Dreams Don't Come True, Decisions Do // Ground Up 073

hey guys and welcome back to the ground-up show my name is Matt dia Vela and today I sit down to talk with TK Coleman he is a writer podcaster and the education director at a company called practice they run of an apprenticeship program designed to give an alternative to college and we cover quite a bit on this show including the true cost of not following your passion why you should plan for the worst day of the week and the value and sharing your big goals and dreams with the world it's a very very good podcast I think you guys are gonna like it let me know what you think in the comments [Music] I'm a book maximalists I try to get as many books as I can when I when I go into bookstores and I look at books I hear their voices calling out to me like save me take me home and so I have to get them rescue them I gotta say I love the look of like a bookshelf just filled with books or a wall filled with books to me I'm like it just feels there's like energy there right yeah but now now that I'm a minimalist well I try not to have too much so I'll usually cycle about 10 to 15 books yeah and actually just did a video about like 6 books that changed my life from like Tim Ferriss 4-hour workweek to the art of possibility Seth Godin the dip and I didn't have those books physically and I was like it would be really cool to actually own those books that changed my life and like obviously visually for the video it was good but I also was like I just I it's kind of nice because then when people come over it's not exactly about it kind of starts a conversation you know people see the books that you've read maybe they saw it and then you can have some common ground to discuss things but yeah you know there's a related concept I think it's if I say this correctly the seem to lead he has a concept called the anti library and so he says you should have plenty of books in your home that you haven't read and those books are kind of like your cautions right they they're there to remind you of how much more you need to know they're there to nudge you for it be sure to finish the book that you're currently on because you still have a lot left to learn so we not only need books that kind of showcase what's impacted our lives but we need books that kind of summon us to go even further down the path of knowledge I love that that's great dude I feel like I always have a couple books that I'm I'm like meaning to get through that I have in my house so that makes me feel better look at the positive side of me not reading it when every time I look at it at all I see is guiltless I'm like man but I can do those now that's great dude so I'm excited to have a conversation with you because as a lot of my listeners know debt student loan debt was a huge part of my life I graduated college with ninety seven thousand dollars in student loan debt did the smartest thing I could think of at the time which was to buy brand new car and just being in that position and also trying to do something different trying to be a freelance filmmaker you know in the beginning it was weddings and bar mitzvahs but trying to do something untraditional which can often be very challenging in the beginning and not as much money as like just entering the corporate world and it was it was a real struggle and then I went to your website this morning and you guys at practice that the headline was the degree is dead you need experience yeah and that just like that hit me because I don't think enough people are talking about it and obviously we see it just so many people flooding into colleges so I want to hear from you about what's wrong with this system right now when it comes to college when it comes to the status quo and what people are expected to do you know when they're 18 19 years old sure so I'll take an atypical approach to talking about what's wrong with the system because when most people ask that question they're looking for some kind of knockdown argument against college some sort of logical reason why no one should ever go to college why it's wrong for everyone I'll take a different path and I'll say the first problem with this system is that it does not successfully accommodate those who fail to fit in no system is for everyone right that's probably the most fundamental truth that for whatever system there is there are outliers there are people for whom the system doesn't work in fact as an entrepreneur the definition of being dishonest is being unable to look another person in the eye and say maybe my product isn't for you maybe my service isn't for you right if we're going to do business with integrity if we're going to teach with integrity we have to be able to identify those for whom the product or service we offer is not for and the traditional system doesn't accommodate those who don't fit in very well I'll give you an example so my co-founder my CEO Isaac Morehouse he received an email from a young lady who had just finished like her first year of college and she was very unhappy she was doing really well in terms of grades hitting all the metrics that adults care about but she was depressed and she was depressed because she never wanted to go to college in the first place she never felt like she fit in but she went because she knew what the social consequences would be of not going she knew that she would be drilled with all sorts of difficult questions she might not have the answer to she knew that she would be you know rejected by her parents she knew that other people would look down upon her and see her as a waste of time you know see her as wasting her time because the way the game is set up for people who don't fit in in college is we call them dropouts and when we call you a dropout we don't mean that as a compliment right we mean that as you're a loser we grow up hearing messages like don't be a fool stay in school right so if you drop out that means you're a loser and there's a lot of pressure on you it's Steve Jobs or bust it's Bill Gates or bust if you go to college you turn out to be unhappy with your life it's possible we'll feel sorry for you we're certainly not gonna blame College we're not gonna say you're unhappy because you went to college we'll say well maybe it's the economy or maybe there are some other things you need to know or maybe you know you've had some bad luck or whatever it may be or maybe you just need to be patient but if you don't go to college and you turn out to be unhappy with your life the risk is really high coz the first thing we're gonna say to you is you should have went to college right so there's a high cost for not doing the things that everyone else thinks you should do and you have a lot of people who are in college they don't want to be there and the only reason they are there is because they are afraid of the social consequences of not doing this thing that they don't want to do and so for me this isn't about twisting anyone's arm and saying hey I don't care if you want to go to college I'm going to argue with you for 10 hours and try to make you do this thing you don't want to do this isn't about me looking at people for whom that college experience worked out and saying well you're an idiot because that's the outdated paradigm and you should do things in the way that I think is cool no this is about saying if you went to college and you had a positive experience great god bless you but you know what you have thousands of high school guidance counselors who are willing to step up on any given day of the week and validate that decision you have thousands of politicians thousands of celebrities thousands of adults who validate those decisions but who's stepping up on behalf of those people who say college isn't for me and who's saying hey maybe you're onto something maybe you're not a fool who's the one that's creating a community a coaching experience a curriculum experience a professional experience that allows those people to have a home so they can carve out their own path without the unnatural pressure pressure of having to be the next Mark Zuckerberg just to justify their decision so I think that's the fundamental problem that we're trying to solve at praxis it's it's creating that kind of experience that says hey look if college isn't for you and you still care about your career and you want to launch your career there's a way to go about this without a college degree it is possible the world is changing but maybe you can't do it on your own we're here to help we're here to supply you with the coaching with the network with the curriculum and with the professional opportunity to get your foot in the door and you know you can be one of those people who says you know the way I like to say it is not drop out but opt out right you can be one of those people who opts out of the current paradigm and still has a shot at life still has a shot at playing this game successfully so that's the problem that's what drives us there needs to be something to replace college I think for most people right because at 18 years old we don't have much experience like it's kind of like laughable to think about me at 18 trying to start a business like I didn't really know where I wanted to go and I think a lot of people are uncertain a lot of people just get a business degree because they don't know what else to get so it do we need to replace it with something and you know what options are out there for people who maybe are second-guessing going to college they don't feel like it's right for them what path can they go down at that point sure so I don't like to wear replace because I think competition is healthy right like let's say you know you look at um gym shoes for instance we have Nike do we need to replace it with Reebok no because if you have an alternative that's valuable you don't need to enough out the other options in order for people to see what you're doing is worth it right like so again if college is something that you've thought critically about and you're really passionate about it and you're determined to do it god bless you right pursue your path but it's not about replacing it it's about breaking beyond this paradigm where we preach and teach that there is only one way or that this is