YouTube Video — Transcript

13 lessons I learned after graduating college from The Real World that I wish I had learned earlier. The first is that you make better decisions and you learn more by assuming that you're dumber than everyone else. The reason this was something that took me a long time to learn is that when I was in college, it was all about showing how smart you were. It was about talking more in the group meetings, about raising your hand more in the classroom. I took that and started translating it in the real world, and I realized that I didn't learn very much because I was the one talking all the time. It only took a few times of me getting introduced to somebody, someone would introduce us, and I would basically spend the whole time blabbering on about how great I was and how much I knew, only to find out later that this person was way above me in business and whatever things that I was pursuing at the time. Then I felt tons of shame and embarrassment about how stupid I was for doing that. I had to shift the way that I talked to new people and the way that I entered rooms. I'll be real, I still talked probably too much, but at least being aware of that lesson as early as I could, I wish I had learned it earlier. Fundamentally, you can't learn if you're talking, and so if you're trying to learn, then don't talk. Talking is the first requisite for doing that, and if you want to make better decisions, then you need to learn. This was a big epiphany I had. I got introduced once to somebody. I was walking peripherally after I had left, and somebody else went up to them and was like, "Do you know who that guy is?" In that moment, I realized that my positioning was now sky-high because I didn't have to be the one to say it. The idea that I realized was, how can I get other people to edify me? Because what I had to allow people to do was to make the same mistake that I used to make, which is that someone young, someone inexperienced, someone less aware, whatever, would come up and then start posturing themselves and blathering on about everything that they're doing. Me, I might be way ahead of them, but I would listen and see if there's anything interesting. On that conversation, I learned more than they did. I learned what type of person they are. I learned where they're at with their career, if they had anything interesting that would be worth following up with. They learned nothing. They felt good about themselves and then later would feel bad about themselves when that other person went over and told them. So I was like, of these two scenarios, which would I rather do? Would I rather have someone have a conversation with me and then not know who I was but be able to learn because that's the worst-case scenario? Or would I rather blather on, learn nothing, either I am above them and then they're like, "Well, [expletive] that guy, he brags," or I'm below them and I'm the [expletive]? So I stopped doing that. So that was lesson number one. Lesson number two was that the hardest respect to earn is one’s own. What I realized, and this was something that was really hard for me, is that I had a pretty bad reputation in the very beginning of my college career and in all of my high school career. It was because I drank too much, I was irresponsible, I slept around a lot, and I wasn't representing the temperaments that I wanted to be. I felt ashamed of the behaviors that I did, but I didn't change them. It was only through a conversation I had with my father where I said, "How do I change my reputation? How do I get these people to stop saying this stuff?" I thought there was some PR marketing angle that I could take, that I could control the narrative. He said, "Why don't you stop being a piece of [expletive]?" And he said that in his own words. I was like, "That can't be it. I'll figure out a way." When parents talk to kids, they're listening but they're not listening. That really stuck with me, and I started thinking about it. I said, "Well, if I wanted to be somebody who's respectable, what would I do?" So then I tried to start acting in that way, to be someone who's respectable, my own respect I would earn. When I started doing that, nothing changed externally. People still treated me like I was a piece of [expletive], and they were probably right, but my behavior began to change, and then slowly so did my reputation. It started with me trying to respect myself first, and then others began to respect me as a result. If you want to control what people think, control what they say. This is the third lesson I learned, and this is more of a business marketing lesson. If you want to talk about products and services, you have to equip people with the words to describe what you have. Otherwise, you're asking them to solve the problem of how to describe your business. If right now you can't even figure out how you're going to describe your business and you own the darn thing, how do you expect them to do it in half a second when they're telling their friend? This is really about equipping people with simple language so they can communicate what you do. For example, at acquisition.com, the mission when I started the business was to document and share the best practices of building world-class companies. Most people don't know what that means, so I have now, and we probably will shift the language to make real business education available to everyone. They functionally mean the same thing, but giving people the words to describe it in a way that they understand allows me to give them more so they can explain to somebody else. You get more out of reading one book that's great five times than out of reading five mediocre books. I don't read many books, and what I mean by that is I buy lots of books, I skim most of them, and quickly realize that it's not worth reading, so then I toss them aside. Just because someone wrote a book doesn't mean you need to finish it. It has nothing to do with you; it means that they didn't organize it well. I have found that books that are older, in general, tend to be better because the reason the person wrote it was a different intention. They wrote it because they wanted to transmit knowledge to the next generation, whereas the people who write books now are either writing for money, writing for notoriety, or writing them to sell other [expletive]. If you find books where the author is actually writing because they want to convey knowledge to the next generation, those tend to be better books in my experience because the intent is to actually teach, not to persuade. Slight difference. When you do find those gems, I have realized that if I read something once end to end, I still don't know it yet. I will read a book two times, three times, four times, five times until I can teach the book when I feel like it is worth learning. Once I have squeezed the book for everything that it has, to the point where I can convey the message to somebody else, like I can teach the concepts of the book, which is something that I've done many times, or I'll actually make a presentation on the book so that I can wrap my own frameworks around how I can remember it. That's where a lot of these frameworks come from, because it's me trying to make sense of the world in a way that I can remember. If your behavior doesn't change as a result of reading a book, it means you've learned nothing, which means it was a waste of time. Many people who read books are just wasting their time because their behavior doesn't change. I consolidate once I find something that's good. I plug everything I possibly can into it and suck the juice out of it so that I can change my behavior as a result, which comes from the frameworks and how I think about it. How deeply do you understand the knowledge of the book? There's a handful of books that if you just did them for the rest of your life, you'd win because if you just did "How to Make Friends and Influence People" and you put it into your DNA, you would be successful. Number f...

