No Permission, No Problem, Six Figures at 19 | Jay Yang - Author & Hormozi’s Secret Weapon

You can just do things is this idea that you don't need permission to change your life or to change your career. The best opportunities come to those who do things, not those who wait. I remember one day looking in the mirror and honestly just not being proud of the stuff I was doing. So that day I literally Googled how to make money online, and one of those things was to start a YouTube channel.

Today's guest is living proof that waiting your turn is optional. At just 16, Jay Yang cold emailed a startup CEO with a bold pitch and landed an internship. By 19, he'd built a 6-figure business and amassed over 200,000 followers without asking for permission. Why do you think the majority of people do not take action without permission?

It's just because it's safe. We're ingrained to follow the rules, to wait our turn. But the truth is, most traditional paths aren't designed for speed. They're designed for stability and stagnation.

He's helped create a best-selling media campaign, led content at AppSumo, and turned his own media ventures into exits, all before college graduation. His new book, You Can Just Do Things, challenges everything we've been told about permission, perfection, and play it safe.

Learning is not memorizing information, it's behavior change. And one of the best ways to change your behavior is to actually engage in a real-world project. Switch out the words or change the definitions. It's pretty simple. Like, what do you want? Not what society, not what parents. The clearer you can get on that, the clearer everything else will be.

So Jay, tell me what "You Can Just Do Things" means to you.

"You Can Just Do Things" is this idea that you don't need permission to change your life or to change your career. It's about realizing that the best opportunities come to those who do things, not who— those who wait. And so the idea of the book is stemmed from my journey, uh, creating different opportunities when I was young and in my career, um, and also from studying those who have come before me and realizing that the common patterns between all of those who have come before us is this idea that they go out and do things. They make things happen instead of letting things happen to them.

The people that I usually speak to on this show that, that write and communicate and sort of philosophize on the world is, for lack of a better term, they're not 16. They're usually like much older. So tell me, what was, what was, what was the thing? What was sort of the inflection point when you were around 16 or I guess a little bit younger when some of these ideas started to present themselves to you? You started to understand them. You started to understand their power.

Yeah. The, the story starts back in COVID 2020. I was stuck in my little room and I was playing video games for 5 hours a day. And, you know, I remember one day looking in the mirror and honestly just not being proud of the stuff I was doing. I know, you know, I was 16 and most kids my age play video games, and so that was normal, but I just felt like I was wasting my time. So that day I literally Googled how to make money online. And one of those things was to start a YouTube channel. So that summer I started a music promotion YouTube channel where every single day I'd post, uh, I'd promote an underground artist's songs to help them get exposure on YouTube and grow. Um, and I did that every single day for the entire summer. The, the channel ended up not going like where I wanted to go, but it did teach me a very important lesson. And that was that power of permissionless work. This idea that you don't need permission to go and do things. I started that channel with no one's permission at all. And by the end of it, you know, I was able to impact and inspire a few dozen people. And to me at the time, that was incredible. You know, little ol' me from my room was, you know, impacting and inspiring people. And so, that kind of opened my eyes to the world of content creation and the world of creating things without permission from other people.

Why do you think in my opinion at least, the majority of people do not take action without permission.

I think it's just 'cause it's safe. You know, growing up we're taught from society, from school, from our parents, we're ingrained to follow the rules, to wait our turn, raise our hands before we speak, ask to go to the bathroom. But the truth is most traditional paths aren't designed for speed. They're designed for stability and stagnation. That's how school is supposed to work. It has to accommodate to the average person. And so if you're a little bit more driven, a little bit more ambitious, a little bit more energetic, I truly believe you can compress your timeline for accomplishments and your career by simply not waiting for permission, not waiting for approval from the crowd.

Are your parents entrepreneurial at all? Like, did this idea come from you just being like, I need to figure out a way to create a life and architect a life that I'm proud of, that, you know, sort of fulfills me and energizes me? Or was there input from your parents or input from your peers? Because the reason why I ask is because I think most people— and you can agree or disagree, tell me what your thoughts are— I think most people, what happens is their parents want safety and security for their kids. They want them to be financially well off, but they don't want them to, like, you know, no parent wants their kid to fail, really. Not really. They want their kid to be successful. So what they do is say, go be a doctor, lawyer, go to school, get your, you know, get your degree, get your MBA, get your PhD, get, you know, whatever. And then we as kids, you know, we are very impressionable. And then we just assume that our parents' view of the world is the world. And then it's very hard for us to break out of that unless in some cases parents are very entrepreneurial or they're high risk takers. And they understand the value of risk, or sometimes when there is no parent and then like the person hits rock bottom and then they have to find a way to climb out of rock bottom. But I don't think you were either of those situations because you've spoken about how great your household was, how great your family was, but they don't seem like they were risk-takers. Am I correct or incorrect? Did they have influence on you and on these ideas or no?

