The Best Way to Master Anything Isn’t Watching Videos

If you've watched five, six, seven, even ten videos on something and still are not great at that thing, this episode's for you. Here's today's biggest takeaway: nobody's ever gotten good at watching. Watching is not learning. Mastery comes from doing, experimenting, improving, and repeating that loop so that you can continue to iterate and get better. Listen, I know this sounds strange for somebody who's created over five. 100 videos and has a YouTube channel and publishes this podcast on video. Videos are great for tips, for strategy, for inspiration, to get unstuck. It's very good at that, but they're terrible at mastering something. Today I want to show you the exact 3-step method I use to master anything. Anytime I want to go deep to really change my life in a certain area, this is the strategy I use, these 3 steps. And I'm going to share real stories and real examples So that you can see how it actually fits into your life. Let's go. Let's start with why are videos so bad when it comes to mastery? I know that sounds strange, but the uncomfortable truth is that watching videos to learn isn't really learning. It's actually just getting information that is actually not easy for you to retain. Watching is actually quite passive. What I found in my own life is that if I watch and don't do, so I'm just watching without doing, I will forget it, okay? And it doesn't matter if you take notes, it doesn't matter if, you know, you have voice notes or whatever it might be, it still doesn't stick until you actually apply what you learn. The crazy thing is that when you watch videos, you feel productive, you feel like you're actually getting something done, but it's actually very temporary, it's very shallow learning. And I learned this as an educator. I was a teacher for over a decade in the classroom. I taught English as a second language. That was my first career. And one of the strategies we had to implement as teachers to make sure students actually learn something and can reproduce it so that they pass their exams is something called input-output. Okay? And this is actually how human beings learn. So what is input-output? Well, basically is that you input information. So as a teacher, I would try to teach a concept, but I don't teach for too long. Like if I was going to teach somebody how to write an opening paragraph of an essay, I would give them maybe an inch, I'm going to give them some instruction for about 2, 3 minutes maximum. Why? Because if I give them instruction beyond that, they're going to forget the first 2, 3 minutes. So what we want to do is also have output. Require the student to give me output. So they learn for 2 to 3 minutes, they understand one concept, and then I ask them to do it themselves. You output what I just showed you. You go ahead and produce. What I just taught. And this is what really works. So if you're watching a video and you're not doing something every 2 minutes or so, it's very hard for you to actually master it, for actually know how to do it because you haven't applied it in the real world. Listen, I love watching videos. I'm a big consumer of YouTube. But one thing I notice is that watching creates this illusion of competence. You know, you feel like you're getting it in the moment, but that's just it. You get it in the moment, but after the moment passes, it's gone. The way we actually learn something and get good at something is that the information that we learn has to move from the screen or instruction through our hands, through something that we actually did. And the best example I can give you is learning how to drive. If you've ever learned how to drive, if you can remember back then, you know, what you do is you learn from a book first, the rules of the road, right? You learn from driver's school what you can and cannot do on the road and what the signs mean, all that kind of stuff. And then you got to get on the road, right? You don't actually know how to drive until you get in the driver's seat, put it in drive, and learn how to operate the car. And in the beginning, you're like super focused because it's the first time you're doing it. Like, your hands are gripping the wheel, you're white-knuckling the whole way. You're trying to figure out, you know, how to use your mirrors. You're going slower than you actually need to. All that kind of stuff, right? But what happens? You drive and you drive some more and you ply and you, and you, you go on road trips and 3, 4, 5 years later, one day you're driving home from work and you don't know where the last 5 minutes went. Like, you're like, how did I get to this point? You're on autopilot. You've mastered driving. Okay. And you could do things while you drive. In the beginning, you're just solely focused on driving. But once you start doing it over and over with repetition, you start realizing, oh, I could do other things. Like I can, you know, have a coffee. I can listen to music. I could do other things. Mm-hmm. And that's why a lot of people, when they get older, they can't deal with a lot of loud noises or they lower the radio when they're driving because that muscle, that skill starts to fatigue. So, you have to understand that that didn't happen by accident. That happened because you did it over and over again. You actually applied what you learned. You didn't just like drive for like a few hours and then watch a bunch of videos and got better as a driver. No. You had to get behind the wheel and do it over and over. So here's my 3-step framework. Anytime I want to master something, if I want to really go deep and really get good at something, this is what I do. And I'm