Learning Quickly, Gamification, Iteration, and Mastery

Most people procrastinate their way to mediocrity. Take the risk, don't talk about it, start doing something today.

More advice like this today on Business Brain, the Entrepreneurs Show. Episode 403 for Wednesday, October 26, 2022. Greetings Fol. Hey folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take things like that and we apply our business. We take problems in life, sometimes in business, sometimes just in our lives, whatever it is, and we apply our business brains to them to achieve better outcomes. That's really what it's all about. And to learn more about ourselves. Sponsors for this episode include Shopify. We're@shopify.com SBS. You get a 14 day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. We'll talk more about them in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Gene. And I realize it doesn't really matter where I am. Hopefully, you know, I'm in your ears right now or in your car and hopefully I'm working my way into your business brain over time as you listen to this show.

I like it. Well, you've worked your way into my business brain like that. No, it's true. Like I really appreciate being able to not only share this advice together with you, but to learn from your advice. I mean it like this is same with you.

Yeah, yeah, same.

It's great.

Well, part of this and we could actually probably do a whole show on this concept of, of reiterating. It's almost like an affirmation. It is when I get to come on the show and talk about the things that I believe deeply in and techniques and tactics that have worked very well for me in my business and in my personal life. It just reiterates that to me and it's a self fulfilling kind of thing. So I'm definitely the beneficiary of this as well. Like we, we always argue about. I'm learning the most here every week.

Well, I've learned something this week that I'm going to share with you, Shannon. All right. I'm helping someone who recently had some property foreclosed upon. Okay. A non optimal scenario, obviously. Uh, sure. There's, there's certainly an argument to be made that the business brain should have been, could have been involved, would have been helpful to have been involved, you know, much earlier in this process. But sometimes that's not. The second best time is today, right? Yeah. Yep. So which is fine. Okay, here we are. This is what we're Dealing with. Fine. Okay. The question was, did the property sell for more? There was a foreclosure auction. Okay, fine. Evidently, that's how these things work. I don't, like. I'm not in this business on either side of it. Yeah. So I just didn't know. But the way it works is, you know, the county is in some way involved to sort of handle the auction in some way that, you know, they auction it off. They announced the times and the dates. If you're paying attention, you'll see those.

On the courthouse steps. Right. Well, or.

Or at the front, you know, at the, the street of the property's address. They can't go on. Right at the address. Yep. You can see it. Can't go in. You know, that's. That's how these things work. Yeah, but the question was, was the amount paid more than the amount owed? Because it's the bank who initiates this foreclosure. Their. Their only claim is the amount of principal and presumably some fees and et cetera, that remains on the loan. They don't. If it sells for more than that, the bank doesn't necessarily get to keep the. The surplus proceeds. In theory, those surplus proceeds would go to anyone who has a claim to them. The former property owner would be chief amongst them. But if someone else had put a lien against the property, they could potentially also have a claim to these. Right, but the fun part is none of that information is made evident to the former homeowner. Because it's one of those things where, as I'm learning, if no one makes a claim, well, then other people don't deserve the money. Stand to profit, and it's a huge business. And as I'm learning, this happens not just with foreclosures, but like tax liens and things. Like, it's not just mortgage foreclosures, but if there was a tax lien, the same thing happened the town multibillion dollar business. So, okay, it's been a couple of months. We've been trying to look up, like, okay, you know, where in the public files are we going to be able to find the foreclosure deed or some details about it? You know, I've been checking various places and nothing came up. And then one day recently, we started getting phone calls from an asset recovery company that said, hey, there is there. There is, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting for you. We can go get it for you. And it was like, okay, all right, like, fine, they're probably scammers. But like, like, okay, this Is interesting. The number that they came up with was not completely unreasonable. It was higher than I would have expected it to be. But, you know, in today's market, like, I don't, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't just like preposterously large. It was like, wow, if that's really true, that, what a nice little thing, you know, silver lining to this particular cloud. Okay, great. So I figured, all right, if in fact these people are telling the truth, then I should, I should just call the, the bank that formerly held the loan. So I called the bank.

Ah, there you go.

