The New Way To Wealth Anyone Can Take Advantage Of

If you're watching right now and you're listening, I want you to know there's an alternative way. If you went to college or not, if you're in a job or not, if you're self employed and wanting to go to the next level or you want to be self employed, I want to tell you there's a new way to get there faster. With all the opportunities that exist today, why haven't you reached your next level of income, life, and wealth? In most cases, we've been lied to. We've been told that if you find the right opportunity and you work hard, you can be successful. And that's simply not true. Billionaires, billionaires and successful people have realized you need the foundation for wealth, the habits. And that's exactly what you'll be learning on the Millionaire Success Habits podcast. All success starts here.

All right.

I am so excited for this. It's very rarely I get, like, geeked out over talking to somebody and sharing, but who we're going to be talking to today is Danny Enie, and he wrote a book called Leveraged Learning that I can't share with you enough how much it, like, it solidified my life. It was so impactful and so powerful that I've recommended that book as much as any other book I've ever recommended to somebody because of the impact it's made on me. I mean, I was just taking my daughter to school, she's 12 years old, and I just said, figure out the bribe. I need to get you to read an adult book because I want her to see a new path. I want her to see that so many of these innate or internal feelings we have that there's got to be something else than no college blue collar broke. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I was a blue collar worker my entire 20s, and I loved it. But I'm saying it's like this old stigma of no college and struggle or college and perfect. It's not real. We know the college education system is. This current system is broken. And finally someone put a voice that's easy to hear, easy to understand, and sharing it with the world. And I'm so excited. Danny, thank you for spending some time with me here today.

Dean. I'm incredibly flattered. I'm blushing and I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the opportunity. So I'm excited to share whatever will be of value to everyone who's watching. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Before I have so many questions, like, literally, I geeked out last night thinking of all the things I want to ask you. But if you're watching right now and you're listening, I want you to know there's an alternative way. If you went to college or not, if you're in a job or not, if you're self employed and wanting to go to the next level or you want to be self employed, I want to tell you there's a new way to get there faster. There's a way to leapfrog. And as crazy as that sounds, what I hope to do over the next half hour to 45 minutes is have you exhale and go, wow, I knew this was something. I knew this was here. And now you can have a voice, you can have a process to think through it. And I like to call it, Danny, either self education industry or specialized knowledge. And I want to talk about all that, but I'd love, before we get started, what made you so passionate about writing a book like this and exposing kind of the new way to success for those that want to share and basically those that want to learn?

Yeah. So I had two big decisions related to education in my lifetime, and they were a decade apart and there was this really interesting contrast between them. So the first decision was when I was 15 years old. I decided to drop out of high school and start my first business. And, you know, I was a straight A student as a kid. Goody two shoes. All he had his homework in, like, before leaving class, I was that kid. And then in the ninth grade, it was like a switch gets flipped in my head. And I'm just sitting there in class and I'm thinking, I am so unbelievably bored. I just can't take this anymore. And so I started cutting classes. I disappear for a week and come back and I'm like, they're still talking about the same thing. Nothing has changed. I just can't do this. And so I started cutting classes like nobody's business. And I don't do anything halfway. So the first trimester, I missed 152 classes. Wow. And the number just kept going up. And that went on for about a year and a half. And after a year and a half of this, I just paused. I looked in the mirror. I was like, danny, what are you doing? Like, what's the plan? Is the plan to just keep cutting classes and going to the gym and watching MTV all day for four more years? Like, that's not. That doesn't make sense. I was like, I'll make it official. I'm Going to quit school, I'm going to start a business. And the prevailing narrative around me was, Danny, you are making a horrible mistake. You are throwing your life away. And so let's unpack that for a moment. Danny, you are making a horrible mistake. Okay? People think it's a bad move. You know, I grant that that's a possibility, but the other half of it really threw me. It's like, Danny, you are throwing your life away. This is the end. It's not just that this is a bad move. Yes, it's irreparable.

Yeah.

And I was like, that doesn't make sense. I mean, in a worst case scenario, I could just go back to school. Like, this is a reversible decision. And so I went ahead and I dropped out of school. And for me, it was a great move. I got to do all kinds of things and experience all kinds of things. I was involved in a lot of different startups. I had all this great stuff that I got to be a part of. All good. Fast forward about 10 years and I was building my first attempt at a big startup. So I raised money from friends and family and from some third party investors. We had a prototype. We were in the educational technology space. So experts loved it, kids loved it, and the parents and the teachers who are the actual customers, they didn't get it at all. And I was a young and inexperienced CEO and what in hindsight is like the most complicated industry on the face of the earth. And by the time I figured out how I needed to change things, we were out of money. I was figuring out like what the next move is. I work out the plan and I'm ready to hit the pavement, raise some more money. And that was August of 2008. And so it's September 2008. The markets crashed. It all falls out from under me. There's no money to be had. And when you have a setback like that, you question your life choices. And so I said, maybe a traditional path would be useful, maybe a safety net would be valuable. So I thought, you know what? I think I'm going to go back to school and get an mba. And now the prevailing narrative around me is like, Danny, this is a great move. This is amazing. You are going to have doors open to you. Everything is going to be like laying at your feet. It's going to be the arm over.

