like how the project got. started was I figured that there was. there was a book written by a business. school professor in the 1950s or. something and I just needed to go out. and find that book and read that book. and then I would understand the. fundamentals then I would understand the. basics of of what it is that that we're. all doing here.

and I looked and I looked and I read and. I read and I I couldn't find it and so. at a certain. point that I had essentially spent. months reading just going through. category after category just trying to. understand for myself what businesses. are how businesses work and at a certain. point I realized like this is important. to me and there's something that should. exist in the world that for some reason. doesn't exist in the world and I think I.

need to be the person to make that to do. that and so that's when the personal MBA. be went from just this crazy side. project that I that I did post undergrad. into essentially a second full-time time. job reading and research and and trying. to to decide for myself what are the. critical parts of business how do. businesses work how do they function and. then I decided to put that in a form. that other people people could read and.

benefit from as well what is an MBA. master of Business Administration it's. big big degree um actually one of the. most. economically uh successful academic. degrees that exist um over the past. several decades uh growth in uh business. masters programs worldwide has has just. exploded and so for better or worse when. adults decide that their interest.

in business the first thing they do is. go to Google or Amazon and they type in. the letters MBA and they start looking. for graduate business school school. programs and I think that's a mistake I. think there's there's a reason that. people want to learn business there's a. reason that people um find this area of. of knowledge useful and I don't. necessarily think Academia is the the. place to start I think there's an.

enormous amount of business knowledge. and skill that you can develop on your. own um by understanding the most. important Concepts around what. businesses are and how they work and. using them in your day-to-day life using. it in the career that you already have. using it to start something new on your. own and just a a few very simple. straightforward ideas go a very long way. and so my goal in writing the Pumba was. to.

explain business to someone who has no. knowledge no experience no idea what's. going on start from absolute Square zero. and explain all of the different parts. of a business how they work how they. interrelate to each other and so you can. take that knowledge and do good work. whatever it is that that you do in your. life or in your career when you say do. good work we're talking about an outcome. there what kind of outcomes do you think. if someone's just clicked on this. conversation now and we you know with.

the knowledge that we're going to talk. about this as many as well as other. things what do you think the outcome for. them could be if they got access to the. information that you put in this book. the personal MBA but also from listening. to this conversation sure uh so many of. of the readers of the personal MBA over. the years um our early career. professionals are just getting started. in their career in some way shape or. form and I can't tell you the number of. times that that I've heard from someone. who's like I'm interviewing for my first. job or I am interviewing for my first.

big promotion um I actually have a. friend who is who was in this position. uh a couple months ago she's like I'm a. skilled professional I've been working. for a while there's an opportunity to. move into management here and part of. that interview is going to be they're. going to ask me like how how do we. improve the business that we're in she's. like I'm trained as an engineer I don't. know about any of the this business.

stuff and so there's a very simple way. of understanding what a business is what. a business does the primary parts that. every single business has and and how. those processes. interrelate and what that knowledge gets. you is the ability to take a look at any. existing business and understand it in a. very deep and fundamental way so you can. take a complex organization you can. break it down into parts that are very.

simple straightforward easy to. understand and then you can take that. knowledge to ask a series of very useful. questions how is this business creating. value how do they attract the attention. of people who might want or need what. this business provides how do they. convince people to pull out their wallet. or checkbook or credit card um and and. give the business money how does the. business deliver the value that it it. promising to its paying customers and. then is the business bringing in money.

how's the business spending money and a. is it bringing in more than it spending. if not there's a problem um and more. importantly is it enough is it enough to. make all of the time and energy and. effort that's being put into the. business by the owner and the employees. worthwhile and that's the essence of. finance and so understanding business in. this very systematic way is a superpower. it it allows you to take a look at.

anything like the businesses that are. happening in the world all around us it. helps you understand them if you want to. create a business this is the foundation. of every business plan that has or ever. will exist because each of these parts. is universal essential and fundamental. you have to answer these questions and. so by having this framework in your head. um going back to my friend earlier her. prep for the interview was very simple.

we had a 15minute conversation about. what those things might look like she. went away and did her prep and she went. into the interview the next day and she. was offered the job and one of the. things that comes out of having this. deep understanding of business even for. potentially very young or very Junior. people who are just getting. started understanding these things being. able to ask these questions being able. to know what's important and what's not.

and think like an owner or an operator. of the. business is what the owners and. operators and Executives and managers. are looking for in terms of people to. hire people to recruit or people to. start companies and so the more you. understand how all of this works at a. deeply fundamental level the more. opportunities you're going to have I. think it's I think it's a skill That's. essential for every person to to know. and and be conversent.

I think from the stats you said about. how the desire to sign up to a academic. MBA have increased most people would. agree true because you know that's a. reflection of demand in the market. you're saying more and more people are. going to University and trying to do a. business. course are they being scammed because if. you think about the promise they're. signing up to even through the lens that. you've just described they're being. marketed something sure is that. institution delivering the value that.

they're being marketed I.E I guess the. the promise is that you'll have a better. career you'll earn more money if I go to. university and do a business degree is. that being. delivered the answer to that is it. depends and the it depends is it depends. on what you want for yourself and your. life and so um approximately 2third of. business school graduates um go into. either management consulting or. Investment.

Banking um the remainder of them the. vast majority go into working for. extremely large companies and so if you. want your life to look like that then. the promise that is is very often. delivered but with business business. school programs is you're essentially. buying yourself a very expensive. interview to have an opportunity at a. company or a firm or an industry where. that is the primary mode of of um um of.

getting into it. now the price of that interview can be. very very Steep and so um the the top 10. Business Schools um as we're talking. right now charge anywhere between $240. and. $250,000 for a two-year. program that's an enormous amount of. money and that's usually financed with. debt and so if you don't have a a for. example if you're not working for a. company that is willing to sponsor your. way through and pay the tuition costs.

most of these degrees are are financed. with debt and that debt is going to be. with you regardless of whether or not. you like your career. regardless of the the economic situation. that you you graduate into regardless. whether or not you get a job at at the. end of it. so you're taking on an enormous OB an. enormous obligation spending a lot of. money borrowing a lot of money with a.

very unsure outcome at the end is there. any correlation between getting an MBA. and long-term Career Success uh it it's. funny uh this has been asked by very. many people and the answer is always no. um so my my two favorite studies here um. Jeffrey feffer and Christina Fong at. Stanford University at the time this was. the early 2000s business school. professors did a study of do business. school programs work because if they did.

you would expect to see more successful. Executives. professionals having business school. degrees and what they found is no it. makes absolutely no difference and my my. favorite quote um was was by the lead. offer um Jeffrey feffer was like if you. are good enough to get in you are good. enough to do well. regardless it's a credentialing system. it's it's a pre selection um but really.

like the people who make things happen. in business are people individuals with. skills and abilities and the abil the. the the Curiosity and the drive to to. make things happen you don't necessarily. get that from having three letters after. the end of your name there's going to be. so many people that are listening that. want to start their own businesses. they're probably currently in a. corporate job right now and they're. thinking gosh I have this idea I'd love. to give it a go but something is holding. them in place and from reading your book.

it's it's the first thing that tends to. hold people in place is just their. belief that business is complicated yeah. um from everything you've come to learn. and all the testimonials you've had do. you agree with that belief that business. is complicated and or how difficult do. you think it is for the average person. with an idea to go from working in a job. to earning I don't know $10,000 a month. running their own business do you think. that's achievable for most people I. think it is achievable for most people. yeah and I I think uh um I think.

business is complex in the sense of. there are many moving Parts it's not. just one thing they're interr. relatednesses that you need to. understand it's not complicated in the. sense of the most important ideas. principles things to do things to. understand are not all that difficult. when it get gets down to it um I think. in business in general um somewhat for. status related reasons but business. people like to feel fancy and.

complicated and and sometimes you signal. status or sophistication by making. things sound really big or difficult or. or complex I think that's fundamentally. not the case for business most of the. ideas that we deal with are common sense. and simple. arithmetic and. so we do need to Grapple with the. complexities of the world because as we. were talking earlier the every business. has these five major interrelated parts.

we need to understand how those work um. businesses are created by people for the. benefit of other people and so we need. to understand human psychology both our. psychology and the psychology of the. people we inter interact with relate to. whether that's customers or employees. contractors the other people in our. world and then there are certain parts. about how the world Works system and. process how things tend to interact with.

each other that's very valuable and. important to know um but. again complex not complicated and I. think there's there's a lot of for for. the person who wants to. start a new business a lot of it comes. down to answering those fundamental. questions how are you going to create. value that someone else in the world. wants or needs okay so let's start so. typically when I do these podcasts I I.

try and navigate The Journey right I try. and figure out where to start but this. is going to be the first time I actually. ask you if I am that person who has an. idea in my head um or maybe I've got you. know I'm off to the races with an idea. I've got a I don't know I'm going to. launch a business that sells. candles okay sure I think I can make. candles that smell amazing so what's the. first of those sort of levers or. principles I need to think about when. I'm when I'm designing my business. thinking about my business you know.

thinking about making a business plan. what is step one in that Journey yeah. Step One is is the value creation. component which is it it sounds like in. in this particular example the candles. are the the type of value that that. would be created and then the the. relevant question there. is why do people buy candles what are. they looking for when when somebody goes. goes out and they say you know what I. would really like to have a candle right. now. what do they want what do they need what.

are they looking for they want them to. smell nice exactly okay so perfect they. want them to look nice yeah um they want. them to not be a ripoff so they want. them to be cheap guessing they want them. to last a long time I guess sure y last. a long time okay and so this is a a. really interesting thing a lot of the. things around value creation comes come. down to making trade-offs between. competing priorities and. so the perfect product or the perfect.

offering would deliver every single. thing that the the customer would like. and it would be free yeah and so a lot. of the the early stage value creation. process is like okay we've identified. some some areas like things that people. are looking for things that people. want can you understand each of those. things in detail around for example what. makes a really good candle set what. makes a candle last longer what allow. Kingdom manufacturing at at a relatively.

inexpensive rate all of those things and. then most successful businesses pick one. or two of those things to focus on and. then turn that dial all the way up to 9. 10 11 and so for example you might be. able to make the best smelling longest. lasting candle using some complex. chemistry manufacturing process whatever. mhm that might be very expensive to do. so the price of the candle might be. higher than you than you otherwise uh.