going to give you the 3-step framework right now on a silver platter. And then I'm going to give you an example of how I use this 3-step framework to change my life. Actually, how I applied it in my life and in my business to learn something and master it to a point where it actually benefits me. Step 1. I actually read a book or two and go deep in that subject. Listen, videos are great and it's a good way to kind of start exploring an idea. But if you want to go deep and understand something, books are the best. Why? Because if you think about how much time it takes to write a book, most really good books have a lot of work involved. Like we're talking about 6 months, 12 months, sometimes 2 years, 3 years to write a book. A lot of research goes into it. So you're getting like the best information that has really a lot of effort put into it on a silver platter in that book. And you're going to get a broader understanding of that subject matter. And don't worry, I'm going to give you some examples in a moment. But what I recommend is you choose one, maximum 2 books and read those books in that topic or whatever area you want to learn. Now, I want to make it very clear what The goal of this step is. The goal of this step is not to know all the information about this area, right? This is not the goal. The goal is to understand how to best spend your time in the next months when you're gonna apply this stuff so that you can be able to get the most out of this skill, okay? Like, I wanna start doing this. How do I do this in a way that's most efficient? Sometimes I don't actually read a full book. I'll read like maybe 3/4 of a book and have enough because now I have enough information to start intelligently, to actually have a strategy and how I'm going to start doing this new skill. And before we move on to step 2, I want to make this super clear. I can't think of any other resource that is most value for your dollar than a book, right? A book is like, what, $15, $20 max, right? It's even cheaper on Kindle, audiobooks, or even part of Spotify Premium. There's so much value in a book way beyond what it costs. Like, In terms of like taking a course or the amount of time you're gonna take to watch all the videos so that you can be able to consume the same amount of information. Books are actually quite efficient when it comes to your costs in terms of dollars, but also your time and your attention. What I love about books as well is that it is at your pace. Sometimes when I read a book or a chapter in a book, something really hits me and I have to think about it. I can simply just put the book down and start thinking and start daydreaming and start thinking how this applies in my life. And maybe even just like jot down some notes in my notebook or my journal. It's very hard to do that on video. Yes, you could pause. Yes, you could do that. But like, there's this anticipation that you want to see what's next, especially with retention-type videos these days. It's super intense. With books, it actually allows you to stop, think, reflect, and then continue. Step 2, start doing. Don't delay this step. Okay? A lot of people, they get into the research stage, they read 5, 7, 8 books, and they're like, I'm still researching. No. Right? Force yourself. Max 2 books, I say, uh, just to stop it. Usually 1 book is enough. Uh, but just start doing immediately. Implement what you learned, what you understand as the next step. You don't have to be perfect because you're not gonna be perfect. You're a beginner, right? Any version of implementation is fine. Okay? You can learn more the first week of doing than continuing to consume information. This is why I like to time block this. Like, I have this week to read this book. That's it. One week. After that, I start applying in week 2. Doing is where the real permanent learning happens. This is where the mastery starts actually happening in your life. And what I love about doing is you start understanding how this fits into what you want to accomplish. How do I actually start doing things so it fits in with my goals? And again, I'm going to give you a full example in a moment, but I want to go through the steps so that you have the context. Step 3, you wanna analyze and improve. Listen, it's not enough for you just to do. A lot of people, they just love to do and implement, and they, you know, ship products out, they put out art, they do things that they've just learned, and they post it on social media, and they're so happy about it. Great. But that is not where the mastery happens. Where the mastery really happens is when you put something out there and you analyze your work, you analyze how you are doing that work, And you improve. A lot of people say consistency is key. Yes, it's true, but really iteration is key. You want to do something and you want to iterate upon what you do. If you're doing the same thing over and over again, you're not really improving. Uh, you probably know this if you've ever worked out in a long period of time or you're at the gym, you know, you just can't do the same weight in the same sets every single week, month on month. You have to increase the weight, right? You have to increase maybe the reps. Maybe you have to change up the exercises. Your muscles start Recognizing, oh, I'm used to this now. So, you have to constantly iterate what you do. And the only way you can iterate and know what to do differently is if you analyze what you just did, right? What you put out there in the world, what you produced. You want to improve it every single time you put it out there. So, anytime you share your— whatever you've learned or everything that you've built or anything