Seven months ago I was reading this book.
It was called Dotcom Secrets.
And I just read it all through.
I was like, oh, it's good.
And then, you know what I did?
I read the next book, Expert Secrets.
Read it all through.
Oh, it's good.
And then I read the next book, Traffic Secrets.
Read it all through.
Oh, nice.
What's wrong with that?
Well, some may argue it's actually good.
Like, you're reading educational books that are actually
going to help your goals.
But the thing is that it took me seven months to take action
on the first step on that first book, Dotcom Secrets.
Seven months.
Literally the simplest step identifying your dream customer.
Seven months.
Took me.
Now, yes, there were some things I took action on right away,
like in Expert Secrets.
I took action on starting a podcast straight away.
Actually, it took me 14 days to take action on that,
even though I was practicing my recording before that.
But the thing is that I kind of have this theory where I'm
just going to tell you how it related to me.
Because let's say when I just started my entrepreneurship
journey, which, OK, let's just say when I first started
taking entrepreneurship seriously and actually reading
books about it.
That was like seven, eight months ago.
And I would read books like Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets,
Traffic Secrets, Four Hour Workweek, The E-Mith Revisited,
all kinds of books like that.
And I didn't really take much action on them.
It was all just kind of like soaking up the knowledge
and adding it to my database, which I actually think is good.
Because in the beginning, I didn't really
have a very actionable mindset.
Because that's something you develop.
One of the early things that I realized
is pretty much all throughout high school
is really focusing on my physical health and my fitness
and my physique and exercising a lot.
And so I developed this thing that I called the,
all right, let's do it mindset.
It's pretty much where whenever you're
like about to do an exercise, you're just like, all right,
let's do it.
So for example, I would go to the park over summer
with my friend.
And there was this guy who was older than us,
who was basically training us.
And we were doing crazy hard exercises, like bear crawls,
backwards bear crawls, forward bear crawls, crab walks,
like literally all the way across a soccer field
and like many sets of each.
And we're doing like pretty difficult exercises.
So we just got done with this brutal workout.
We are completely pooped.
And then he was like, all right, to finish it off,
full field sprint.
And then I was just like, all right, let's do it.
Even though I felt like literally terrible,
like I was literally so tired already.
But I just did it.
So that's kind of the all right, let's do it mindset.
And early on in my entrepreneurship journey,
like when I first started reading books about it,
I identified the fact that successful entrepreneurs
have that all right, let's do it mindset,
for entrepreneurship.
I only had it for physical activities.
So then I, early on I realized, okay,
I gotta build this mindset for the entrepreneurship.
Cause that's what allowed me to have so much success
in my physical fitness.
Because I literally just say, all right, let's do it.
Like I don't really allow my mind to give it
any extra thought, I just do it.
And so that, I figured that it would help me a lot more
to develop that for entrepreneurship.
But it took me time to build that up
in my physical abilities, like years, maybe months,
I don't know.
So it was not gonna happen straight away
to build it up on entrepreneurship.
And then I went, I just kept reading more and more books.
I was just taking as much action as was easiest for me
at the time.
So literally all the action that I took
in the beginning was recording a podcast.
That's literally all I did.
And I would just do like one episode a day.
And then I did like a progressive overload
where I would do like, I started with like 10 minute episodes
and then 11 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
And then it just kept going up until I got to one hour.
And then I did like one hour episodes for like months.
And then eventually I kind of stopped that
because I realized I got to change course.
But that just like developing that habit
of literally just sitting down for every day for an hour
and just knowing that that's what I'm doing.
I'm recording on an episode.
That helped develop the, all right, let's do a mindset.
And this whole time I was reading books,
but not really taking much action on them.
And then something kind of switched.
I believe that it was,
once I really started to take YouTube seriously,
I started editing my videos.
And so that was something that I didn't really want to do.
It was something that I kind of like,
I was like, ah, I don't want to edit.
But I did it anyways.
And I, like initially I was really bad.
All I could do was literally like make cuts.
That's it.
I didn't know how to add pictures or anything.