would like it to be um or you could go. the other direction let's make the. cheapest most ubiquitous candles ever. but then let's focus on the distribution. end of things to have candles in more. places and so you start um this was. something that that I learned how to do. very early in in my career I worked for. a consumer goods manufacturer big. company called Proctor and Gamble who. make everything by the way if people. don't know what Pro everything they. literally they're probably 10 things in. this room that Proctor and Gamble made.

yeah toothpaste laundry detergent you. know all of that I I worked on the home. side and one of the things that I took. away was uh every once in a while you'll. you'll read in like the The Wall Street. Journal New York Times whatever about. the the crazy lengths that consumer. goods researchers will will go to to. figure out how people use like paper. towels or something like that I got to. be one of those people for a couple. years and it was. fascinating I've watched so many people.

clean their. kitchens and there's there's a certain. amount of like the value creation. process that that is psychology and. anthropology of just going out into the. world with your eyes wide open noticing. what people do asking questions noticing. subtle things that they might not even. pick pick up. on and then if you do more formal. research you can start asking people to. to make explicit trade-offs between.

options and so if you could have a. candle that lasted the long time versus. had the most amazing scent throw ever. which one would you pick and you can. start to to kind of navigate the space. of possible solutions in that particular. category by talking to people who buy. candles because you don't want to ask a. random person on the street you want to. talk to people who will actually. purchase the things that that uh that. you're creating.

but by paying attention and by asking. questions and starting to to get a feel. for. how the people who are making these. buying decisions actually navigate the. process of narrowing down options to. make a decision that's where you find. some sometimes the very tiny things that. make an enormous difference that's where. you find the places to innovate right. yeah but people don't know what they. want right so you got to be careful. because if you give people a survey on. candles exactly. they might tell you something but they.

might buy you know there's this sort of. Detachment between what we think we want. and how we spend our money totally which. can cause people you know because I'm on. Dragon's St so people I'm halfway. through filming at the moment so I've. had 50 pictures so far and one of the. most popular phrases I hear as a dragon. on Dragon s which is the like shark tank. in the US and around the world is I have. this idea my friends and my M my mom. have told me it's great and they they'. definitely buy one and here it is and. and I go that means [ __ ] nothing.

means absolutely nothing yeah and a lot. of people pursue ideas they quit their. career they spend years pursuing this. thing that their seven best friends and. their mom said they would buy and they. you know they gave it to their their. friend and their mom and their friend. and mom used it and said they liked it. yeah the best way to get around that ask. for early pre-orders ask people to lay. down money on the idea so um this I mean. this is part of how Kickstarter started.

right here's an idea here's a concept. here's exactly what you're going to get. please enter your credit card details. because it's that act it's the raising. your hand wallet checkbook credit card. and saying yes I'll take one that's the. signal that you're looking forward for. and that can be everything from you know. Kickstarter on the consumer side to. letters of intent on on the the mid to. large size company side yes if you build. this Software System we will sign up for.

an engagement at X price for X term um. so finding that buy buying signal is. really important and then going back to. to your comment earlier about um. noticing the the subtle. things people's behavior says a lot more. than people's words and so if you if. there's a conflict between what people. are saying and what people are doing. focus on what they're doing all the time. um one of my favorite uh stories coming.

out of the the um consumer research. department at Proctor and Gamble was. there was a researcher in in a a lady's. home one afternoon and they were just. watching her do her laundry this was. this was back in the days of powdered. laundry detergent so you know you have. the box of powder you have the scoop put. it in and so the uh the lady turned on. her her. washer and just stood there for like 15.

20 seconds doing nothing just like. waiting and the research just watching. and then at a certain point she's. like what what are you doing she's like. oh I'm I'm waiting for the tub to fill. up why are you doing that it's like well. if there's not water in the bottom when. I put the powdered laundry detergent in. it's not it's not going to dissolve. properly so you've got to wait for the. tub to fill up a little bit and then.

then you put the powder in and you swish. it around the the bottom of the Basin. with your hand so it dissolves all the. way and then you put the clothes. in and so the researcher took this back. to the um to the research department and. all the chemists are just like this is. dumb we have science we have data that. says no our our detergent dissolves. completely this is not this is a. nonissue and the consumer researchers.

are like no this is a psychological need. there's a bit of reassurance here that. people don't have how can we give that. to them and the answer to that was the. invention of liquid laundry detergent. which is now a multi-billion dollar a. year product category and it didn't come. from a physical need it came from an. unmet psychological. need and I just love that because I. remember remember growing up um watching.

my grandmother do laundry and she did. the exact same thing for the exact same. reasons and it's sometimes those subtle. things so for example going back to our. candles um one of the things that uh. just by pure coincidence I was involved. in uh when I when I worked at PNG uh was. scent research so the scent of the. cleaning product like there's there's a. lot of psychology there's a lot of. science um that that goes into.

that. and there's a difference in how. something smells for example when you. take a cap off of a bottle of something. and sniff it smells different than if. you for example a cleaning product you. pour it into a bucket and dilute it with. water and you mop your. floor and. so those things make an enormous. difference like how is the product going. to be used and in the case of candles. one of the things that people pay very.

close attention to is the smell of a. candle while it's. burning and the smell of a candle when. it's not. burning and there's a whole category of. candle purchasers who will buy a candle. based on what's called cold throw how. much does it smell when it's just. sitting on the middle of your table not. burning not doing anything and so those. are the the little bits like if you pay. close enough attention if you focus on.

the right things the the the subtle. things that people are either saying or. not saying you can find those very. important unmet needs and then focus on. on meeting those and that's that's the. making of of a a product or an offer. that that has likes to it so interesting. because um we all walk around that thing. you were saying about the powed laudry. deterant that was 100% me I was too. young to be messing around with the. washing machine but whenever I had like.

my shot my parents were out I'd pour all. the powder in into the little tray and. then I would like swish it around with. my finger I'd get water from the sink. above and pour it in there to try and. dissolve the powder with my finger so I. was doing that as well and I was. thinking as you you you were saying that. you know we all walk around with the. same kind of set of psychological biases. so if we assume that we can truly. understand how other people are behaving. when we are other people when we are.

them as well when we have the same sort. of. psychology assuming that we can guess. that is quite dumb because none of us. would have ever guessed what you just. said about the laundry detergent thing. none of us would have ever sat in a. boardroom and figured that out we had to. go out into the world and almost become. like a fly on the wall or take a bird's. eye view on how we as humans are. behaving to spot that opportunity right. and and I was thinking you know there's. so many people that are maybe have. business ideas now. um or thinking of a business idea but.

but there's just just gaping opportunity. in observing the world objectively and. seeing how people are doing what they're. doing and why they're doing what they're. doing um I always wonder that I think. you know if you're trying to think of a. new business idea should you sit down. with a piece of paper and sketch out the. problems that you've had in your life. should you just start to become more. aware of your day-to-day life and then. make notes in your journal or is there. another way to find that idea yes start. there for sure. yeah and then go out into the world with.

your eyes open just looking for problems. annoyances frictions um things that are. just a little bit annoying or suboptimal. in some way I mean I I think kind of a. general a general question like we're. not humanity is not running out of. problems to solve the there are millions. of opportunities to make someone's life. a little bit more pleasant a little bit. more secure a little bit bit more. interesting a little bit more fun and so.

I think there's there's a lot of magic. to be had in just going out into the. world and having experiences in the. world with other people and just. noticing in a way that you've never. noticed before of oh there's something. there that's that's a little bit higher. friction than it otherwise could be I. mean this this was kind of the the. Genesis of um like Amazon Amazon Prime. how can we make it as easy as possible. for someone to click a button and. something magically arrives on your. doorstep within 24 to 48 hours how can.

we make just just this opportunity a. little bit more fun or different or. interesting um this is this is where. like um over the past 20 years and. consumer goods packaging design has come. come a long way because if you can grab. someone's attention and give them a. little bit of a pleasant experience. while they're they're walking around. shopping that's a good thing it it moves. an enormous amount of product and it's. something that you have to plan for from. the very beginning stages but it makes a.

huge difference it's so interesting cuz. I was just thinking as you're saying. that I was thinking what is an annoyance. or a frustration that I've just I just. live with that I've kind of just assumed. is the way of the world and it's just. the way it is and one sprung to mind. that's very close to home in every sense. of the word we've been doing this. podcast a long time a couple of years. now three four years now and every. single time before we start the podcast. Jack will walk in and Jack will say to. the guest please don't bang on the table. because if you bang on the table it. comes through the.

mic we've been saying it for years we. haven't figured out how to solve the. problem yet so if there's anybody out. there but I was thinking do you know. what what an entrepreneur would do um if. there was any in this [ __ ] room um we. would we would make our own mic we would. solve the problem we could we could. probably solve but we kind of just. assume that someone else will solve it. or it's just the way of the world and I. say this because we could have probably. fixed this we've been very busy but we. could have probably. made a new mic with a new Bas that.

suspends the mic so the vibrations don't. go through but I say this because. everybody in their lives has those. frustrations absolutely things they're. just living with and they they're kind. of assuming that someone else is going. to solve it or it's just the way the. world is. yeah what's sorry Jack we can't hear you. Jack Jack's defending himself from the. corner. sure. yeah yeah it's difficult with sm7 BS but. uh no there's a company called reot that. makes some really amazing universal.

shock mount adapters for microphone I. think we should I think we should do it. and we should sell. it we'll have a meeting about that later. are you gon to go get it yeah totally. are you gon to go get it oh it's in. there. okay no I was thinking God why didn't we. just make one okay so Jack tried to make. this contraption here oh cool which. would I guess suspend the microphone and. limit the vibrations going through it. yeah okay but we tried it and it didn't. work now now we're very busy with lots. of solving other issues so this was kind.

of low on the list of priorities but. that as an example and everybody. listening to this now has daytoday. frustrations things they observe and go. that could be better sure and they go I. hope someone else figures that out yes. and that's the entrepreneur that's going. to make the millions yeah and and the. the difference between um entrepreneurs. and non entrepreneurs is the. entrepreneur says and I'm going to be. the one that solves that problem and. then what happens it depends on the idea. so for example like manufacturing idea. like this is this is where we start.

getting into the different types of. businesses whether you're you're. building a product or building a service. um some sort of shared resource. membership um I I talk about 12. different forms of value in the personal. MBA so the instantiation of the idea. really depends on the form of which the. you're you're going to deliver it to to. the end result but like a lot of times. the early stages are prototyping finding. people who might benefit from this thing.