My parents definitely had an influence on me, but not in the sense of I'm gonna take risks and I'm gonna create my own career and be ambitious and be, uh, try and accelerate my career. Um, honestly, I think the, the biggest inspiration for that would be when I was in 4th grade, I started playing basketball and a lot of my peers started in 1st and 2nd grade. And so right off the bat, I was just not as great as them. And I hated that feeling of not being as good as other people.. And so I remember when I was a kid, I would wrap a basketball with a plastic bag to make it more slippery, and I would prop up a little iPad and I would watch basketball YouTube videos of ball handling routines, and I would dribble the ball for hours in the basement. And, you know, eventually I got, I got better at ball handling and then I became one of the best ball handlers on the team. And I think even throughout my career, it's been this sense of inadequacy, this sense of not being enough.. And so when I felt that, I tried to look for inspiration outside of the, the people around me. And I found that in, in my personal heroes that I write about in the book, the, the Kobe Bryants, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, the, the greats that have come before me and realizing that it's okay to feel different or it's okay to not feel enough, uh, right now because you can actually use those things as fuel. To accelerate your journey.

So when you jump into this entrepreneur mindset, what works, what doesn't? And talk to me about the journey from— and I know there's various parts of the journey with Beehive, with Noah Kagan. I mean, I love these guys because they are people that I've looked up to and people that I've studied as well. What's the journey from how to make money online to, to, to really your body of work now?

So I started that YouTube channel and at the end of the summer I decided it wasn't going as the way I wanted to go. And so I'd started a bunch of other things after that. I started Instagram theme pages, I tried to start a clothing brand, uh, I started a Twitter account. None of those ventures really took off and I realized I was missing something. There was, there was a reason I kept getting blocked or I kept getting discouraged or I kept not getting to where I wanted to go. And so I realized one of the best ways to overcome that was to then go work for somebody who knew what they were doing. And so I could learn something. And so I chose my favorite company at the time, which was Beehive, because I had also started a weekly newsletter using their platform. And from an outside-in perspective, Their team was incredibly impressive. I mean, they were shipping new features every week, and I still think they are. And so, I knew that I wanted to surround myself with people who were ambitious, who were driven, who were A-players. So, I went to the Beehive website and I looked for any internship job opportunities on their application site. Unfortunately, there were none. And so, I said, you know what, maybe it's not for me. But then I thought about this idea that I heard in a podcast called Backstage Careers from Jeremy Marey. This is where he interviews people who are working behind the scenes with some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. And he talked about this idea of the permissionless apprentice, which is from Jack Butcher. And it was this idea of doing the work upfront. And so I said, you know what, why not? I'll just give it a shot. And so I put together 3 projects or 3 ideas that I could do for Beehive. And I sent them over to Tyler Denk. I cold emailed him and I said, hey, here are 3 things I can work on over the summer. Like, you don't even have to like talk to me. Like, I'll work by myself in a silo. I just want to work with you guys. And so he loved one of the ideas and that's how I landed my first internship at Beehive.

Do you believe that it's very useful to work for somebody, to work in like a high-growth startup before starting your own thing, or do you feel like people should just, you know, not just figure it out, to just jump into it, to learn, to iterate, to fail repeatedly? You mentioned your first YouTube channel failed. Like, it's gonna be, candidly, first of many failures. And I say it in the best way possible because anybody who's built anything meaningful fails an exceptional amount of times. But do you think that that's actually a smarter path for somebody who's an early-stage entrepreneur?

For me, it made sense. There's this idea that Alex Hormozi talks about, uh, he calls ignorance debt, which is if you're making $50,000 a year and you want to make a million dollars a year, every year you don't know how to make a million dollars a year, you're missing out on $950,000. And so the, the, the most valuable thing you can do is pay down that ignorance debt to learn the skills, character traits, and beliefs to get to a million dollars a year. And so, For me, I realized that I was missing so many pieces and so I could learn them by myself through more trial and error, more beating my head against the wall, or I could go work for somebody who already knows what is needed to get to that level, absorb that, and then accelerate my journey from there. And so I've used the apprentice approach several times now and it's paid off dividends. There's no, right or wrong answer. I think it's different for everybody, but I think an underrated way, an underrated approach is to lower the ego and realize that sometimes working for somebody else, being a 9-to-5 wage slave monkey is sometimes a great way to learn.

I agree. What would be some of the more important lessons that you learned from working with Beehive and Tyler that you think, or, you know, integral in sort of what you've built now?

I think the two biggest lessons are, number one, a deep understanding of your customers, and number two, working in sprints. So the first idea, understanding your customers. When I worked at Beehive, one of the key observations that I learned from Tyler was his, his deep understanding of what his customers wanted and how he could then craft his marketing to speak to those people. And so, over the summer, I worked on a project called Beehive 101, which was a free course teaching users how to better understand, unlock, and maximize the Beehive platform. When we sent that launch email, he came up with the idea to make it more humorous because a lot of the Beehive users are creators and they're kind of— they're kind of rebels, per se. And so, the email was— the subject line was, 'Shh, please don't tell my boss.' And then it was just me saying like, 'Hey, I just hacked into my boss's computer. I wanted to share this project that I've been working all summer on. Check it out. If enough people like it, maybe my boss won't be mad at me,' and something like that. And it got a lot of impressions and it did really well. And so, I think that number one is understanding how you can tap into what your customers want. And then the second idea is working in sprints. Before Beehive, my time management was all over the place. I had no idea what I was doing. And so a lot of projects or a lot of things I was working on got delayed. But Beehive worked in 2-week sprints. And so that decreased deadline increased my productivity. And it's something I still do to this day. When I was writing the book, instead of saying, hey, I need to finish this book in 1 year, that'll never get done. I said, hey, I need to write 2 pages every day. And setting those deadlines, more deadline, more frequent deadlines and decreased time really helped my productivity.