You know, let's start there. So I talked with the bank. This is with permission of the person who, who went through all of this stuff, of course, you know, and then the bank needed permission to talk all those things. But that's fine. I offered to help out. It's, you know, I'm comfortable with these weird conversations. It's that, you know, that's like part of the business brain lesson here is just, you know, be, be willing to ask people questions that might seem aggressive, but like, sure, yeah. So fine. So I call up and I say, hey, you know, yadda yaddy, here's, here's what's going on. Can you. Oh, yes, we'd be happy to help you. They forward me along to the right person. Okay. Yep. The first thing the bank starts with is, okay, I have the file in front of me now. No, it's a zero dollar balance on the mortgage. I'm like, yeah, kind of figured that after.

Okay, Right.

I think that was the point of you doing this.

Oh, yeah. Because on the flip side, if it sold for less, the bank would still try to recover those funds.

Maybe, like there's at a minimum, probably.

Issue you a 1099.

Yes.

So they could write it off.

So they could write it off. Yeah, exactly. Something like that would happen. But they were like, okay, yep, no, it's, it's zero dollars. I'm like, okay, that's great. But was there a surplus? And they're like, oh, well, you know, I'm not really sure, but it's a $0 balance. I'm like, okay, great. And so I, I did what I would normally do. I, I painstakingly went through it politely, but as if they were a child explained, you know, that the, the, the property was likely worth X, the mortgage was worth Y. If there was more than one person that showed up at this auction, it sold for more than Y. If there was only one person, it probably only sold for Y, which would have been a shame, you know, so there was some potential equity on the table. The question is, is there realized equity on the table? And the guy was like, oh, I understand what you're asking. Okay, you know what, Let me check. Goes away five minutes, comes back, yeah, the property sold at a loss, but we're going to eat that loss. You have a zero dollar balance. That's. That's a shame. Okay, so now I have the bank telling me this. I have this, you know, asset recovery firm from who knows where. Although their Better Business Bureau rating is. Is fairly substantially high. Like, you know, they seem pretty legit. I mean, they're in a scammy business. They're in a slimy business. They're in a business that no one really wants to have to deal with, you know, but like, okay, fine. So I'm like, all right, well, somebody's lying to me, and it's probably these scammers. So, you know, these asset recovery people, I was calling them scary. So I get on the phone with them, like, okay, can you send me a copy of the contract that you're going to want this person to sign to go on board with you and I? And they're like, of course, sure, no problem. And I, and I even said, I said, you know, it's just weird to me. I said, I called the bank recently and they told me there was, you know, that it sold for a loss. And the guy said something very interesting to me, says, yep, this was Rocket Mortgage. I'm happy to give the bank's name here. He said, rocket Mortgage is. He's like, I don't know how to say this without sounding like a salesperson. He's like, but what I'm going to say is, Rocket Mortgage, you are about to find that Rocket Mortgage is your sworn mortal enemy. And I was like, okay, that's interesting, right? Like, few people say things like that without, like, being able to back it up. I'm like, all right, well, cool. Send me the agreement. Like, fine. So I read through the agreement. There is nothing in there that would commit this other, you know, the person who formerly owned the property to anything other than agreeing to pay a percentage as a commission if and when this company were able to collect. And the percentage was a tiered thing depending on, you know, the amount of dollars that they were able to collect. But, but like 100. But 100% of it was. You will never owe us anything unless we collect on your property. Right? Like, if we need to hire an attorney, that's on us all the Filing things. They even said to me, look, if you're going to be the one handling this, you'd need a power of attorney. We'll take care of that. We'll cover the fees for making that happen. Not that it's huge. You just need a notary and good to go. But, like, still, they were, you know, they're used to dealing with people that aren't comfortable dealing with this kind of stuff. And that's great, but they, you know, they were very polite. And I'm like, okay, so what's the scam again? Like, I'm asking myself, what's their thing? And so I. I'm like, wait, this information must be public if this asset recovers?

That was going to be my question. Yeah, I've got to find county involved.