that you've created, you want to kind of have a critical eye and say, hey, how can I improve this the next time I do this? And this could be anything. This could be like writing a blog post. This could be presenting on video. This could be pitching your business to investors. What did I do this time that I can improve on next time? You could just choose one thing. Like, a good example of this is that every time I shoot a podcast, I am thinking about what is one thing I can improve. This could be my intonation. This could be my breath. This could be the content itself. This could be the topic matter. It could be how we edit the video. It could be the title. It could be the thumbnail. It could be the length of the video. All these things are iterations, right? There's some ways I can improve How we create this podcast. So let me give you a working example, how I applied this 3-step framework. Back in 2014, I launched a software company called Webinar Ninja. I never built a software company before. I barely built a piece of software before. Like, this was like my 3rd try. Other 2 were kind of hobby projects, and I created the beta version of Webinar Ninja. And when I decided I was actually gonna sell this product and build a company and start hiring people, I started to realize I don't know how to do that, right? I don't know how to be a CEO of a tech company. I don't know how to lead. I don't know how to create software at scale. I don't know any of this stuff, right? So I applied this framework. Step 1, I read 2 books. The first book I read is called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It's an honest and brutal, uh, book about leading a software company. Right? What is it like to lead a team of people building a piece of software? How to make decisions, uh, how to prepare yourself for the challenges ahead. This is not theory. These are actual practical stories he shares about what it's like to build a software company and what you should expect to be some of the pitfalls. And what I loved about this book is that it was real and it was honest. It talked about finances, it talked about team, it talked about hiring, it talked about when software fails on you. All kinds of stuff and things I didn't know, things I didn't know that could happen if I go down the path of software. Now, it didn't deter me from starting the company, but it allowed me to be prepared and not to go out, go into it so innocent. So that was the first book I read. The second book I read was called Scrum by Jeff Sutherland. Scrum is basically how to build software with a team. There are certain best practices when it comes to building software. How do you sprint? In terms of a deadline, whether it's a 1-week or 2-week sprint? How do you iterate on software? How do you ship software out to the world so that it's tested and there's minimal bugs in the software when you're presenting it to the customer? How do you take in feedback and implement that in your build? And how do you make sure that you prioritize which features are most important to your customers? This was a great book for me to learn how to really lead a team of engineers. I wasn't really an engineer. I was a former teacher. I was a self-taught kind of amateur PHP developer. And actually, I created the beta version, but as soon as we started selling it, I hired an engineer because I needed somebody to actually write real clean code. And I didn't know how to manage this person. I didn't know how to start building around this person. And this book really helped me a lot. Listen, I read these 2 books after we pre-sold Webinar Ninja. What we did is that we wanted to validate the idea of the software, so we had a landing page. And we pre-sold it to our audience, meaning that we said, hey, put down a deposit and you'll get first access to the software in about 4 months. So I read these books after that happened. So in those 4-month period where I had to get a software out there, right, that was ready for commercial use, and I was able to read those 2 books in about 2 weeks, 1 book a week. And a lot of people think that's pretty fast reading a book. Well, I actually just allocated about 1 hour in the morning when I was having breakfast and 1 hour before bed. And if that's 2 hours a day, you're gonna read at that kind of pace around 10 hours, 12 hours, depending on the size of the book. Really, you can complete the book. And of course, you know, there are some areas where I read faster, some areas I kind of reread because it was complicated. But 2 weeks is all I allocated to it. And after that, I moved on to step 2, which is start doing, right? We started building our software company, Webinar Ninja. I applied the concept of Scrum With the team, with the sprints, with shipping out our features. I applied Horowitz's lessons when it came to the moments that were difficult, the tough decisions we had to make, whether it's hiring or even firing when we're building out our team. Uh, and here's the thing, I learned about 10 times more in the first month of building that company than what I learned in the books, in the books that I read. Why? Because I'm different than Ben Horowitz or Jeff who wrote Scrum, right? And my experience is going to be ultimately different because I'm building something completely different. I'm dealing with different people. It's a different age, my age, and a different age in the world. And it just allowed me to understand how to apply those principles that I learned in the book in my context. Now, not everything went perfect, and that's good, right? When things don't go perfect, you learn, right? You learn what not to do. You learn what you need to do differently in