getting their input advice perspective. and that gives you the information that. you need to either continue going down. that path or sometimes the information. is yeah this is a this is something that. could potentially be a really good idea. um but is is not going to be a viable. business for for whatever reason and so. some of those early stages of. Entrepreneurship are very focused on. what is this how might it work can we.

sketch it out in enough detail to know. what questions we need to answer next in. order to figure out like what are the. critical assumptions can we meet those. critical assumptions to make a viable. business if so yes let's move on to the. next up if not let's discard it and go. on to the next so when we think about. this microphone challenge we've had one. of the critical assumptions we're making. is that it can be solved sure is that. there's some way to kind of insulate the. microphone from the vibrations of the. table at some point as those vibrations. travel up and I can see in this quite.

cool Contraption actually we've used. rubber here yeah assuming that if we. suspend it with rubber there I'm. guessing this is Jack's invention I. guess it's your or someone else's is it. your invention. yeah it's a cool idea it now um that's. an assumption we've. made I'm guessing it failed it failed. yeah I think. the. okay yes okay so these are the. assumptions you're talking about yes and. and there's also um in this specific.

example it's something that will serve. the need with this particular microphone. and so for example you might be able to. solve the problem in a very. straightforward Way by changing to a. different microphone that has different. options available so a lot of it just. depends on the constraints that you're. dealing with and this is the early. stages of figuring out how to give value. to the end consumer this is the sort of. iterative experimental failure ridden. process yes which everyone has to go.

through and I think this is important to. highlight because what often will happen. is people will take the first pop at it. I know we've been doing we've been. taking many pops but just for the sake. of this conversation they'll take the. first pop at it it won't work then. they'll concede uhhuh yep when it's and. a lot of it comes down. to how big is this problem how urgent is. it how many people need something like. this um so this is where you get into. like the you know St this The Standard.

supply and demand sort of economic. consideration is this a need that only. you have or is this a need that many. many people have and how how big of a. need is this is this something that for. example um high-profile podcasters will. pay thousands of dollars to solve or is. this something that affects only a Subs. segment of people and is not valuable. enough to to bother with or to invest a. lot of time and energy researching. finding a a solution for how do we how. do you find out if there's a big enough.

market for your idea that's where you. that's where you talk to people and. that's that's the this is where value. creation and marketing tend to intersect. and so it's can you identify people out. in the world who have a very. similar problem set of things that. they're think thinking about set of. questions that they're trying to answer. and the more of those people you can. identify and the more urgent and. pressing the need is. um that's the first thing that you need.

to to look for in terms of of. identifying viable markets so they tell. me that they want it I go out there I. speak to people they all tell me that. they want it but that's not enough right. ask them to place a pre-order that. that's that's the step two H okay so. it's it's not the question. isn't do you want it is it's is this. enough of a problem for you to pay money. to solve it um um there's a a guy desk. trainer who who founded.

intercom um has a saying I just love. he's like show me a credit card that has. been swiped to solve this problem and I. will concede that the problem is. real and so you're really looking for. like are people is this big enough. important enough are people spending. money to solve this particular need if. so that's a really great sign you're on. the right track okay so what I'm gonna. do then is we're going to before we. spend a lot of money in building out.

this new microphone system we're going. to put up a waiting list for the. podcasters we're going to see how many. of them swipe to pre-order it yep and. then if we get I don't know a couple of. hundred a couple of thousand probably a. couple of hundred couple of hundred. swipes with their credit cards to. pre-order this thing even though we. haven't built it yet then we're going to. invest in building it yep does that make. sense it does and then you do a short. run to mitigate your risk first okay you. get your your uh initial Fe feedback. from your first run of customers they. will have opinions about what works and.

what doesn't mhm and then um if that is. enough that's when you start like start. small and then you work up to to larger. and larger batches of production because. what's happening a lot out there with. aspiring entrepreneurs is they're. spending two to three years building. their company and it's all leading up to. this launch day where everything's. riding on this big launch day they've. raised I don't know $70,000 for their. whatever sure why is that the wrong. approach to take I think there's a.

difference. between doing business and playing. business it's like people who get really. really excited of I'm going to start a. company and so the first thing I need to. do is pick a logo and buy my business. cards like that's the signaling parts of. business it's playing a role where the. actual doing of the business is the. value creation Marketing sales value. delivery finance and so the more you can. skip all the early stuff. get to the core of what is going to make.

the business succeed or fail figure that. out as quickly as possible and then get. on with it then you're going to have. more than enough time and money to have. fancy business cards and like do do do. that bit but yeah it really is like at. the idea validation stage it's how can. you ask enough people who might be in. the market to spend money to solve this. particular problem how can you get. something valuable in front of them as. quickly as possible what would that look. like and how can you do that. particularly early on if you don't have.

a lot of funding in a way that minimizes. time and finance because the worst. possible uh way to go about things is. raise millions of dollars of venture. capital and build up out this whole. thing only to have no one buy it at the. end you started with this point of value. giving value to other people why why is. that the the frame to think through when. you're thinking about the idea yeah I.

think if you are not providing value to. other people in a fundamental way you. have no. business. um a venture that markets and sells. something that does not deliver value to. other people is a scam and so really. like I think there's there's a way of. thinking about business this is one of. the things I find fascinating about it. business to me is is a generative act.

you are going out into the world you're. finding a problem you're finding a. solution to that problem you're creating. something that makes the world better in. some fundamental. way and then you're bringing it to the. attention of people who care and you're. convincing them that they need to try. this to actually solve their problem and. then it works and then they give you. money for it it's great so you can just. keep that process going going for for as. long as as it makes sense to everyone.

involved like I I think to me a well. running working business system is a. thing of beauty you're solving people's. problems you're being rewarded for it. you're doing it in a way that allows you. to keep solving people's problems and it. makes your life better in the process I. think that's a wonderful way to live. your life and if you don't start. by asking the question what is the. valuable thing that I am going to.

deliver to people who care the whole. thing pulls apart what step two then. yeah marketing marketing okay marketing. is fun yeah marketing is is just who. might be interested in this. thing um. and a lot of it is the the the. fundamental thing is if no one knows you. exist no one's going to be able to buy. your thing and and so marketing is is. the process of attracting the attention.

of people who might be interested in the. value that that you're creating and in. an Ideal World making them curious. wanting to learn more um asking for. additional information engaging with. what what it is that you have a lot of. people conf conflate Marketing in sales. to me they're distinct processes so so. marketing is the attracting attention. and generating interest and then sales. is the process of convincing someone to. buy and then getting them set up as as.

as a. customer and a lot of marketing comes. down. to what is it exactly that you're trying. to gather attention for and where do. those people generally hang out what are. they curious about what are they already. paying attention to what can you um what. can you take advantage of or dovetail. into in order to attract someone's. attention at the right moment at the. right time. and make them aware that you have. something that could benefit their life.

here's what it is here's how you can. benefit from it to be great at marketing. do you think we need to understand the. underlying psychological sort of core. motivations of humans oh absolutely yeah. and you know what those are yeah um. there was a really great book about this. um published years ago called um drive. by Paul Lawrence and and noria um who I. think at the time was the um the dean of. Harvard Business. school and they argued that um humans.

have four fundamental drives um and if I. can remember them off the top of my head. the drive to. acquire the drive to bond the drive to. learn and the drive to. defend is there a fifth the drive to. feel the drive to feel is is my addition. to to this okay so yeah and to me like. so the drive to acquire you know let's. go out and buy products in enhance my. career things like that the drive to.

learn gather knowledge understand the. world um the drive to bond relationships. uh. experiences uh the drive to defend uh. let's protect myself home security. systems you know all all that thing and. for me like entertainment is very much a. a drive to. feel um we don't go to the movies to do. any of those previous four things we go. to the movies to have an experience to. feel motions and so I to me the vast.

majority of offers in the. market are designed to to to hook into. or to take advantage of one of those. five core human drives and the more. drives that you you hook into generally. the more attractive the the business. offer is is going to be and so you could. make a a a pretty straightforward. argument that um one of the reasons that. soci media has become so popular over. the last decade is because it hooks into.

at least four out of five of these. drives potentially all. five so give me an example of a business. and the drives that it's kind of playing. to in its marketing strategy so if we. think. about Nike maybe sure yeah so um the the. drive to acquire is straightforward I. need to put things on my feet like shoes. are great um also it is status so so I. would say the the there can be like the.

acquiring status drive there can also be. very much like ingroup outgroup Dynamics. are a form of bonding right I'm the type. of person who identify or who will wear. this sort of thing I form relationships. with people who care about these. sneakers these special additions these. athletes these whatever. um less learning less defending. feeling can very much be a part of of a.

product experience like people who. strongly identify with certain brands. certain Lifestyles certain ways of of. being in the world like when you put on. something that makes you feel good there. can be an emotional component to that. experience that's very very strong it's. interesting because I was thinking about. Apple as well through that lens Apple's. a great example obviously so if we think. about the drive to acquire very much a. status project product and it always has. been Bond again most much of their. advertising is about connecting people.

in connection learn again you know much. of their marketing is about the fact. that you can learn on these devices like. the iPad for example defend they talk. about how encryption a lot and huge. focus on security and privacy right now. for that reason yeah the drive to feel I. guess most of their marketing when I. think about the Vision Pro where they. weirdly show like the dad and his kids. and he's got this massive headset on I. guess that was an attempt to arouse em. The Vision Pro now has this sort of. spatial video where you can you know one.

of my team members when they first put. it on for the first time remarked that. they wish they had got spatial videos of. their grandmother that's passed away. because but that's the kind of narrative. that they show with the products as well. is that it's going to they really put at. the heart in the the marketing. initiatives they do so they really do a. really good job at hitting all of these. yeah I I would say do you remember the. early iPod advertisements with like the. white silhouette person dancing on a Col. those advertisements were. straightforward feeling. a thousand songs in your pocket it's how. the songs make you feel this is a way.

that you can feel that more often or. more strongly it's pure. emotion and they specifically you know. so a more like straightforward drive to. acquire on a technology product is is. like how many gigabytes of storage does. this thing. have and they talked about they made a. deliberate decision not to talk about. that at all because it didn't matter. people didn't care it was all about. here's how you can feel through the. experience of using this product to have.