the right way for everybody I'm all about free markets I'm all about having many different options for many different people and in fact this is something that we intuitively get about education once we step outside of things like elementary secondary and higher ed let's take music for instance if you want to learn music is there just one instrument you have to learn like do you have to go to the the piano teacher and ignore guitar you know or are you forced to take yoga or could you do Tai Chi if you want right there there are a wide variety of options for how you can learn to exercise how you can learn to eat you know what instrument you want to play and I'm an advocate for having that same element present in education as well now that's partly difficult because higher education is is subsidized and that in some ways creates you know a sort of monopolistic effect but I'm all about alternatives and I think one of the alternatives that we need you know to get to the other part of your question like what can people do if college is not for them is a way for people to get their foot in the door where they can acquire professional experience and build skills without having the traditional credential because here's the deal the credential does serve a function a very important function and that is to help the people that are making hiring decisions have some kind of security about the idea that they're not wasting their time right so if I'm interviewing a bunch of people for a position I want to feel I need to know like what makes you different from some other random person that comes in and so if you have some sort of credential that said that says I've studied at this institution I've learned these things at least I have some kind of idea of what differentiates you but now we're at a time where we can create our own credential we can find new ways to signal to people that we have the capacity to create value so one thing I would encourage people to do well for starters look into praxis write discover praxis calm because what we do is we streamline this process of developing professional skills building or a portfolio and getting you that opportunity without you having to have all the creativity on your own so when people come to our program they do six months of a boot camp where they learn professional skills they do portfolio projects and so forth they learn how to build their brand how to think like an entrepreneur and then when they're done with that they get matched up with a business partner in their area of interest or competency so that could be marketing operations technology sales and so forth so but if you're just someone out there and you're looking for your own way I would say number one get some work experience you know if you take just one year let's say you graduate high school you're 17 18 years old and you take one year and you get a part-time job or a full-time job you will already be a step ahead of most of your peers because most of your peers don't know what it's like to have any responsibilities and most of them live in a space where someone else takes all the responsibility for their choices if you go work somewhere for a year even if it's fast food even if it's at a grocery store you're gonna have more self-knowledge and more experience and value creation than many of your peers and if you decide the colleges for you at the end of that year you'll be able to make more informed decisions about the path that you take because most people when they go to college don't declare a major in their first year for most people their first two years it's just really a highly expensive experiment and self-discovery where you learn the kinds of things about yourself that you learn by going a lot of parties skipping class getting drunk meeting new people you know and that's a really expensive way to discover yourself so one thing I would say is just get a job or take a gap year program you know travel or you know just do anything that involves getting some responsibilities and creating value does that make sense yeah and I think a lot of times we feel pressured both to do what everybody else is doing but also to get right into it and hop right into the job because we have this fear of missing out that if we don't jump right into it and start acting now and hustle and have this kind of like you know get rich or die trying' mindset then we're never gonna get what we want and that's what you know that I think specifically an American problem or at least more so here because you see like people in Australia who have who travelled at different countries they have a gap year where they they tend to urge their students and the youth to travel more and it's not as common here and I meet a lot of people that haven't traveled out of the country like that are 18 years old and that was me like I didn't leave the country for the first time until I was probably 18 or 19 no actually probably 20 and it was for a job it was because I you know somebody paid me to do it sure and so I do think that there is there is a balance there and if you can actually have life experience because like we're talking about when you're going to get a job eventually you want to stand out from everybody else everybody that comes in for that interview you know many of their resumes look identical and you have to set yourself apart both in terms of like your personality how you interact with them as well as like what that piece of paper says what ways do you think people can stand out what ways can people what ways would you want to you know somebody comes into your office and you're thinking about hiring them what would you want to see out of them so a really quickly funny story about this differentiation thing so I heard someone tell a story of a gathering where a bunch of university presidents were together and they did this exercise where they each wrote down their mission statement and they put it in a hat and then everyone had to reach in and pick their own mission statement and no one could find their mission statement because every one of them they were pretty much identical they all sounded alike everyone was making these general safe sounding statements we are here to uplift and enlighten and strengthen and nurture and they're all saying the same thing it's good stuff but it's the stuff that everyone else is saying so differentiation it's a need at every level what are some things you can do to separate yourself from the crowd well number one you can actually create and I make the distinction between creating and being creative being creative is ontological that refers to your state of being that refers to your personality trait you're eccentric you're stylish you're we you're cool you're a good dresser lots of people in the world are creative very few people actually engage in the process of creating the process of creating is about producing effects it's about getting up getting off your butt and working it's about facing the blank page it's about taking the risk of being criticized of being misunderstood and the best way to compete in a world where everyone and their mom is creative is to be someone that actually creates I mean you know how it is living here in Hollywood for instance every other person is a writer right so ontologically you are a writer but how many people are actually writing how many people are putting pin to the pad and shipping it putting it out there in a way where other people can do it so don't let your work be a secret don't let the things you're learning be a secret you can separate yourself in the crowd by doing everything from blogs podcasts YouTube videos where you are sharing with other people the things that you are studying the things that you're learning one of the things that we do in praxis for instance is we eliminate the distinction between learning and creating and and we teach our participants that you are not legitimately learning if you are separating the process of engaging ideas from the process of solving problems for the world or creating value for others so let's say for instance you're studying a tool like Salesforce and you just spend like hours mastering that tool okay that's fine you learn Salesforce good for you how about creating value for someone else turn on that video camera and create a tutorial for beginners right you went through the process of not knowing what you were doing to learning this help someone else navigate that process or write a blog post where you review Salesforce you talk about the pros you talk about the cons you talk about ways to get maximum value out of it do something that helps other people if you do that you'll separate yourself from the pack in a very powerful way hmm a lot of people think that ideas are so special that if you have great ideas then everything else will fall into place and this is kind of that same notion of people think that they're creative but it really doesn't matter in the market does it doesn't matter to the employer when they're sitting down and thinking about hiring you because all they're gonna see is go absolutely I mean one of the things that I talk about in a talk dreams don't come true decisions decisions do is that people don't invest in ideas or creativity they invest in momentum right they invest in evidence that things will get done this is why VC's analyze the management team as much as they do if not more than the business plan if the business plan needs some room for improvement that's tolerable as long as the management team has a track record of getting things done if the management team is poor it doesn't matter how great the idea is because great ideas the majority of them often go to the grave right it's about the execution it's about the ability to navigate the sort of unanticipated complexities that come up along the way those are the things that matter and when you do the kind of stuff I'm talking about when you learn out loud when you show your work when you actually create even if it's not that good you build trust and respect and people say people say about you this is someone that isn't scared to get out there this is someone that's willing to take risk this is someone that can see a project idea from concept to completion one example