MBA1038 Must Read: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show where you get your fuel to fuel your business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is Read Episode on our Must Read Episodes, I share with you a book that I've read that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its insights, its takeaways, and why you should read it too. Today's must read is how to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. For those who don't know, Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, yes, the comic, but he's also a very successful entrepreneur and author. This book in particular is a New York Times bestseller, one of his many best selling books. And I've heard a lot about this book in the past and I thought I gotta pick this up and finally read it. And boy am I glad I did. Now this book is filled with great advice and perspectives that I've never thought of. Scott shares plenty of great stories and I want to share with you some of them as well as some great insights that he shares in the book. These are one of those books you're going to really love or hate. I personally really loved it and I'll share why in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by Earth ClassMail. If you run a business, you need a business address, but it doesn't mean you need to open up a business office. You can work from Home and Earth ClassMail can hook you up with a business address and scan all your mail and upload it to your account in the cloud so you can check all your physical mail anytime, anywhere. I love it. I love it, I love it. And we use earthclassmail because we love it so much and earthclassmail wants to hook you up with a free month. To get started. Just go to earthclassmail.com mbamonth again, it's earthclassmail.com mbamanth use coupon code mbamonth. How to Fail Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams is a very unique book. It was published back in 2013 and it's got 38 odd chapters, I would say medium sized chapters on several different topics. He also walks you through pretty much his life story as you go through each chapter and cover different topics, I want to start off by saying that this book is very opinionated, and he's very, very upfront about that. And what I mean by that is that he flat out says he's not a psychologist. He doesn't have a lot of data or research behind his opinions. He's just sharing with you what has worked in his life, in his career. But he feels very strongly about these things, and he reiterates this over and over and even makes fun of himself and says, hey, I can understand if you don't want to take advice from a cartoonist, but a lot of what he says makes total sense. And I want to share with you some of the things that really has resonated with me in this book. The first thing is his whole story of becoming the creator of Dilbert and that journey of becoming a very, very successful cartoonist. He admits himself he's not a great artist. He's a good artist, but he's a pretty decent writer and is able to communicate a lot in very little. And that's what Dilbert's all about. It's just one frame with a few words under the comic. So that's very hard to do. So I highly respect his expertise and that skill really is shown in the book, the writing of the book, because he's very concise and he's also very direct. And for me, I like that style. I like people that just go straight to the point and there's no time wasted. In the book, everything has a purpose. Everything fits in perfectly. I don't feel like he's waffling or belaboring a point. So it's an enjoyable book to consume. Now, the first takeaway that I thought was very interesting is his perspective on goals. He flat out states that goals are for losers. He believes in systems. Now you might be thinking, what's the difference? Well, the simple example he gives in the book is a goal could be like, I want to lose 10 pounds. And he thinks that's the wrong way to approach life. Instead, what you should say or you should do is have a system. A system like, I will do physical exercise every day of my life. That's a system that instills that health is a priority in my life and that exercise is going to be a big part of it. It's not about the £10. It's about being healthy and making it a priority. There's a big difference when you look at that perspective. He gives other examples and a really convincing argument about how Setting goals might be a waste of time. Now, I'm not totally sold, but I learned a lot by seeing this different perspective. And I highly recommend you pick up the book so you can see what I'm talking about and you can make a judgment for yourself. Now, surprisingly, this book talks a lot about health. I know it's a business book or personal development book. And he flat out states, again, I'm not a health expert, you know, consultor, doctor, but this is what worked for me. And he explains how health is so important in any successful person. Getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, and having the right nutrition. He says if you can do these three things, it can drastically improve your life and the results of what you're trying to achieve. And it's so true. If you're hungry or tired or not getting the right nutrients or not energized because you're not exercising, or worse, you're getting sick because you're not in good shape, you're not going to be able to achieve anything. So he actually offers a lot of good health advice. How to get started with exercise if that's a challenge for you. How to have a good diet without making you feel like you're depriving yourself. And he had a great concept of willpower. He says we all have a limited amount of willpower. You can't just constantly, you know, rely on having this amazing willpower. So