Your shoulder again saying, okay, you're not a dreamer anymore. Thank you.

You're getting on the right track. Yeah, exactly. So I apply to a bunch of schools, I get into Queen School of Business. It's one of the top business schools in Canada. I'm Canadian. And by the way, I don't have a high school diploma, I don't have an undergraduate degree. Turns out even universities only value the signal of a college degree in the absence of better signals. But I get accepted into this program and it is not the great experience I was hoping for. Did I learn something? Sure. But you know, we're talking about more than a year, we're talking about a lot of money and you know, a lot of the instruction was mediocre. A lot of the things I learned were, you know, whatever. I could have learned them elsewhere. A lot of it was very theoretical. You know, the brochures promised the future leaders of tomorrow. The classrooms held the middle managers of today. So not exactly what I was expecting to get out of it. And so just contrasting these two things, right? Dropping out of high school, people thought it would be a terrible move with irreversible consequences. Neither of those things were true. Getting that mba, everyone thought it would be a great move. Well, you know, it wasn't. And I'm never getting that time or money back. And that prompted me to just think like, well, something is really messed up in the way we think about education. And that led to a lot of research and a lot of digging, which is what eventually became leverage learning.

Yeah, it's written so well. So I want to start here by saying if you have gone to college and you're considered, we're not poo pooing it like you're bad, it's absolutely the wrong thing to do. It's just the fact that. And I want to share my thoughts for a second, please. A friend of mine who's in the educational space, he's been helping young entrepreneurs for years, built a hundred million dollar a year company by taking high performing high school students, flying them out to Washington D.C. and given weeks of immersion on success, not just academics. Right. And I asked him the other day, because I'm on this terror, just trying to help people have this third route right again. I'm going to go back and say my guidance counselor in high school said, wow, you're not taking your SATs, your grades are bad. Hmm. No college. Okay. There's a factory in town and I know they pay minimum wage, but you might be able to work your way up to mid level management or you could work with your dad on cars. They didn't say there's this middle path to learn from other people who've already been There to follow self education, to be mentored by someone who does something you like. That was never an option. And dammit, even with my partner Tony Robbins. What we want to do is make self education the new norm. Not only do kids and adults who went to school 40 years ago have a new path, we want to push so hard to that employers look and go, do I choose the guy with the MBA or do I choose the person who's been in self education, learning from masters? We want that to change. And I'm going to digress here for one more second. Jeannie Romney, who is the CEO of IBM, I just had somebody, because everybody knows I'm in this wavelength right now, sent me this. She was addressing a crowd about three weeks ago, I think it was, and she said, forget blue collar and forget white collar. We have to go after new collar. Colleges teach general knowledge and when it doesn't work, they teach more general knowledge. And then you get your master's in general knowledge. She's like, I'm hiring people with specific knowledge because they're immediately employable and they go to work the day you hire them knowing what to do. And she went on to say, if you can even find them, because if they have deep enough specific knowledge, they work for themselves. So the world is starting to see it and I just want to beat the drums and give people this third option in a deep way so it becomes the new norm. So anyway, I'm backing up on what you said when you decided to write this book and decided to impact this. I went down a rabbit hole so far. Excuse me for digressing. I went so far. What does it mean? What is self education to you? If you don't mind, I want to start that because then I have my next questions.

Sure. So I think there's. It's a really important context question. Right. Because there is a big misalignment between college and traditional education in general and what it takes to be successful in the world. But that wasn't always the case. Right. Thirty years ago, a college degree was the golden ticket. So it's not that this was always a bill of goods. Things have changed. And part of it is that the costs have just exploded. It's insane. Part of it is that degrees have just become ubiquitous. Right. So when you were the only guy applying for a job that had the degree, you stood out. When everyone does, you don't anymore. But a lot of it is that just the needs of the world have changed. We used to exist in a world that stayed more or less the same like you could go to high school, graduate college, get a job, and then 30 years later you're doing pretty much the same job, presumably better, but you know, you're doing the same job until you retire. That doesn't exist anymore because the world is just changing so quickly. We change careers, we change jobs, we change roles. What it takes to succeed in a job changes. And here's a thought experiment that I put to people, you know, make a list in your head of like, who are the 3, 4, 5, like best people you've ever worked with? They were just like rock stars. And I'm willing to bet that other than technical skills in whatever they were doing, here's what they all had in common. They were all smart and resourceful and they thought well on their feet. They all took initiative and ownership. They all handled ambiguity well and they all played well with others. Am I more or less on track?