When you think about the first point you made about knowing your audience, because this is a very— this is interesting to me why in business it's so important to know your audience. You're not gonna sell your product. But I find a lot of creators when they're first starting out, they don't realize the importance of defining their audience and they almost create content for everyone. They like create almost like they, they just wanna talk about everything that's going on in their life. Can you, if you, if you've thought through how you have sort of taken this idea and applied it to the work that you do as a creator, Um, I think that's really interesting because you've grown as a creator very quickly. So we'll talk about other ideas that have impacted your work as a creator, but this idea in particular, uh, did you, when you first started writing, which I think is really— that's kind of how most people know you, for the stuff that you push on, on Instagram and, and now your book— but did you very carefully, almost diagnostically, define who your audience was to the same degree as like what Tyler would do with Beehive? Was that something you carried over into your content?

Yes, 100%. When I first started, I broke down my audience based on the demographics and psychographics. Here is Charlie and he is 21 years old. He's ambitious, driven, and he has so much energy, but he doesn't know where to direct that energy. And he lives in, you know, he lives with his parents still. He's kind of in the Midwest. And I just, I created avatars to speak to. But what I did realize over time was as my interests changed, sometimes the avatars changed. And so the most reliable way to write to an avatar was actually to write to myself 2 years ago. And so when I write to myself, it helps me, helps me stay consistent because I don't need to feel like I'm performing for anybody. I'm simply writing reminders to self. And oftentimes that's what resonates with a lot of people because it's real, it's raw. I'm not trying to go viral or, or be performative. I'm just writing reminders that I know I needed 2 years ago and I know that I need right now.

Is the gap 2 years? Is that the best gap? And I've always thought about this because I actually agree with everything you said and I've seen creators do it differently. Some creators speak to people that are, you know, them 20 years ago. Some creators speak to people like, to your point, that are them 2 years ago. How do you understand? Because I think, by the way, just as at a high level, the concept of creating content for your younger self, yes, 1,000%. I just think that people have a hard time figuring out which version of their younger self is the best version to create content for that's actually going to hit.

If we were to break it down tactically, I think it would depend on your age. Uh, the truth is 99% of people on social media are beginners.. And so if you are 60 years old, writing to yourself 2 years ago may not resonate with a ton of people. It may resonate with the people you wanna reach out to. So again, I think it depends on what you're trying to optimize for. But if your goal is to reach and impact as many people as possible, it makes sense to write to yourself as a beginner. And that doesn't mean your psychological, your biological age may be super young. It could mean your psychological or your career age. Per se.

You've gone through a few of, a few of these sort of, what did you call them? Permissionless apprenticeships, which is really you're trying to pick up skills from these, you know, these great learning environments like Beehive. I guess a question for you, but also just a question for the audience who's listening, who is following your path. How do you know when you have learned quote unquote enough and you can go and go build your own thing? Because that's also this point that I think a lot of people have trouble with. They never know when they can just take the jump, or maybe they de-risk the jump by starting the thing while they're still working. I don't know what you did in particular, so let's unpack that. When do you leave Beehive and what do you do next, and how do you know when it's time to leave?

So I left Beehive, um, after 3 months, which was pretty short.

Oh damn.

That was like super— but I was, I was obsessed with this idea of learning more about newsletters at the time. And so I started another project called The Newsletter Nerd, where every week I would deconstruct a piece of advice on how to grow, monetize, or engage your newsletter subscribers. I eventually sold that project, but I think it's For me, it's always been, how does this align with my north star? And so you can kind of tell when there are diminishing returns in what you're learning. Um, with Beehive, it's not that the learning was, uh, diminishing. I think it was more so I was so obsessed with starting my own, like, newsletter project now that I've been working at a newsletter company that I wanted to go full-time and, and work super hard on that project. Um, So yeah, I don't think there's a framework, but, um, with Beehive it was, it was more so I was so excited that I needed to, to go full-time on that project.