of this was the horror movie I forget the name of it it's I think it's Paranormal Activity the one like where they're in the bedroom or something like that word has it that that the initial movie was produced for something along the lines of like $10,000 was very low-budget and Steven Spielberg saw it and wanted to get behind it well why would he want to get behind a movie that was produced with a really low budget because you don't need to see the perfect rendition of things in order to identify potential and this is the mistake that a lot of young creators make they feel like I'm not gonna create anything at all because I only want the world to see the 50 million dollar budget version but if you let the world see your two dollar version they'll see the thing that matters most they'll see the potential and they'll see the willingness that you have to invest in things and the people that have a lot of money they can imagine how much better that thing would look if they put fifty million dollars behind it but you got to let them see what you got first yeah and a lot of times decision decisions seem obvious after the fact so a lot of times when I'm making a documentary or a movie or even a short video for YouTube yeah people be like well I like of course that was his vision from the beginning and it's like well no actually if I had more money I would have done a lot of other things but peep don't realize that and they they let that and other excuses get in the way it's like oh I don't have a budget so I can't make a movie I don't have this camera so I can't shoot that video I don't have this running shoes so I can't go out for a jog and all that is it's just it's [ __ ] you know you're just trying it you're tricking yourself into thinking that you're not ready for it when in reality the people that are actually going to make change they're actually going to do something important in the world are those that are resourceful even when they don't have resources oh man and it's a very self-defeating mindset too I lived that life for many years I'm a couple of friends of mine we had a technology startup that was oriented around decentralizing the filmmaking process I also worked with a couple of guys in different independent filmmaking and we spent a lot of time talking to producers putting ourselves in a position where all we need it was the check right and basically the pitch came down to changed my life changed my life talking to wealthy people changed my life and when everything that you that you do is dependent on someone with power or money green-lighting your project that has a very taxing effect on your mindset it's very disempowering and and so I advocate what I call permissionless creativity which is identifying the steps that you can take right here right now however little without needing anyone to take a vote without needing anyone to write a check it might not be a very flattering step but if you can take it take it and the knowledge of what to do next will come after you do that not while you're contemplating that you know I think that's a very self-esteem building way to move things forward and you actually build momentum when you take that approach there's a there's a TV show called are you smarter than a fifth grader I don't know if it's still on the air I don't think it is but you made an appearance on this show on the show coming about your experience I land on that oh man it's pretty funny so you can watch you can watch it on Hulu I I forget what season it is I think it might be season two or something like that but the story behind this is pretty crazy so I was at the mall the Westville Plaza Century City Mall and I'm walking through the mall and this lady stops me and she says hey what do you do and I'm like uh I don't know why you asking me this but this is what I do and she said have you ever heard of the show are you smarter than a fifth grader and what's funny is my cousin had just told me about it a week earlier and he told me about it as if it's if it's the show where they embarrassed people make you look stupid right and I was like oh yeah I've heard of that show and she goes awesome I want you to be in it and I say uh I don't think so I'm not I'm not interested in in looking stupid around a bunch of fifth graders and she's like no no no it's not like that you won't look stupid and she explained the show to me and then she said well you have to audition to be on it but I think you'd have a lot of fun on it and you do well and I'm like I don't know and there you know I'm okay and she goes luck kid I'm trying to help you out this is a great opportunity so anyway she gives me a car she tells me to email her I I talked to a couple of friends about it and they're like yeah it's a cool opportunity do it so I email her she gives me the information and I go I audition and I get on the show and I get a chance to meet Jeff Foxworthy and I'm on television it's this awesome experience and you you ever know you know those like sitcoms that you watch where someone gets in a spotlight they're super confident but then they get in the spotlight and then they just don't know what to do just blank that happen to me so I have to tell all these lights on there are all these people in the audience and I walked out they're just like confident and excited and then I'm like oh no like I just forgot everything I ever knew so the first question the first question is how many sides want to queue and the worst part about it is I'm sitting there and I'm like okay Square four times to eight Jeff Foxworthy comes up to me he says hold out your hand I do this and he does that he even helps me man he gives it to me and I got the first answer wrong now on that show you you do have you do have like three cheats and so I used I use my cheat for that and and so the the kid that I picked he actually saved me on that and I went on to win $50,000 because I got like the next four or five correct and then um the one that I got wrong that got me booted out was uh I think you know like the the the interpretation of the words under the statue like at the base of the Statue of Liberty or something like that but I did pretty good and I had a lot of fun it was an exciting episode and I want a decent amount of money but here's what's funny about that experience so one of my friends sent me this youtube link sometime later and and it was a video where someone just took that part someone just took the part of me getting that first question wrong and I don't know what the title of it was but it was like look at this stupid guy oh and the comments man the comments were brutal there were all sorts of comments like this is everything that's wrong with America right now you know like this is why our country is such a you know because of stupid people like this who don't even know the answer to that question and it was jarring at first and and it taught me something very valuable about doing cool things about doing interesting things and it taught me that you know if you want to do if you want to tell stories that are worth telling and if you want to look back on your life and say yeah I did that with a sense of pride that's the cost you got to be willing to pay and I think there are a lot of motivational speakers out there who are quick to tell young people oh go do cool things go pursue this or that adventure and the thing that everyone is afraid of is what I experienced what everyone's afraid of is some is the emotional equivalent of ending up with a YouTube video about you where where thousands of people are saying the meanest nastiest things but none of those things could change the fact that I met Jeff Foxworthy I was on national television for an hour of my life my phone was blowing up with friends I had never heard from since high school with with people calling my mom like I heard from thousands of people who were just like dude it's so amazing to see you it's so cool and the $50,000 wasn't so bad either you know that wasn't so bad either and that's definitely a price worth Pam but it was a really cool experience man it was just an amazing thing to happen and a beautiful lesson learned - yeah there there is a lesson there that's got to be the biggest fear for a lot of people is to be outcasted to be to feel rejected when we fail because that's inevitable like we're all gonna fail if the only people that aren't gonna fail are those that don't actually try that don't actually push themselves to do something new how was that obvious to you that did you give a [ __ ] what people thought did you care what people were gonna say if you screwed up and you know fumble terribly well thankfully I was naive I didn't know what was coming right I didn't know that moment in isolation because if you watched the entire episode it you can kind of tell yourself a story of a guy that just kind of got nervous but then warmed up got more comfortable and then did pretty good overall because III did pretty decently but if you just watch that clip in isolation man does it look the Hat right so I never know that anyone would do that so thankfully I was naive and I just got out there but um you know III think one of the lessons about failure there is not just that when you fail everything will still be okay but there are also these benefits that lie on the other side of failure as well I mean it's not just the story of a guy that got one question wrong it's also meeting someone that he really looked up to having a really cool conversation with that person right winning $50,000 right like a lot of good things came out of it and so one of the most powerful coping mechanisms for failure is looking at the whole story and asking yourself all right what were the gifts given to me as a result of having this experience what are the ways I can now go forward and offer good to the world as a result of something that I saw someone that I met something cool that I knew you know what I mean hmm so it's kind of trying to focus on I mean there's a real silver lining there which is $50,000 yeah obviously like it wasn't a total you don't always get that you whoops I always get that but I think that it's it's important to look at you know any misstep any failure as just a stepping stone and just to look back at it