an experience you wouldn't otherwise. have I mean this highlights a really. important point about marketing but. building products and deciding what to. build which is how important is it to. make something that is logically better. versus something that is emotionally. more compelling yeah in an Ideal World. you do both um you can go a long long. way with. emotion even when you don't have um. straightforward. Superior product benefits you know going. going back to uh our our discussion of.

candles earlier candles have been around. for what hundreds of years like you're. probably not going to to make you know. barring Material Science advancements. you're probably not going to make a a a. technical contribution to Candle science. in the process of making something speak. for. yourself I mean it's possible it's my. next business IDE I told you yeah um but. like. things like the packaging and the.

marketing and the scent and the unboxing. experience and the anticipation of. putting it out as as the centerpiece. when all your friends come and all of. that like there are so many emotional. hooks to that sort of. experience that you could argue that. candles are sold. almost all on emotion and that's great. that's the value that's being delivered. do you know a better example of that. I've came across recently liquid death. oh yeah it's just.

water what yes they built a billion doll. business selling water in a fancy can. totally and affiliation like there's a. little bit of a bonding or I'm the type. of person who wants to present to the. world in this particular way so I don't. buy Fiji I buy liquid. death sure it's just water it's just. water sometimes it's carbonated or. flavored yeah come on it's water I I saw. some I thought these stats might be out. of date but it was maybe last year the. the year before I saw that they were. selling half a billion dollars of water.

and they're like a fairly new market. entrance in the grand scheme of things. and and from what I can observe it's. just a different can yeah and the. packaging matters the affiliation. matters the story matters why do you. think they won I think they were first. so that's also. um you talk about in your book the value. of doing something big and crazy for the. value of doing something big and crazy I. mean they were the first to do something.

crazy on the marketing side for water it. was a really boring product category. very straightforward very functional um. and what their big Insight was the way. that we talk about it the way we package. it the way we present it matters and. there's a certain Subs segment of. customers that would not buy a. straightforward bottle of water because. they don't care but if they can signal. something about themselves or a group. affiliation in in some way shape or form.

through the packaging of the product. then then to a certain subse of. customers that's valuable I've been. thinking about this theory for a while. last couple of months maybe six months. now that Brands need to especially New. Market entrance in saturated busy. markets like if you're coming out with. an energy drink right now or you're. coming out with a can of water you the. easiest way to market in terms of. marketing is if you you do a really good. job of making it clear that you are the.

antithesis of the incumbents yes so you. are a or not an and in your customers's. decision framework for and what I mean. by that is to be very specific um I've. invested in a company called perfect Ted. it's actually the drink in my cup right. now and when in one of my first meetings. with them um when we sat down I said you. know this brand I think will win if the. consumer walks down that Supermarket. aisle and thinks to themselves. I can be a insert incumbent energy drink.

brand mhm or a perfect Ted person I. can't possibly be both right and we all. know that well I think a liquid death. customer doesn't believe they can be a. EV and Water customer sure because that. it's so clearly they've stood for. something so much so that in doing so. they stand against. something and and this is what breakout. brands have done Brew dog is a good. example in the UK brw dog came into the. market Indie Punk beer they literally. took Carling beers and stuff like that.

to Fields as part of their marketing and. blew it up with dynamite to say we are. not commoditized beer we are the. antithesis we are an awe you're either. with them or you're with us yep but that. takes guts it does it takes Bulls like. liquid death Bulls yeah yeah and there's. there's a whole like on the. psychological side of things the the. studies about signaling and counter. signaling like this is this is how. fashion in in the the broad scale works. so all the cool people high status.

fashionable people start wearing a thing. to Signal group affiliation of like we. are the type of people who wear this. yeah and then very quickly you have. follow on folks who like oh the cool. people are wearing this I should start. wearing this too and that happens a. couple Generations until that thing is. at marks and Spencer Target uh choose. your retailer and then. the people who want to distinguish.

themselves for from all of the things. that are being sold the mass retailers. will change Fashions specifically to. signal that we are not that and so the. cycle begins. again and so that that's just like. social signaling is a rabbit hole that. you could spend decades going down and. not get to the end of it but it's all. about who am I presenting myself to be. in the world who do I affiliate with who. do I not affiliate with and counter.

signaling is noticing a signal that's. happening out there there in the world. and making a deliberate decision to be. the opposite of that or the the the. antithesis of that in some ways. and that is such a fascinating part of. human. psychology that. um generally speaking if you can so you. could say like um Apple did a lot of. counter signaling because Microsoft you.

know some of the incumbent manufacturers. was their uh their famous uh 1984. advertisement was almost pure counter. signaling it was almost pure. emotion and it set them up as the polar. opposite to faceless beig computer box. Corporation and so yeah like if if. there's something that is is the. prevailing Trend in a certain industry.

it can often pay to you know in in the. anthropological sense take a step back. notice what's going on here's the signal. that's being sent and then make a. deliberate decision to be the polar. opposite of that it takes guts though. because there's no blueprint for the. opposite yeah and you stand out yeah. which is great you get attacked yeah I. mean that's the the benefit of. controversy too so controversy can be a. wonderful marketing tactic if you use it. responsibly responsibly and so you know. you don't necessarily want to turn your. business into a soap opera but by um by.

deliberately courting a certain amount. of controversy focused on the benefits. or the features you can attract a lot of. attention that way and that's what I. mean by the brewog example where they. took beer to their competitiv beer to a. field and blew it up with dynamite sure. and said we are not commoditized beer. they got they got destroyed they got. attacked so so much but the the. controversy is energy and it's making. people make a decision exactly and that. results in what is what became a.

multi-billion dollar Indie beer brand. with a fraction of the marketing budget. but also that had been around a fraction. of the time versus the incumbents really. interesting Jane warring was on the. podcast she's the founder of dermologica. and she said the same thing to me she. said you know she's Built This Global. Beauty brand she goes we need to piss. off the 80% to get to the the 20% she go. we don't need everybody to like us. that's not a brand exactly a brand makes. you feel something y um but most people. that are struggling right now with. marketing I think much of the reason.

they are struggling is because they are. vanilla wallpaper yeah I mean this going. back to our new product development. conversation that's what a lot of people. struggle with too because they have. their first conversation with somebody. who's like oh I hate that it's GNA work. for me it's like oh no yeah what am I. doing wrong how can I fix this it's like. no no no no you don't need all the. people you need the tiny fraction who. care more than everyone else M and a. certain like a certain amount of.

polarization is a very very good thing. because it means that the thing that. you're doing is distinctive enough like. the people who care really care they. really love it they're going to buy it. consistently buy it often the people who. don't care might be completely apathetic. to the category you might not ever spend. a million dollars in 10 years you might. not ever be able to get them to care and. so your job is at a market marketer is. to attract the attention of all of the. hyper responders the people who care a. lot care often and like are really into.

it and then all of the people who don't. care and are never going to Care they. can go away and that's fine if I wanted. to be an exceptional. marketeer if I wanted to you know I've. got a product and idea and I want to. make sure that it penetrates a very. noisy online Market but even an IRL. Market what would you um what kind of. skills and principles or first. principles should I really be thinking. about to become a great marketeer. because you know we can get carried away. with the fish and what I mean by the.

fish is tactics and strategies but what. is the fishing rod what is the the. mindset the principles that are going to. make me a great marketeer for the next. 30 40 years regardless of change yes. fundamentals of human attention that. comes down to psychology so so the vast. majority of people moving through their. lives are busy stressed overwhelmed. already have too too much information. bombarding them from all uh all points. at all times and so figuring.

out I think this is a story you tell in. your book actually so so Jenny on the. side of the road who who's who's broken. down having the worst day of her entire. life um it's a little bit hyperbole but. it's it's true like most of us are just. wildly oversubscribed in in terms of. attention and time and energy and so. figuring out the little bits. of being able to to highlight the thing.

that's most important most interesting. most valuable upfront quickly in a way. that cuts through that is the primary. skill of. marketing. and a lot of the the other particulars. the tactics the strategies are very. dependent on what Market are you. operating in what scale are you. operating at like all of that stuff but. fundamentally understanding that people. are busy and starved for time and. attention how can you grab it and what. can you do to keep it um that's the.

primary skill of marketing by far so if. I'm if I'm running that if I'm thinking. about starting my candle business what. is step three in your sort of I think. you said five-step framework of what. really matters sure yeah this is sales. okay sales and so for a candle business. this might look like direct sales online. it could also look like intermediate. intermediatory sales like through a. distributor and. so it's funny like value creation. marketing value delivery and finance all. of those are the processes where uh.

where money is Flowing out of the. business you're spending money to do all. of this analysis uh sales is the part. where money comes in which makes it. makes it particularly important and so. some of the early decisions around sales. are um how are you going to ask for the. sale what does the sales process look. like and are you dealing directly with. the customer that who is purchasing from. you or are you dealing with some sort. sort of independent third party or. sometimes multiple third parties in the.

process like a retail or distributor. exactly okay and in order to be. exceptional at selling my. candles is there anything that I should. bear in mind maybe when I'm making the. candles how I'm packaging the candles. the way that I'm you know going to those. retailers or yeah so I think. um there's a part. of because sales is kind of in the. middle the process there's a part of. sales that intersects with marketing in. the sense of you're trying to make this.

maximally appealing to get someone to. give you money for it and so the. customer understanding how how can how. can we be persuasive in getting someone. to say yes this is for me here's my. money I would like one please there's. also a part of sales which is somewhat. neglected which intersects with the. value delivery part of the process which. is the point a sale is not just to get a. customer in an ideal way it's to get a.

happy satisfied customer someone who not. only purchased the thing that you bought. but is happy with the thing that they. bought and is thrilled that they did. business with you and is planning on. doing business with you again why is. that so important well it's relatively. straightforward to make a sale once um. usually the first sale is the most. expensive and so generally a repeat C. repeat customers are the best customers. you will ever have they are already know. you exist they already know your stuff. is great um you don't have to attract. their attention again necessarily um and.

depending on what you're selling like. those repeat customers can the lifetime. value of a repeat customer can be. extraordinary and so if you've already. done the work to get a customer once. then you should want to keep them happy. and keep them around for as long as. humanly possible what's lifetime value. oh lifetime value this is this is a fun. one um so lifetime value is the sum. total of all sales of a customer with a.

business and so imagine um Jack I sell. jack a candle. yes. now Jack how many candles do you uh do. you burn a. year seven seven okay so take the The. Profit that you make per candle so I'm. selling the candles at $10 and I make $1. profit on them yep times s. okay so the lifetime value well let's. say we're just over the course of a year.

