today I'm talking to Sam ovens a Serial entrepreneur who's had a big impact on my life and how I think he used to be known as the Consulting guy wearing a blue suit in his New York apartment but now he's building School a community platform that I think is going to go to a billion dollars and we dove into things like why the best decisions are based on feeling the downsides of monk-like discipline and why you may need more distraction and Chaos in your life how to develop your intuition and live life on your own terms after this conversation I felt the urge to sit down and really reflect on some of the things that he talked about and I think he will too so put on your seat belts let's get into it a few years ago you were known as the Consulting Guru wearing a blue suit in a New York apartment teaching people to start a Consulting business maybe making $10 million a year and then you went Incognito for a while and um now you have a software company school that if I had to guess is going to be worth hundreds millions of dollars and you look very different and so last year in August we hung out for a weekend retreat at a Rec at a Creator event there's about 15 people Chris Williamson was there Charlie from Chrisman command ran Doris and you told us that the shift from consulting.com to school made no logical sense at the time it was just purely based on your gut and feeling why did you go with something that didn't make sense at the time financially didn't make any sense because well in the short term because you know I had a company that was making a lot of money very profitable and it was everything was working fine right so and then school is I just knew it would cost a lot of money I didn't know how it would make any money and it was unknown territory so you know the polar opposite so there was that but you know the the main reason was I just didn't I'd like fallen out of love with the business and also the the work that I was doing each day I didn't think it was very well aligned to my personality I am quite introverted I don't really like being on camera I don't mind talking to people because it's just very natural to me I mean I talk to people right like who doesn't um and I forget the cameras there right but I really don't like talking to a camera um and it just didn't feel right it was also kind of rubbing some people the wrong way like you know criticism and I know a lot of people say like oh [ __ ] your haters or whatever but you know I think when there's well at least for me sometimes I agree with them um right and so I find their feedback to be helpful sometimes and cuz if I'm not enjoying it and I don't like it and it's and then they're also saying it seems fake I'm like well probably because it is right like cuz I I don't like it so I have to kind of fake it or put on a character or whatever so it was more based on just feeling and and I think that's what you know most people probably want to be successful and they don't care how it happens right but once you've been successful for a while you start to think maybe I'm successful but in the wrong thing I don't know if anyone else has that thought but that's what I think about all the time yeah I think a lot of people think about that thing it seems like you've done almost like a full circle because you started out in software and then you got into the Consulting thing and being basically in front of the camera and in front of millions of people because you ran Facebook ads right and that's where you received I guess a lot of the hate or a lot of the negative feedback and then you now you coming back to software and I think a lot of people go through transitions where they're trying to figure out what do I actually want to do and where what is my thing and um I'm curious what what was some of the comments that you got that that rubbed you the wrong way or maybe they stung because you knew there's some truth to it some people would say like that I forget the exact comments right although I do remember maybe one of them one of them was like it looks like this guy's in a lot of pain or um or it looks like someone is for has a gun to this guy's head and is forcing him to make this video and then there was just various ways of saying that this is fake or I don't trust him or I don't trust this right so and then I thought well I am in pain I do have to force myself to make these videos I don't like making these videos I dread it um and I am kind of Faking it because I have to maintain this particular character cuz you know if you just change the nature of your Channel all of a sudden people are like whoa wait a second what happened to that other stuff right um it's like being a musician and changing it's like going from Rock to acoustic right like your rock fans are going to be a little disappointed so you have to kind of put on a show it's interesting because um when we're hanging out at the retreat I brought up to you as well that you were known as this hyper disciplined guy and November 23rd 2018 you uploaded monk likee discipline what it really takes to win which is a 2-hour video with slides almost at 500,000 views where you break down how to become hyper disciplined and love pain and just stick through something that is tough and um you shared that you weren't doing that anymore you stopped meditating consistently you had a more flexible schedule I mean even you saying yes to this here right it's something you would have never done and that's actually the advice that you gave to me as well that I should be more fluid and less rigid and I did do that and it actually led to a lot of growth in the last few months so thank you for that one of the things that you said was at the retreat was if something sucks I often think there's something wrong yeah that's not how you used to think what changed well I think part of it is it's a luxury right like a lot of people just want to succeed and they're willing to do anything not not anything but you know a lot of stuff and they're willing to go through a lot of pain but once you're able to do it you realize that you can do almost anything and you may as well pick something that isn't painful right so you don't have to do the thing that sucks um and there's a lot of intelligence to that actually like what makes a good product is something that