as you know maybe it won't feel like a positive and if I have many many moments that are cringe-worthy where you look back and like I don't want to think about that moment yeah but if I didn't put myself in that position you know what's the alternative regret like is it worth it to like live with a life filled with regret or is it worth it to live with a life filled with moments where I'm like I wish that didn't happen yeah sure sure yeah you know think about think about how many of us can identify with the following experience there was someone that you were just so in love with in sixth grade or your freshman year in high school and you just thought they were the world and they didn't like you back or maybe you asked them out and they said no and at the time it felt horrible and maybe for the next couple of years it felt horrible but when you look back on it now it's like oh yeah that's just this thing that happened you know I can't imagine how hard I might laugh if I ran into a buddy from high school and he tried to make me feel bad about some girl that didn't like me in freshman year you know I mean like hey man like you know that's that that's gone that's just a thing that happened along the way you know and and failures become the same thing once you actually experience them failure looks very different from the inside-out than it does when you're analyzing it and theorizing about it and we're where most people fall short is they never give themselves the chance to experience failure but failure is kind of like this that there was an episode of Stargate Stargate Atlantis where this woman was these these entities had hijacked her brain and they created this illusory reality for her and the only way that she could escape this illusory reality was by stepping through the Stargate and then she'd be back home again and because the this enemy knew that they tried everything they could to keep her from stepping through that portal and once she saw the portal and realized that she needed to step through it she began to move for it and at that moment all of the monsters that were chasing after her got bigger and stronger and more frightening and and it intensive the closer she got to that starting Stargate but the moment she stepped through it the illusion was revealed and it all disappeared and I think that's a great metaphor for fear the closer we get to realizing who we are the closer we get to dialing in on what our potential really is that's when fear gets the strongest that's when the world seems like it's gonna grind us under its feet but once you step through that portal man and you say I'm gonna go after the things that matter to me and I'm gonna listen to my voice then you see that that was all just an illusion and that your your fears were just a stepping stone to a greater version of yourself you know so I gotta ask ya the $50,000 what did you do with it you know what like is that was was money tight for you at the time where you be doing well was that $50,000 did that mean a lot to you was that life-changing for you at the time it was life-changing for me at the time it meant a lot to me I was able to put some of the money into my first startup I was able to buy an engagement ring for the girl that I was in love with and that is now my wife and I was able to put a little something away you know so um that that was a real game-changer it meant an absolute lot to me for sure mmm it sounds like you you you did the smart thing there where you you put it back into your passions right where because I think a lot of people have fantasies about winning the lottery and you know they say about the lottery it's like the tax on the poor it's and it's the sad truth that people who don't have money are spending their money on the lottery which they're never gonna win and I think a lot of people have these fantasies about what they would do with the big windfall of money right and I think the reality is a lot different when you when you do make a lot of money comes a lot of stress comes with the fear of losing that money or doing something wrong with that money have you always been very have you bet always been smart with your finances in terms of you know putting in the right places and not being overindulgent absolutely not and before I let you before I let you give me too much credit for doing the smart thing well sometimes what's smart and what's not is all about the results that you get from it so I put the money into that first startup a significant portion of it not all of it and that failed so I lost all that right but no regrets but lesson learned so no I haven't always been I haven't always been conscious of it and part of that is because I've always identified as a dreamer as a creative and I've always prioritized pursuing the adventure chasing after the risk over thinking about the future and I think this can be a problem for many young people because as you grow older youyou think about time more often right and your sense of time increases and it becomes a lot easier for you to think about like when you're 40 it's easier to imagine being 50 it's easier to imagine being 60 and to kind of worry about those things but when you're 20 it's kind of hard to care about being 40 you know it's kind of really difficult to imagine that and you kind of have this sensation of everything that will ever matter in my life is the stuff that's gonna happen over the next five years and this is where I got to really live my life because you know once I get 25 I'm just gonna go to prison which might mean get married have responsibilities things like right for people that are younger so it can be a little hard and it was definitely hard for me I didn't start caring about those things until I started experiencing some failures and those failures started to get tougher and tougher to cope with and I and I had to step back and start going alright I'm still down with following my dreams but I need to find a way to go about this that factors in some of these other things that are gonna be important for me to keep following my dreams for the long term because I don't want to just be an in-the-moment dream follower I want this process to be sustained I want to be able to do this when I'm 70 when I'm 80 when I'm 90 and in order to do that I got to develop some financial literacy I got to start taking responsibility and thinking critically about this money stuff yeah that was my lesson from getting ninety seven thousand dollars in debt right when I entered the real world it was a very real world lesson about personal finance and realizing that I didn't want to enter this situation ever again so my life became about calculated risks where I like I'm a big believer in taking risks and taking chances but I'm gonna make sure I have a little bit of runway you know if I if I leave my job I want to make sure I have six months of rent paid you know and and I think that you have to do that because if you jump before you have your parachute then and you're trying to build it on the way down it's probably not gonna end well for you yeah and we say a lot of things like hey don't worry about that just focus on your passion and the money will take care of itself but I don't believe that I don't believe the money will take care of itself yeah I believe in the focus on your passion part but money just like health it won't take care of itself you got to think about it you got to be deliberate with it what place is like inspiration and motivation like where does that play a role in all this in terms of like following our passions and finding out what we really want to do in life because I know there are a moment when I listen to a Tony Robbins audiotape and I'm just fired up like I'm gonna I'm gonna take over the world I'm gonna start a business I'm gonna start working out I'm gonna do all these things and then it seems like that inspiration that those all those chemicals that rush into my body they dissipate over the coming days yeah so I guess what place does that play and how do you see habit being developed in the long run sure so one of the things I like to say is follow your priorities not just your passions right your passions are the things that you you know get excited about but your priorities are the things that you're you're willing to not just die for it but that you're willing to actually live for right and because you know being excited that's not something that anything is capable of sustaining there's no career there's no object no possession that can make you feel excited all the time right so I think it's more important to think about what you believe in what do you believe in so deeply that you're willing to make sacrifices for that you're willing to commit to even if it's inconvenient and I think a good analogy for that is the love that a parent has forfor the child right a parent loves that child but love here doesn't mean this child never makes me worry this child never makes me feel stress love here means I believe in what I have I cherish what I have so deeply that even when I'm stressed even when I'm inconvenience even when the baby cries at 2:00 in the morning and I don't want to get up and I'm complaining about it I am going to make that decision because I'm coming at this action from a place that's deeper than in the moment feeling good and I think that's an important thing to remind people because there are a lot of people who talk themselves out of what they're passionate about because they they have this assumption that says if I were truly passionate I would feel different I would behave different you know III think I'm a writer but maybe I'm not because I don't enjoy writing all the time you know III think you know I think I love entrepreneurship but maybe I don't cuz I don't enjoy it all the time and it's no no no everyone feels that way about everything they do like there are aspects to every career every job every relationship that is just a pain in the neck sometimes and you have to pursue things based on something deeper than just passion can its conviction that you have to go out there you know yeah so let's say somebody wants to start a podcast or start write a book or start writing they want to develop healthy eating habits or whatever it is