$7 profit for let's take someone like. Jill who burns the candle every week wow. and not just this year she Burns a. candle every week years and years and. years running so for Jill 52 time 7 is. $364 and so she's a much more valuable. customer than Jack is by a lot and so if.

you had to to to make a choice between. Jack and Jill like you should choose. Jill every single time customer service. matters right it does yeah because. people many companies see it as like an. annoyance like I've sold you the [ __ ]. thing why you email me stop bothering me. and they treat you like you're a. nuisance yeah yeah and that's a shame um. because really like those happy repeat. customers. are not just like your high lifetime. value customers the customers that will.

stick with you keep spending money with. you they're also a primary source of. marketing like Word of Mouth marketing. is all happy customers telling other. people who might benefit from your. product that hey here's this wonderful. thing you should probably check it out. and so yeah like things like post Sal. support um sometimes customer. reactivation so like to your point. earlier it's a very straightforward. marketing technique called. reactivation if you can contact Jack and.

say Hey you bought candles from us last. year would you like to buy candles from. us this year and get him to to pick up. just a couple more more candles like the. cost of that promotion is potentially. very small you already know he exists. you already know that he's purchased um. can you just get him to do that again um. those are some of the most effective. Marketing sales campaigns that you can. possibly run but it also requires that. they had a good experience with whatever.

it is that you're offering in the first. place is there like a sales equation of. sorts is there like a you know when I'm. thinking about how to close a deal how. to sell that candle is there a skill set. or a framework or a model that I should. be thinking through when I'm trying to. sell it to Jack or Jill um there are. many many Frameworks I think the um the. biggest most most popular one uh which a. lot of people get stuck on as the whole. features versus benefits.

conversation and so. um in the context of candles Fe a. features conversation would be is this. candle is made from 100% soy wax people. don't necessarily care it's not relevant. to the reason that people purchase. candles benefits are the things that. people that get to those core human. drives the things that that motivate the. purchase to begin with. and. so one very useful way of thinking about.

this is whenever you're doing any sort. of marketing or sales you're focusing on. the benefits the things that you're. delivering to people the things that are. enticing and if you talk about features. at all you use them as reasons to. believe that you're going to be able to. deliver the benefits that are promised. and so um if for example you're you're. uh taking an an ecologically friendly. approach to your your candle business um.

the fact that 100% soy is very clean. burning and environmentally friendly. might be a reason to believe that this. benefit is true but it's not the primary. reason that people are going to purchase. interesting and a lot of people I guess. are making the mistake of focusing on. the features of their product yeah this. is the the difference. between um an iPod has one gigabyte High. Drive hard drive and a thousand songs in. your pocket a thousand songs in your.

pocket is a benefit the size of the hard. drive is the feature that enables that. and why why is it more powerful and. compelling to the customer to focus on. the benefit versus the feature is there. something in our neurology is that a. word neurology it is a word is that the. right context in our brain yeah well I. think this this gets into um some Bier. psychology things which is people. generally before making a purchase. decision imagine what their life is.

going to look like if they go down this. particular route if I buy this thing if. I uh sign up for this service if I. become a member at this club or gym or. or or whatever um there's there's a a. mental simulation process that very. often happens of like may maybe buying a. new car is a good tangible example of. this like before you buy the car you did. the test drive and you imagine like what. my what would my life be like if I was.

driving this every day if I pull this. into into my in my driveway where are. the neighbors. gonna are they gonna look at me gonna. think I'm cool you know like there's. there's this. like with a little bit of information. our brains can kind of extrapolate or. start to predict what is likely to. happen out into the future to a certain. extent and this is you know to to to. some of the things you talk about in. your book about storytelling this is why. stories work for marketing and sales it. helps people engage that part of their.

brain that can that can simulate a. potential future that looks and feels. really great and start to anticipate it. get excited about it. and like when you're selling a car on. the sales side of the the. Spectrum rule number one is get the. potential customer in the driver seat of. that car as quickly as possible nothing. else matters. you want them to engage in the process. of driving and imagining as quickly as.

possible because that that's when they. start to convince themselves that this. is something that they might want to. have in their life so anything that you. can do to engage those kind of. simulation prediction sort of of. processes the better if you were to try. and pin down the very core parts of what. makes a company. successful what are what is what are the. core components of that what are the. fundamental games at Play in business in. your view yeah so there I think there.

are a bunch of different ways to answer. that um we've talked a lot about the. five parts of every business those are. the fundamentals of what the employees. are actually doing MH um in general you. want to hire people who. are curious. engaged excellent. communicators and are signing up for. whatever whatever it is the the the. long-term objective Mission Vision of of.

the company here's what we're doing. here's why it matters here's exactly who. we're serving here's why that matters. here's how we're going to go about doing. that and from there everything that. happens within the. company each of the employees are going. to be focused on one or more of these. five essential parts of the business in. an ideal World they understand all five. and how they interrelate to each other. and.

how something that is done in one like. say the marketing end of side end of. things might really make a huge. difference on the value delivery or. customer service end of. things if you have all of those pieces. in place then the question becomes how. large does this business need to be in. order to serve its customers at to the. maximum possible extent in a long. long-term sustainable. way and then what level of internal.

organization makes the most sense so. people can spend most of their time. doing work related to the five parts of. of every business and as little time as. possible managing the rest and so this. is kind of the the flip side of of some. of the common failure cases of. bureaucracy paperwork busy work all of. these. things what level of management do you. need. um how can you minimize that how can you. make sure.

that um to me good management is is. helping remove barriers to people who. are doing skilled work how can you. remove as many things from their plate. as possible so they can focus on the. parts of the business that are are. generating the most. value and. so there's a lot um I think this was the. founder of Southwest Airlines herp. Keller it's like hire for attitude train.

for. skill I think there's a lot to be said. for that because because I'm thinking a. lot about that person who is you know. again they're starting their candle. business and they're trying to figure. out what this game of business. fundamentally comes down to in 10 years. from now is it how smart I am is it how. good I am at assembling a group of smart. people is it culture is it the vision I. set is it the product I build is it all. of these things but if we just start. with hiring then because this is in my.

experience where people often succeed. and fail and often where a lot of their. biases show up that they don't even know. about sure um how important is. hiring to building a great business and. becoming a successful. entrepreneur complicated answer to that. okay so. it can be more or less important. depending on exactly what you're. offering I'm offering candles you're.

offering candles yeah so so to me. like making some assumptions if you're. handling if you're selling candles. Direct on the internet with a small. distribution center and mostly online. advertising your team is probably going. to be relatively small and that can be a. really good thing if you're selling. candles in distribution and tooling up a. manufacturing line and uh and going off. and and calling on all these large. customers and potentially producing Mass.

Market candles it's a very different. business operation and so there's a lot. of. like understanding the necessities of. the game that you're playing and then. matching your hiring exactly to what. those needs are but not more I think. about um when I was thinking about this. candle business that I'm hypothetically. going to launch one of the things that. might stop me from launching a candle. business as it does for many people is. that there are already lots of [ __ ].

candles and in every industry you know. when I hear entrepreneurs or I hear sof. preneurs which is someone who's got an. idea on the sofa one of the reasons. they'll give as to why they've not. started the business is because they've. just they've done some market research. and they've discovered there is already. someone solving that problem uhhuh and. then they go no there's no there's no. money to be made there what role does. competition play in this whole pitch. is competition a bad thing a good thing. a signal that I shouldn't yeah there's.

something really fun here um I talk. about it in the book I call the iron law. of the. market which is um a way of saying that. markets that don't exist don't care how. smart you are it was a mark andreon. quote from way back in his Netscape. days and it's the whole idea like it's. actually a really good thing that there. are a bunch of people selling candles in. the market because that means that. there's a large Market of people who are.

willing and able to buy candles it. validates the the the need it validates. the existence of the market in the first. place the markets you need to be really. careful about are the brand new to the. nobody has ever seen anything like this. on the face of the Earth because not. only do you need to educate and convince. people you have no idea whether people. have will purchase this thing that. you've made this is a story a story that.

I tell in the book um Dean Cayman like. prolific inventor this was the. development of the. segue the like oh yeah balancing scooter. thing yeah I remember I think this was a. Time magazine article something like. that was like this is the this is the. mystery invention we're not going to. talk about it yet the mystery invention. that is going to change the way that. cities are planned. the hype for it was absolutely extreme. and when it came out it turned out that.

people didn't want to buy a $110,000. alternative to walking or riding a bike. and so it's like those like nobody's. ever done this before can actually be in. in a weird way a bad. sign um you want something that like the. market exists the need is there people. are excited about it people are looking. for Solutions and then like liquid death. if you can come in and do it in a. fundamentally different way that grabs a. lot of attention it's a really really.

great promising. sign but if it's completely brand new. that's that's more of a a warning sign. than than many of the sofa preneurs uh. would would chalk it up to be so how. should we treat competitors then if I've. got a competitor should I should I. attack them should I block them what. should I do first learn from them. buy from them become their customer. learn as much as you can about what they.

do how they do it um customers can be a. wonderful source of market research. around what's what's happening in the. category what's important what's not. what was your experience competitors. yeah totally if you if you're starting a. c Candle Company go out and buy all the. candles burn them all smell them all. burn them all line your like buy a. bookshelf and fill it with candles why. um because you can learn so much about. how people do things um look at their.

labeling deconstruct their packaging. look at their price points where are. they selling how are they doing their. online advertising um and the wonderful. thing is aside from your time and maybe. a little bit of budget all that market. research is free you just get to go out. and and learn from what people are doing. and then combine that with your own. research going out and talking to. customers on your own having your own. experiences your own ideas and that's.

where you get your unique take your. taste your Twist on on that particular. way of of doing things what else do I. need to be thinking about so I've done. my market research on the candle. business we've got the marketing done. I'm I understand the the sort of sales. framework that I should be thinking. through I've bought every candle in the. market now MH is there anything else. that is really important to be thinking. about as I go forward and launch this. company oh yeah we haven't talked about.