makes people feel good right to use so like you use an iPhone you use a MacBook Pro it makes it feels good it's nice to use um bad products make people feel not very good and so that difference between like a good product and a bad product is how it feels right and so to make something great you have to be very attuned to feeling and how it makes the user feel right and what I've found is that to do that it has a high like correlation to how the Creator feels making it right it kind of shines through or something um and so there's a lot of intelligence to that actually like maybe you can succeed at at some level doing things you hate and just grinding but what if you found a way that was fun maybe it would I mean if you did find that way it would probably work way B yeah what you kind of alluded to is that you you earn to get to that stage right it's not something you start out with cuz in the beginning you can really start with it honestly like I just don't think anyone even cares for that when they're not successful or broke I think they should be mindful of that really CU maybe they could be a lot more successful but you have a very scarcity based mindset when you're you don't even believe you can make it in using any method right so it's it that's just my experience of it but I have noticed some people they just follow their heart and intuition from the beginning and they never have to go through that stupid thing yeah interesting because I look at a lot of people who have not done that or who who who do that they they follow what they're passionate about and they've never built a business before and and their passion happens to be a very competitive Niche right they're like oh I like Fitness so let me do fitness clothing and good luck you're going to be competing with gym shark how about you just launch a boring gardening product first you learn the stage of stages of business and then once you have some WIS under your belt and some experience you can then go into but I guess it depends on the passion right yeah I mean that's not to say someone couldn't do that it's just the the challenge they're choosing is much more difficult to to make the world's leading gym clothing company and brand is a serious it's a big Market lots of people are going for it and there's some talented people in there I don't know anything about the market by the way but I'm guessing you know it's it's tough um whereas if you choose something a lot more Niche and small and obscure like yeah it's not as you know it's easier right right yeah back to the monk-like discipline versus now being more free flowing what does that look like and why did you decide to I guess just add more chaos into your life well you know there's a danger of like saying things like especially on the internet because they it's they the life is more complicated than words you know and so it's just like how a map doesn't represent the territory it's a map is not the territory and the words aren't the actual life experience right so I think I was a little bit more extreme in that I applied one thing to everything and thought that is the only way whereas now I still definitely have some Monk likee discipline for sure but I'm not so rigid in what happens when I like I'd say my monk like discipline at the moment is is showing up like I wake up pretty much at the same time every day and I show up to work every day and I work hard the whole day um but what I do within that day is more free flowing and not so rigid right um and so that is you know I used to schedule everything out like the night before I'd you know scheduled it all out and I wouldn't let anything interrupt that but I don't really do that anymore um and I also have to be a lot more distracted it it's the nature of my job because there's many teams inside school and if one of them is blocked all of a sudden or they've got a question if I don't answer that right away I'm holding a whole team so I can't put that in a schedule right and sometimes I might have a plan but something I might just discover through some random accident might be better than my plan and I'm always willing to change it but that's more complex than it sounds because the overall plan and goal doesn't really change and it's not like I'm changing niches every day I'm not changing companies I'm not trying a new product I'm working on the same thing every day with extreme consistency but the it's the Nuance that's more free and fun if that makes sense yeah I guess the goal of a billion users stays consistent and just the approach changes to adjust on the fly to adjust to feedback and one of the things I mentioned to you was maybe it was necessary for you to make the change to being more free flowing and flexible because you recently or fairly recently became a dad because that's when all the consistency I feel like you must be flexible when you have kids yeah that was that was definitely a helpful experience because you know I'm definitely kind of a control freak and I like to control things and structure them and organize them and and do that having a kid you cannot control them right you can't create a system you can't create a schedule you I mean you can't really do much at all to control them and you have to be very reactive and iterate live um and go with the flow too right and if you fight it it'll it'll ruin you um but if you find a way to work with it it's surprisingly like effective and helpful and then I kind of Applied you know just I kind of used that same you know that same kind of experience or pattern or whatever to my business right yeah so instead of having a schedule I just had a list of things to do and yeah I was a bit more reactive and stuff um and because I having a kid taught me that you you know it's kind of it's it's really quite different before to focus I could just block out a whole day right and I was like okay I've got a clean day no distractions I'll Focus but then after having a kid I was like so distracted I was like oh my God but then when you're not you you're ready to go and you have more intensity and you learn how to use those small moments much more effectively and you're kind of doing your thinking about what you're going to do when you can work while you're not working and you you find a way to make it work basically and I found