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So after Beehive and after the Newsletter Nerd project, I actually reached back out to Jeremy Mary and I DM'd him on Twitter. I said, hey, like, I don't, need or want anything. I just wanted to say I appreciate you and I appreciate your podcast. It inspired me to cold email Tyler. We got to talking and at the time he was also head of content, not head of content, head of YouTube for Noah Kagan. And he mentioned that Noah was looking for someone to help grow his newsletter because he had a book that was just about to come out and he wanted to get as many people as possible onto the email list. And I was like, hey, that's perfect. I just came from a newsletter company. And so I dropped everything. And I spent the next 50 hours putting together a 19-slide pitch deck, deconstructing his entire social media and email funnel. Here's what your website is, here's how it can be better. Here's what your Instagram is doing well, but here's what someone else is doing that you could improve. And then I sent that to him along with 9 pieces of ready-to-be-published content, all free. Like, all you have to do is click send. And I said, hey Noah, if you love this, like, let's work together. If not, like, no pressure, no harm, no foul. Luckily, he loved that idea. He loved that project was showing— it was— so, the advice I like to give young entrepreneurs or young people who want to work with their dream company or dream entrepreneur is you have to show two things. You have to show, number one, that you want the opportunity, and number two, that you can do the opportunity. And the best way to do that is to do the work upfront. And so I think what was smart about the pitch deck was it showed Noah my thinking processes because it was outlined in a pitch deck. And it also showed that I could do the job because then I gave him pieces of content that all he had to do was click publish. And so if you're trying to work for your favorite entrepreneur or favorite company, the question you want to think about is, how can I make this a no-brainer for the other person? How can I decrease the friction so they say yes? How can I make it so obvious that they want you to join their team? And so that's what I did with Noah. And then 3 months later, I became his head of content.

When you, when you work for Noah Kagan, and he's a great entrepreneur, he's, I mean, the guy is super dynamic. What was, how long did you work with him? What was the timeframe? And then you eventually left. Was it under like AppSumo or was it? His actual, like, personal brand?

It was under Noah directly. And I, I've been working with him and I just ended working with him this past month. So it's been a year and 7 months. So definitely a lot, a lot longer time.

Most important lessons that you learned from working with him behind the scenes, because I know that he's very— he's a very smart entrepreneur. And then also, why did you leave? That was the point. That was the point where I'm assuming you go full-time betting on yourself?

So there's a ton of things I've learned from Noah, and Noah is an incredible entrepreneur, an incredible marketer, an incredible human being. There's— I could write a whole book probably about the lessons I've learned from Noah. But for me particularly, the two things that impacted me the most and I think changed my behavior and how I operate today, uh, number one was data-driven growth. Before working for Noah, I was a qualitative marketer, which basically means I didn't know what the heck I was doing. After working with Noah, he taught me how to be a quantitative marketer, how to identify the key metrics that we want to be tracking to grow the newsletter or to grow the social media. And then more importantly, how do we double down on what's working and cut what's not? Which sounds like a super simple concept, but most people don't do that. They don't put common sense into common practice. And so just internalizing that idea has led me to grow my own following that way, has led me to work with all my ghostwriting clients and grow their followings. Um, and it's completely changed the trajectory of, of my career. The second lesson would be it's possible to, to live your dream life. And that sounds kind of floofy, but for the longest time, Noah's wanted to be a husband and a dad. And this past summer in August, he had his first kid and he got married. And seeing him transition from, you know, work 80 to 100-hour weeks, like grind, grind, grind Noah, to stepping back into a different phase of his life, a different season of his life, truly made me realize that there are more than one definition for success. And so that is one of the reasons why I stepped away from working with Noah is because he paused content. He stepped down as CEO for AppSumo and he's being intentional about trying to be present and be there for his family. And I admire the heck out of that. I think that is the absolute greatest thing. And so those two lessons, I'd say, impacted me the most.

I'll let you just comment on the importance of mentors and just like sort of fulfillment across all areas of your life. Have you put thought into this, even though I know that you're still kind of early on in your journey? What are your thoughts on this? And I'm sure you study entrepreneurs too, so you see it with people, both good and bad examples.

Yeah, I think for the mentorship aspect, there's this idea that I love. It's called the Golden Circle of Friends. And so you're in the middle of this circle and above you is mentor, someone 1 or 2 steps ahead of you. That's the Noah Kagan's, the the Tyler Denks of the world, right? And then to your side of you, you have your peers. These are your intellectual sparring partners, the people who hold you accountable, the people you can grow with, the people you can bounce ideas off of. And those are also really important. And then finally, you have your students, someone who's 1 or 2 steps behind you. Maybe that's what the people you try and write for. But when you have this golden circle of friends, you have different people and different models that you can bounce ideas off of and you can put yourself in their shoes and ask, like, you don't even have to talk to them. You could be like, hey, what would Noah Kagan do in this situation? What would Tyler Denk do in this situation? And that's just a super helpful mental model. In terms of different seasons of life and like work-life balance, I think for me as a 19-year-old, um, I think it makes sense for me to work really, really hard when I'm in my youth because I believe hard work compounds over time. And so, it makes sense to try and like get that machine going, get that flywheel going so that it can reap benefits in the long term. But at the same time, I'm trying to be really intentional about not being that workaholic person who hides in their room all day and has no friends and sunlight, ah, sunlight, right? And so, I try and double up activities, like I'll try and eat dinner with friends or go to the gym with a buddy and try and make sure I'm, you know, being aligned with what my goals are, but also not losing out on the people around me. Because there's a quote I love, I think it's from Big Panda, Tiny Dragon, and Tiny Dragon's like, what's more important, the journey or the destination? And Big Panda replies, the company.