something that took me a long time to learn is that when I was in college it was all about showing how smart you were it was about talking more in the group meetings about raising your hand more in

the classroom I took that and started translating in the real world and I realized that I didn't learn very much because I was the one talking all the time and it only took a few times of me getting introduced to somebody someone

would introduce us and I would basically spend the whole time blabbering on about how great I was and how much I knew only to find out later that this person was way above me in business and whatever things that I was pursuing at the time

and then I felt tons of Shame and embarrassment about how stupid I was for doing that I had to shift the way that I talked to new people and the way that I entered rooms and I'll be real I still

talked probably too much but at least being aware of that lesson as early as it could I wish I had learned it earlier fundamentally you can't learn if you're talking and so if you're trying to learn then not talk talking is the first

requisite for doing that and if you want to make better decisions than you need to learn this was a big Epiphany I had I got introduced once to somebody I was walking peripherally after I had left and somebody else went up to them and

was like do you know who that guy is and in that moment I realized that my positioning was now Sky High because I didn't have to be the one to say it the idea that I realized was how can I get

other people to edify me because what I had to allow people to do was to make the same mistake that I used to make which is that someone young someone inexperienced someone less aware whatever would come up and then start

posturing themselves and blathering on about everything that they're doing and me I might be way ahead of them but I would listen and see if there's anything interesting and so on that conversation I learned more than they did I learned

what type of person they are I learned where they're at with their career if they had anything interesting that would be worth following up with they learned nothing they felt good about themselves and then later would feel bad about

themselves when that other person went over and told them and so I was like of these two scenarios which would I rather do would I rather have someone have a conversation with me and then not know who I was but be able to learn because

that's the that's the worst case scenario or would I rather blather on learn nothing either I am above them and then they're like well [ __ ] that guy he brags or I'm below them and I'm the [ __ ] so I stopped doing that so that

was lesson number one lesson number two was that the hardest respect to earned is one zone what I realized and this was something that was really hard for me is that I had a pretty bad reputation in the very beginning of my college career

in all of my high school career and it was because I drank too much I was irresponsible I slept around a lot and I wasn't representing the tempers that I wanted to be and so I felt ashamed of

the behaviors that I did but I didn't change them and so it was only through a conversation I had with my father where I said how do I change my reputation how do I get these people to stop saying

this stuff and I thought there was some like PR marketing angle that I could take that I could control the narrative and he said why don't you stop being a piece of [ __ ] and he said that in his

own you know in his own words and I was like that can't be it I'll figure out a way when parents talk to kids they're listening but they're not listening that really stuck with me and I started thinking about it and so I said like