that to be very useful yeah so you don't feel like it has taken away from your productivity and maybe has even added to it cuz I've heard from other people before that when they had a kid they actually felt like they should have had a kid sooner because it just don't think anyone should have a kid to be more productive um definitely not that's definitely the wrong reason but you I don't think I grew up until I had one yeah so you just have to take a lot more responsibility it makes you much more um I do think it makes you more compassionate and I do think probably the biggest benefit is actually just how much more rich and joyful life is and that gives you a lot of energy and inspiration yeah in 2019 I saw a video of you why you can't do the work um and that was a big shift for me at the time because I just sold my first business and I was forcing myself into starting a new business because I was like oh I'm an entrepreneur I have to do the next thing and that video made me consider that maybe I'm having such a hard time getting back to work because my heart's just not in it if you can't do the work that's the lesson that I took away from it your heart's probably not in it I feel like that's something we already touched on with with school right M and one of the things you said as well at the retreat is that people can just tell when something is pure don't try to create a brand just figure out from the inside who you truly are and what you really care about how would you go about that I think it's quite hard to do and I think it it can't be done fast because it's like peeling back layers right layers of fakeness um and it's not like it's all intentional actually it's not like you know all the where all of these different places where you're being fake it is not actually you're not aware of it fully I mean you obviously start with the places that you know right but you really have to get good at figuring out what you like and what you don't like and and then you have to make sure that that's real why you like it and not you like it because other people like it that's the hardest one right because like sometimes I see some people wearing some clothes and I'm like that looks ridiculous and it looks uncomfortable but it's the fashion right and I'm I ask myself like does that person really like that and I'm pretty sure they don't but I'm I'm pretty sure if I asked them they would say they liked it and they would think because it looks good but if you were to look back at that person's choices over time they're changing their mind right and it just so happens that their mind change perfectly correlates with what everyone else has done with their mind change so like it's clearly not their choice right like it's too that's too uncanny to be to be real um so really they like it because other people like it and they want to be perceived as cool or something and there's nothing wrong with that by the way people can do whatever the hell they want I don't care but it's it's not there it's not their like choice right it's not what they really like and I think this is there's quite a lot of depth to this because they would say that no it is and then who am I to tell them what they don't what they actually like and don't like right um but it's getting into that kind of territory also if the people you hang out with are kind of fake that can make you kind of fake and if the environment you're in or whatever right um that can make you you know you you adapt yourself to fit in with certain things and you know even using social media for sure like I'll give you a perfect example um since the launch of Instagram black cats and dogs sales have gone down because they just don't photograph well right I can see that and the certain weird cats and dogs they have sales have shot up like those cats that look like tigers I know those ones shot up right and you know all kinds of things are distorted by these different things and it's not that this is this is very messy how I'm going about explaining this but this is a hard thing to explain right it's not like I can just give you some canned response am I making any sense absolutely absolutely I mean there's just societal biases that brainwash us into believing this is what I should want because this is what gets rewarded in society M and it gets to the point where we believe that is what I want I think I see a lot of comments too or I've spoken to people from my community that feel almost guilty for just having a normal 9-to-5 having a girlfriend and boyfriend having a cat and a dog and just living a very simple life and they enjoy it but they feel like they should want more but they don't but what they see online is mediocrity sucks just live life to the fullest but they're living this life and they enjoy it but they feel like they should want more they want to want something else but do they creates a lot of pain that's the question do they really um because they're just seeing that on the internet right yeah and so that's why I don't have social media like I don't use Instagram at all I don't that has got to be one of the hardest ones um because your con people are presenting themselves how they want to be presented so it's like a very out that is like the definition of a constructed character in life portrayed deliberately with a lot of intention right versus just what it is actually and then that's but the danger of it is is when people look at that they really think that's how it is and then they compare that to their how their life really is and the Jer position is so Stark that they feel so bad it's so such a like dangerous setup really you know cuz my wife used to look at it a lot and she would show me these videos and she's like oh my God look at this family they're traveling all the time why don't we travel more and I'm like dude This Woman's a psychopath first of all because if you're traveling overseas with kids twice twice a week you're a psycho first of all I was like I was like that is you don't want that trust me like you've forgotten what it's like to get on an airplane and go through an airport with kids um and second of all we travel like a lot I was like think about your childhood and how you were you grew up how often did you go overseas or fly anywhere and look at how often we fly places every