Have you thought about what people you surround yourself with in terms of like value alignment or ambition? Meaning like, you're very, very ambitious for a 19-year-old. I can only imagine that most of your friends are not killing it the way that you are at your age. I would assume that people still drink a lot, still party a lot. Um, have you found it hard? Because now at my age, I don't spend as much time with like single people that go out and, you know, get bottle service and get shit-faced every single weekend. I just don't. It's like not helpful for me. But have you thought about how you manage relationships and friendships, especially when your peer group more often, more likely than not, is, is probably not working like 16-hour days right now?

It's a delicate balance for sure. I mean, I have friends who, yeah, go out every Thursday, every Friday, um, sometimes every day. And I think it's, it's about realizing that you can learn something from everybody. And that friends serve different purposes for different parts of your life. And so, yeah, I have my friends who we go out and play basketball together. And then I have friends that we go and study together. And then I have my more entrepreneurial friends that many of them I found through online from Twitter and Instagram. And so, I think it's about realizing that you don't have to like, like every part of that person as long as they're not detracting from your goals. And so, when my friends say, "Hey, we're gonna go out Thursday, you wanna join us?" I'll just politely decline. Hey, I have something that I want to be working on instead. And as long as they're not like actively detracting you from that, trying to drag you down, I think it's okay to have some of those in your life. Because sometimes like, sometimes the best things we learn aren't what to do, but what not to do. And I think it's important for me to have people who are quote unquote normal or average to kind of center myself and realize that because I sometimes I get, you know, that trap of looking ahead at people and feeling like I'm not enough, right? There's, there's the Noah Kagan in the world. Why aren't I there? And then realizing that, oh, maybe I'm a little bit ahead because there are people behind me that would dream to have the life and business that I have now.

When you think about how you write and how you create content now, how does that idea of being data-driven impact what you do? I mean, is there do you, are you measuring how every single piece of content performs? Are you testing content in short form before you turn it into long form? Like what is your current sort of evolved strategy of content creation? And the book, even when you think about the topics you're writing about in the book, I know that there was some sort of process to measure whether or not this particular idea is gonna hit, which is why you spent so much time writing a book about it. You did not just write a book ad hoc. So talk to me about how you, as a great content creator and a writer, you include these ideas so that you don't just write and you don't just create, you actually do it with intention.

Yeah. So there's definitely an ecosystem of testing grounds. The first, all ideas start on Twitter for me. Twitter is my playground for ideas. I shoot off the hip and see what sticks. Once a tweet, say, takes off a little bit more than the other, that's when I start to I try to analyze— there's obviously, there's two different ways to analyze a tweet. It's structure and topic. So why do we think this tweet did better than others? Was it the structure of the tweet? And oftentimes you'll find that the top tweets have juxtaposition to them. It's not X, it's Y. Stop doing this, start doing that. Don't do this, do that. And then the topic, is it self-improvement? Is it going to the gym? Is it like whatever topic would be? Then I flesh out that idea into a medium-sized post and that goes to Instagram and that's probably the some of the posts you've seen. And then from there, if it still resonates, then we try and turn that into a newsletter and we try and flesh it out into a little bit of a long form, longer form. And so it kind of operates on this small testing, small testing, small testing. What I love about my Instagram page is I use black background and white text. So if something pops off, I can be pretty confident it's the actual idea of the post. It's not the design, it's not the music, it's not some fancy thing. It's, it's the actual words and that's what's resonating. And so just like a scientist tries to eliminate confounding variables, I think that's what I've been trying to do as well.

And why did you choose writing as like your content medium? I mean, you could be doing video, you could be turning a tweet into a script that you could read and put up on YouTube like Dan Coe or something like that, which I'm I have no doubt you know who that is just because of the title of content. Why did you choose writing as like your primary format?

Writing for two reasons. Number one, because the act of writing serves as a way of clarifying my ideas. There's this quote I love: Thoughts, thoughts disentangle themselves when passed through lips and fingertips. And so the act of writing is clarifying the jumbled mess of thoughts I have and making it real. And so even if I were to do scripts and to record video, the foundation of that, even the scripts itself, that's writing. And so I never try and like outsource my writing to AI or anything. I try and like, that writing is mine because that's me figuring out like what I actually want to say. In terms of videos, honestly, like the honest answer is I did a few videos the start of the fall. But I got recognized a lot. And right now, like, I'm not trying to, like, be stopped on the sidewalk all the time. So I'm a pretty private guy, so I like to, to stay pretty private. But I do have some plans for long-form video in the future.

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There's this, uh, the framework that I've been playing around with. So, so bear with me. I like to call it the 5 C's. So the 5 C's, the first C is consume. There's, there's no way you can be writing self-improvement ideas if all you're consuming is brain rot TikToks. And so the first step is if you want to think differently, you have to consume differently. And so I tell all my friends who are like trying to be entrepreneurs or ambitious, like, you got to get on Twitter. Twitter is one of the best places where you get raw thoughts from the world's greatest entrepreneurs, builders, and creators. So that's consume. Step 2 is collect. As you scroll Twitter, some tweets naturally pop out to you. They stop your thumb. And so the question you want to ask yourself is, okay, let's collect these and then connect the ideas. Why are these tweets standing out. And just like I mentioned before, like maybe it's the, maybe it's the structure, maybe it's the idea, maybe it's the topic. So consume, collect, connect, and then copywork would be the fourth C. This is how I got better at writing is I would handwrite, handcopy word for word books that I loved. And so I would handcopy The Bore on Letters by Gary Halbert. Because he had this conversational rhythmic style of writing. And so every morning for 30 minutes I would do copywork. And then over time I developed understanding of like sentence structure and there's some flow and even some things like subconsciously you don't even realize it's untraining what you've learned in school, which is like the boring 5-paragraph essay. Don't use me. You or us, like, like random rules that like have no basis for the real world. And then fifth step would be create. A lot of great writing is a function of a lot of writing. Like if you look at some of the most prolific writers on Instagram or Twitter, even the most prolific anything, like it's just a ton of output and it's a ton of iteration.