True story.

That's what it takes to be successful. Now let's boil down what is underlying that, right? If we talk about taking initiative, if we talk about taking ownership, if we talk about handling ambiguity, all of that comes down to being self directed, right? You don't want someone that you just give instructions and they follow. We have computers for that now, right? We want someone who can figure things out and take the lead on things on their own. Now college, fundamentally, all of traditional education, fundamentally is a process of someone looking to someone else to tell them what is important and what they should do. And so there are a lot of ways that you can educate yourself. You can read books, you can take online courses, you can do project based learning, you can start a business. There are a million things you can do. But the core thing that makes you effective is that it be self directed, that you be the captain and the leader of it. That's probably the biggest shift. Traditional education follows a paradigm of teacher led serial exposure. Right, sorry, parallel exposure. So the teacher decides what you're exposed to, a whole bunch of stuff at once, and you're exposed at a relative shallow level. Effective education, effective learning is student led. Student picks what because they have to be in charge. They have to get used to being in charge. It is serial one at a time and it is deep. It is an immersion, it is a specialization. And that's, that's the key. Mental.

What a great. And I know where I got diverted. I was talking about my friend Richard Rossi, what I wanted to share with you. He said think about the world because this is his whole life is helping young kids go faster he's an amazing dad. He's just a good human. And we got on the subject, he goes, think if you took somebody from 1920 and you brought him in today's world and you showed him an iPhone, like no way. Directions, food delivered, like every bit of knowledge that they could possibly get on a cell phone, the way air travel is, everything would astonish them. He said. But then if you brought him to a classroom and let him spend the day there, he would say, wow, the blackboard's now white. And when he said that, he didn't need another word. Said he's like, what has changed in the way we educate our children as the world is growing exponentially, the education system's not even growing linearly, it's staying flat. And he said, how can we expect our kids? He said, think about this. When I was young, my parents would look at me and say, the world, the way it's going, go to college, you're just evolving. He goes, kids look now to their parents and go, what's my world gonna be? And their parents like, I don't know, it's going so fast. And he said that was his redirect on, like, we need kids to be self educated, they need to have specialized knowledge. And he's been bound in the drums for 20, 30 years doing this, 40 years. And I think. But I also think this, Danny and I want to get your opinion on this. I think we're at a tipping point because we did a little research and the self education business, or whatever business you want to call it, elearning combined with all the rest, was barely a business 10 years ago. And right now it's a $355 million a day industry. And then Forbes just predicted that that number will be a billion dollars a day within five years. And then the statistics in your book were amazing on the massive exodus of college. Like kids are realizing they don't need all the starter classes that really where the colleges make their money, they just want to jump over that and get the specific knowledge. And then when they don't get that, they're leaning back into, well, if I'm going to go into online marketing, how about I just find the best online marketer and see if he could teach me right or she could teach me. So I think that with that, what do you see as this evolution? I think we're leaning towards self education, be more of a norm. What do you see a way to help expedite that? What are some of the solutions that you've. I read Your book. I read it twice, but I read your book. So what? People listening right now? Okay, I know it's broken. I went to college 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Everything you're saying, I knew in my gut, but I was following what my parents said or what my peers said. Okay, I'm done with that. But how do I fix this?

So, first of all, I totally agree. We're at a tipping point. And you know that thing you mentioned that you want employers to stop looking at degrees and all that kind of stuff? It's already happening, right? So if you look at companies like Apple or Google or bank of America or PricewaterhouseCoopers or KPMG and the list goes on, they've already started dropping degree requirements. Generic degree requirements, I should say, right? Nobody's hiring an engineer who didn't learn engineering. Of course. Of course, you know, the. Requires an undergraduate degree, any undergraduate degree. That's already starting to go away. So that's already happening. The question is, what do we do instead? And we're at a really interesting, I think tipping point is right in that people are stepping away from like, you know, what college is, not where to go. But there isn't a generic. Here is the path everyone should follow instead. And there isn't going to be that kind of generic path anymore, because the whole point is that it has to be self directed. So it's kind of like, you know, it's like almost a Zen riddle, right? You know, what are the seven steps that you can follow to become self directed? It doesn't work that way.

That is a Zen riddle. I like that. I'll keep that one for life. That was good.