like all these things are kind of daily practices that you're trying to bring into your life what advice would you give somebody who's looking to pick one of these either skills or habits up yeah so first I would say start with what you're genuinely interested in or intrigued by right even if it's not always characterized by excitement that's the best starting point because if something kind of fascinates you or stimulates your curiosity chances are you'll learn about it more you'll work a little bit harder at it the second thing I would say is start small focus on the feasible what most people psych themselves out early on by trying to go all or nothing or by feeling like they're insulting the process of professional development or personal development if they don't do the biggest version of it and I've struggled with this myself so for instance I love reading I want to read more and for me I would love to just read a book a week I feel like that's the minimal that I need to do if I'm gonna respect this thing that I call you know reading but sometimes that just comes down to a blog post a day for me that sometimes it's all I have time for and that's fine you know but I have to remind myself at times that's fine I'm not insulting my passion by doing it at a level that's realistic for me the the venture capitalist novel says read what you love until you love to read and I think that applies to everything not just reading do it at a level that that's easy for you until it becomes easy for you to do it at any level you know so start small if you want to run every day instead of saying running every day equals going for five miles every day and trying to make that big leap start for a block do something that's ridiculously easy so that you have absolutely no excuse not to do it so start with what you're interested in start with what's feasible another thing I would do is I would say conduct experiments rather than rather than you know making lifelong commitment so if there's something that you want to try out say for 30 days I'm gonna commit to this way of doing it for 30 days so if it's running I'm gonna run every day for 30 days this isn't a marriage this isn't a new religion I'm not gonna let myself feel guilty or feel like a flake if I change my mind and switch it up in two months it's just gonna be a 30 day experiment so when you get 15 days in and you feel like giving up you're like I don't know if this is working out for me you can tell yourself I only got 15 more days let's go ahead and follow through and finish and instead of feeling like a flake when you're done you actually get to feel proud of yourself for keeping your word and committing to something and if you want to switch it up then you can recalibrate or if you want to keep it going you can say alright let's do it for another another 30 days and that's a great way to alkalize the guilt that we commonly experience when we change our minds take that guilt and transform it into a sense of achievement and that builds the foundation of self-esteem that allows you to go on to accomplish more and the beauty of that is that a lot of studies show that habits are formed over the course of 20 to 30 days so if you can actually stick with it for a very short period of time look we get very overwhelmed where even if we're thinking about like a gym membership we're like oh I don't know if I can afford that like maybe I that that personal trainer is a little bit expensive for me I don't know if it's like worth it just say alright three one month or three months or whatever it is in terms of a commitment of money or commitment of time and then it makes it less overwhelming because you're not looking at I got to do this forever I don't think I can keep this up and especially if you're out of shape whether physically or mentally you know you're not prepared to do a podcast every week you have to set yourself up and really kind of look into the future yeah and see what roadblocks you might come across what things may actually interrupt this new diet because a lot of times it's like oh Travel gets in the way or you get sick and then all of a sudden you fall off and then three you know a three years go by whatever hat like I was so motivated I was so fired up to change things and all this and it just went away and I think it's you know like you said originally it's like kind of recalibrating and understanding what we actually want to get out of something absolutely you know one of the things I advise people to do is plan for your worst day of the week so let's say it's it's reading every day I'll pick that for me and you know when you're initially setting out you might say I'm gonna read for three hours every day okay that's great but does your worst day of the week look like that because you know you're gonna have one right you're gonna have that day where the car breaks down where your best friend gets sick and their car also broke down and they need you to drive them to the hospital and that's the one day where your mom's got to talk to you today for whatever reason that's the one day where all sorts of things go wrong and you only got about 15 minutes what can you do on that day okay take that and make that the Norn make that the basis of your experiment and if you can do more that's great you know making a small commitment never prevents you from doing more but it does prevent you from feeling guilty for doing less so like our brains aren't very good like because I like it takes maybe a couple days and then we completely forget about the thing that we were so passionate about so are there ways in which you would track or write down certain things do you add it to your calendar do you add it to a to-do list like how do you make sure that safe reading three days a week is something that you want to do without a daily consistency to it how do we actually keep that up so I don't know if this is the right way I haven't done any research on this to say that this is what everybody ought to do but in the name of doing what what's right for me and finding what works for me I never keep my goals a secret I know some people preach it a different philosophy but if I'm going to keep some kind of commitment to myself even if it's only 30 days I'm telling someone and the way that's worked for me as I do this on my blog so something that's very important to me is reading something every day so every day on my blog I publish reading notes there a section on my blog and if you go to the reading notes section you'll see like an intro paragraph where I state why I'm doing this how often I do this and then I got a publish every day so when I have a night like last night really busy day long day and it's about 11:45 and there's nothing that I want more than to close the day out I realized that I need to do this thing that I love and if I were on my own I might decide to forgive myself and then just show up and do it tomorrow but I'm thinking man I got people that look up to me I got people that look out for me and they're gonna see that and I don't want anybody to see that I missed that day so I'm just gonna stay up do about 15 minutes of this and get those study notes published you're creating an accountability creating that accountability yeah I think accountability is very important yeah I think right and then that would be you know it would help you if you're starting a business actually making this documentary minimalism the only reason I truly believe we were able to make it was because we didn't try to do it alone and we had each other where yeah I did the editing and filmed it and and Josh and Ryan did like a lot of the pre-production scheduling the interviews conducting the interviews and and we all had our different roles in our different parts yeah but we couldn't have done it without each other and the main thing is like skills one thing but also the fact that we were holding each other accountable that Josh would be like hey when's that first cut gonna be done and then I'm like oh [ __ ] I didn't even start it yet like I better get started on this thing and then that really pushed us and carried us forward and it also helped when we were able to release it we can kind of lean on each other for support even when you know maybe it didn't go well at a certain festival or we didn't get the feedback we wanted to get on that first cut you're there for each other to help organize and figure out a path forward and accountability yeah like I think some people like say that when you put your ideas out in the world that like you release this excitement that then will dissipate and you won't carry through but I found personally from me accountability has been one of the biggest things to actually create something that you otherwise wouldn't yeah so let's address that though cuz Derek Siver's gives an excellent talk about that where he says you know don't announce your plans because everyone will be like oh yeah you're gonna write that book I'm so out of you and then you kind of your brain doesn't know the difference between finishing the book and being praised for the idea that you're going to write a book I think there's true but I think there's a difference between the accountability thing notice that in that example it's pretty vague there's nothing specific that you're committing to doing there's no deadline there's there's no specificity at all when are you going to start when will you be finished by that's different right so I I think I think it is important to not give yourself an out by living off the praise people give you the easy likes that people give you for saying you're gonna do this cool thing I think it's important to say hey here's something specific I'm going to do by this time because people aren't gonna praise you for that people are gonna watch you for that right if I go on Facebook right now and I say hey guys I've just been thinking about health and fitness and I'm just tired of just not being helped anymore I'm gonna start working out everyone's gonna like that and then my brain is gonna be like yeah woo if then I'll go back to the door whatever I was doing before on the other hand if I go on Facebook and I say hey guys I want to work out more I need to hold myself accountable here's what I'm