And then eventually I started adding pictures
and I started like zooming in and like adding videos
and all kinds of things, animations.
And that period of literally just locking in
for less than a month, maybe even one month.
I don't know.
I think that me locking in and being like,
all right, this is what I'm focusing on.
Like before it was recording one hour podcast.
And that built up my recording ability.
So now I can just be like, all right,
let's do it for recording.
But now I had to build up this brand new skill of editing.
I was like, I gotta do this.
Like you know how it feels when you have to learn,
when you want to learn a new skill,
but you kind of like don't really want to do the work.
Like that's what I was feeling.
But I just did it.
I did like every single week I was like,
all right, I'm gonna get better and better and better.
Until eventually I was literally spending hours every day
editing.
And that's what I was, that's all I was thinking of.
Like how can I make this better?
Edit, how can do this?
How can do that?
And eventually it got to the point just like the one hour
podcast did where I kind of like realized
I gotta change directions because now that I've developed
this skill, I don't really want to focus too much time
on it anymore.
So then I completely changed directions
and went back into recording.
But I think that me, like the process that I took
to develop the all right, let's do it mindset
was simply just picking a skill and building it.
Like the original skill that I developed was recording,
like literally recording a podcast.
I wasn't like right now I'm practicing recording a video
which is different because you have to make hand motions,
you have to like look at the camera,
you have to walk around or in my case you have to walk around
but like you gotta do different things.
And then, but I didn't like complicate myself with all that.
Like initially I just did a podcast.
So it was complete like no visual.
Like I would literally just,
I could literally just look at anything.
Oftentimes I would literally just zone out
staring at like my water bottle or the lamp or something.
Literally just staring like just zone out and just talk.
That helped me build my first skill
of literally just talking.
And that was like the, that was the first skill
that I used to develop the all right, let's do it mindset.
And then I had to diversify
because I couldn't get locked into one thing.
So then I learned editing
and I literally just spent hours learning how to edit.
And then I will also another skill that I learned was
creating thumbnails, which I'm very like that was also hours
that I spent doing that too.
And so like these three skills that I learned
really helped me to develop the RL is do a mindset
for entrepreneurship and in the beginning of this journey
I was reading books, not really taking much action.
I would just take action on the easiest, simplest things
or the things that I knew would impact me the most.
For example, when I first started recording a podcast
even though I didn't upload the first 14 episodes
that was really difficult for me to do.
But I knew that was like the 20%
like the 80, 20 rule, the podcast was like
the most important thing for me to take action on.
So I knew that the results far outweighed
like the risks and the fears and all that.
So that's what I took action on.
So the three, like I learned these skills
and they helped develop my all right, let's do it mindset.
And now, now when I'm reading books
I'm far more likely to actually take action right away.
Like it took me seven months to take action
on the dot com secrets thing.
And then it took me like eight months to take action
on one thing that I read in expert secrets
cause I'm in the middle of rereading it right now.
So I'm literally just taking action on everything now.
And one more thing that helped with that is I kind of locked
in my taking action and kind of built a positive feedback loop.
When I first started recording the podcast, I was like
I understood the value of the positive feedback loop
because I remembered back to when I was starting
going to the gym.
Like the first couple of weeks was pretty difficult.
Like I was like, I don't really want to do this
but like I want the results.
And so I kind of just like use my willpower
on going to the gym, making sure that I get consistent
until I build that positive feedback loop.
So then I don't need to actually use nearly
as much willpower anymore.
So I understood the value of that
and I applied that same principle to the podcast
because when I recorded the podcast in the beginning
it was tough, it was difficult.
Like I didn't want to do it, it was scary.
And I was scared of people judging me.
I was scared of myself.
I was scared of all kinds of things
and it was just work.
Like it was like simple as that.
It was just like something that is action.
Like people don't want to take action on things
because it's easier not to.
And then, or should I say it's easier to distract yourself
because eventually when you do nothing,
literally nothing stare at a wall,
it is easier to take action than to continue staring at a wall.
But that's a different topic.