So you have to make up your own steps. And that's a core part of the challenge. So I have the answer that I give individuals. When an individual asks me, if, you know, not college, what should I do instead? I say, well, take some time to figure out what you really want to do, right? And so do you want to be an online marketer? Do you want to be an architect? Do you want to be like, what is it? And then think really strategically about what is the best path to get there. Because in some cases you need the degree. Nobody's going to be a doctor who didn't go to medical school. In a lot of cases you don't. And often you can be surprised. So here's a bit of historical fact that most people don't realize. The majority of United States supreme courts throughout history never went to law school, because law school was not a thing until relatively recently. Historically. Wow. So a lot of that systematization only comes later in the process. So you know, first figure out what it is, what is it that you really want to do? Second, make sure, right? Because you know, thinking I want to be a doctor and then seeing what it's like to work in a, in a hospital all day are very different things. And so get clear on that before you invest all the time. But you know, do some job shadowing, do some internship interning, just like make sure this is what you really want. Third, do some research and look for examples of people who got into that role in unorthodox ways. So you know what the obvious path is. Get a sense of what are the non obvious paths and then based on that you can create a plan for how am I going to get into it. So here's a way of thinking about like, you know, how does college get you to where you want to go? Fundamentally, that piece of paper is going to impress a very small number of people, enough for them to open a very small number of doors, right. So if you identify, here are the five people I really need to impress, then think, well, you know, if you're.

Looking at what would impress them.

Yeah, exactly. Can you not be more effective than the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and four to seven years you would spend on this experience? Is there not a more efficient way to impress those people and get to where you want to go? That's my advice for individuals.

Yeah, I love it.

There isn't that on a societal basis. There just isn't that alternative path.

And I want to tell you, I selfishly too having this interview with you is I have a 10 and a 12 year old and what I told my kids is I'm not going to deter them if they. My daughter plays softball, if she wants to play softball in college, she's going to have to go that route. But what I'm pushing them to do is pretty much it's great that you kind of anchored it. I said when you get out of college, when you get out of high school, let's take a year off and not a year off to just meander around the world and spend money. Let's figure out, let's figure out paths that you might like and let's investigate them like crazy. Let's watch them, let's interview people that are doing that for a living. And I was joking, I said to my daughter, not joking, but I said, I'm just throwing something crazy out. Say you wanted to be an interior designer. Her name's Bri. I said, if you want to be an interior designer, Bri, let's do this. Let's find several interior designers and let's interview them. And as a young girl, interview them, I'm sure they would give you that right. And ask them what their job's like, what excites them, what wakes them up in the morning, what inspires them, how they got good. And if you go, damn it, this is what I want to do, they then here's what I suggest. Let's find one of the top interior designers on the planet and you write a badass email or letter to them and you go work for them for free for a year and you become their best employee without taking a dollar. You build so much reciprocity, you hustle and you learn it. And at the end of that year, you're going to be able to rob the knowledge of somebody in that for say 20 years. And at the end you might say, I don't know if this is for me or oh my God, I can leapfrog and start and that position. And I said, and that, I said, if you want to be a doctor, something like that, we have to go to college. But in all these other areas, there's so many people with knowledge that to the right situation, they'd love to share it. And I kind of want to reverse that, like kind of flip that on its side right now because I get this is my passion. I want more people to share what's in their head. I want more people with a skill, a passion, an expertise, a deep hobby to realize that the world needs that information. I've been saying this to a lot of people lately when they say, well, I've been doing this for 30 years, I don't know who would want to learn it. I said, listen, if you die with that knowledge in your head, it's like taking a hard drive that collected data for 40 years, it's worth millions of dollars, and you throw it in the garbage. Somebody is going to take the same exact path you took. It's going to take them 30 years, 10 years, 3 years to learn what you've learned, where you could find a way to extract that knowledge, make an impact in that person's life. And if you want, make that a part of a next level income because it's going to be a billion dollar a day industry. So what do you feel on the other side of the people that could help fuel this education?

So let me give you a quick tip for your Daughter and then we'll dive into that.

I love that. Yeah, I know. I asked about four questions at once because I'm so excited.

No, I love that. It keeps me on my toes and this is an exciting conversation. So I love everything you said for your daughter. I think that's like perfect. Here's a little tweak that I think.

Would, I'd love to hear it.

When she goes to that last step, she goes to the top interior designer and says, I want to work for you for free for a year. I would add, in Exchange, I want 30 minutes of your time at the end of each month so I can ask you questions about how I'm seeing that everything is working so good. And she'll get a ton out of it. And they will give her that much more energy and attention because now they're on the hook to mentor her in a semi official capacity.

Yeah. And I told my daughter too, she said, work for a whole year for free. I said, here's what I, what I'll tell you.

Well, it's a lot better than paying for it.