Exactly. So I did. I called the county. They were like, yeah, the foreclosure deed would be filed with us, but usually it takes a little while. And I said, well, they're like. And looking at the timing, I'm not convinced we'd have it yet. And I said, well, we've. We've been getting these calls from, you know, this. This company. They. If. If they're legit, this is public, and they're like, okay, great. They've already looked at it, right? They've already. Somebody else has already seen it, or they're completely making this up, which would just be. They had too many details to, like, make this up. So. Okay, so I. It's, you know, the woman at the county was like, but let me look. Give me the information. And so I gave her information. She looks it up, and she's like, oh, yeah, it's here. I'm like, amazing. Can you tell me what was paid for the property? Like, you know, I don't need to know anything else. And she's like. She's, like, starting to read me, you know, the book and page number so I can go look it up myself online, which, of course, I did afterwards. And she gives me the number, and it's exactly what I would have expected it to be if this asset recovery firm was telling the truth and Rocket Mortgage was lying. Wow. Yeah. Right? So my mind is, like, pretty evil, right? Well, it gets more.

Pretty evil.

It gets more evil. So I called. I'm like, thank you so much. You saved my life. This is amazing. You know, I. So I got. I went online and I had to pay $8 to print a copy of or to save a PDF of a copy of the foreclosure deed. So now I have this it's like, okay, now I can actually do what I like to do. You know, I can. I can. So I called Rocket Mortgage. Back started from scratch. Didn't tell him I'd talk to him the day before or anything. And. And I just said, hey, you know, same sort of thing. And they get someone. Finally get someone on the phone in the recovery department, their own recovery department. And. And I said, yeah, hey, so here's the thing. You know, we have a copy of the foreclosure deed, and I'm just wondering how we go about getting the proceeds for this. I didn't let them walk themselves into a trap. I wasn't interested in that. I'm just interested in getting this person their money. You know, I'm not. I stand to gain nothing other than knowledge here, which clearly I've gained. And. And the woman, as soon as I got to that point, it went from all friendly to all business. And she's like, we won't be sending you that money. And she's like, because it was foreclosed. She started with this BS line because it was foreclosed upon. I know. This is like, this is. I, I told you you were going to love this story. It's just like, because of this, we. You aren't do any of these proceeds. It just goes back to like, Fannie Mae or whatever, and they absorb this. And so, like, all the things that this guy was telling me were true. And. And I'm like, no, I don't. I, like, I, I'm not an attorney, but I have researched enough of the. The statutes here to know that what you're saying isn't definitively true. That may be the end result of this if no one takes action. But, like, there are people out there and, and one of them is the person that I'm talking about that have a claim to this money. And she's like, well, that's. You're not going to get it from us. And I said, so you're telling me I need to hire an attorney? She said, you can do whatever you want. Anytime someone said that to me, that's the next phone call is when I've hired.

So that's part of their business model, basically.

It is. Exactly, exactly. And it's legal evident. You know, my. I've talked to a few people about this, and here's the thing. Fannie Mae has to, like, deliver and guarantee mortgages that are probably not. That they know are going to fail. Right. Like, by statute, they have to do this. There's, you know, there's laws, obviously, lots of them, about mortgages, but my guess is somewhere in the, the process of agreeing and compromising and creating those laws that allow people to get mortgages, there was an agreement made that. Okay, yeah, look, you don't, it, you are not obligated to, to, to go out of your way to distribute. Yeah. These proceeds. So I'm like, okay, before we give away what, what was going to be 15% of the story. Right. So I called an attorney, I got referred to a real estate attorney. And they, they, they were like, yeah, look, this is probably, you know, maybe five hours of work. You could probably do it yourself. I'm like, yeah, it's not my rodeo. Best to let you know them pay you to do this. But they were like, yeah, it's going to cost, you know, a couple of grand worth of attorney's time, which was going to be far, far less than the 15% that the asset recovery company wanted. So, so you know, that, that was, there were two options on the table now, but like, I think either one of them is going to result in, in this surplus being collected.

I, Yep. You know, I am. Go ahead.

No, I'm agreeing with your, your flabbergastedness. Yes.

Yeah. It just reaffirms my internal bias that large institutions are just, they do not work in the best interest of us, the people.

Certainly true. The banks never believe banks. Yeah. Yeah.

Whether it's a large corporate institution, whether it's like banking institution. I mean, don't get me started on the large government institutions.

Sure.