So I got the positive feedback loop formed.
That happened probably like 30 episodes in, 20 episodes in.
So after a month of recording the podcast,
I got the positive feedback loop formed.
And I used that same principle
by developing the positive feedback loop
on something even more important,
which is taking consistent action on books.
Because you shouldn't read books.
You should use them.
And this is something that
I never really took fully advantage of
until really recently, like within the past two months.
Because the first book that I really said,
okay, I was gonna take action on everything in this book
was a book called Deep Work.
And that book I read like this year,
so two months ago, I realized that
I pretty much have already done all of the things
on that book, so I didn't really need to take action.
So that was like kind of a bad opportunity
for me to build that positive feedback loop.
And then the next book was,
the next book that I said,
okay, I'm gonna take action on everything
was a storytelling book.
Because storytelling is something that I knew
I needed to build.
Like that's a skill that is required for influencing others
and is required for being a great YouTuber.
And so I was like, okay, I'm getting this storytelling book
and I'm taking action on everything.
And so usually, if I just read it normally,
I could have probably gotten it done in like a week.
It was like 200 pages maybe.
But I took action on everything and I said,
I am not going to move forward on the book
until I take action.
Because I remember back to the summer
when I was so addicted to reading,
I just didn't take action.
It was so much easier to just keep reading on.
And then I ended up just not letting myself read
until I took action, which I failed at doing that,
but that doesn't matter.
And so I'm sitting at this book and I'm like, okay,
I've built up all of this discipline.
I take cold showers, I work out,
I have learned how to edit,
I learned how to build thumbnails.
I've built up all of this discipline.
So now it's time to use it.
Because a lot of times people forget that they have discipline.
So you gotta be conscious of the fact that
when you have discipline, you can use it towards things.
So if there's something that you want to achieve,
for example, taking action on the book
that you're about to read,
just remind yourself of all the discipline that you have,
and then say, I am gonna use all of this discipline for this.
And then just don't let yourself read to the next chapter
until you take action.
Or if it's like an actual step in the middle of a chapter,
say, okay, you're not gonna read until the next section
or the next sentence.
Like, I was lucky for the first book that I read,
the Power Personal Storytelling.
He had actionable steps, like literally an activity to do
at the end of every single chapter.
And I would do them.
I would literally just say, okay, I'm at the end of the chapter,
I'm gonna read this activity, and then I'm gonna do it.
And then I'm not gonna read on until I'm done.
And it took probably like two to three weeks
to read that book instead of one week, but it was worth it.
Because I took action and I built that positive feedback loop
because now I know just how beneficial it is
to take action on books.
So then now, right after I read that book,
you know what I did?
I went back to Dotcom Secrets,
figured out the first thing that I needed to do
took action on that.
I didn't read Dotcom Secrets again,
but then after that, I read another storytelling book,
I took action on everything on that.
And then, now I'm in the middle of reading Expert Secrets,
and I'm gonna take action on everything
that's applicable to me,
because there's some things that may not apply to me,
but pretty much, I'm like 20 minutes into,
or 20 to 30 pages into Expert Secrets,
and I already identified one or two things that I didn't do.
So that's the power of taking action.
Like books are for reading,
or no, books are for using and not reading.
Like if you wanna read a book, I still think it's valuable
to read a nonfiction book over a fiction book,
but like once you get to a certain point,
take action on books, and don't just read it, take action.
And I still think it's valuable to read all these books,
because when I was reading like four hour work week,
and the e-meth revisited, a lot of that stuff
was not really applicable at the moment,
but it kinda built my database in my mind
to like expand my opportunities,
and expand my potential,
because when you have a goal,
and you don't really know much,
your field of vision is just very narrow.
But the more you read and the more you learn,
even if you're not taking action,
you kind of expand the field of vision.
So now let's say the goal was just outside
of your field of vision, so you didn't really know
if you were going the right direction,
and the more you read, you're like,
oh, I gotta change course,
and now you can move towards the goal.
So it's good both ways, but once you get to a certain point,
definitely take action on books.