year right so I like bought it back to reality and she was like oh yeah and that that that happens multiple times and then finally after like 3 years or four maybe she was like I think I I don't need to look at this Instagram anymore yeah and now she doesn't she doesn't use it yeah you never know what's going on behind the scenes I mean I there there are channels on YouTube as well that go on all these cool adventures and they document them and I mean I've made big shift too with my content where I would make these really high production videos oh we're going to do Navy SEAL training we're going to hire two Navy Seals to train me and the laziest friend that I can find it'll be funny and it was just I mean even the the experiences that were actually supposed to be fun they were they were a nightmare because it's work you have to you know have a whole production team with you and uh it's just uh and even these channels that that go on adventures and they go on travel Adventures the creators are burning out right on schedule like every it's it's about every 5 years somebody goes I can't do this anymore and I've been miserable this whole time and it's actually really stressful and everyone wa watches it and they're like oh I want to do this too but nope you don't um one of the things you said too was the best creators and artists do what they want not what the audience wants and you told a story about about Bob Dylan who switched from acoustic to Electric can you retell that story yeah well he you know Bob Dylan was an acoustic artist right so he played the guitar that isn't electric um for people that don't know what that is and that's what his fans loved him for and everything but he just felt like playing electric and he started coming up with some songs and you know when he was in people would buy concert tickets to come to his concert he would play the first half of the concert acoustic he' play the hits cuz that's what everyone's there for right but then he would change to Electric so he kind of gave people what they wanted and then he kind of played the things that he was into and at first people booted him like hard but then they learned to like it and then I think he had his best album ever I don't think people do great work when they aren't following their passion or their heart right um but that doesn't mean you have you you can deny your audience too there's like a healthy way to transition I think and that's what I think everyone's too scared to do I think they get burnt out because they've changed their mind and their maybe the things they used to say they don't agree with anymore and so you know now being in that character or doing that performance it's not right and it's killing them basically to keep it up but if they change their audience will hate them so like you know that that's the typical kind of dilemma I think for an artist yeah yeah or even an entrepreneur I mean that's what you went through I guess 5 years ago five six years ago with consulting.com and it took you about 5 years is to actually make good money with it I think you even mentioned that you put most of your own money into it um and you're just stuck with it and I feel like this is something I'm going through right now as well switching to long form podcasts instead of the high production videos that I used to do and I mean right now it's it's tough because the views on what they used to be they will pick up again but right now I'm getting a lot of negative feed back people are unsubscribing every video that I upload um negative comments but I know if I just stick with it in in a year or two it won't matter and so I think it's a common experience for a lot of people that you have to get worse first in order to get better when you switch Yeah and people don't like change right so like it's and I don't even blame them honestly because there's some like musicians that I like like lead Zeppelin and stuff and if they came out with a totally new sound I most likely would not be into it at all and I would just still keep listening to their Classics right in fact that happens to almost every band that I've ever followed as they progress I don't like a lot of their new albums it's just kind of natural honestly but they pick up a new audience right some people might fall like from the classics and love them all the way through but it's just normal you just have to like really think about it properly instead of panicking yeah one of the things that also really stood out to me when I learned from your videos back in the day that's by the way how I found you I saw you in Facebook ads like a lot of people and then I ended up seeing you on YouTube and I watched all your YouTube videos and then I just bought the courses because I was like I just want more content I don't want start a Consulting business let me just let me just learn from him um and what really stood out to me was the way you thought and yeah the way you introduce systems thinking first principle thinking the scientific method and it was just very appealing to me and I I know that with your software you get to apply all of that because there are dozens of fature requests so many things things that you can focus on do we focus on getting more users or do we focus on building out our platform or hiring people or getting more sales there's so many things you could do and I think anyone listening to this podcast whether they're working on a business or just in their own life how do you decide what to focus on because there's so many things that you can do is there some sort of mental model that you have or thought process that you go to that helps you define what problem to tackle first well it depends like what we're talking about I don't have maybe I have some generic thing or tricks I use but I guess there's different like levels to anything right so at first I don't get stuck into the details because what is the point if that's not even the direction you want to go in right so you have to think more broadly at first because that one choice you're not going to be able to escape later um like what Market should I focus on right like um what kind of company do I want to make what kind of product do I want to make and do I want to make something simple do I want right you you make a lot of these choices early on