Yeah, that's very, very good. Okay. So when you think about Um, when you think about the topics that you do focus on, I'm curious, just as a creator, have you put thought into why these ideas resonate so deeply with an audience? What is it about these ideas? And I want to frame it as for another creator, someone who's up and coming, they don't want to copy exactly what you do for a living, but how do you think through framing ideas in a way that will resonate with an audience?

A lot of people talk about the 3 common content types, which is educate, entertain, or inspire. But I'd argue there's a 4th category, which is resonate. And so there's this incredible line from The One Sentence Persuasion. It's a book. It's like one short book, but basically it goes, people will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. And so in the back of my mind, when I'm writing a piece of content, the, the number one thing I'm trying to, to think about is how can I make people feel the same for feeling different, especially for the type of people I'm trying to write for. I write to driven, ambitious people who know they're, they're meant for more, but don't know exactly like where they're going to direct that energy, or maybe they do and they're feeling discouraged. They're in that, that, that dip, as Seth Godin would say. And so I write to the people who are experiencing those things, and I believe it resonates because I've experienced those things. I know what it feels like to watch other people win and feel bad that I'm not winning. I know what it feels like to be on that journey and then have something bad happen and feel discouraged. And so I write to myself 1 or 2 years ago And I really try and put myself in little Jay's shoes, like what was he feeling in that moment? And so that's, that's the secret to me.

And when you think about even like how you've taken these ideas and then focused on one for the actual book, like that's a significant portion of energy and time. What was, what was so powerful about this particular idea?

It's—

it obviously resonates. And we've spoken a little bit about why it's impacted your life. Why was this the idea that you chose to focus on out of all the ideas that you write about?

It was the idea that I couldn't not write about. It was the idea that was screaming in my head and it needed to get out into the world. It was the number one idea that changed the trajectory of my career, of my life, of how I operate in the world. This idea that you don't need permission fundamentally changed who I am. And so, uh, I hope to write many books in the future and I will only write a book when I can't not write about the idea, when it's so fundamental to the core of my being. It's a value that I just need to flesh it out and get it out to the world. And so you can just do things was the number one principle from Beehive, from Noah Kagan, from starting a business in school. And, and so that was principle number one of Jay Yang is like, you can just do things.

I love it. When you think about Uh, we've spoken a lot about like creative process and how you think through content, but for creators who again are just getting started or are looking at how you operate, what are some of the more, um, daily practices or rituals that really help you be creative? Is it, uh, you know, finding times when your energy is highest, when you can actually achieve flow? Is it I'm trying to think, is it meditation? Is it going to the gym? Is it going for a run? Like, what are the things to be like the best possible creator that you found really work for you so that you're not distracted, so that you can have the best output?

I'll tell you what worked for me, but I think to preface that, the, the only correct answer would be do what works for you and do what you can do for a long time. I think like just like working out, a lot of people like, oh, which workout push-pull legs or 5-day split or only 3 days a week. Like the only workout plan that really matters is the one you can keep doing for the long haul. Um, but for me in particular, the habits that have impacted my creator journey the most, uh, number 1, reading, reading books in particular. Uh, I think it's just this idea that you have to sit with this initial boredom or this initial agitation. Like when you start reading a book, it's like, it's kind of uncomfortable. And I think that has helped me be able to sit with boredom more better. And then second one would be a daily writing practice. When I first started, I would write for at least 30 minutes every single day, and I did not skip a day. People often talk about the difference between quality and quantity, but the truth is quality comes through quantity. And so you can only get to quality by putting in the reps and like you can't skip the actual— like people talk about like, oh, get the right pen and use a key— like, the only tool that will make you a better writer is to write. Like, you have to write. So that's probably number one, actually. I talk about going to the gym a lot just because I truly believe going to the gym will change your life, but it's also helped my writing ability. When I'm in the gym, I am not doing anything else but lifting weights. And so that allows my subconscious to then wrestle with the idea in the background. So that's what I would say is reading, writing, and going to the gym. I think, I mean, those are the things I talk about a lot, but, and they're simple and they're obvious, but again, we need to put common sense into common practice.