dollars and cents at all yet dollars and. cents yeah Finance okay so you know as. you're doing all of so development takes. money making product uh requires money. um customer service requires money. manufactur like all of the you're. spending a bunch of money making this. product you have at this point since. this is a startup you have a price that. you think is supportable hopefully. you're collecting pre-orders you're. getting some Market information about. like how much you potentially be able to.

make here financial analysis is the part. where you're taking a look at all of. these decisions and tradeoffs that that. you've been. making where am I spending how. much if I have to make a choice between. a or b which one am I am I going to make. and then the finan finance is basically. just a systematic way of making. decisions around monetary. considerations um in the case of a. manufacturing business you might have. raised some some early Capital friends.

family loans investors credit cards. whatever how much do you have at your. disposal how much runway do you have if. you've hired people how many months do. you have left before you really need to. be bringing in more than than your. outflows or else you're going to be in. trouble very quickly I've got a. corporate job and I've got $2,000 of. savings yeah okay so so relatively small. so then like the financial decision. making might be how many candles if I.

make a small. batch like maybe of that $2,000 how much. am I going to allocate to making the. actual physical product packaging. shipping distribution how much am I. going to set aside for marketing and. sales sorts of thing that's an. allocation decision and so your early. decision making is how much do I have at. my disposal what are the the critical. things that need to be met I have to. have product to sell I have to get.

people's attention somehow I have to be. able to deliver this when people buy it. and then you start making lots of. decisions lots of trade-offs about we're. going to put this here this here this. here this here what if you're bad at. math because a lot of people I think. they're put off business because they. hear about gross margin and net profit. and revenue and they go oh God I was bad. at math in school so I'm never going to. be good at business and or I meet a lot. of Entre especially in the den but just. in life generally who basically avoid. the finances of their own business yeah.

because it's just not their strong area. so I think they think they can just. maybe they're right because I did meet. Richard Branson and he told me that you. know he's not very astute with finances. and he said to me you just basically. need to know three numbers in business. um and he also said to me that he was. sort of 50 odd years old when he was in. a meeting where his directors were. talking about net profit and he had had. no idea what they were talking about so. one of them pulled him out of the room. and drew a picture of a ocean and put a.

net in it and said the fish is in the. net your net profit and at the time he. was running one of the biggest groups in. Europe you just go so what how important. is this thing called finance and money. and accounting yeah I mean most of it is. common sense in simple arithmetic really. like we're talking addition subtraction. multiplication division um some of the. the definitions when you really get down. to it are relatively straightforward. um so how much you going to sell it for. minus how much does it cost to make how. much does it cost to Market how much.

does it cost to deliver is your profit. um and then you know how much on the. things that you have to spend um every. month so in the case of an online. business uh your website your shopping. cart credit card processing all the way. up to if if you have a physical business. how much are you spending on salaried. employees office space electricity. utilities um there's some very.

straightforward uh Concepts like. amortization like can you take something. that would be a a larger pool of money. how much does that cost you per month as. an equivalent can you build that into. your budget how do I learn this stuff if. I didn't go to school that's why I wrote. the first LBA okay so yeah can you will. you tell me about all of this stuff if I. get this book yes it so the the whole. idea aidea behind personal MBA was to. take all of these Concepts like. amortization like nonprofit all of this.

and explain it in the clearest most. direct most straightforward plain. language that I possibly could and is it. easy it's very straightforward yeah is. there a a most important number or or a. most important set of numbers in. business when it comes to running my. candle business if I was to really stay. focused on a particular number or metric. is there one in particular yeah I think.

so early on the things that you're going. to want to pay very close attention to. like early stage entrepreneurship is all. about is this Su are we to the point of. keeping this business sustainable can we. keep the lights on can we keep going and. is it worth it to me or not and. so your monthly fix. overhead like how much am I spending. every month just to keep the lights on. everything cleaning yep everything my my.

Gmail account everything yep okay yep so. what is what are my monthly. outflows what are my monthly sales. numbers and it's monthly because usually. our modern expenses happen monthly rent. payments happen monthly all that how. much is coming in product service offer. sales how much does it cost to deliver. that in. total what is my monthly overhead.

everything required to keep the lights. on. and at the end of that is net profit. which is how much do I get to. keep and is that enough so for example. if you're if you're working 80 hours a. week keeping this candle business open. and you have $5 to your name at the end. of that month you might be able to. sustain that for a little bit but at a. certain point there are going to be some. very difficult decisions.

around technically we're making money. but it's just not it's not enough to. make this sustainable and so some of. that early number like as as an early. stage entrepreneur is like what is that. for you like based on your life based on. your lifestyle what you hope and dream. for. yourself what's the number that makes a. venturous long-term sustainable like I. can keep doing this it makes sense for. right now to keep. going you focus on getting to that. number first and then from there you.

have a lot of different. options one of the mental models that I. think we share is around this idea of. experimentation yes absolutely and it's. one of my favorite subjects because it's. been a real Revelation for me over the. last couple of years in business um. which is really this idea that. increasing my exp rate of. experimentation increases my rate of. success and I think um you know the. podcast is an example of that for me. where we've really tried to experiment. as much as we can and that's led us to. um the growth of the podcast but when I.

look across the greatest entrepreneurs. in the world they all seem to eventually. arrive at this conclusion that. experimentation really is the path to. finding the right answers in a world. where the right answer is changing so. much yep what is what is for for an. entrepreneur that's at the very. beginning for someone that's at the very. beginning or someone that's in the. corporate world what is it about. experimentation that you think is so. important to understand yeah I think. experimentation removes the. pressure. [Music]. to know or feel like you know what you.

should be doing every moment of every. day um I think there's there's a sense. of like we kind of. conflate certainty or over certainty. with competence in a way that's not. necessarily functional whereas we're all. very imperfect oracles like we have. anticipations based on our knowledge our. experiences um the information that.

we're collecting about the world around. us and we're all using that all the time. to try to predict what's going to happen. next just how our brains work it's what. our brains are. for. and I think there's a sense of we can do. that to a certain extent to eliminate. some of the more obvious errors that we. might make. but when it the when it comes down to. making a decision about something we've. never done before the honest answer to.

will this work. is I don't know let's find. out and so there's a certain amount of. if that's the case if we can't be 100%. certain what's going to happen if we try. plan a or plan b or plan. C then there are a couple of ways of. approaching that one is is um by working. through scenarios of like let's just. imagine what would it look like if we.

chose plan a let's play that out a. little bit let's try to make. anticipations about what what might work. or what might not um and let's compare. our different Alternatives and and see. what what looks the best feels the best. based on our anticipations right. now that's valuable but it can only go. so far because it relies on all the the. knowledge and EXP experience that we've. collected to date it doesn't account for. the knowledge and experience that we're. going to gain through the process of.

making a choice and learning from the. choice and so one of my very favorite. mental models this comes from computer. science and and. decisionmaking is called the explore. exploit. trade-off. and this might be entertaining it comes. from decision research uh actually about. gambling of of all things like imagine. um imagine you walk into a casino and.

there are a 100 slot machines that you. get to play for. free each of the machines has a. different. payoff but you don't know which one your. job is to find the very best. one how do you go about figuring that. out you try them all yeah you try them. so you start collecting information. right like the thing to do you when you. walk into the room you have no. information and so the first phase of.

solving this problem is to explore you. just try a whole bunch of things and you. collect information every time you pull. this slot machine does it pay out or not. the longer you do this the more. information you collect and after a. certain period of time you start to get. a feel for patterns of some things seem. to be more Obviously good and other. things seem to be more obviously bad and. so over time you shift into the second.

phase which is called the exploitation. phase so you take the knowledge and. experience that you have and you use it. to do the best performing thing that. you're aware of at the time more often. so you're playing the higher winning. slots. more the key is though the exploration. phase never stops. it just gets smaller over time so if. you're going to play this game optimally. there's always a certain Subs segment of.

your time that's dedicated to exploring. to collecting information to trying new. things and I think this kind of General. way of going about the like this is what. early. career early entrepreneurship looks like. you're trying a whole bunch of very. different things sometimes in in. information about what works and what. doesn't so in the context of my candle. business yeah I'm going to I'm going to.

try a bunch of different candles I'm G. to I'm going to try I think the key part. is we'll get like try other stuff but. the the part that I often see people. Overlook is what you actually said after. that which was collect information uhuh. which is you know people will listen to. this and they'll go C right guys they'll. come to the corporate office they'll go. right we're going to try a bunch of new. stuff but that is just wasted time if. you're not accurately correct collecting. the feedback yes because that's the. power the feedback is the power right.

failure is nothing without feedback yeah. exactly and that's like so trying the. new thing and then paying very close. attention to what happens is the. valuable part so like in the in the. context of the candle business like. maybe you try 10 different scents at the. very beginning and you do small batches. of each one and how do I test that in. the context of a candle business how do. I test which is the best scent yeah so. um you could do all sorts of different. things like um early on you can get. direct feedback so follow up with people.

ask so this is where the like. quantitative and qualitative research. studies can be very very valuable so. your first source of information is what. do people buy what's most appealing. where does where does that kind of. initial spark go you'll probably see a. distribution if you try 10 different. scents you you'll probably see a couple. very clearly stand out um and then. contacting customers directly to to. follow up what did you like what did you.

not like um asking quite like we were. talking earlier about how did it smell. when it was lit how did it smell when it. was not lit like all of those things. spending a little bit of of time digging. into it in a deliberate systematic way. is how you get that information could I. do this before I even start selling. these candles I could I get 10 flavors. um put blank labels on all of them and. also try and create a situation where. you can't see it because again I'm.

trying to limit the variable so I don't. want you to make your a decision based. on color put you in a pitch black room. this is actually what a lot of companies. do companies I've invested in called hu. does this they have these pitch black. rooms at their HQ which they invite. people into and these are like sensory. deprivation rooms I guess because you. there's no light there's no nothing you. can't see anything and in the context of. candles get 10 strangers off the street. to smell them all maybe 100 yep and just. to leave some scores yeah and then get.

them to smell them when they're lit and. take that data as well you can. absolutely do that that's crazy it seems. so obvious but people don't do this. stuff yeah and it like it doesn't take. that much more work you're actually. limiting your risk because you're not. committing to you know one big batch of. something that you think will work yeah. you just experimenting a little bit more. broadly collecting some information and. allowing that information to guide your. future to decisions you talk about this. thing in your book called goal's law. yeah what's gal's law G's law is the.