It's, they lose their connection to us and it's, I mean, that concept of someone's going through tough times, obviously some devastating things have happened in their life to lose their home. Right. And that balance, that Delta could be just the stepping stone they need to recover. Right. And hear this institution that's obviously worth billions of dollars. I mean, they, you know, stadium this kind of thing. I, I know a little background about that.

Oh, yeah.

And their policy is to keep it and, and to, and put it under the revenue column. I mean, that's pretty evil, man. And I don't know if a lot of people know about that, but I'm going to be telling this story for a long time. Yeah, man, that really, it really pisses me off.

Yeah, I know. It pissed me off too. But it's just, I'm shocked.

I, I, I guess I shouldn't be.

Because I have, I know it's, yeah, but I like, you know, these things sort of as a, as a General concept, but when you see it in action and very specific like it was, that was made abundantly clear to me that they weren't just going to offer to stroke a check. Yeah. And I, I just can't.

I can't even see if they said, hey, we, we really have incurred this extra thou, you know, these thousands of dollars in this process. That's very reasonable.

I'm sure they've already assessed fees on all this. Of course. And as well they should. Yes.

I, I will tell you, I broke up a very. It was a good business partnership. I had a company that I owned with some folks and they also owned an insurance company. And I learned a valuable lesson because it was the only time in my life where I gave up control of the accounting department. And I thought, okay, these guys know what they're doing. I'll focus on the deals and generating revenue. But one day I was happy. I started hearing a lot of calls about customers that just were complaining that they weren't getting refunds.

Sure.

And I brought it up to my partners, said, hey, there's gotta be a problem here. What's going on is this not counting. And their concept, because they were in the insurance industry, they said, well, in the insurance industry, we don't give refunds unless you call us and file a claim to get the refund.

Yep.

And I said, well, we're not in the insurance, you know, industry. We're in the computer business. And when somebody sends something back, you have to give them their money. Because I couldn't understand why this account had hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.

Yeah.

That rightly belonged to our customers. And, and we. It. I mean, I drew. I mean, it was a little bit more involved in that, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back where I said, okay, it's time for me to get away and get out of this, this relationship. Thank you for sharing that story. And, and that's. That's brutal. And good on you for representing your. Your friend and helping them get to the bottom of it.

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Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. I love this. You shared this tip, this kind of framework from this guy, Dickie Bush, you know, and first I was like, well, yeah, there's so many people pitching this kind of stuff. But as I read through the concept, I confirmed so much of what I already believe, which is great. But then there was some really good twists to it that I've missed. And I even recognize one thing that I don't do very well that's held me back. So I'm excited to talk about it today on the show and tell us what is the single most powerful skill Dickie Bush thinks that you need to or that you can develop to succeed?

Yeah. And I'll link to this in the show notes. The single most powerful skill you can develop, according to Dicky Bush, is learning quickly. And he goes on to frame this. He says the way schools teach us to learn is a horrible way to learn in the real world. Textbooks, worksheets, flashcards, all of it is a waste. Now, there's some hyperbole here, but that's how you sell stuff. You sell an idea, Right. He says, instead, use this simple three part framework to rapidly learn anything. And he says the key to learning anything is seeing it as a game. So let's, let's dig into that a little bit.

Yeah, I like the gamification concept. I Think is pretty powerful.

Yeah. He says every skill is a game. And he says therefore there are rules, prizes, losers, winners, shortcuts and different levels. And he says the three part framework to win every time is immediately start playing, totally immerse yourself and then iterate and tighten your feedback loops. So let's go through each of those three. Right?

I love, yeah. And I love his first thing because we've talked about it for over 400 episodes. It's action, right? This is a call to action. It's that you need to start, stop thinking and start doing, you know, and really get yourself going because you're, it's your actions that are going to propel you. Right. You kind of build this self fueling system and as you take action that's going to push you a lot further than sitting down and trying to plan. And for, I mean there's people that have been planning to start a business or you know, start a side hustle their entire life and they're still planning it. And you want to go out and start today?