your business to actually succeed. I think the biggest thing the books gave me when I started doing is the vocabulary, is understanding how to communicate with engineers, how to communicate and understand like what it means to deploy code and what does it mean to have like a PR, right, before the code goes out. And what does it mean to like make sure that we have like what's called unit testing inside of our software so that we make sure that we ship bug-free software. So all this stuff is kind of technical information that I didn't know. And those books gave me the information so I didn't look like an idiot in front of my team. And of course, I could not forget about step 3. I analyzed and improved what I was doing. Every hard decision, every missed deadline, every, uh, misstep that we had along the way, I evaluated it, right? I didn't just bury those tough feelings. You know, when, when things don't go your way, when things don't actually succeed, sometimes we don't wanna talk about it or think about it. But you have to face them because there are lessons in there that have helped me tremendously, not only in the business, but until today, like things that happen over and over again. The thing about business is that it's almost like Groundhog's Day. You're going to get the same situations over and over regardless of the business. So, your next business, you're going to be able to do better because of those lessons. So, you have to kind of just face the music and be like, OK, that didn't go well. What could we do differently? What could I do differently the next time I do this? What really caused it to fail? Evaluate it as much as possible. Gather as much data as possible so that you can actually win because of the failure, because of what you learn. We had a rule at Webinar Ninja. Mistakes are okay, but we don't want to make the same mistake twice. We make a mistake, we learn from it so we don't do it again. New mistakes are fine because we're going to learn new lessons. And eventually you're going to run out of mistakes and you're going to start doing things right. We don't wanna ignore mistakes so that we don't do it again. And guess what? No video in the world could have taught me how to fire somebody face-to-face, how to handle a product crisis, a bad deploy that happened, uh, more than once, and we had to roll back the code and make sure, uh, customers are taken care of, right? No video teaches you that because your situation's gonna be different than any other situation. 'Cause you're building a unique product with a unique team, with your unique skillset and experiences, right? Doing taught me everything every single time. So you have to kind of like learn the basics through books is what I recommend. And then start applying because the applying is what's gonna teach you everything. And the results speak for themselves. Our company grew for over a decade. We had over 30,000 paying users. Um, it was, one of the biggest companies I could ever imagine building. And we had an incredible team. We learned so much through the process. And, uh, ultimately I accomplished our goal, which is to sell the company in 2024. We sold to ProProfs, changed my life forever. Uh, but those, that decade of learning, uh, it's funny cuz the other day Nicole and I were, you know, experiencing some growth in our own business here in the $100 MBA, in our media company. And it reminded us of a challenge and, and a learning that we had back in Webinar Ninja. Like, wow, You know, this is a good sign because it means you're growing. It means that you're outgrowing your current strategy and you need to create a new one. And that's why they say business is like jumping out of a plane and building your parachute on the way down. You're going to have to learn how to build and create solutions on the fly. Listen, if this episode is landing for you, I encourage you to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you're listening to or watching, whether it's YouTube or Spotify or Apple, whatever it might be. We have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. It's called How to Become the Best Version of You. I go deep in a book I recently read called Start with Yourself by Emma Grede. You might have heard of her. She's a huge, huge entrepreneur. She's the founder of Skims. We go into why that book is so pivotal, especially when you're doubting yourself constantly in your business. If that's something that you need help with, you don't want to miss that episode. Hit subscribe. Now, as you know, I'm a balanced person and I'm not here to tell you that all video is horrible. I'm not anti-video. I'm anti just watching. That's all you do, right? Videos are actually really good at refining your skills, at giving you tips, specifically techniques to try, right? Strategies or frameworks that you can approach, like today's video, right? Like today's episode. Video is great for inspiration. It's great at getting unstuck. Like, I'm stuck in this process. I don't know how to get out of this situation, or Uh, how to fix this problem. And it could be something as simple as like, you know, uh, how to do something on your computer, right? Notice a pattern here. Video serves the doing, right? Today's episode only works if you apply what I teach you, if you apply the 3 steps. So this only works if you watch this video and you do something with it. Like say, hey, oh, I wanna learn how to— Vibe Code. I wanna learn how to create software with AI. Let me pick up a book today on Amazon and start reading it. Let me start applying it the week after and start building some software. This is what I'm talking about. You have to apply. Don't just watch and then