idea that any complex system essentially. evolved from a simpler system that. worked so if you want to create a. complex system that. works the easiest best thing to do is to. start with a simple system and then. build it up from. there and so this is like. when we're talking about this. hypothetical candle business we're not. talking about the multinational.

distribution version of the candle. business quite yet there's a simpler. version of that business that must exist. in order for it to ever reach the level. of complexity and success that would. allow that to actually operate in the. world and. so one of the the reminders of of G's. law is that it's actually okay to start. simple straightforward strip it down. focus on the essentials start there.

because every additional bit of. complexity needs to serve some sort of. purpose to justify its costs either. direct cost or time attention. opportunity. cost and so I think you to our earlier. conversation. sometimes complexity can be seen as as a. bit of a weird. status signal like I'm fancy I'm. sophisticated I think the more. sophisticated thing to do is to start.

simple and keep it simple on purpose and. then make every additional bit of. complexity earn earn its way because. complexity isn't value this is I guess. this the the thing we get wrong we think. if we take a candle and we add some neon. lights to it and we add some I don't. know like a metal lid to the top of it. and then we add you can charge your. phone using the candle sure we think. because we've added more stuff people. are going to Value it more therefore. they're going to pay for it more yeah.

but that's not necessarily how the world. works exactly you're going to screw up. so many things by adding those features. you know the best example I can give is. this whoop on my wrist which I'm an. investor in and Ambassador for so I'm. not Shilling it here but it's just a. something that always comes to mind. where you ask the founder of why you. didn't add. a watch to it why you didn't add the. time because you could simply just put. the time on there sure but he said. adding an additional feature changes the. frame and that really made me understand. this idea that more isn't more in as it.

relates to value of products because the. minute you add the time to a whoop it. becomes a watch and then people have. these whole new set of expectations of a. watch it's a fashion item etc etc. interesting I've never heard that that. term before gouls law yeah we like it's. instructive that we're talking about. candles and not about some complex. mechanical device that you would bolt on. to a a building's a HB system to deliver. scent to the entire space right like. don't start there maybe start with a.

candle and then at a certain point if it. makes sense to move in a in a direction. based on what your customers are telling. you that's fantastic but but keeping it. simple from the beginning is is the way. to go once upon a time if you had a. business idea it was exceptionally. difficult to get going but now in the. age of Shopify it is exceptionally easy. as many of you will know Shopify are. sponsor of this podcast if you don't. know Shopify it's an exceptionally. simple web platform for anybody that's. got an idea that wants to transact on a.

global scale so things like these. conversation cards which we sell we've. sold using Shopify and it only took us a. couple of clicks to get going so why did. we choose Shopify for a number of. reasons but I think one of the big ones. which goes unappreciated is their. checkout system converts 36% better. compared to other platforms and here's. what I'm going to do to remove the cost. for you if you go to shopify.com Bartlet. you'll be able to try Shopify for. $1 a month I've seen Shopify completely.

change people's lives and for many of. you I think it could change yours we. haven't spoken about this book though. first 20 hours yeah the first 20 hours. how to learn. anything and you have a TED Talk don't. you which was crazy yeah crazy crazy I. don't know if it's hit 40 million views. yet but PR pretty close if not 40. million views on a TED talk about the. first 20 hours how to learn anything.

yeah why why did it do so well I think. for a couple of different reasons. because that's one of the best view TED. talks of all time yes that's crazy yes I. did a TED Talk nobody nobody watched it. I did like T talk are fun they're very. fun. um yeah so so the T talk for the first. 20 hours did did very well and I think I. think part of it has to do. with it's something we all have in. common right like wanting or needing to.

learn. something necessary useful fun cool not. really having a whole lot of time like. we're we're busy people we're busy. culturally um and so there's a bit of a. conflicting desire there of like yeah I. want I want to learn this but I I don't. have a whole a lot of capacity to spare. here um and then the the Genesis of the.

book was was digging into some of the. psychology research that I that I. uncovered in the process of working on. personal MBA which was all about. learning new. things. and learning that the first few. hours of acquiring or learning any. particular. skill are. validated by research to be both the. most effective and the most efficient so. like your rate of improvement per time.

of of uh or per unit of time and energy. invested at the very beginning of. Learning something new is extremely. high and so the question that that. sparked the research for the first 20. hours is is there a way that we can take. advantage of that consciously like is. there a way that we can. be very conscious and deliberate about. how we approach the process of learning. something new to.

make to to to reap the maximum rewards. from that early stage of learning. something that you're not familiar with. and how good can we get in in that early. early window and in my research you can. go from from knowing absolutely nothing. about. something to being reasonably good in. much less time than than you would.

expect so in my experience that's about. 20 hours of focused deliberate practice. so call it 40 minutes a day for about a. month but but the narrative out on the. market is that you have to do 10,000. hours I mean this is everyone uses this. phrase in in society they say have you. done your 10,000. hours so you're telling me it's actually. 20 hours is the key I'm saying different. goals based on different objectives so.

um K Andrew Ericson was the researcher. behind the the 10,000 hour. rule and I think what's important to to. understand about that as a general. guideline is those studies were focused. on. Mastery of very competitive performance. oriented activities so call it so the. original studies were done um with. correlating practice hours to how high a.

position do you have in like the first. violin and an orchestra sort of thing. and there was a correlation between like. how much do you practice how good to you. get that's all well and good and yeah. generally speaking the more deliberate. practice that that you have on on a. certain thing the the better you are. that is a true. thing to me. me I think it's valuable to shift the. spotlight from Mastery which is very.

flashy very high status people who are. extremely skilled at things have a lot. of energy and attention around them. that's. great. um the type of skill acquisition that. most of us do most often throughout our. entire. lifespan is figure out how to do. something new for the first time like. dejing for me exactly yeah so how do I. do that then know you talk about these. 10 major principles of Rapid skill.

acquisition sure where I can learn. anything in 20 hours what are the most. important elements of this that I need. to know about if I'm someone who maybe. let's in the context of business has. never started a business in my life has. never run one before but I do want to. learn how to do it yeah the best way to. approach. this is. um there's a set of five recommendations. that that that go in. order and the first is like deciding.

exactly what it is that you're trying to. do so in my experience like a lot of. people when they at the beginning of the. process of learning how to do. something the goal is way too big like. it's way too much way too soon. um whereas something something specific. concrete and approachable. is a way better place to start so um. dejing an entire set at a crazy music.

festival is not the place to set the. goal right at the very beginning. it's I want to do my first song for. myself for me it was like I want to mix. that song into that song without it. sounding [ __ ] totally exactly and that's. a great place to start because then it's. like okay this is a concrete specific. thing I know exactly what it looks like. you probably had some experience. listening to music of this type knowing. when things go well and when they when. they don't go well so you had a little.

bit of like taste context. perspective and so deciding like okay my. early goal is to do this one specific. thing it's the first failure mode. because most people don't decide on that. concrete specific thing it's way way too. way too nebulous there's not enough to. work with so deciding is the first. part from. there most of the things that we we talk.

about as skills. aren't single skills they're actually. bundles of smaller subskills that are. all important and you use in in in in. combination and so I'm not familiar with. DJ DJing so you can fill in the blanks. for me but like what were some of the. smaller things that you needed to learn. how to do as a thing to be able to like. mix one song into another well you need. to know music because music has.

different I'm really going to but you so. DJs are literally going to laugh at me. in their WhatsApp groups but um. different beats per minute so every song. has a different beat per minute so you. need to learn about the different beats. per minute so you can merge them um. every song has a different key I think. that's kind of what they call it a key. so you have like an a a b a c and you. need to know that because before you. even get to mixing them in that's quite. important um so that's the like the. music side of thing then there's the. like the hardware itself which is. knowing how you see two songs coming at.

the same time so you need to learn about. the hardware before you can mix two. songs together and then. um yeah actually interestingly in the. first hour of lessons I was expecting to. jump on the decks but the first hour of. lessons that I had was all about what is. music totally it was like an and how. does music sound good and this kind of. like eight bar thing that music goes in. so it was all about music itself I had. to start over there whereas I was. expecting to jump on the decks yes that. is a brilliant example of deconstruction. it's exactly what we're talking about so.

the skill is not dejing itself it's. learning about Keys learning about Tempo. learning about transitions learning. about all of these smaller things that. you need to use in concert in order to. use them together to do this more. complex thing that you want to do so a. good teacher like the value of a good. teacher is they can help you with that. deconstruction like what are all the. little subcomponents that I need and. then the next layer down from that is. once you've deconstructed into the. smaller parts that's when you start to.

do some research of which of these parts. are more important or less important. what should I focus on first what can. wait until later and so like Tempo and. musical Keys might be really important. and so it might make sense to to start. the process there let's get that really. solid we can wait for the hardware we. can wait for the plugins we can wait for. you know all of these things that comes. later get this stuff down solid first.

nobody wants to wait yeah you know you. know what I mean that's the thing. like I. think there's an element to which that's. true there's also an element. to waiting here going about it in a. little bit more of a deliberate. fashion is what gives us an Advantage as. adult Learners like we can approach what. we're doing in in a strategic way we can.

we can focus our time and attention on. the things that are going to have the. highest rewards first and so just a. little bit of impulse control of like. I'm gonna hold off on the buttons for a. couple hours to learn a little bit of. this first like that's where you. start figuring. out the inflection points in the skill. like the the thing that if you can just. wrap your head around this you can get a. huge Improvement in a very short period. of time and then the trick on the.

research phase and this is the one that. I struggle with a lot because I like. research it's fun for me I can get stuck. here and so the trick is to. do just enough research to give. yourself context understanding what. you're looking for an idea of what it. looks like to do well or to not do well. and from. there you do just enough to know a.

little bit of what you're doing and then. you actually start the focused. deliberate practice component because. that's where the skill is actually built. the skill is not built in research a lot. of people seem to get stuck on that. research part because they are you know. that people call them in culture. procrastinators but I had a conversation. with Nel and he said we're discomfort. avoiding creatures and he said whenever. you find yourself. procrastinating um it's basically. because there's discomfort associated. with the task at hand yeah so I had a. conversation with someone very close to. me recently actually yesterday and um in.