well if I wanted to be somebody who's respectable what would I do and so then I try to start acting in that way to be someone who's respect my own I would earn and so when I started doing that

nothing changed externally people still treated me like I was a piece of [ __ ] and they were probably right but my behavior began to change and then slowly so did my reputation but it started with me trying to respect myself first and

then others began to respect me as a result if you want to control what people think control what they say this is the third lesson I learned and this is more of a business marketing lesson but if you want to talk about products

and services you have to equip people with the words to describe what you have because otherwise you're asking them to solve the problem of how to describe your business and if right now you can't even figure out how you're going to

describe your business and you own the darn thing how do you expect them to do it in half second when they're telling their friend and so this is really about equipping people with simple language so they can communicate what you do so for

example at acquisition.com the mission when I started the business was to document and share the best practice of building world-class companies most people don't know what that means and so I have now and we probably will shift the language to make real business

education available to everyone they functionally mean the same thing but giving people the words to describe it in a way that they understand allows me to give them more so they can explain to somebody else you get more out of

reading one book that's great five times than out of reading five mediocre books I don't read many books and what I mean by that is I buy lots of books I skim most of them and quickly realize that

it's not worth reading and so then I toss them aside because just because someone wrote a book doesn't mean you need to finish it has nothing to do with you it means that they didn't organize it well I have found that books that are

older in general tend to be better because the reason the person wrote it was a different intention they wrote it because they wanted to transmit knowledge to the Next Generation whereas the people who write books now are either writing for money writing for

notoriety or writing them to sell other [ __ ] if you find books where the author is actually writing because they want you to convey knowledge to the Next Generation those tend to be better books in my experience because the intent is

to actually teach not to persuade slight difference when you do find those gems I have realized that if I read something once end to end I still don't know it yet I will read a book two times three

times four times five times until I can teach the book when I feel like it is worth learning and then once I have like squeeze the book for everything that it has to the point where I can convey the

message to somebody else like I can teach the concepts of the book which is something that I've done many times or I'll actually make a presentation on the book so that I can wrap my own Frameworks around how I can remember it

that's where a lot of these Frameworks come from is because it's me trying to make sense of the world in a way that I can remember if your behavior doesn't change as a result of reading a book and

it means you've learned nothing which means it was a waste of time and many people who read books are just wasting their time because their behavior doesn't change and so I consolidate once I find something that's good I plug

everything I possibly can into it and suck the juice out of it so that I can change my behavior as a result which comes from the Frameworks and how I think about it how deeply do you understand the knowledge of the book

there's a handful of books that if you just did them for the rest of your life you'd win because if you just did how to make friends and influence people and you put it into your DNA you would be

successful number five is that most Champions do not have something that you do not they lack something that you have it's a different thought process because if all of us have the exact same hours per day it means that they're allocating

their time differently many times they eliminate things that you are still doing they have sacrificed more they have given up things that you have continued to have on your tree 3 as branches that are distracting from growing up Champions when I look at the

people who are further ahead of me they're even more ruthless with their time they even have lower tolerance for friends family people around them that are not at the bar that they hold themselves to for me going through

college or you know when I was younger I always thought it was about adding to your plate saying yes to everything saying yes to opportunity say yes say yes yes when all I did was I just completely got distracted and spread

super thin what most Champions have is singular focus and they are willing to say no to everything else and that took me too long to learn six is that Goodwill compounds faster than money like if you actually think about what

Goodwill is it's that you have positive sentiment and you have a degree of influence over a person's Behavior that's what good will is if one person has Goodwill with you and then shares your stuff with somebody else and you

create Goodwill in that next person you can double your Goodwill or 10x your Goodwill in a matter of 12 weeks 10xing your money in a matter 12 weeks is very very unlikely Goodwill because it's based on audiences and humans can

compound significantly faster than money can and when I realized that that Goodwill could be translated into money if I so desired at a future date then I realized and rather than focusing on the money that I'm trying to make today

water and I focus on the compounding vehicle that compounds at a much faster rate than money does that compounds tax-free by the way building the audience is tax free and then when you choose to have the conversion event you