going to do every day I'm gonna run for 15 minutes and when I do it I'm going to post a status here saying I ran for 15 minutes today okay now what are people gonna do they're gonna watch they're gonna send me a message and be like amen I didn't see a status update for a couple of days everything cool alright and that's just a different game that you're playing you know David Allen says in getting things done he says the mind is for having ideas not for holding ideas and I think the key point here is that you don't want to trust your own brain to remember the things that are important to you and to push you to execute on them outsource that to something external as s Thiago Forte says build a second brain something that will remind you what's important to you and something that will reinforce your highest values during those times where you have a difficult time retaining it I love that before the podcast you mentioned a story about a college professor and a 19 year old girl yeah yeah I'd love to that story yeah so this was a girl who I I think I referenced her a little bit earlier the one who wrote the email to Isaac Morehouse she had a lot of different entrepreneurial interest and she was in college performing well doing it because of the social pressure she felt and she just decided I'm not gonna fake it anymore I'm not gonna pretend to be happy with this I'm not gonna live the next four years of my life depressed going to school just because I'm too afraid to admit my truth and she confessed to her parents I don't want to do this I've always wanted to pursue an alternative I've got a drop out of college and her parents let her know like alright well you know we respect your decision but you've got to provide for yourself if you're going to do that so that was the first hit she took you know she could have it much easier if she just goes to college plays ball she can stay at home have her parents provide but she decides to pay the cost of her own choice and so she gets a job she provides for herself and she starts to pursue her passions and about half a year in she's so happy she's a lot busier life is a little bit more challenging because now she's responsible for herself but she's learning so many skills taking online classes building her portfolio and she sends Isaac this message you know thanking him for all the material that he's put out there to kind of validate people that don't fit into the traditional system so with her permission he shares this post on Facebook and within minutes of posting it a professor comes on and caused that girl a fool he didn't know her he didn't know anything about her all he knew was the story that she told about her own life and in her own story she said that she was happy none of that matter to him why she's a fool because that's what we say about people who drop out of college they're fools you know and that shouldn't be hard for anybody to believe maybe it was a little course maybe he shouldn't have you know put it out there in that way but that's the kind of message that we you know condition everyone to think you know here is someone who for her age taking on far more responsibility than most of her peers and she's got guts the easy thing to do is to say I'm gonna let mom and dad pay for my bills and I'm gonna do this thing that I don't want to do so that I can you know get the free laundry get the free meal and not have to deal with any conflict and there's nothing wrong with letting mom and dad pay your bills there's nothing wrong with that at all but there is something admirable about a 19 year old stepping out there in doing what most people don't want to have anything to do it until they're 25 30 there was just like a news story recently about a 30 year old guy whose parents had to take him to court just to get him out of the house because he wouldn't leave and we mocked that guy we laugh at that guy but we don't want to praise the guts of a young lady like this you know and when I saw that man it just really ticked me off you know and it put me in a space where I felt a burden of responsibility to use my voice more to validate those who are perceived in our society as being invalid don't get me wrong just because you drop out of college doesn't mean you're doing something good because there are a lot of ways to waste your time you can waste your time in college you can waste your time out of college nobody gets a free pass just because of the location they're in but it's about living life in accordance with your values taking responsibility for your choices and pursuing your own definition of success and happiness and we preach that we talk about like that we talk about that as if we really believe it but then there are certain choices we make in the world that that caused us to diverge from the mainstream makes everyone nervous and then we sort of compromise that whole message about defining your own success and so it just really challenged me to step up and take responsibility for speaking on behalf of those that quite frankly I think a lot of people are scared to speak up for I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people who have influence and what they'll say in private is they'll say things like hey man between me and you it's kind of a scam college or they'll say things like hey man between me and you everybody does all this talk about how the value of education is priceless but they sure are putting a big price tag when you paying right you know or there are lots of uber drivers I talked to who talk about like oh I love what you're doing in I have a college degree and this is what I was taught to think and now I'm in a position where no one's valuing my degree the way I you know thought they would and there are a lot of people who get this but no one wants to step up and say it in public because well you're challenging the the religion of our day you're challenging the dogma of our day you make a lot of people angry you know when you say things like college isn't for everyone you make a lot of people angry when you start saying things like the world is changing and there is a way for you to create a career career without relying on the traditional credential but I'm willing to make those people angry because I believe this is right I believe this is the message that our world needs and I'm not willing to I'm not willing to let so many people who have dreams let those dreams go to the grave or underestimate their potential just to you know make every parent feel comfortable you know student loans have to be just breaking the back of Millennials of people who are graduating college those who otherwise would start businesses but they have to pay the bills they have to Penn is this gonna do you see this continuing for much longer you can't even get out of you can't even file bankruptcy to get out of student loans if you wanted to you can do that for a house but you can't do it with a massive amount of student loan debt and so many people I I know more people that have student loan debt than I do that don't I mean it's hard for me to pick out a couple people that I know that I graduated with that don't have student loans yeah I mean can you imagine giving like a six-figure loan to someone who's 18 19 years old can you imagine encouraging someone like that to buy a Ferrari you know and in the name of it's an investment and for those who say what well it is an investment that you're using a bad analogy it's not like buying a car okay fine can you imagine giving someone a hundred thousand dollars and say yeah put it in the stock market at random it's an investment just because something is in the category of investment mean you can't go broke doing it right people lose a lot of money in investments all the time Paul Graham talks about this in an article where he he discussed the difference between the mindset it takes to get rich and the mindset that it takes to hold on to your wealth and he talks about how the number one way that people lose their money when they become wealthy it's not through spending it's investing right there is such a thing as bad investment so just because you're putting your money in an investment don't mean you're putting it doesn't mean you're putting it into the right things it doesn't mean you're thinking critically about the best way to invest and we've sort of given people a free pass when it comes to college we we just assume that if they're going to college that that everything will take care of itself you know that it'll all be fine and I would say that's not just sketchy that's outright irresponsible that's outright dangerous we're asking young people to give up five years of their lives and if you're 20 years old that's 25 percent of your life right we're asking you to give up five years of your life and anywhere from fifty to a hundred grand you know without challenging them to think critically now compare that to a dropout if you say I'm not gonna go to college no one is going to let you get away with that decision without drilling you and making you do a whole lot of philosophy you're gonna need to answer questions from about 50 different people on well what are you planning on doing instead you know what if that doesn't work out well what happens if you change your mind and want to do something differently well what if you develop some passion and you try to go get it and and and they don't accept you without a degree you're gonna have to do the hard work but when people say I'm going to college we don't make them do that hard work you know I see people on Facebook all the time I just got accepted into this university and you know what we do we say congratulations I'm so proud of you wait wait wait wait what are they majoring in oh we don't care wait wait wait how do they intend to use that degree we don't really care it'll be taken care of but but what if they decide that they're gonna major in elementary education and then five six years later they decide they don't like kids we don't really care about that everything is gonna be fine we trust that College will take care of them that's how we treat it and so young people are making a very significant investment and we can talk all the smack about how knowledge is priceless but the acquisition