Talk to me about sort of your learning process, your ability to not just consume new ideas, but actively apply them. I know you speak about learning machines and I want to understand that concept. I know you speak about the monkey research method. I want to understand what that means, but just help people because I think this will help creators. Who are actively creating, because if you are a creator, you have to be consuming and learning, but it'll also help young entrepreneurs who are just trying to understand new concepts. But under the, the, the, the, the main thing that I want people to take away from this is not just that you learn, but that you actually, that you actually take action. I feel like we have this obsession with consuming knowledge and, and not enough application of said knowledge. And I feel like it's almost like, um, we can end up being lazy or, or, uh, we can make excuses for not working because we're, we're saying that we're actively reading 10 books and listening to 20 podcasts, uh, and we're not actually taking any action towards our goal. So that was a lot, but let's start with just your learning process, your ability to consume new knowledge, new information. Um, and then I wanna talk about the importance of action and how you bridge that gap.

So being a learning machine comes from the idea from Charlie Munger. It's a quote of his. He says, "I constantly see people who rise fast in life who aren't necessarily the most intelligent or the smartest, but they go to bed every night a little wiser than when they first woke up." And that's that idea that like you're either learning and growing or you're dying and detracting. And so a lot of people will become complacent or think that they know everything. But the truth is we all have stuff to learn. And so that's that idea. It's not a tactical idea. It's more of a, a North Star idea to, to ingrain yourself into. The monkey research method is, in my opinion, one of the fastest ways to get to the core of an idea. And so the monkey research method is take your inspiration. Say you have one person you look up to. Who is 3 people who inspires that person? And then you start to climb your tree, climb the tree of inspiration. Who are 3 people who inspire those people? And now you have a, a personal board of advisors that you can go seek into. You can read their books, you can dive deeper into their ideas. Because what you'll find is there's not really anything new under the sun. Everything's already been talked about or mentioned, but we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. In terms of making it practical and bridging the gap between learning and action, my number one tip would be engage in project-based learning. Uh, when I first started writing, I started a weekly newsletter where every week I would write and I would document my learnings. Um, it, when I wanted to learn copywriting, I would do copywork every day. And that was the project. I had a notebook and I was like, I'm gonna fill this entire notebook with words. And so that's what I did. Um, and so when I wanted to dive deeper into the principle of permissionless action, I wrote a book about it. And you know, people often say like, you'll learn a lot from reading a book, try writing a book. Like you'll learn a ton more from writing a book. And so, it's about realizing that learning is not memorizing information, it's behavior change. And one of the best ways to change your behavior is to actually engage in a real-world project.

If you think about, I wanna pull out some, some last ideas, just some sort of words of wisdom from your journey and how you've evolved as an entrepreneur. But I do want to just give a plug to the actual, to the actual book. So if people are actually, first of all, they can download it Kindle, they can go get it on Amazon. So anywhere you get books, you can just go get, you can just do things right now when this is live. Is there any other places that you want to send people like website, social, any of that?

Best place to keep up with me would be my weekly newsletter, jayyanginspires.beehive.com.

Perfect. What's it, what's your Instagram? I can't remember what your actual handle is. I'll drop it in the show notes as well.

It's called @JayYangInspires.

As a creator, your identity is a superpower because it allows you to put yourself into your content. It allows you to, uh, speak to things that you've personally gone through. But at the same time, when your identity is so intertwined and woven into your content, I, I think that it can be like mentally stressful for people because that means that when people don't like your content, it's almost like a direct hit at your identity as a human versus if you had like a product or service and a business. And yeah, it's still your baby, but it's like if somebody doesn't like the socks that I'm selling, I don't really feel like they hate me as an individual. I think a lot of creators get stuck up because their identity is so intertwined with their content. So when they get a negative response or reaction, um, it's difficult. So how do you navigate that? I mean, how do you navigate putting all of yourself into something and using that to create good content, but at the same time not letting, you know, the hate, the negativity, which even if you write mostly positive stuff, it's gonna come regardless. Um, how do you not let that really throw you off, for lack of a, a better word?

I like to view myself as a scientist. Like we were talking about that data-driven approach, any piece of feedback on a piece of content is exactly that. It's feedback. It's, I try and view it not as criticism or hate of me, but of the idea of maybe the way I articulated it. Maybe I said everyone when it wasn't everyone, it was most people. And so just realizing that there are nuances to it and then adjusting from there. I think the second part would be realizing that I write to myself and so it's not for everyone. And so like if someone doesn't like the idea, it's not for you, you know, like, and that's okay. You know, I don't think I know a single brand in the world that's for literally everyone. I think they have pockets of people they speak to and by definition they'll also have pockets of people they don't speak to.

You speak a lot about permissionless action and just, and you don't have to ask anybody to just do what you want to do. But on the flip side of that, when you do take risks, when you do build something, there's always sacrifices. So for somebody who is going to go on this journey, just as like a— not a— I don't want to scare somebody from, from not asking permission and just doing things. I think that's a beautiful idea and mindset. But what are some of the unexpected sacrifices that they should prepare for when you start to, to go on this, on this path?