can do that at your own choosing but if you focus on the audience you focus on the Goodwill that will grow significantly faster than any kind of monetary move but you can still translate that later into money when you

want seven is that you're going to die two weeks after you die most people have forgotten about you and six months after you died no one will talk about you and if they're not caring enough then then it certainly doesn't matter what they

think about your life now because if that's the most significant event that's going to happen in your life which is that you stop living how much credibility or weight should we give to other people's opinions on what we

should do with our lives in my opinion very little unless the person has a vested interest in seeing you succeed comma and the context to provide the advice most of the times it's just worth ignoring because they're trying to live

their own life and they're projecting their own beliefs and experiences on you and you've spent all this time trying to improve your own view of reality the the beliefs that you've shed and shifted that they have not and so what they

believe to be true is what they're casting on to you and if you don't like the life they have then I don't think it's worth listening to eight extraordinary accomplishments come from doing ordinary things for Extraordinary periods of time this is just me speaking

about me but when I was younger my action showed that I was more impatient I always was willing to sacrifice what I had today to get the quick Buck I you know I was always I was Shifty like that

because I just thought that that was how it worked I thought there was some Shortcut I didn't know about and I would see the guys on stages being like this is what we do we do the basics and we do

a lot of it I was like they're just trying to hold the secrets back and I'm here to tell you that that is not true like I wish I could go and shake my college self and be like if you do one

thing for a very long period of time you will get very good at it and it will Compound on to itself and maybe I would listen to me if I mean if future self showed up in my living room now I would

totally listen to him but you know what I mean and so I can't do that so the next best thing I can do is try and Shake You by the collar the thing that makes the action extraordinary is the

commitment to it not the nature of the action itself working out and doing reps is not extraordinary if you saw one set of a workout from me at the gym you wouldn't think oh this guy is amazing look at them quads

it's the fact that you do it for 23 years is what compounds on itself if you listen to one guy make one phone call you listen to one major league baseball player one at bat nothing about that is

extraordinary it's the dedication to doing it over and over and over and over again despite feeling like there's better opportunities despite people approaching you with new and exciting things but saying that you're committed to the original Vision you had and that

reality has not changed in such a way that your native beliefs are no longer true you said I believe that X Y and Z is true and as long as that remains to be true then I will continue on this

path for an extraordinary period of time and that not the action itself but your commitment to the action is what makes someone extraordinary nine if it's worth doing it's worth doing well this is a really great saying I shortcuted so much

stuff when I was younger I just wanted to like get it done get it done get it done rather than doing it well there's kind of two ways you can take the saying which is why I like it so much is that

if it's worth doing it's worth doing well because many times I was doing things that were not worth doing I didn't have the time to do things well because I was doing so many things that were not worth doing the first criteria

is what problem are we solving what am I hoping to accomplish is this worth doing at all because if it is worth doing then I have to understand that to do it comma right to do it well it's going to take

this much time now given that is it still worth doing and if it passes that test of a being worth doing in the Long Haul and because it is worth doing worth doing well then it gives us this lens

through which to see the activities we do so that we can prioritize the things that will make us the most money are going to get us closer to the goals we have and so younger me had more energy

than me does now I make way more money than younger me did is because I do fewer things and I do different things than I did then and now if I write a book I'll take a year on writing the

book because if it's worth doing it's worth doing well because I understand that taking one year today will mean that that book might sit and sell and distribute itself to millions of people over the next 50 years or 100 years or

after I'm dead compared to me just putting words on a page that are pretty good and then shipping it and I think the vast majority of people don't get the difference between good and great the Ocean between good work and great

great work is vast it's five times ten times the work to go from something good to something great which is why you have to be really selective about the few things you choose to do that are worth doing and in being worth doing worth

doing well 10. be willing to negotiate everything except for your values and so there were so many things when I was coming up that like in college even right after college is jobs like I always just took things at face value so

prices terms relationships everything I took it face value so whatever someone presented I said yes or no to I have now realized that virtually everything is negotiable people present with basically their best bad guess and they're hoping that someone takes them by the hand and

says you know that makes no sense what if we did it this way what problem are you solving what problem am I solving and then ask the right questions to get someone else's true desires and wants and then knowing what your own true