Yeah, exactly. I said, you could pay for it. But I said, I know how this works because I've had them, I do this now for young kids. I got five of them in the other room. They're under 20 and they're killing it. Right. I said, I'll tell you, you go and be her best or his best employee for free. Within three months, they're gonna offer you a job. And at the time you can decide whether you wanna just don't want that obligation or you do, but you kill it for free. You learn, you grow, you extract that knowledge and you implement it. You'll be. So I love the 30 minute in exchange. 30 minutes a month. Great.

Awesome. So, so let's talk about like how people get into this on the, on the supply side, essentially.

Right, Right. Yes, Yep.

So there are three buckets that post secondary education, like post post kid education falls into. There is foundational adult education, which is just what you need to thrive in the world in general. You know, comfort with ambiguity, playing well with others, all that stuff. That's the university promise of we train you for nothing, but we educate you for everything, which is. They're not delivering on that promise, but it's a great important promise. Then there's Last Mile, which is the bridge between whatever your foundation is and a career. And that can be as simple as an internship or a coding boot camp. It can be as elaborate as medical school. And then there is continuing adult Education through a lifetime. And that's the huge, huge area of opportunity for probably most people who are watching this, because our pattern of consuming education is shifting from a big chunk of education, just in case, at the start of our career, to actually a lot more education, but just in time throughout our career. And that is for professional purposes and that is for personal purposes. Right. So we're consuming, you know, probably instead of, let's say, four years on average at the start of a lifetime, more like six years spread across the lifetime. But you can't just like opt out of life for two years to learn something. So it's, you know, it's going to be stuff you do part time on the side or two or two weeks or four weeks or two months or four months. And it's a lot of little granular chunks. And where we get that information is changing. Because as the pace of change has gotten faster and faster, Larry Summers, the former dean of Harvard, is on record saying that, you know, everything you learn is going to be obsolete in five to 10 years. Right. Which is not a great vote of confidence for, but it's very accurate. And that changes in a nuanced but really powerful way who we need to learn from. Because there's always been this balance of, you know, do I want someone who is a practitioner who really knows the stuff, or do I want someone who's a good teacher? Because both are important. And historically, the answer was you want someone who is a good teacher who also knows the subject matter. Right. But the curriculum was more or less the same. You're teaching the same stuff for 20 years, so be a good teacher and then you learn the curriculum. But now things are changing so fast that someone who's a good teacher who also knows the subject matter can't keep up. And so the only way that you can have that training that is current is that it comes from a practitioner, someone who does it, who is also a good teacher. And that means that the people who are well positioned to do this are the experts, the professionals, the people with real life experience. Boots on the ground. That's where this has to come from. And there's a second layer that points straight back to them. Because, you know, I did this as a thought exercise in the book. If you are the most powerful person in the world, right, and you need a tutor for your son, who do you get to tutor your son? Well, if you're the most powerful person in the world, this was the real question for King Philip of Macedonia. His son was Alexander the Great. He's like, I'll get Aristotle, right? Aristotle is the best, most learned person. I'll get him to do it. Well, today's equivalent is, you know, I want to learn music. I'm going to get Christina Aguilera to train me, right? I want to learn screenwriting. I'm going to get Aaron Sorkin. Problem is these are busy people. They're not available most of the time. So you can get a little bit of high level training, right? These people have classes on Masterclass. You can watch a few hours of video, but that's not a real learning experience. That's not an educational, transformative experience. That's, it's edutainment, right? I'm interested in the topic, so I watch it and it's fun. There's a little bit of star power and I get some tips. But after that, let's say I've taken Aaron Sorkin's screenwriting class and nobody takes that class really expecting it to make them a dramatically better screenwriter. And they say, okay, I'm ready to go deeper. I'm ready to go past just consuming some ideas. I need to apply, I need to get feedback. That's how learning really works, right? Consume ideas, apply them and then get feedback. Well, Aaron Sorkin's not available to give me feedback. He's busy. And so I need to look one or two rungs down in the global hierarchy. I need someone who really knows their stuff and can justify putting the time forward to really support me in making this happen. And something that we're seeing in the online courses, online education elearning marketplace is a hollowing out of the middle. So go back five or ten years. It was the era of the $2,000 video course, right? You, you watch a bunch of launch videos, you put down $2,000, you get a bunch of videos and a membership site, you're on your own. Those are disappearing because the marginal cost of fulfillment on that is nothing. It really isn't. There's nothing in there that justifies the $2,000. We're seeing a lot more at the lower price, which is just the information, right? You can get a course from Aaron Sorkin with, you know, for 200 bucks and we're seeing a lot more on the higher end where it's like, I'm ready to go past just information and I want someone who's going to coach me a little bit and there's going to be that support infrastructure and I can do some work and get some feedback. And that's worth More than $2,000. And that is the lion's share of the opportunity for most of the people who are probably watching this video. And I'm sure a lot of people watching this are familiar with the concept of the long tail. So you've got, you know, the short head with a few hits. That's Aaron Sorkin. He's going to sell, you know, a million copies. So doing that at 200 bucks, he's profitable, then the volume is going to fall off. But if you sell 1,000 copies of your course at $5,000 each, because it's really transformative, that's big money, That's a really big opportunity. So it's really, really an exciting place to be.