I think so, yeah. Yeah. He says don't think about starting, don't prepare to start. All of that is procrastination. You have to start playing and losing quickly. And this is I think a really important part of this framework. He says you will suck for your first 20 tries of any new game. Your first 20 ads, your first 20 videos, your first 20 Twitter threads, cold calls, workouts, photographs, all of them will suck. And that's a good thing. And I think this is super important because so many of us, especially those of us that occasionally are led to believe that we're the smartest person in the room. That may or may not be true in some of those instances. But those of us who have been led to believe it get ourselves, and I've certainly caught myself doing this into a scenario where it's like, well, if I'm not an expert, I can't do this. And of course the reality is the expert is, comes from experience and there's no way to be an expert without doing it. And hey, if you're not an expert, that means you're not good at it or you're, you know, I mean, yeah, if you've never done it before, you got. Yeah, you gotta get there.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, when I read this I was trying to think back and go, okay, you know, where did I, you know so many times in my business career that this has happened and even back to the beginning where I wanted to be in some sort of business With Apple and with the Mac, you know, I loved it. And I was like, how can I do this? This would be just amazing because this thing empowered me so much and if I could push that, you know, use that passion and start a company. And I thought that we were going to sell whole, you know, systems and all this kind of stuff. And so I jumped in and immediately started buying complete systems and whole computers and everything else. And I was completely wrong. And I could not sell those complete systems. I didn't know how to do it. I was like, I just borrowed all this money. I didn't have any money. I put it all on my credit card and not until someone else asked me to buy a specific component and the cost that they were willing to pay for that component was almost the cost for the entire computer. Did, did I realize, oh, okay, the parts versus the whole, the parts are worth much more and they're. There's a much broader audience for it as well, a customer base. And that's what got me in the parts business. And you know, if I hadn't jumped in and bought, I think I bought like 10 computers thinking I was gonna, you know, start an empire. But I wound up in printers and that kind of thing. And I wound up selling the logic board, the brains of the thing, for about, just about the whole cost because somebody didn't want the whole printer, they wanted that board. And it's stuck with me ever since. I can envision myself sitting behind my computer answering that message on aol. Really date myself. Yeah, but so, you know, I failed at selling complete systems, but I learned how to sell the components and I built, you know, a 30 year career on that. So getting out and sucking at those first 20 tries and making those mistakes, it's. It's so powerful.

Well, yeah, and I mean, you're right, that's a perfect example of this dick. He says, in those first 20 reps, you will learn the rules of the game and what winning and losing looks like. And that, I mean, the first part, okay, the rules of the game, I get that. But the whole idea of what winning and losing looks like, that is what blew me away. Because oftentimes when I start a project, I'll say, okay, I don't know how to do this, but I know what winning looks like. That's what I think in my head. And I'm often wrong about that. You know, I, it takes me far more than the 20 reps to shake loose this grip on what my prior definition of winning was to realize, wait, wait, you're winning, it's just not what you thought. There's a whole different angle here. And, and so having that in my head, this idea that I'm just going to start before I even know what winning means. I mean, losing. Losing is a much wider pool of options. Right. But even winning, it's not just one thing that's predefined or if it is predefined, you don't know it. So. Yeah, yeah, it's. That was fascinating. It is. And he says, you know, the most important thing is that in those first 20 reps there, you will experience your first win. And that is all you need to get hooked. One of them will click. You get the dopamine rush that makes you want to play forever. Like that's the key. And I agree with him.

And it gets easier, I think, after you've done this a few times, and also for me, after you've built up some financial reserves, you can. You feel more comfortable if. And I'm coming from a product aspect because that's been my whole, you know, in my wheelhouse. And so you could jump in and take a risk and immerse yourself and try to figure this stuff out, not knowing what the end game was going to be.

Right, right, right. No, I love this. Taking action. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a big deal. And then, you know, his total immersion thing, the thing that really stood out to me was his thing is, hey, after your 20 tries at anything, you really, you know, what you don't know right now, you've. It's like your concept of what is winning. You're. You're figuring that out. And he points you to the. Find who the best players of your game are. You know, he's, he's using a YouTube, YouTube creator as an example because he's trying to get that going for his business. You know, immerse yourself in their work, figure out how they did it. This is where the problem for me came up, came around. And it's. He says, take their course, listen to their interviews. And I mentioned this to you when we started talking about doing this topic.

Yeah.