of it through college is not priceless it's one of the most expensive things you'll pay for and you can call it an investment but that doesn't mean that you're investing wisely and we got a challenge people to think critically about that mmm I would imagine that most of the kids that are entering into praxis have support from their family am I wrong in that assumption because I would I would think that it has to start with the parents in some way because if parents are putting pressure on you from a very early age that you're going to go to college and that you're gonna graduate it's hard to get out of that mindset even if you are rebellious so do you find that a lot of the you know kids that are in your program have that support so we've got a number of parents that are tremendously supportive and we even have some participants in the program whose parents are the ones that told them about the program you know so we have a tremendous amount of that and at the same time in the name of keeping it real we have a number of participants whose parents are we're very frightened by it or whose parents still remain skeptical of it and a large part of my coaching at times has to involve encouraging young people who who are really taking the social hit to do this and and helping them understand why they don't have to be disrespectful towards the people they love in order to disagree with them you know and why you're not gonna achieve anything by arguing with people who are worried about you they're worried about you because you're untested you're unproven and if you want to win them over the best thing you can do is be cool be respectful don't defend yourself work hard and prove that you made the right choice by handling your business you know and my show showcasing what it's like to be an adult through the life that you live I know that there's a I think it was an episode of freakonomics I listen to where he was agreeing that college isn't everything or maybe was Seth Godin but somebody was talking about how like I don't think college is everything but just based on like the economics of it and then looking at the numbers most people that go to college end up having a better salary and a being better off in the long run what have you seen from people who've gone through your program not necessarily specific numbers but what does it look like when somebody leaves that program do they end up better off in a better off position yes so III want to touch at the core of that argument because this is how so many people approach the topic they look for the answer to the question which one is better and professors ask me this all the time it's such an academic question they ask me all the time well what's the evidence that practice is better I don't care about that III don't care about what's better I care about identifying what people want and then creating value for them on their terms right is is Nike better than Reebok I don't know it is is is basketball better than baseball I don't know who cares let people watch what they want to watch and once people indicate what they're interested what their interests are then we do the hard work of creating value for them based on that right so let's talk about these kinds of statistics I can produce the same sorts of meaningless stats for other things I can say that the overwhelming majority of startups fail right that if you try to start a business the odds are overwhelmingly against you and the statistics show that you will be much better off if you go pursue a degree in accounting right does that mean you should go pursue a degree in accounting or should you start your business like this is an argument that immediately defeats the overwhelming majority of people right now that are working at startups they all need to leave and go to accounting in fact let's stick with accounting I think it has like a a placement rate over 95% so let's talk about the people who use this argument for college okay fine you're going to college do you know the statistics for theatre majors because we're letting a lot of young people do that and we're not discouraging that do you know the statistics for philosophy majors for anthropology majors everybody ought to be majoring in mechanical engineering or accounting if we're going to base our life decisions on which position makes the most money but human beings are more than just their need for money right human beings need to find things are a good fit for them they need to find things that they believe in that they want to do so is it my place to tell all the actors who move out to Hollywood or New York that hey the statistics say you're gonna make much more money over a lifetime by going into accounting rather than acting rather than theater rather than business rather than music or about 80% of the things you should be doing well that's silly right because the most important question is what are the results that matter most to you and this is what's different about my philosophy of Education most people approach education in this bureaucratic sense we start with the subject rather than the student we start with what we think people ought to know in order to be good citizens so we say everyone ought to know history everyone ought to know math everyone ought to know this and your interests come next if we've got some time left over to get to your interests we'll get to that right but everybody's learning these things that these bureaucrats have decided are important for everyone and even though we don't have to live your life all right we've decided this is what's important for you for me I say no we start with the student and we ask that student hey what are the results you want to create with your life what matters most to you you know what are you after just like if you go to a gym the fitness trainer doesn't start by saying hi what's your name mat that's great we're gonna do the Stairmaster we're gonna do some resistance training no they say well what brought you to the gym what are you here for and then that's when you say something like hey look man I got a marathon I'm training for or hey look man I got a wedding coming up and I want to look good in that tux and the job of the fitness trainer is to not laugh at that answer the job that the job is to say okay I accept that that's cool how much time are you willing to put in what are you willing to sacrifice anything I need to know about what you're not willing to do injuries and stuff like that all right cool so we got all this equipment in here but I'm gonna have you ignore that that's irrelevant to your goals don't worry about that guy over there lifting all those weights yeah he's bigger than you were stronger than you has nothing to do with you I'm gonna have you work on these machines over here we're gonna do it like this we're gonna do it like that and it's a customized plan that's based on your goals I would contend that if education is not goal oriented it's not education what the teacher knows doesn't matter until we have identified what the student wants to create and that's the approach we take so I don't care about people's arguments about what's better I care about satisfying my customers I love that that's great ma'am let's do a couple quick questions here and we'll close out this podcast if you personally could go back say 15 years ago 20 years ago hmm what would you do differently say you're like 20 years old or so I'm maybe I just guessed how old you are it sounds like you're in the ballpark yeah yeah yeah so you're going back there on like 20 years old what did you do wrong what did you wish that you would have done at that time hmm the advice I would give to my my 20 year old self would be hey don't fear regret don't fear a regret hey and and don't rush trying to get all the answers to all the philosophical questions before you turn 30 because when you get older you still have an idea of fun that is unique to that age and you know life doesn't end I think when I was 20 I believe as a lot of 20 year olds did that um that there's something about adult responsibilities that marks the end of life and that whatever cool things you want to do you got to get it all in you know before you're 25 and I would I would tell my 20 year old self don't buy into that you got a whole lifetime for life do what's important to you now and don't base any decisions on the fear of what you're gonna lose an opportunity to do when you're old if it's interesting to you that's good enough pursue it follow up on it and don't worry about missing out on anything you know that's the thing that scared me most when I was in high school was talking to a couple teachers and them saying that like without a doubt College was the best years of their life and kind of almost imprinting that on you as if like the expectation is that the next four years are gonna be the best times in my life and then that's it I just call it quits and then I just live like a ordinary life after that yeah that terrified me I'm so glad it was wrong yeah but for a lot of people that that can be true it could you know if the only time you have freedom if the only time you push yourself or are creative or have fun and let loose during college then yeah it's gonna be the best time to your life but it's really up to you if that's true or not well you know we don't I mean it's okay if those are the best times of your life but it's always possible to create better times right and I don't think we mean to do this but sometimes when we when we speak to young people we have this sense of urgency about our advice and we want them so badly to take advantage of the unique opportunities they have to be flexible and take risk you know like if you're 19 you're not married you don't have any children someone can call you up and say hey man there's an opportunity over in New York or I need you to come you know move to Alaska for two years you can do that without having any conversations with anybody and and the game is a bit different when you're married or when you you know have employees or whatever it may be and as fine as it is to tell young people that they have a unique opportunity it's important that we don't ignore the flip side of that coin which is growing older has some really