for example, if you're going to have broccoli, it's okay to sprinkle some salt on top so you can eat that broccoli. That's a good compromise versus having something completely unhealthy. So his perspectives on health and well being are really cool as well. I really enjoyed that. He also has a controversial chapter on being selfish. Now he talks about how you should be selfish to some extent in your life so you can improve who you are, become successful and be able to help other people with what you do. He says if you don't take care of yourself, you're not selfish enough to take care of yourself. Your needs, your health, you're going to be a burden on the people around you and society as a whole. He says people that are well off and take care of themselves have enough leftover after that to give to others. Now, you can agree or disagree with this, but it's again a different perspective that you may want to consider. You may want to just actually see it as a thought experiment. And this is what this book does. It forces you to think differently for a moment and consider, hey, maybe this person has a point. He also shares some great stories in his life where he really overcame some serious challenges. Challenges with his health, challenges with his career, and how he's able to combat these challenges and overcome I don't want to spoil it for you, but a lot of these things are incredible and gives you some great tips on how to take on challenges in life. Sometimes things are hard in life, often they are. And this could be in business, this could be personal things. But we're all going to have challenges in our life. How we're going to face it, that's the question. He also has a long chapter on just important life skills everybody should have regardless of what they do in life. They start a business, they work for a company, it doesn't matter. Some of them are like communication, persuasion, technology skills. And he also backs up why he thinks these skills are so important. There are more, but I don't have time to list them all and explain them and I want you to experience them yourself when you read the book. Now there's one controversial chapter in this book. A lot of people have talked about this chapter and he actually references it at the end of the book as well. And I'm still thinking about this chapter. Well, after I've read this book. I'm going to share that with you in a moment. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Payroll and benefits are hard, especially for small businesses. 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Focus on your business and not payroll and paperwork. And to help support the show, Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive limited time deal. Sign up today and you'll get three months free. Once you run your first payroll, just go to Gusto.com MBA Again, that's Gusto.com MBA so that controversial topic, that controversial chapter is about affirmations. Affirmations are when you say to yourself over and over on a regular basis things you want. For example, for him, an affirmation was I, Scott Adams will be a successful cartoonist. Now, he prefaces this topic by saying he doesn't understand the science behind it totally and he has no real data to prove that this stuff works. But all he knows is that when he does his affirmations, these things come true. Now he does say, of course there's hard work involved, but he works hard on other things and doesn't do affirmations for and they don't work out. He's actually done his own research and split tested doing affirmations and not doing affirmations. Now his theories on why they work are pretty good actually. He says when you focus on something, when it's in front of your mind and you're constantly reminding yourself of it, your mind starts accepting the fact that this is a reality, that this can happen or will happen. Now personally, I believe it's very hard for you to do something if your mind doesn't believe it's a possibility, if you can't imagine yourself doing it. So part of affirmations is conditioning your brain to understand that this is a possibility and this is who you are. And he goes into detail about his experiences with affirmations and how it's a little bit scary how well they work. I'm going to let you read that chapter. I'm going to let you read that part of the book. Because personally, when I read it, it had me thinking for days. And I had a discussion with Nicole and said, what do you think about this? You know, this is what he discusses in the book. And I'm an open minded person. I like to open up my mind to new ideas before I just reject them on the surface. So I encourage you to pick up the book how to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. Fantastic author. I picked it up on Audible actually as an audiobook. Great narrator. You can pick up two free books with Audible with our promo code. Just go to audible.com mba and it was a super, super easy listen as I was going through the day. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. That wraps up today's lesson. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I love books that challenge the way I think it broadens your perspective, it broadens your mind and opens you up to new ideas. A narrow thinker will never make a great entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are innovators. They're open to crazy and wild ideas. They say yes and and they're open to new perspectives. So I highly recommend picking up this book just as a thought experiment, as an experiment to being open. And you'll love it. He's funny, he's a great writer, and it's an enjoyable read. Alright, thank you so much for listening to the Hunter lmba show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Until then, take. Sam.