Yeah, no, and that's what. So I've been doing courses online for 20 years, 21 years TV and online. And my partner and friend Tony Robbins, been doing it for 42 years, courses. And we obsess to get people to take action. You go very deep on this in your book. It's like we feel every time I create a course, especially recent courses, like I'm doing everything in my power to pull people through. I think you had a stat once that was like 9%. I think another one was 12 or maybe it was somewhere in the middle. People who actually finish, if you don't bribe them to go through it. Right. They get to the core later. And I also see and why we want to help make it kind of a gold standard process. I also see a lot of impact because I know I teach them when if someone builds, does a workshop where it's either, you know, it could be a zoom call like we're doing right now, or live in person or build a community where people are lumped together or a mastermind or a high level group. It's like there's a difference between just getting a course and saying, I'll get to it later, compared to, oh, wow, I'm going to be on a zoom call with my teacher. Let me get my pen out. Do you notice the difference in impact that way? Do you see that as the next insurgents?

Well, so one of the big changes in the landscape, you know, we talked about the shift from just in case to just in time. We talked about the shift from, you know, they consume a little bit at the beginning of their career versus like, you know, all along. One of the corollaries to that is, is a really important shift from motivation from mandatory to volitional learning. Right. So for most of the history of education, it was not optional. Right. We went to elementary school because we had to. We went to high school because we had to. People go to college because they feel like they have to. If your boss says take this course, you know, if you want to keep your job, you have to. And so getting people to go through it is not that hard. The bar was unreasonably low for teachers. Now you're competing for people's attention with Game of Thrones and that's not a fun competition to be in. Right. And you're doing it with one hand tying behind your back. Because our context for education for what does education look like comes from the classroom. And there's a lot that's suboptimal about the classroom, but there's some things that work for it. Right. When you are sitting in front of me in a class, like you are there, you are literally a captive audience. Right. So you're going to do some of the things that I ask you to do just out of like, you know, it would be awkward if you didn't. Whereas online, a lot of that disappears.

Right.

So a lot of online learning today we're at this crossroads where a lot has gone online, but we've kind of just made it a poor man's version of what happens in a classroom. And that's already really lousy. So I'll give you a for example, right? How long is a typical lesson in most people's expectations? 45 to 90. And how often should you get a lesson? Once a week. Right. That's our expectation. That has nothing to do with the most optimal learning experience. It has everything to do with. This is how it works in a classroom. And it works like that in a classroom not because again, it's a great learning experience, but because, you know, you need the teacher and all the students to synchronize their schedules and show up in the same place at the same time for the lesson to happen.

True story.

But that's not at all optimal. So we've taken these things that maybe they weren't ideal, but they made sense in an, in an in person classroom. We're copying everything that doesn't work about them and we're taking away the stuff that does. And so for education to really be made into what it could be, we have to like start fresh and reimagine what it could look like.

Yeah, I love that. So I'm going to, I'm going to flip. Somebody's watching right now and we've intrigued them where they thinking, wow, this is going to be a billion dollar a day industry. I think I have A skill people might want. I think I might be an expert in this one field, or I've been an accountant or working in marketing or sales for all these years. I could share it, but I guess the two, three things. There's going to be three and I'll ask them each individually. One is, how the heck, like, I think people ask themselves, well, I don't have a degree. I don't have initials. And they feel like they need permission to teach. Like, I've talked to so many people, like, yeah, I'm good at that, but who's gonna. Who's gonna learn from me? I'm like, I want to shake them because I think society has made them feel like they're not the professor at the college, so they can't do it. So I guess let's just stick with the first question is, do people need permission? Even if they have a skill and expertise, do they need permission?

So they do need permission, but it's not the permission that they think. Okay, so you don't need the credential. You don't. So what's the purpose of the degree? Right. Fundamentally, the degree is supposed to attest to the fact that you can actually teach something of value.

Yep.

Right. So you don't need the degree to do that. You do need to actually be able to teach something of value. So I wouldn't ask yourself, do I have a recognized credential or something like that. I would ask yourself, can I legitimately, meaningfully, substantially help someone with my knowledge? If the answer is no, then honestly, you have no business teaching anyone anything. But if the answer is yes, then the credential you need is just the honest answer to the question, well, how did you learn all that? Where did it come from? Because it has to have come from somewhere. You didn't just wake up one morning with a spark of inspiration, be like, you know, like the Matrix. I know kung fu. Like, that's not how it happened.

