How To Become a Learning Machine

Hey guys, Sabri Subhi here and in this video, I'm going to be talking to you about becoming a learning machine. You know, at this time of year, you know, we're in January right now. As you start to kind of sit down, look at your goals and really plan 2020 and plan on, you know, what is the kind of outcome that you're shooting for? Where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? And the concept, you know, that I've been taugh talking about with my team is really becoming the person that is capable of achieving those goals. And a huge part of that is you kind of transforming into this new version of yourself that is going to be capable of achieving what your goals are for this year. Because, you know, let's face it, the person that you were last year or that you are even right now is not capable achieving those goals. Otherwise they would have gone and already achieved them. So when you start to look at the difference of like where you are right now and who is this character of this person, this new version of yourself that you need to become in order for you to reach your goals, and you look at the gap in between those people and typically the number one thing that is going to be separating those two people is probably the skill level and the knowledge base of what you're operating, right? If you've already got a very good work ethic and you're already, you know, working 12, 14 hours a day or whatever it might be for your individual circumstances, you're not going to be able to double the amount of work that you put in, right? So you're going to need to basically get more leverage for those hours that you put in. And you're going to need to be working on things that do give you that leverage, right, that have, you know, a disproportionate amount of input to the output that you get out. And in order to do that, it really involves you one knowing what to work on and then becoming ruthlessly more effective at those things. So that's the thing that I want to talk to you about today, is becoming ruthlessly more effective at those things. And that really, that really kind of stems from becoming a learning machine, right? And being somebody that is constantly learning. And if we just look at it is like in your business, right, there's all these different elements of your business. There's like sales, there's marketing, there's product, there's service delivery, there's team, there's leadership, this retention, there's so many other different parts Right. Or monetization. And realistically, as the founder of the CEO of the business, you should be kind of like zooming in and zooming out to all of those different business funnels, right? And there's always areas of attention that require your attention in a business, or little fires that go off that you have to go and attend to, or mess that you have to clean up and go in and really strategize and work on for sprints of time and then zoom back out and then there's another function of your business. So the way that you want to look at it is look at all of those different functions in your business and have a look at, okay, well, where are the areas that I really want to uplevel, like this year? What are the things that I foresee me spending a really decent part of this year working on? And then you want to start looking at, well, you know, it might be sales, it might be marketing, it might be leadership. Then you want to start really going to the places where you're going to learn about those things. And, you know, people ask me all the time, like, I had a guy in this office last week, and he was like, you know, where do you suggest, what blog should I read or what podcasts should I listen to? And all those things, you know, they're great. And you can definitely get a lot of insights, really, if you look at, like, the whole spectrum of learning and where do you get the best return on time? It's really from reading books, right? Because, you know, I look at just my own, like, situation, right? So I brought out a book last year, and it basically took me 17 years of my life to accumulate the knowledge and then to synthesize that down into wisdom and put it in my book, right? And I get messages every single day on Instagram, you know, on YouTube, emails, all that kind of stuff of people telling me that they sat down and they read my entire book in one or two sittings, right? It might have been one or two days, and some people have even read it in a day. And you think about that transfer of wisdom. That's something that I have literally been out there, like, getting my teeth kicked in, losing so much money, like trial and error across 17 years of my life. And someone has basically taken that learning curve in, you know, one or two days or even in a week, right? And can get a lot of nuggets out of that and apply it to their own business and learn from all of my mistakes and then propel themselves a lot quicker, right? And I Look, that with the books that I read, it's like some people, you know, write a book when they're 50 or 60 years old and they've accumulated all of that knowledge and then really synthesize that down into wisdom. And I'm able to just download that into my brain and get that, you know, over eight hours that on average it takes to listen to an audio book or to read a book or whatever, what have you, right? And this is something that you constantly want to be doing. Like, you need to become a lifelong student in order for you to keep that passion in the game and for you to keep excelling and keep leveling up and transcending to that new level. And books are just an absolutely phenomenal resource. Like, you know, you can go get a book for like 15, 20 bucks and that thing can make you an insane amount of money, right? In terms of the return on investment for books is just absolutely out of this world. And I'm only ever looking for one or two concepts or ideas that I can apply from a book in order for the whole thing to be worth my while. But you know, realistically, that's this. You want to become that lifelong student. You want to become a learning machine. And one of the reasons for that is that that knowledge that you accumulate from reading books and, you know, it compounds over time, right? So if you're going to be learning about something, for instance, like Pareto's principle, right, the 8020 rule, something that about a lot. And if you, if you apply that to your life, right, and you think about like how much more output that