I think the number one fear that stops most people from doing things is this fear of judgment, this fear that, you know, those around them will make fun of them or hate on them or not support them. But the actionable piece of advice that I like to give people is like, be, be super clear. Who are you actually afraid of the judgment from? Not people, but like who in particular? And I think when you'll— what you'll find is number one, there's not that many people, not as many people as you thought that you're afraid of judgment. It's actually really just 1 to 2 people that you had in mind. And then I think number two, it's then you can kind of confront that, not in like a combative way, but you can kind of— you can bring it up to them. Hey, like, here's what I'm trying to do. Here are my goals. Like, I'd love for your support. And I think when you ask for that, you'll find that a lot of people are more willing to support than you first thought. And when you say that, you actually show them you're serious and you show them that you're committed, and that creates a lot of fans and supporters along the way.

The last thing that I thought was really interesting that you speak about, and I've never heard somebody articulate energy this way, but I think energy is so important. I mean, I speak about energy all the time. I always am telling people like, it's not about time management, it's about energy management. Like, you have to figure out like your, your, your energy and how it ebbs and flows throughout the day. But you have an energy test. Explain to me where that test came from, why it's so useful, and how people can apply this sort of 3-step energy test in their life. I'm assuming to figure out not only how to work best, but also if the thing they're working on is even what they should be working on.

Yeah, it's a shout out to Zach Pogrob. He's the Follow Obsession guy on Instagram. Love his stuff. And the, the whole thesis of obsession is the people who have gone on to achieve the greatest things, not only did they not wait for permission to start, but they were absolutely obsessed with their craft, with their mission. And when you are naturally obsessed with something, you do it more times. Because you're obsessed with the details. And when you do it more times, you get better than other people, which means you get a better positive feedback loop, which means you want to do it more. And it just kind of creates this self-fulfilling prophecy. And so the tactical advice I like to give people to identify their obsession, I have 3 tests. Number 1 would be the pee test. So pay attention to what you get so absorbed in that you forget to take care of basic needs like peeing. And I've definitely, I've definitely been there myself. The second test would be the midnight test. What keeps you awake at night? Not out of stress or because you have a deadline, but out of excitement that you're so absorbed in what you do, you don't want to go to sleep. And then the third test would be the energy test. What do you find fascinating that other people find boring? Oftentimes the activities that you enjoy but others avoid holds that, holds the clues to your unique strengths. So, an example would be I write a weekly newsletter, right? And my brother is like, has no, he has no, like no idea why I would intentionally give myself a weekly homework assignment. He's like, why would you give yourself a weekly essay? But to me, I'm just so energized by writing. Writing lights me up and it's something that I can't not do.

What would be your advice to people who are running so fast in their job or in their career, and they are just inundated with, with stress, anxiety, responsibility. And for the first time after listening to this podcast, they finally go through these 3 tests and they realize that they are so far out of alignment and nothing that they do lights them up. I think I'm pretty much describing like the majority of people, by the way, as sad as that sounds. I think that we are in a small cohort of people that actually really love what we do and probably pass these 3 tests. Not— that's not a hard and fast rule, but I can only imagine how many people don't pass these 3 tests. I think it's the majority for sure. What's your advice to that person? And I assume this is when a midlife crisis would hit, but when, when they go through and they don't pass these 3 tests, how do you to at a later stage start to re-architect your life in a way that is not super disruptive but starts to get yourself into alignment? What would be your best advice for that person?

In the book I talk about, there's this line that I love: most people don't lack motivation, they lack clarity. And once you are actually clear on what you do want and what does give you energy, I think you'll find it's a lot lower friction to do the thing than you thought. And a lot of people like view work as boring or something that's bad only because they don't find joy and meaning in it. And so that's what they associate work with. But when you're clear on what you actually want, I think that's when you start to, you start to work longer and harder, not out of commitment, but because you, you just can't stop. You just love doing it so much. And so step 1 would be, how can we get clear on what your north star is? If you could design your dream life, what would that look like? And I like to tell people to be super specific, like write it down. What does your ideal look like? Where are you? What are you working on? Who surrounds you? Like write it down, every detail. And the goal isn't to be perfect right off the start, uh, because you won't be. The goal is simply to get your first iteration down on paper and be intentional about trying to, to be clear on that. And then I think step 2 would be, as simple as it sounds, it would be stop digging in your current direction and start digging in the direction you know you want to go. Once you have that general idea of your North Star, how can you align your actions towards that North Star? And so every action you wanna think like, does this get me closer or further away from my North Star? And it doesn't have to be big things. It can be small things. Like maybe it's, wake up an hour earlier to write a weekly newsletter. Maybe it's stay up later one night, one more hour to brainstorm your podcast idea. Maybe it's spend your lunches creating the pitch deck to the entrepreneur you wanna work for instead of, you know, going out and eating lunch.

If you want, if people read this book and they only take one big idea away, What would that idea be? Obviously outside of, outside of the title, what would that idea be like? What would you want somebody to walk away with?

I think the second idea, if I couldn't tell people that you can just do things, I think the second idea would be to clearly define your North Star. I think, you know, it gets, you know, people often make fun of like, oh, find your purpose, find your calling, like, what's your passion? But like, switch out the words or change the definitions. Like, it's, it's pretty simple. Like, what do you want? Not what society, not what parents, not what your teachers told you, but what do you want? And I think the clearer you can get on that, the clearer everything else will be.