Right, right.

And so the story of how you got there, how you studied, what you learned, what you experienced, what you went through, that is the meaningful credential. So you do need the permission in that. If you don't believe that your knowledge and expertise can genuinely help someone, then no, you shouldn't be teaching. But if you do, don't worry about the credential. Like, you know, you got it somehow.

Yeah, you got it through experience. I just said the other day in an interview that I think people are less about learning from the professional teacher and more about learning from the non professional. Doer who's been through the trenches. And a lot of times, if somebody's even just three years or five years ahead of you, the gap can be shortened by extracting their knowledge. And that's why I tell everybody again, Tony and I are working on a process to help people extract their knowledge. Because a lot of times I see that people are unconscious competence. Like, they're competent, they do so well at what they do. And you say, God, how'd you get. Why are you so good at xyz? And they're like, I think I just work hard. You know, they're not sure at the first question. I'll give you an example. My fiance, she has been voted the top hair stylist in Arizona, like five years in a row. She specializes in hair extensions. Nothing. I didn't even know they existed until I met her, right? And she probably makes on average about 10 times what the average hairstylist makes across America. So when I see her, she's got all the highest level clients. She has three personal assistants working, getting people ready while she comes in and does this great job. I said to her, why do you think you make 10 times what everybody else does? And she's like, I don't know. My parents just gave me a really strong work ethic. I'm like, all the other girls in your salon, they're there the same hours, they're working hard. And it took us a little time to extract and we found out how personal she is. She has a follow up system to make sure everybody's okay. If they call her at midnight, she'll take the call and say, I'll fix you tomorrow for your wedding. Don't stress. She found a way to empower her assistants where they know when they're done working with Lisa, they can go get a job any place. So they come there excited and they come there and want to. So she's got this standing operating procedure. When we extracted it, she's like, oh my God, I want to teach this, right? So now we're helping her, gonna set up and she wants it. She just wants to give back. And simultaneously she'll get paid for it, right? And I think, I think a lot of times it's just that, like, if you're watching right now going, I'm pretty good at this, or I'm really good at this, but I wouldn't know what to teach. Sometimes it's just backing up and looking through the years of what you created. I remember when I was first in business, maybe five years, and I Was running a pretty successful company. You know, the roller coaster, being an entrepreneur. And I was sitting in a room and somebody said, so how do you manage and document your SOPs? And I had no idea what they were talking about. Standing operating procedures. And I remember just sitting through. I couldn't think of anything else in the meeting other than I was trying to figure out what does SOP stand for? But it's like, what was Lisa, my fiance's standing operating procedure. And when we extracted it, we realized what her unique ability was. She's not great at accounting. She's not great at marketing.

She's not.

She's not great at creating systems and doing the bookkeeping. She's great at client relationships. And if she was gonna teach, she wouldn't teach on all that other stuff. Cause that overwhelms her. But this part is great. And when I gave her permission that people wanna learn just that one little thing, now she's like, I wanna do workshops and help other girls that are struggling, right? And I remember the same thing. I run masterminds. And I started a $100,000 a year mastermind with a buddy of mine named Joe Polish. And I remember thinking on a whole nother level, they came from mostly the marketing strategies that I've used through the years. I remember thinking before they came, like, wow, they're spending like $8,000 an hour while they're with me. Like, I need to go deep and extract what I'm good at. And I went back and looked at all my marketing strategies, all my videos at work. Why did I sell a million copies of this particular book? What was it? And I, like, I geeked out on it. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, oh my God, I do have a pattern. I do have. I shoot all my videos exactly the same. It's like a hook to get people to watch that I want to tell a compelling story about the truth. Then I did, like, and I found all these models. Then I couldn't wait to teach them. But at first I was like, wow, are they going to really want to spend a hundred grand to be with me? And when we re upped the next year, like 98% of them re upped because, like, that was so amazing. So I say that out of inspiration with you right now is if you're listening and you have a skill, you have an expertise, you have something that could benefit other people. I'd really consider extracting that knowledge and finding a way to share it through a workshop, through a mastermind. And I know that might sound crazy, but technology's changing. With our phones, we can do things that 10 years ago seemed impossible. And I love that. Again, I love what you wrote. I love that you wrote this book and you gave a voice. I'm gonna say this now. I think whatever sales you're at with that book, I think you've only seen the beginning. I think it's going to. I truly believe your book's going to catch fire because of word of mouth. Everybody I've turned onto the book have come back to me and thanked me and they've shared it with their friends. And I think that momentum has just begun. So I'm really glad you did this. I just went back. I'm sharing a lot of things here, but I want to say I went back to Think and Grow Rich, a book I haven't read in over 15 years. And there was a part on specialized knowledge versus general knowledge. And it was talking about Henry Ford who didn't go to college. And the Chicago paper, an editor called him ignorant because he had no college education. He changed the world because of assembly lines and now mass produced cars. And he replaced the horse with cars, right? At almost about the same price. And so he sues the paper and ends up on trial. I don't know if you remember this part. He ends up on trial and a guy comes up, he says, so you say you're not ignorant, Mr. Ford, tell me how many, how many soldiers from the Rev in the Revolutionary War, how many soldiers came to British and landed on New York City and who won the first battle? And he gets done, he goes, are you done? Basically paraphrasing Henry Ford said, are you done asking me dumb generalized questions? Why would I want to know nor care about any of those? And the truth is, if I needed the answer for a specific reason to bring my life or my business forward, I would hit one of four buttons on my desk and they would ring to an assistant of mine who would go out and get that general knowledge for that specific thing. Why would I fill my brain up and waste the space with something that's not going to move my life? And the attorney on the other side said, I guess he is a genius, right? Even though he never went past high school. And really what that made me think of in today's world is he had Google like Henry Ford had Google. It was his four buttons were four guys doing research. He had Google. And it just made me think of everything you're doing. So I know we both got something to do in a Little bit here. But any last words for people that are thinking about maybe I could share this or either side. Either I should share this or maybe I should look deeper into specialized knowledge.