and they're very important and you they're hard to change later so you should be very slow and careful with them um but then in the you know in the daytoday noise of it like if people are just asking for features I use the product myself so I have my own experience right I talk to people that use the product a lot and I get a sense of their experience and frustrations our company also has goals right and we also have like resources like teams and engineers and things right and I have to factor in all of these different things and I Sometimes some things just fit I'm like oh I was experiencing that problem everyone I talked to was experiencing that problem and if we fix that problem it would make school better to use it might also help with growth and that engineering team over there doesn't have any work lined up for their next Sprint and they're actually really strong at this type of feature right and with if we did this one first it would that one would work second and so like it's it's extremely complicated um and this is what I spend most of my time doing like it this is like at least four or five hours a day of thinking about this kind of stuff but sometimes you find a perfect com a f a perfect like combination of things or very close to perfect and it's almost like it was meant to be it's like and that's always what what you're looking for I think um whereas some things people ask for are like just totally random and like I'm like no if we did that it would ruin the product right very easy I'm like there's no way in hell we're ever going to do that that's mad it's so it's very easy for me to dismiss the things that are stupid that we definitely shouldn't do but then you're left with a lot of things that you we will probably do and all of them are good then the hard part is choosing which one of those right and you can't do all of those either so you have to be very selective and that's where the hard choices are when you have like 20 options and all of them are great and all of them are needed now and if you did all 20 you would ruin it so which few things will you choose and in which order will you do them in and sometimes it can just be a very simple addition right where we for example I think you told the story of some sort of affiliate feature that you wanted to add to school and you were thinking about it and it ended up being this complex thing and you made a list of a dozen things that this thing could need or what it could look like and then you just hopped on a call with a user and you asked him a few questions and he was just like yeah I just need to get the email and and that's all that was needed and then boom you could simplify a problem like crazy and I think uh that's what people like to do in general not just whether they have a software company or a business but also in their life where sometimes you just need a little tweak of something and it makes a massive difference yeah well this is what I mean by levels because what I was the process I was just explaining was like what should we do next but then once you've decided that like oh we're going to improve the affili its experience well what should we do to improve that is another question once you've just but you there's no point of in thinking about that unless you've first of all decided that that's what you want to do and then once you know that's what you want to do then you've got to think about like what am I going to do to do that we're talking in AB we're talking abstractly here so it's like I don't know if people listening are going to be like is this is crazy talk but like it's lot easier to talk about something that really happened and then it like maps to that what we're talking about but we're trying I'm trying to take something I do very intuitively and naturally and theorize it which is is hard I don't have a process I follow I do not pull up a notion dock with a f like checklist and a and a tagging system in it like no anyone that uses that to do something like this is going to miss by a mile there there is no process you follow in fact anyone that's going to follow a process to do something like this will Mees mess it up it's messy and random and the process really is just like you have to sit with it and think about it and give it time and and talk to lots of different people and and it's hard and you struggle with it and something happens right yeah yeah I think that perfectly Segways into the next Point uh because you mentioned this video that you saw of Mark Zuckerberg at The Retreat that we were at um where he was in in the early days of Facebook and some TV Dude asked him hey Mark what books do you read or what mentors do you have that that guide you through this and he was just like what do you mean what and um he was confused cuz he he didn't he was just like um nobody has built something like this I'm just figuring it out as I go and you mentioned that Steve Jobs admired Mark Zuckerberg because he could also just work on intuition alone and it seems like that's what you're doing here there's no there's no YouTube video that you can watch on the 12 steps on whatever there's no spreadsheet there's no process there may be some mental models or questions you can ask yourself but the complexity is infinite and so I think this is where intuition becomes necessary and just having like you mentioned a feeling it's just a gut feeling how do you develop that do you work a lot with your intuition does that resonate with you yeah so how do you sharpen your intuition well it's it's like peeling the onion first of all you have to know what signal is real and what isn't right so and you also have to just tune your the signals that you're receiving so for example looking at Instagram or Twitter too much signal like just it's just piped straight to your brain like and it's random it's chaotic and it's all over the place and so even if I look at that I'll lose it for a little bit um because I'm there's just too many conflicting thoughts in my head and there's no reason why they should be there um so you have to like really figure out what you like what you don't like which takes time you have to I think you have to develop your own taste right and you do that the same way you develop taste for food like everyone knows what food they like hopefully um and that