desires and wants and what you're willing to give up allows you to make better deals and so I used to think of negotiating as a zero-sum game and it's not at all you can find a way where both

parties get better than they were before which is the entire point that is how negotiating works if you're doing it well and so I didn't understand that I thought everything was an armrest so I thought everything was like this for

that Tit for Tat like no give and I also thought really short about it I was like I was trying to get one over I was ruthless with vendors I swung in the other direction so first I didn't

negotiate anything and then I found out you could negotiate and then tried to get everyone to give me their last penny but then I realized that this long term doesn't create good relationships and they will not be loyal to you at all

which long term has a more negative impact than giving them the extra 10 and having an amicable relationship you want to negotiate everything except for your values I negotiated everything in that second example including my values because I was doing business in a way

that was contrary to the values that I wanted to espouse wanted to embody because the deals we do with acquisition.com for example like I could probably ask for significantly more than I do and I've had many times for people

like I want to give you this I'm like I don't want that because I don't think you know what that means this is what I think is fair today and in 10 years and so it's balancing both your need today

your need in 10 years and their need today and there needed 10 years and you have those four points and you try and find the closest point given your reality and you can explain that this is how you're thinking through it with them

and I think they will appreciate all four data points on the map to come to the best solution for today and tomorrow 11.

[Music] humility this is a big one because I want to be a different voice on this because I have heard all over the Internet recently people saying humility is stupid if you looked up what the word means you wouldn't want to be it because

if you look it up on Google it says thinking less of oneself this is why looking and defining terms is important because if you look at Merriam-Webster for example it's lack of Pride or arrogance I don't think people would say

you wouldn't want that I was like no I think I think people are okay not being popular arrogant I think that's okay but even more so and the definition that I have taken on is actually the exact opposite of that which is it is not

decreasing your regard for self but increasing your regard for others that's from Clayton Christensen who's a Harvard Professor go to the human I thought that posturing when I was younger was the thing that would get people to like me

but what I realized later was that you gain status by giving more to the group than you get this is especially true for guys it's probably true for girls but I can't speak to that if you want to gain

status the way you do it is by sacrificing more for the group that everyone else does if you want to gain status in a company you give more to the company than anyone else does more than company gives you back because what do

they do they reward that behavior the group rewards the person who gives to the group it's how it works the people who take from the group they only go in to get status from the group end up getting banished by the group and batted

down because everyone wants to keep that person down because they don't serve anyone else and so it was only by realizing that I had to give my life in order to get it I had to give status I

had to serve because when you serve someone you're giving them status you're increasing your guard for others when I gave status I got it back when I gave respect first I would get respect back and it was understanding that group

dynamic which is what made me president of the fraternity that I was in all of these things started compounding when I realized that truth and if you do that I promise you you will have all the status you want 12.

the happy man has a thousand Wishes the sad man has won this is a little bit more of a heartfelt one for me because when I was younger I was definitely angrier probably darker in general and a lot of that came because I had

expectations that were fictitious real or otherwise from other people in my mind that existed who were constantly judging the behaviors and actions I was doing every day and were telling me that I was not enough in some ways that

created and reinforced behaviors that I still continue to this day in terms of the actions I take but the way that I feel and think about them has shifted when you are sad you want to not be sad

that's the main focus you want to feel better and many times people will take the short-term way of getting out of that which is alcohol drugs Etc because in the moment they can feel better everyone just wants to feel better and

so when I think about things that I used to think people were wronging me right you know get all angry and I'd spin myself out I use a different frame now which is they just wanted to feel better

do you think it had nothing to do with me and they just wanted to feel better about themselves and that's given me a lot of Peace about many of the things that used to anger me being able to

quiet the hundreds of non-existent voices in my head that were constantly judging the activities that I was doing and labeling them good or bad or good enough or not good enough Etc took up a tremendous amount of my attention and

because of that all of my focus was on feeling better and so I couldn't actually have any energy left over to do stuff because all I was focused on was feeling better and all I was spending all my day was in my head trying to not

feel like [ __ ] and doing both short and long-term things to do that and so it was only when I came up with a mantra which I have said before but [ __ ] happiness which sounds ironic because I