Yeah. So here's something that trips a lot of people up who have legitimate knowledge, legitimate expertise. They could really help someone. But part of having some real expertise is that you also know who has more. Right. Like there's a line in Good Will Hunting where the math professor is like, you know, there are five people in the world who know the difference between you and me, but I'm one of them. Right. And that's part of the challenge.

Wow. Yes.

And so something that I want to encourage everyone who's watching this to draw inspiration from is Henry Ford. You know, he is famous for. For the assembly line and all that. Here's the thing. He didn't invent it. Frederick Taylor invented the assembly line. And it's okay. Right. Henry Ford used it and did a lot of great things with it. So it's not about pretending something is yours that isn't. But it's also about you don't have to be the world's number one leading authority on something to know it well enough to do meaningful things with it for other people. And that should be the real bar. And, you know, there's a recursive quality to this, which is if you want to be successful, you have to chart your own course. It doesn't matter if you're going to be building courses or building businesses or just, you know, having a career. You have to be self directed. And that means figuring out your path and taking ownership of, hey, there are ambiguous things here and I'm just going to figure them out. And so if you're going to be doing that anyway, you might as well pursue the path that is going to be most impactful to those around you and most rewarding for you.

Oh, that's amazing. This has been awesome. I appreciate you spending time. I know you're busy. What is a good way people can find you or find your book?

Well, Leverage Learning is available where good books are sold. So mostly that just means Amazon these days, but everywhere else too. And I would love for people to buy dozens of copies for everyone they know. Or they could just go to leveragelearningbook.com the whole book is there for free. I think this message is too important. I just want people to find it and if they like what they read, presumably they'll buy a copy. And you can reach me through that book as well, or@mirasee m I r.

A s e-e.com Danny, it's been so awesome having you. Keep up the fight. Let's show the world that self education and is the new norm. And if this intrigued you, and if you're looking for an opportunity to learn how to extract a skill, a knowledge, a hobby, a passion of yours, share it to impact other people's lives. Allow them to learn from what you've already experienced and get paid for it. Tap into a $355 million a day industry, then you're going to want to go to Dean's link right now, deanslink.com and register for for a special webcast training I'm doing. My dear friend, Tony Robbins. We've been in this space for 60 years. The tide has turned. The tipping point is here. And if you'd like to learn how to be a part and be a part of this wave of heading towards a billion dollars a day being spent, help fix the education business and get paid for what you know, then you're going to want to go register@deanslink.com right now. And here's even a cooler part. I know this sounds crazy, but even if you don't think you have a skill or an expertise, we can show you how to partner with experts or also how to be the reporter of other people's knowledge might sound crazy. That's why you gotta go register right now@deanslink.com if you know anything about Tony Robbins and myself, we are going to deliver massive value. Tony hasn't done a training like this in over 10 years. You're not going to want to miss it. Go to deanslink.com right now so we can help make self education the new norm. Even learn how to receive it or learn how to share it for profit and impact. What's up? What's up? Hey, before you go, you need to watch these next few videos. They're absolute game changers. Hurry up and click right over here and watch them and I'll see you there.