And it. I'm suspicious and it's almost like your sense of. You were talking about the story with the company, the asset management. If you just let them take it and they did all the work and they gave you 85%, that's a pretty good deal. But I'm always thinking, I could do this better.

Right.

I can figure out things. I can figure out things independently, and I really have to work hard to overcome this because I have example after example how it's held me back and slows down my progress because I think I can do it myself and that's a mistake.

And then you got to learn. And I had the same gut reaction here. And thankfully it's not my claim. Right. And so with that in mind, it was like, okay, wait, if this were me, I would be on the phone now. I know the attorney that I spoke with actually gave some fantastic free advice, you know, about, hey, you could probably do this on your own unless somebody's gonna fight you, but I don't think they will. You just need to learn who to ask. So here's how it works. And he spelled the whole thing out for me before I ever paid him a dime, right? And it was like, okay, I could, but. And if it were mine, I would. But I'm not convinced that that would be the best use of my time, you know, because I don't need to learn to be a lawyer. I have this inner desire to be a good lawyer, but I'm not actually a lawyer at all. And I'm not going to invest the time to make that change to my status. So better to pay somebody who has put that time in. And that's what's happening here is, you know, gone that route. But if it were mine, I don't think I would have hired the attorney right away. And I, I would have tried to be the amateur expert.

This is the toughest part for me.

Yeah, I have to. That's it.

I have to. Consciously, I'm writing it on my quartet board that I have in front of me at all times. If you don't know what that is, search at businessbrain show and you'll find out. Change your life. But yeah, you have to use those resources. And he's right. Like paying somebody to learn what they are doing really well, it's a good investment.

Oh yeah.

You know, really jumping in. And so I respect this and I think he's totally right. The thing I loved about it is he then talks about you create a one page worksheet about everything you've learned from during this immersion of who's doing the best job, finding somebody that's doing really well and trying to emulate it. This one page sheet is kind of your roadmap, you know, what did they do, what did I learn in the course, what worked for them, what didn't, what, what other resources do I need to employ? That's really powerful and I just love that Idea.

No, I agree. I just. I just wrote down on my. On my. On my quartet here. Don't be an amateur expert, Dave. Seek experience or farm it out one way or the other. Like, if I want to be an expert because that's worth it to me for the rest of my life. Or what? You know, the rest of the product, whatever. Okay, fine. But know that that's an investment that needs to happen. And if I. If, you know, it's pick one or the other because, like, just bumbling around. I mean, look, I've had a lot of success bumbling around. I've also wasted a lot of time bumbling around. We forget the wasted time. We remember the success. And some of that's really good. But. But right now, at this point in my life. No, no, like, farm it out to the expert. Get it done fast. Don't spend the time learning. And yeah, it's. I'm with you. I love this idea, the one pager. If you are gonna choose to gain the experience, well, don't just do it on your own. Find someone who's the expert and distill what they've done. Hey, you know what? We got a review this week from none other than Seth Goldste. Seth Goldstein says five stars. This was on podchaser. A great show. Dave and Shannon really break down what's facing small business owners in today's climate. I highly recommend. Thanks, Seth. We have something we'd like to recommend too, because as Seth points out, entrepreneurship has its ups and downs. It's how we deal with the obstacles that make the difference between success and failure. And we're listening to a new podcast that helps us navigate that path. It's called Entrepreneur's Enigma and who's it? Hosted by Seth Goldstein, a former journalist. Every week, Seth interviews entrepreneurs from all walks of life about their journeys through entrepreneurship, the ups, the downs, and how to deal with them. Episodes of Entrepreneur's Enigma drop every Tuesday at 8am Eastern. Check out entrepreneursenigma.com or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks, Seth. And hey, if you want to leave us a review, do that, please. In fact, we would like you to leave us. We want you to leave us a review. Go to BusinessBrain show reviews. That will get you as close as we can to leaving us a review over there on Apple Podcasts. That would be fantastic. And there's a link in the show notes for this as well. But yeah, thank you, Seth. And thanks to everybody who leaves us reviews. It really makes a difference for everything that we do here in the show. All right, Step three, right? Yeah.

Absolutely.