said the person who's happy is a thousand wishes but in choosing not to admit the deficiency between my current state and the future state of what I desire to be I was able to accept where I was and then the deficiency of not

being good enough not being happy enough disintegrated in my mind and then I was able to focus on just doing things and then when I started doing things I started making progress when I started making progress I started looking back

and feeling proud of how far I had come because it wasn't about the many voices outside it was about the only one that mattered and so that shift is what I think genuinely from Spirit social standpoint is the thing that was able to

give me the strength to do some of the things we have done but I wouldn't have been able to ever start on this path because I was paralyzed about what I thought other people were going to think about me only to realize that they

weren't thinking about me at all 13. failure leads to learning learning leads to success success leads to complacency complacency leads to failure and so a lot of times I remember thinking that like there was a destination but I think

the actual entrepreneurial cycle it's not a destination it's not linear it's cyclical and so that's why I talk about entrepreneurship in terms of Seasons because there are Cycles where you learn a lot right I used to say this a lot

where I'd say either the business is growing or I am either I have learned lessons and I am applying those lessons to the business and the business is growing or the business is not growing and has problems and now I am the one

receiving the lessons from the business and until I learned the lesson that I'm supposed to learn the business will cease to grow until I have learned this lesson until I beat this boss at this level and the difference between video

games in real life is that sometimes in order to beat that boss you're not doing it in 10 minutes it might take you 10 years recognizing that you are not above the cycle but that that cycle is inevitable because you have failure

learning success complacency the goal is if you can identify that how quickly can you get back to learning success learning success and try and skip the complacency step altogether it still happens to a degree when I can start

feeling the feelings and it's rearing its head I'm aware of it and it allows me to speed through it faster into the same degree I stop labeling things as good or bad because if I'm failing it means I'm about to go through learning

and I see learning is good and on the flip side if I'm succeeding I succeeding is good and so either way they lead to my success and framing it that way took a lot of the judgment and the label and

the depression around not achievement away from me and also when things are good it allowed me to not be so high on my Supply because I knew that whenever things were good everything is good is followed by something that is not as

good and so you always have regression to the mean right you have regression to the mean and so things are amazing then it means they can only go down from here if things are terrible it means it can

only go up 14 is that I would pay any amount of money to make obvious truths real for me there is a reality that no one can see right now true reality and no one can see it because we are shape

by the many things that we've been told throughout our lives and many of those things were not true much of the path of Entrepreneurship in my opinion is shedding these false truths so that you can see the world more clearly if you

see these business people are super far ahead and all of a sudden it's like they can lose it and then they can get it all back in and things seem so seamless for them it's because they have a more

accurate view of reality than you do and so imagine trying to hit a target with a blindfold on you're just gonna keep missing and keep missing and keep missing now imagine there's a guy next to you who's got a blindfold on too but

it's clear and he's just nailing it and you're like what the hell I'm doing the same thing with my wrist I'm doing you know I've got I've got all this technique down it's simply because he sees the Target and he sees all the

environment around it more clearly than you do and for me the whole concept of ignorance tax and ignorance debt has been one that I have taken with me for life and I actually heard this a speaker said this on stage and he was actually

using it as a close for the audience he said how much is not making a million dollars a year costing you he's like well if you make fifty thousand dollars a year right now he said it cost you

nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to not not know how to make a million dollars and I thought about that and I was like [ __ ] we were paying a Debt Service to a false reality in order

to get the real one and so for me I will pay any amount of money to speed that process up to see the world more clearly in a way that is true and if the views that I have do not serve me and someone

else is further ahead of me in the game than they are better at the game of business than me in some way and in that way I can learn of them doesn't matter what they're doing some people are like

oh this guy's unethical this guy's you can learn from everyone if they're making more money than you you can learn from them and so taking that and taking my ego head off right taking my ego hat off and saying like I'm the student here

this guy's better in some way what does he believe to be true about the world I don't or what do I believe to be true that isn't and simply trying to observe to see those realities is something that

I will always pay for if you're a company and you're doing 10 million dollars or more acquisition.com would like to help you get 200 million if that's you go to acquisition.com everybody else enjoy all the free stuff