cool opportunities as well and most of the things we fear missing out on when we're younger they're actually they actually don't look that valuable from the eyes of a 30 year old from the eyes of a 40 year old they're not that big of a deal it's kind of like the whole thing I said about the girl that didn't like you your freshman year in high school which is just sort of this thing that did or didn't happen and it's not as important but you know all the commercials that you're watching all the Instagram posts that you're looking at makes it look like every party is important everything that everyone doing is important and if you miss out on it you're gonna wake up one day and you're gonna be 40 and you're gonna regret your whole life and sure there may be some people who model that for you but it doesn't have to be that way being 40 is pretty cool and even if you turn out to have not done everything you wanted to do when you turn 40 there's still plenty of opportunity to do other things so live your life now don't be afraid of age is there one skill that you would recommend people sharpen that's the that's maybe the most important thing whether to you or you see for young kids coming up to try to do their own thing one or two skills that are going to be the most valuable for them to master yeah so I'm not an advocate of preemptive learning right the most common question I get is hey what's the one thing people need to learn and people are usually looking for something like well coding coding is gonna be it because their computer is everything and you know that before you really that the blockchain everything's happening with that so you want to learn about the black chain I'm a proponent of orienting your education around the results right like you are most likely to successfully learn things when you are incentivized to learn based on your need to know them because of something that you're trying to produce so I I would say the most important thing to do is to read voraciously about the things that you're curious about developing developing the the skill of finding hunting down tracking down information that's related to the questions that you're asking you know because that will not only develop you intellectually it'll not only develop your critical thinking skills but interest is kind of like a superpower you know whatever you're interested in at the time if you if you consume a ton of content on that you're gonna retain almost everything that you that you consume and that interest is sort of like a window of opportunity that will eventually close because you're gonna graduate to a stage of life where you no longer have those questions and even if you still own the books and try to read them you just won't make the interesting connections that you'll make if you consume it at the time that you're you're highly engaged so develop that skill hunting down information consuming a ton of content relating to your curiosities because that's the thing that as you get older and as your interests change that knowledge will still be transferable to other things yeah I think a lot of people wait to be told what to do and they just follow the syllabus and that's it if you really want to set yourself apart from other people like just focus on your interests and stay curious and keep creating outside of what your professor is telling you to do yeah you know Seth Godin calls it ship shipping right put stuff out there people are so afraid to ship because they psych themselves out with questions like well I'm interested in film now but but if I put out a bunch of you know short films at age 18 19 what happens when I'm 25 and I decide I want to be a neurologist right so people don't ship in relations of the things they're interested in now because they're worried that some version of themselves they don't have access to is gonna be interested in something different and no one's gonna take them seriously because they'll have this other stuff out there that's you know unrelated to it that never happens what actually happens is when people look at the thing you've created they respect you as reliable they respect you as an expert at something and they pay close attention to this new thing that you say you're going to do so for instance I know some guys who are really into self-help in motivation but they never put anything out there right so no one knows if Kobe Bryant who has no experience being a motivational speaker Kobe Bryant or LeBron James decided I'm gonna write a self-help book who do you thinks gonna get the audience who do you thinks gonna get people to pay attention because these guys have focused on what they are good at what they are interested in that when those interests change their current achievements will become leverage for them to acquire an audience and gain respect for those new achievements so don't ever be afraid of shipping based on the fact that your interest will change it'll always build respect and Trust for you how do you feel about setting expectations because I find myself with any big project I try to set my expectations rather low or I I don't even think about what my expectations would be if I put this project into the world I just focus on the craft the art and like what I enjoy about the process yeah and then because a lot of times we don't have any control over how the world is gonna receive our ideas yeah so here's where I differ from a lot of people who talk about following dreams for most people the reason you should follow your dreams is because the universe is this kind benevolent magical place and perhaps that may be true but I don't think that's the primary basis for following dreams I don't think you should follow your dreams because they probably will happen I think you should follow your dreams because there is a version of you that is superior to the person sitting in front of me in every way wiser funnier more adaptive more creative more intelligent in every way and you don't get to be that superior version of self of yourself unless you face your dreams get your questions answered and do the things that your nature compels you to do so I look at the rock as sort of a symbolic representation of your ideal self right so and that symbolic representation is just sort of like an inaccurate best guess of what the pinnacle for success is for you but you need something specific to focus on and and you move towards that but you don't move towards that because getting the rock on your show is the definition of success it's just something specific for you to focus on and the real success is being the best that you can be and going as far as you can go and so if that's driving you that's great but what matters is the process that's being driven the fact that every day you get up and you do all of these amazing things in order to get to that level and it doesn't matter if you get to that or not because ultimately you get to something so much better than the right being on your show you get to you you get to your core self you get to become who you were born to be and that's the real goal and that's why I believe people should follow their dreams even if you might fail because the pearl of great price isn't the possession the pearl of great price is you know self-actualization I gotta get to the gym I feel inspired right now well thank you so much for coming on the podcast a couple more questions here to wrap up yeah since books are such an important part of your life I'm curious what book has had the greatest impact on your life or a book that you keep coming back to you because you're like man this stays true and resonates with me over over the long run yeah so can I give - yeah absolutely okay one is finite and infinite games by James P cars' and and I love the subtitle it's a vision of life as play and possibility and it's a very good framework for thinking about life not only as a game but as a very specific category of games and in sort of opting out of the finite game approach to life into the infinite game approach where the goal is not to win but the goal is to perpetuate play and it's a way of looking at things that can really make life and all of its obstacles and challenges feel a lot more light-hearted and playful and it's a game that sort of takes you beyond the traditional paradigm of just winning and game and achieving and defining success on that basis the second is a book by Robert Fritz called the path of least resistance subtitle becoming the predominant creative force in your own life and this is a book about the distinction between the reaction response orientation where circumstances are the driving force in your life and success is about having good reactions to them and versus the creative orientation where intentionality is the driving force in your life and you're not defined by letting circumstances take the lead and then you reacting to them but by you deciding what you're going to create and experiencing circumstances as these things that can react to you so those are two books that I keep coming back to that I'd recommend awesome yeah and if people want to find you online where should we send them send them to either discover praxis comm or at ek Coleman calm awesome thanks for doing the podcast man oh man thanks for having me thank you for listening to this week of the ground up show TK Coleman what a legend appreciate him coming on the show here as I said at the beginning today's the last day to submit to the get the rock on Matt's podcast jingle competition trademark all rights reserved if you want if you're creative if you're a musician if you want to submit this is it guys and then I'm gonna set up like a little web landing page or something get the rock on Matt's podcast com where you guys can can rush to and vote for your favorite I really want to get as many people to vote as possible because I want you guys are the one that's gonna have to listen to this so you know I'm hoping that you you pick one that brings the most joy to your life all right next week's a good one too I'll see you then [Music]

Channel: Matt D'Avella

Views: 182,294

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Id: gP6d376oq-U

Length: 78min 0sec (4680 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018