Critical. It. It is critical. Dicky Bush says, as we said before, iterate and improve. He said. He says, iterate and tighten your feedback loops. At this point, you've distilled what somebody else is doing. You've had your first 20 reps, you've had your first success. At this point, you're a solid player, and that means you're competing with other solid players. And the only difference between the good players and the great players, how quickly you can continue to improve. This is super important. Like the idea of getting to the point where you're good enough to not be terrible is fine, but other people are going to improve past that, and you need to do it as well to continue to level up. Dicky Bush says choose the right next thing to learn and then quickly learn that thing and then move on to the next thing and repeat that cycle again and again. I love it.

Yeah, I do, too. You know, my take on this is like spending your time reading generic business books or taking courses on how to succeed or how to start a business. Rather, as you get going, because you've taken that action, you're already in it, or you're immersing yourself and you get going. Figure out what specifically is holding you back at any one point of this game and focus on learning how to break through what that bottleneck is. So if you're in the case, you know, I don't know, if you're an online guy like Mr. Bush and you're not reaching people or they're not finding you, and let's say the search engine optimization is your bottleneck. Okay? Figure out how to learn enough about that to either fix it yourself or hire someone that can help you fix that problem. Instead of going and reading you know how to be successful or you know how to. How to build a great online business, you have limited time, focus on learning what you need to do to break through those bottlenecks.

I like it.

Powerful.

Yeah, it is. And it's. That's a hard thing to do. And a good skill for our business brains to have is having a little success and then stopping and saying, okay, yes, I've had some success. I broke through whatever I needed to break through. Now, what am I not good at? What am I not doing well? Or what are we as a company not good at or doing well? Those are important questions to continually ask, and yet they are so hard to ask because you don't want to admit. I don't want to.

I Don't.

I'm not going to say you. I don't want to admit that I'm not good at something. Right. Like it's, it's just this innate thing and it's stupid. I like it's just stupid. But. Well, it's there. Yeah, yeah.

And it goes back to what we talked about, I think on last week's show about giving yourself permission to, to say goodbye. I think that was.

Oh yeah, that was one of those.

But it was. Yeah, it was a. Don't waste your time doing something. If after, you know, watching a movie for 20 minutes and it's garbage, turn it off. If you start reading a book and it sucks, stop reading it. Well, you know, don't just read general stuff, general things about your business. Read things that are going to help you get. Solve specific problems. In other words, maybe be a specialist about solving these kinds of problems versus just learning generic. Generic stuff.

Yeah. And great tip. Now Dickie says something interesting that basically sort of wraps up this concept. He says the best players are keenly self aware. Which is, I think if there was one concept that we have developed and come back to and used as a foundation for this show for seven plus years, it's this pursuit of self awareness. I don't know, I certainly am not an expert at it. I fail at it all the time, but I want to be better at it at this point. I think I understand what it is, so I understand what winning is. That took a while, but I'm there, you know. But he says the best players are self aware. They play, they identify a bottleneck, they surgically solve that bottleneck. And to your point, that word surgically, that's key. Solve the right thing. Don't just learn general stuff. Then repeat the cycle. Their feedback loops are 10x faster than the average player. And this compounds day after day after day. This is the goal. I love this. This was, this was one of those things that really resonated with me.

Yeah, the last thing, last comment I have about this. What I, I respected about this thread too is he, he put some credibility out there in the beginning to show how he's used it to be successful at. At certain things that may not. Well, I guess, yeah, some of these are pretty important, but not all of those. All the way back.

Yeah, yeah.

Even he goes back to when he was 11 years old to becoming a pro speed cuber. I imagine that's a Rubik's Cube.

I think that's. Yeah.

You know, and then, then becoming a top 100 Call of Duty 4 player. So, you know, my takeaway is that he's using his business brain from the time he's a little kid as, as you grow and, and adding to his talent stack. And then now you can see him adding to his, excuse me, his revenue stack by sharing all this, these details. And I think it's great. I love the concept. I shared it with my kids this morning. Got some great feedback from them as well as I'm programming them to think like this. And yeah, I'd love to hear.

My kids were the first ones I sent it to and then, and then I sent it to you. So yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Great stuff. We'd love to hear your story. What do you think about this feedback at BusinessBrain Show? Tell us what we got right, what we got wrong and please do go. Leave us a review.

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