means you just have to try lots of different things and start to realize I don't like that I do like this and then let you know you have to you have to explore I guess you have to try lots of different things and you have to start collecting I also think you have to expose yourself to high quality so I I read this thing and it said that the problem why a lot of people can't achieve the success they want to achieve is because they think the work they are doing is good enough right it's not that the like egotistical or anything in that they they know it's not and they they're deliberately just thinking oh it is and it's not like they're lazy either it's it's more complicated than that it's that they haven't experienced great right and so it's just like if you lived in a cold climate the whole time where it got dark at like 3:00 you don't know what other climates are out there right so you have to be exposed to something to to understand it and until you've had exposure to something great you really don't understand what great is and so I think you have to try a lot of things you have to try you figure out what you want and then you have to experience great and I and I think it helps to experience that in a lot of different dimensions like maybe it's music maybe it's it's Sports maybe it's art maybe it's a car maybe it's architecture right the more different things you experience great in helps it helps you develop a taste for great stuff right and this is just to develop a taste but then so now you've got a taste and you've also you also know what you want right like what what you personally like and I think that that helps a lot in making choices that are more in intive cuz it cuz it's now it's no longer a thought like oh so and so's tweet said that this art was good so therefore this art is good and so I think this art is good and so I like other art that looks like that art right but you you fully that one up like that's that's not how it works you should choose something because you personally like it and you have seen a lot of stuff and you personally believe it's at that standard and it means something to you it's just sharpening this skill like cuz you cuz now it's a feeling for you and I think that's what intuition is I think intuition is more of a a feeling sense um and it's also got something to do with pattern recognition I don't know I've never actually sat down and Tred to Define what the hell intuition is there's also something that I'm very certain is is real which is like some kind of like Global Consciousness that everyone's kind of tapped into all the time right it's like why the same people get the same kind of ideas at the same time there's definitely something there right it's like if you spend a lot of time with a person you can kind of sense you don't need to use as many words and you kind of get a sense of what they like and don't like and everything and I think it really helps to develop that that kind of psychic like sense with your with the people you're making things for right this is very abstract again but I think if you've got a real strong connection with the people and you can sense what they want and everything and then you have good taste and you've experienced great stuff and you know what you want now you're trying to find this perfect kind of overlapping right where it's something you like but it's also something they like in it do do you get what I'm saying MH I think you also told the story of how after a year of relentlessly searching you finally found your business partner and I think that's how you described what it was like talking to him because you would say something and maybe you also said what you just told me which is like oh that's kind of abstract but you get what I'm saying and he would just nod and be like yeah and you you just got each other did I remember that correctly yeah well you know this is you know some life's interesting right so like you when you work with some people you have to explain yourself in painful detail you have to like really say really just put a lot of effort into explaining something and then they still don't get it you got to explain it again again again maybe you got to do draw diagrams then they show you something and it isn't what you meant and and you iterate your way to First and understanding and maybe it never actually works but there's other people you meet where you just say like a few words and the other person you just have a feeling like the other person understands what you're saying like it's like whatever you can see in your head when you're explaining it with words cuz I think well that's at least what I do with language I first visualize it and then I use words to share the picture right and I'm like whoa does he really I think he can see it and I've barely spoken and then he goes away and does it doesn't even do it exactly how I said does it he understood it so well Does it Better than I had imagined or could articulate right and then I'm like oh my God I never knew such a thing existed right like there are those kinds of people and connections right and that that's something special like I have that kind of with my wife too and my business partner it's very special when you find that it makes it makes doing anything a lot easier and it's not so exhausting and you do kind of have these special like these special things happen that were not planned or intentional that end up making something great yeah going back to the idea of following your intuition versus just following others and what others are saying there are lots of really intelligent and successful people that I know personally that really look up to you and you have a you have a a cult-like following I don't know I do I yes I would say so would you would you say you don't I don't really know because I don't make videos anymore I don't even send emails I don't have social media and I you know I had some influence before like if I sold a course it would work it could you know but never like on the scale of the big influences sure I I don't think it's about scale necessarily and I know I'm putting you on the spot here but uh I I think um yeah I think you have a very loyal audience and I think you had a big impact on a lot of people and yeah they I think people are people gravitate towards