our conversation they've been meaning to. do this online project for a long long. time for two years now and they've just. done everything but this online project. and when we kind of deconstructed it as. you said it was really. because they don't feel competent yeah. in several of the individual pieces so. they're just like researching themselves. to death and Mak taking no action. absolutely this is one of the biggest. the biggest barriers to learning as an. adult um adult Learners hate to feel.

stupid we hate to to feel over our head. that we don't know what we're doing that. we're going to look bad in front of. others that there's some idealized skill. level that would represent success and. your early attempts look nothing like. that um there was an interesting study. that was done. about changes in um in artistic ability.

and inclination over the human lifespan. and so when when you ask a bunch of. young. children are you an. artist every one of them answerers yes. yeah I create art that's it's what I do. and there's a certain threshold and it. usually happens around like the the. Middle grades uh junior. highish where people will start to say. like no this not something that I do and. there's a certain amount of.

self-consciousness that develops in the. process of becoming an adult where you. can start to recognize that the. difference between what you can do and. what you want to do can be somewhat. extreme yeah and that self-consciousness. can be an active barrier to to getting. started in the first place um so by comp. comparison as well isn't it really. because yeah like comparison with other. people and then also comparison with. ourselves MH um so with other people.

like early stages of skill acquisition. if you're comparing yourself to the. Masters in hours one two and three you. are not doing yourself any favors at all. um and then even. like I think that's a little bit easier. to avoid because I have only golfed a. couple times in my. life comparing myself to Tiger Woods. doesn't feel like even like conceptually. appropriate thing for me to do that. that's that's not difficult the harder. thing is comparing yourself to the other.

person who has not golfed very much but. somehow hit a shot straight or or. whatever or like it feels like this. shouldn't be so hard for me why is this. so hard for me and then like the self. recrimination feedback loop starts and. so um I talk about in the in the first. 20 hours. I call this the frustration barrier and. so generally speaking rough rule of. thumb hours 1 to 10 are brutal.

emotionally speaking and so those th. that's the period of time where um. you're really frustrated things make. very little sense you're like I don't. know what a key is let alone a key. change what's a beat per minute and like. all of those self-consciousness circuits. are fully online fully firing. and um no matter how much you want.

something those those first few hours. can be pretty brutal it's where most. people quit as well I guess yeah and and. that's why like it's an it's an. emotional management problem and so the. way to get around that also the way to. get out of research mode into doing mode. and this is this is where where the. title the first 20 hours comes from from. the first 20 hours refers to a. pre-commitment which is a very useful. piece of Behavioral.

psychology that says that if you. pre-commit to taking a certain action. either a certain amount of times or. within a certain period of time either. to yourselves or ideally to other people. you're far more likely to actually. follow through on the doing of the thing. and so what I found is that in learning. a new skill making a pre-commitment that. no matter what I'm going to spend 20. hours doing this thing I might be.

terrible this might be really. uncomfortable I might hate it I might. never do this again but no matter what I. care about this thing that I want to. learn enough that I'm going to invest at. least 20 hours of my life figuring out. if this is good if this works for me if. this is beneficial you said something. there which I think is key which is sure. you said this matters to me enough yes.

that feels like it's a prerequisite. something that we really need to be. clear on before we even start yeah you. know because without that part you you. refer to it in your 10 major principles. of Rapid skill acquisition as choosing a. lovable project exactly yeah what does. that matter well it's because we're busy. it's because we don't have infinite time. energy and attention to do all the. things that might look feel sound fun or. interesting to us and. so there there needs to be at least some. minimum threshold of yeah this is.

important to me to make some trade-offs. in other areas of of my life or. to um not watch that that movie or you. know not relax on on social media this. night I'm going to carve out some time. in my day and actually make this a. priority to sit down and do the work and. generally speaking I found that for. myself if I'm not willing to make the. pre-commitment to put at least 20 hours.

into it that's a pretty good indication. that it is not important enough for me. to to invest time and energy and in the. first place we've been through most of. them there so number one is choose a. lovable project number two is focus your. energy on one skill at a time we said. that one number three is Define your. target performance level we talked about. that as well number four is deconstruct. the skill and subskills number five is. obtain critical tools which I guess is. the tools you need to do the practice. right yeah that's um kind of a subset of. removing barriers to practice okay and.

so the classic example here is um so. many people in the world want to learn. how to play the. guitar and so the thing to not do is buy. a guitar and leave it in the case and. put it in uh a closet upstairs far away. because that just requires too much time. energy thought attention of like. remembering where it is going upstairs. grabbing the guitar getting it out of. the case getting all ready the best. thing that you can do is just make it. really really easy remove all the.

friction from it get a little stand put. it right next to you know your living. room chair or couch where it's visible. Insight all you need to do is reach over. grab it and start it just makes it more. likely you're actually going to sit down. and do the work I think we've covered. all 10 there the last one is emphasize. quantity and speed yes yes mean so early. on in in the. process there's a tendency to like want.

to do. it perfectly. sooner versus do it doing it in. perfectly more is actually more. beneficial and so in this case you for. for your. DJing mixing a lot of songs one to the. other is going to teach you a lot more. than just hyperfocusing on what song A. into song b and I'm going to work until. this is perfect you're just not going to. learn as much it's the variety the. exploration and the variety of.

circumstances will teach you more about. what it looks and feels and sounds like. than trying to get too perfect on one. specific thing too quickly so like going. back to the the playing guitar thing. like get a bunch of tabs and learn how. to play a whole bunch of different songs. not super well because it's the. commonalities that you learn between the. different experiences those are the. things that really tune you into what's. really important the foundations of the.

exactly like yeah what's a chord so for. what's a chord how do you change from. one chord to another. um tracking beats Tempo things like that. like those are the foundational skills. that apply across pieces of music and so. if you practice those first across a. wide variety of things that's just. optimizing that early practice around. things that will stick that you you'll. use a lot is there anything about the. subjec of learning and the first 20.

hours that we've not discussed that you. think is especially important to close. off on if someone is really that they. want to learn a new skill and we're. thinking about where they are and where. they want to get to is there anything. else that you think they need to know. that we haven't covered I think that. this duv Tales a little bit with our. conversation around pon. spend more of your time doing weird cool. things like having that that exploration. budget of of really just like the.

further a field you go the more things. you discover you'll find some surprising. commonalities that can be very. interesting and very cool um we were. talking about Apple. earlier one of the primary design in. irations for for the Apple Computing. system was Steve Jobs taking a random. calligraphy class in. college and it's not something that you.

would put together in some sort of. obvious way but it was an important. enough influence of being able to take. some part of life and like apply it in a. different way in a different context to. another thing that that unlocked a lot. of value for a lot of people and so. for me like in in in the larger. sense I think it's just really valuable. to take a step back and think about like.

what might I want to experience or what. might I want to learn how to do at some. point in my life just make a list could. and it can be I think self-editing here. is is not the way to go just like make a. list of all the things that that appeal. to you for whatever reason and then the. benefit of of a an approach like the. first 20 hours is it gives you a way to.

make actually going about doing that. thing look and feel far more. approachable than it otherwise might be. when you said the thing about Apple. there in Steve Jobs going to that. typography calligraphy class it made me. it made me realize that in life there. really is no such thing as a waste of. time no there's really not because we. you know we think of oh chilling on. Netflix as a waste of time. but you can uncover something about. story arc from watching a movie that. makes you bring that into your creative. work or into an advertising campaign and.

you know I think some actually it's. interestingly because if you think about. that example you gave of Steve Jobs in. that typography class had he just gone. to computer programming lessons yeah. about how to make software or Hardware. he wouldn't have stumbled across the. brilliant sort of insight that design. and typography and calligraphy really. really matters so these devices wouldn't. be so amazing so sometimes the most. valuable skills or inspiration we can. acquire exists clearly outside of the.

bubble that we work in. totally Josh we have a closing tradition. on this podcast where the last guest. leaves a question for the next guest not. knowing who they're going to leave it. for oh excellent that's fun and the last. question that was left for you is oh. they finally got some finally someone. with good handwriting um I can read this. one without stuttering when you look. back on your life are there more things. you regret doing or regret not doing. please give some. examples wow they they went heavy.

hitting on this one a stitch up I love. this stitches up the next cast no it's. good. um I think I. have more mistakes of commission things. I've. done than m Stakes of omission or or. regrets so generally speaking like if I. can anticipate that I'm going to regret. something I just try not to do that.

thing in the first place. um. and I think some of those things like. can can fall into like daydreamy sorts. of oh what would have happened if I oh. yeah like hindsight yeah I mean almost. pure hindsight bias yeah which is also. one of the things I talk about in. personal NBA like it's a it's a thing so. um for me it. is like a lot of those regrets revolve.

around um decisions that I made that. didn't work out. um. relationships um I have I have two kids. and the process of of raising kids is uh. hopefully informed trial and error but. like fundamentally trial and error and. um yeah that's part of the learning and. the experimentation too of just.

like sometimes you have to make the call. on the Fly and sometimes you don't know. whether the call you made is is the. right one the best. one um do you have a mental model or. framework for decisions generally I. really like my fundamental way of. approaching decisions. is scenario planning like I really try. to think through all right what are my. options here how much detail can I.

create around each of these potential. options what are the trade-offs are. there any really like hard trade-offs. things that must be accounted for and. then just really TR like in my current. understanding try to play out what's. likely to have happen down each of those. paths and then pick the one that seems. the best or the most appropriate given. the. circumstances Josh thank you thank you. for writing two exceptionally important. books and really you know I I'm a real.

big Advocate and believer that we need. more entrepreneurs in the world but more. people just generally that understand. business even if they're going to. continue to work in corporate. environments because I think that's net. benefit Ben I think that's net. beneficial to Society at large our. society but also to individuals because. it empowers them to have more. optionality in their lives to be able to. make more choices about what they want. to do where they want to spend their. time and societies run on businesses you. know what we're doing now is a business. um the way that I'll get home tonight is. a business so understanding the.

fundamentals the levers that are running. Society I think is only net positive for. everybody and that's exactly what the. personal NBA does it deconstructs what. businesses are and it helps us. understand the world around us and the. incentive structures of the world around. us in a really really empowering way so. thank you for writing a book that really. speaks to those people that maybe can't. afford to go and get a very expensive. ensive NBA one of those top schools um. but gives them an equally if not more. important understanding of business than. anything ever could it's an exceptional. book and I applaud you for writing it so.

thank you thank you very much that was. very kind to say and I appreciate it. [Music]. a.