you're getting from just focusing on the 20% of activities that give you 80% of the outputs. Then you think about the results of that compounding over the next year, over the next 10 years, or over the next 30, 40 or 50 years of your life, like, it is profound. Like, you will literally be in a completely different place than if you hadn't learned that and if you hadn't applied that. And that's just one concept, right? There are lots of concepts and there's lots of different learnings that you'll get from your life. Or it might be, you read my book and you find out that I wake up at 4am and you might apply that to your life and you might end up getting an extra thousand or two thousand hours per year. And then you look at that over the course of a decade or two decades and you have a look at how much time that you would gain from doing that. These are all little things That I look for those little cues throughout what are people doing, right? And getting some of those learnings and applying them. And you can apply them to all areas. It might be marketing, you might find out a way to become a better copywriter and increase your opt in rate on your landing pages from 10% to 20%. And then you look at the compounding effect that that will have over the course of the year, over the course of the decade, over the course of your life, right? Having those learnings and those know how. And that's just one area. It might be becoming a more effective leader. It might be retaining more customers. There's so many different aspects and that's just business, right? And there will be a proven master in all of those different disciplines. There'll be somebody that has devoted their entire life to understanding all of the nuances of the thing that you're trying to learn. And you can go there and you can read, you know, not one book, but a number of books. And that will lead you down a rabbit hole of all these different wisdom and books that they've read and people that they've been inspired for. And you'll be able to create like your own lattice work of knowledge within that different specialty of that field, right? And then you do that in other areas and the effects, I think that you can see, they are profound. And then that's just business. Then what about life? What about relationships? What about spirituality? What about productivity? What about just all the different areas that, that make up life, right? And then you learning about those different things. And you know, if you have a look at like the common traits of that are very successful, the number one thing that I could say that they all share is that they all read and they all read books, right? And typically the people that are uber successful spend a disproportionate amount of their time reading, right? And learning and staying up to date with things. And you know, the average CEO, I think reads 30 books a year. And like the average person reads less than a book a year, right? And the person that's a CEO has obviously got way more time demands on themselves. But that just shows the importance that they place on learning and really up leveling and getting to the next level. So I just really wanted to kind of, you know, make a video for you guys that really stresses the importance of becoming a learning machine and constantly be learning to always be sharpening the sword before you go out there, right. And to always be up leveling. And it's really from this hunger of becoming like a lifelong student, that you keep passion in the game and that you keep focusing on taking yourself to that next level. And that's what really helps you kind of push the boundaries and grow, right? Because if you're not stretching yourself, if you're not feeling some kind of pain, then you're not growing. And while it's not, you know, as. As sexy as the latest hack or the new chat, where chatbot software or sales funnel or the new script or anything like that, these are things that compound over time. And the net effect is just so dramatic and so profound that when you start doing this stuff and you start learning, you start researching and you look at, like, how much ground you cover over the course of a year, you really will be kicking yourself that if you're not already doing this, that you should have been started a long time ago. So I urge you to really do that, to always be reading, to always be up leveling. And the reason that I look to books instead of something like a podcast or a blog post, right? Typically, like, if you're, if you look at like an incredible blog post, it might take that person 40 hours of research to put together that blog post and time to kind of write it. Whereas if you look at a book, it's taken some people 30 years of their life, right? And a lot of learnings. And when somebody puts out a book, there's kind of something about it where you're putting your name to it and you're putting something timeless out there, right? Blog posts, you go delete, you're not going to be deleting books off people's bookshelves. So there's something about putting all the time and energy and really thinking, thinking about it long and hard and creating, you know, a piece of content that's like a part of your legacy, that you really get to find out all the nuances. And the authors typically go really deep. And my tip is you only want to be reading books from people that have actually achieved what it is that you want to achieve. Or they're not just academics. They've actually done the work, right? They haven't gone out there, read a whole bunch of research papers, and then just written, kind of formed a hypothesis and written a book about there. Like, that's the. That stuff is trash. You don't want to be looking at that. You want to be looking at people that have devoted their entire life or the better half of their life to something and becoming a true master and actually does it for a living. That's where you will find a lot of gold. So I hope you got a lot out of this, and I hope it serves you for wherever you are right now. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this video, make sure that you click the like button and subscribe. We're dropping a video on YouTube every other day, and if you've got any questions about any of the content that I covered in this video, just basically leave a comment with heytake sub read in the comment section. And every week we're also trying to go through all those questions and get them answered. 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