people who small and loyal I would agree with small and loyal I would agree with because the people that were my customers or fans they were long time but never never big that's was the thing yeah yeah yeah yeah but I think people gravitate towards people who think for themselves who are unorthodox and I think part of your qualiity is again a lesson that really stuck with me and what I learned through you is um everyone is proven wrong until proven right and kind of this contrarian thinking just questioning everything whether it's whether somebody says oh this is the greatest thing ever is it really or somebody says oh this doesn't work anymore that's a pessimistic view by the way so I would never say something like that anymore like everyone is pro wrong until proven right because it's so extreme like sure like that's not how I treat my wife yes of course of course defitely yeah but do you see what I'm saying about the danger of saying things especially on internet yeah I exper I experience it too and but I'm able to well I struggle with it too because I say things and then somebody says well but what about this but then it's usually some sort of dumb example that's obvious that's like H like of course like use some nuances so I'm I'm this is why I just don't try to say things by the way because there's no way to put a strong opinion out and not have to defend it and take some criticism and then there's no escaping feeling like you need to conform to it even when you change your mind so it's just like the problem of putting an opinion on paper and put putting it out onto the internet you know yeah or you put it out and when somebody criticizes it you just ignore it it's tough but I think it can be done because I think there's always a there's always a loud minority that just kicks and screams and just like but what about but what about this but I think the vast majority they're just silently watching and they're like yep I get it like I know he doesn't apply that to his wife you know they don't need to be told that and I've noticed for myself making content that while I Was preparing a video while I was scripting it scripting the intro I was like oh I shouldn't say that because someone in the comments is going to say this oh I should also add this disclaimer because some people might say that but it's just the loud minority and it's exhausting um but that's why I think podcasts are a lot better cuz the Nuance it's a medium that where the Nuance can be explored right whereas if you're trying to put out a like a spicy tweet right like it it has to have some spice to it to go viral but that spice kind of makes it extreme and not so useful yeah yeah it's funny that you bring that up uh this whole idea of hey I wouldn't say that nowadays because I remember you saying looking at your old videos you're thinking of taking them down because a lot of when you're talking about my old videos I just am like oh God I should have know before old videos I'm like holy [ __ ] yeah I should have I should have uh taken that into consideration before recording this so I guess what would be the take today is um some things are some things should be proven right first before you believe them is maybe a more nuanced idea well if it's a about like constructing your own worldview or trying to figure out what's true and what isn't I think first of all you have to decide to just not care about most stuff right because there's too much going on in the world to to have an opinion or to even try it's exhausting to try to figure out what is actually going on and what is actually real and what you actually think about anything right like that's so you've got to reduce your the field that you care about honestly um to something that is manageable um so I don't know a lot about a lot like I honestly have no idea about so much stuff it's kind of crazy um but I've chosen the zones that I do want to be knowledgeable in I started by listening to a lot of opinions right which I think the problem with opinions is that people State them as truths no one says hey here's my opinion and I'm I'm could totally be wrong and here's the doubts I have with it and right like no one says it like that they just say something extreme um in in a very convincing way and then build a whole career around it so they have to defend it so like that's what happens to you when you uh when you're new is that you know you're like a little kid if a if an older person tells you something you're like you don't question it right um and so when this more experienced person tell tells you something with conviction you're probably going to think it's true right and maybe it is maybe it isn't I think your gut instincts are way better than you believe first of all right so if something doesn't feel right or sound right there's probably something to it I used to ignore that way more than I should um but and now I I think there's a lot of intelligence in that right that that can be a good a good guide to help you um the other guide that can help you is maybe that's just not your style and maybe you can find a different style there's so many ways to do anything right and the different opinions will inform these different styles and you can find one that does fit for you right but the other one is those are good like filters to start with like gut instinct and is this my style or not but really the only way you find out for sure is by doing it um but you can't you don't you don't have enough time to do everything so you need some proxy filters to like you know you need to choose your Zone that filters out all of that then you need some proxy filters like your instincts and intuition to help filter that and then you've got some things that you you believe and and you're going to try them and trial and error is ultimately going to be what helps you the most and I think the people that have done achieved great things in any field it's a universal kind of pattern that I I observed is they found something that everyone thought was wrong and they made it their style and it turned out to be better and no one understood it but it worked and that's G that's what that's where you achieve like Mastery I think in the beginning you're just trying to find some good sources of information and you follow them good enough and you