go to the next video and the next video and the next video. Listen, that would be great if you watch all my videos. I love that. But if you actually want to get the most out of it, and this is going against my interest, but that's fine because I'm here to help you out, is to make sure that you apply anytime you learn. I found that video actually is a great companion in what I'm doing. So for example, I've built software before. I've built software with AI. Sometimes I get stuck, I get an error. I go to YouTube, I, you know, ask, you know, YouTube, is there a way for me to get around this? I learn a new technique, I learn a new way to avoid that from happening, right? So video is very helpful for getting unstuck. But the wrong way to do this is to watch 50 videos preparing to learn how to snowboard, right? I learned how to snowboard about a decade ago, and I watched a couple of videos which were helpful, But I really didn't understand what I needed to do on the mountain until I got on the mountain, right? And I listened to the instructor and I actually felt what I was supposed to be doing. So don't overload yourself with information hoping that this is preparing you. No, just learn enough, like how to put on the snowboard, right? How to put on your boots, how to, you know, put your snowboard, your boots into the snowboard, how to stand up. What does it mean when they say edge? Just some vocabulary, some words. What does it mean to ride switch? What all that stuff so you could understand And when the instructor says something, you get it. So here's the rule. Here's the mindset you need to have anytime you watch a video. You need to tell yourself, I'm only consuming to serve the doing, right? You're not doing, uh, yourself a favor by just watching, watching, watching with no intention of doing and actually learning. Then it's just entertainment and that's fine. Call a spade a spade. If you just wanna have fun and watch, you know, some funny videos, great. But if you're watching videos to learn and you want to learn it for real, then have the intention of like only watching this so I can apply it and do it very soon. Like now, listen, to wrap up today's episode and to just kind of put this all into context, you can listen to my advice here, right? You can do the 3 steps and apply it, and that'd be great. Or you cannot. Right. But I do have to say that I know this works. Why? Because I have a master's in education. This is what I did for a living, right? I taught. 5 days a week, 5 times a day in the classroom, and I had to make sure my students learned what they needed to learn or my job is in jeopardy. Okay? That's why I was getting paid. And if my test scores were very low, then it's— I'm not going to keep my job for very long. So, I had to learn very quickly, how do people actually learn? How do people actually be able to repeat the things I want them to do? And they could do it on their own. Um, and one of the examples I wanna share with you that I learned from the classroom, uh, is try to remember when you were a kid and you were learning long division. You need to know all the steps of long division, right? So for example, like, how do I know how to carry the 1? How do I do all the steps? If you remember, you would actually write down the steps. You would actually have to do the steps. The teacher would show you the first step and then you would do it on your paper, and then they move on to the next step and then you do it on your paper. Remember input output. The reason why this works is because what happens? You, as a kid, go home and got to do some homework. The teacher's not there anymore. So, how are you going to be able to do it by yourself if you don't know and remember the steps? The only way you're going to remember is if you actually do it over and over again. So, this is why it actually works. I wanted to kind of peel back the onion and show you like what's the psychology behind this and what's the methodology behind this. But this is, you know, Education 101. And you're lucky enough to have somebody that has done it for a living and knows a bit about business to help you on your journey. So again, no more than 2 books to get started. Start applying as soon as possible and start iterating and learning and analyzing why that succeeded, why that failed. Get as much data as, as much data as you can so that you can be able to improve and iterate the next time around. If this episode changed how you think about learning, Awesome. That was the whole point. Okay. But you can continue your learning if you want to watch and apply what you learn with this next video, how to build a software business with AI this weekend. I actually give you step-by-step what to do in 48 hours to be able to build a software business with AI. And what's great about this video is that you can go back to it and follow the steps as you're applying the steps on the weekend, right? So that you can be able to build that software that you want. Now, I also have to say that that video is a little bit longer. It's about 40 minutes, and it's because I try to go as deep as possible. So don't feel compelled to watch the whole thing at one time. You can watch the first 10 minutes, apply, another 10 minutes, apply. You have to remember, whatever you consume— a book, a video, you're in a class, you're in a workshop, you're at a conference— you get to choose how you consume that information. Do what works for you, right? If you want to jump around chapters in a book, No one's stopping you. Go ahead and do that. You know how you learn best, and you should apply the best strategy that helps you improve. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.