can achieve success fine but you're never going to break out to that totally different you're not going to become an outlier unless your fundamental philosophy is different than everyone else and that means that you're going to have to do some things that everyone thinks are wrong that's that last Zone and no one will tell you what those are by the way you have to because you know the way a lot of people get popular is by conforming to the mass right so if everyone says something and you jump on it you also get applauded by everyone else that believes that right so it's it's it can help you to conform like that to choose something else can actually you have to have very high conviction in it um yeah do you even get what I'm saying here absolutely yeah and it's often amazing how long people will not believe that it's right even when you do see that it you you're pretty sure it's right um so yeah that's what I would say which is not as clean as everyone is wrong until proven right but it seems like the shift that you've gone through is you've been making videos that had to be applicable for people and back in the day you have to give them some sort of framework and when you were able to just stop making videos and you're like hey I'm done with this the the the new approach for you now is just hey there's no right or wrong everyone has has to figure out their own way of doing things their own world viw their own way of operating in the world and that's not really something that you can teach in a video with a process or a checklist or something like that right so well doing is messy and I do and I have no care for how it comes out when I try to explain what I do right but I think when your real product is what you say about what you do you change what you do to better fit how it sounds when you explain it so you know which one is driving which one is dictating it for me I just want to do a good job make a good product I don't care about anything else I never give a moment's thought about how I'm going to explain something I've honestly never even tried to think about it until you ask the questions because no Who the hell's why would I think about that it makes no sense but yeah if you're trying to make it a notion template it's it needs to be different right I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of the productivity notion people they need to make something kind of crazy in notion for it to be like desirable which makes no sense to actually use never but but it's sexy it's sexy you see it you're like I want that template give it to me that is a juicy template dude it's that's how it is seriously some people show me their like systems and I'm like good God like I just literally have a notebook like that's it I was going to say the exact same thing I'd have this this is my notion template yeah I have a note not app and I show up and have a coffee and then that's it like there's no fancy system in fact the only the times I've I've tried to use something more complicated it always has turned out to be a bad choice yeah I feel like it's a cycle that people go through where in the beginning well that's what I see a lot they follow other people's advice they have the complexity they use the tools of other people and then they boil it down to just oh I don't need this do you think that's necessary or do you think somebody could just go straight to the Finish Line basically and because that's just the pattern that I see with people yeah well it's like it's if you're just scrolling these feeds right like people get distracted like and people the way people talk on these feeds is with high conviction and so you know you're this person trying to figure out how to be successful and you don't really know who to listen to and you someone is like this notion template is the way and they say in a very convincing way and it looks fancy and you're like this must be it because I've just got a pen and a piece of paper right um and you get suckered basically um yeah I mean maybe it's a maybe I do think that you've got to go through a lot of these experiences there's no such thing as just you have to make a lot of mistakes to learn right so there's nothing wrong with it and maybe some people actually get benefit out of the psycho notion template right I don't I doubt it but maybe there is some psychos but having that experience of getting suckered and it not working and then retreating back to what feels right for you which is just this piece of paper gives you the strength next time you see a fancy notion template to be like wait a minute I've been here before and right like this you get suck it again yeah you're like I'm not going to get suckered again or maybe you got to get suckered four times before you learn that lesson but I certainly have been suckered in almost every way you could but maybe that's it kind of reminds me of that saying Michael Jordan said he said I failed and failed and failed and failed so much and that is why I succeed right because that's how if you really think about it that's how everyone succeeds by learning what not to do by doing it and it not working so like yeah I don't you got to you've got to go through it but I think it can be helpful to know that those shiny complex things often it's often just the beer Basics honestly like it's just the amount of time you spend doing something how much you love it how consistent you are and how pure you make your practice of it so like there's no things kind of pulling distracting you from the essence of the thing is there any other big thing that you look back on in your old videos and you're like yeah N I would probably almost everything I don't even know what's on that channel first of all cuz I just have ignored it for a few years now but I don't even want to look at it like even the thumbnails because you know it's just I I've always hated looking at myself on video hearing my own voice and I know my opinions will be very different and so um I would just say most of it too opinionated too extreme and without really giving credit to there's many ways to do something there's many different styles and you should find your own and the only way to do that is to go through some trial and error right so yeah but mine was more rigid opinionated like this is the only way kind of thing