Episode 394: Building Wealth and Fulfillment through Continuous Learning with Scott Young

Scott Young 0:02

Often when we are stuck, when we're struggling, is because we can't see the possibilities. We can't see the moves that we could make. And so if you go out and you look at a dozen people who are doing things, and really look at what they're doing, what is it that they're doing? Now you have 12 options, and you can pick one, and you can figure out you can find your own path. It's definitely charting your own path, but it is also something that you build on the examples of other

Jamila Souffrant 0:22

people. T minus 10 seconds, welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host Jamila souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch, to financial freedom, 54321,

if you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening To this episode in the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources and so much more you can go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. Hey, hey, hey, journeyers, welcome to the journey to launch podcast. This week I have a returning guest, Scott Young. Scott was on, actually, episode 128 of the podcast, so a few years back, a couple years back. But Scott, in case you did not hear that episode, I want to just introduce him. He is the Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author of ultra learning. We discussed that book that he wrote the last time he was here. He's a podcast host, computer programmer and avid reader since 2006 He has published weekly essays to help people learn and think better. His work has been featured in The New York Times, pocket and Business Insider, among many other notable outlets, and he doesn't promise to have all the answers. Just a place to start. I love that he lives in Vancouver, Canada. Welcome back to the podcast. Scott,

Scott Young 2:22

thank you for having me back. It's great to talk to you again. Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 2:26

So one of the things that I really loved about our initial conversation, which, again, you don't have to listen to that first before you listen to this one, if you're just tuning in, was the idea and what your book was first about Ultra learning is about the the idea of being able to learn anything, and you have a new book that's out called get better at anything. And while this is a personal financial, I don't think this is just a personal financial, but we talk about all the tangential things that lead to having a fulfilled and just happy life. And I really do believe that most people want to do things that contribute to society and make themselves happy, and with that, if we can make money and fulfill our life goals and dreams, that's an added bonus. So why I think your work is so important and necessary for people to get into is that mastery or improving on anything that we want to do in life can lead to more money, but ultimately also fulfillment. And so I would love to just like, dive in and talk about just more of the background of learning and how we all can become and keep on being lifelong learners.

Scott Young 3:36

Well, thank you. Yeah, I completely agree. I think there's lots of intersections between knowing how to learn, how learning works, and personal finance, building wealth, those kinds of things, because there's just so many areas of our life like, you know, we want to be good at our careers. Obviously, there's a lot of learning involved in there, learning new skills, learning new jobs, moving up, changing rules. There's, you know, investing personal finance. No one's born knowing this stuff, you have to learn it, and often that involves going through a lot of material to figure it out. And then, as you said, I think I've done a few podcasts with people from the kind of financial independence movement, and, like, a lot of people are like, Well, I've made some money. I've got a little bit, but now I've got some time. And I actually want to finally work on some of those hobbies and things that I was interested in, and I want to know the best way to do it. So it's always fun to talk to people who have a unique perspective on that.

Jamila Souffrant 4:25

Yeah. So can you talk a bit about, I know you this new book talks a little bit or takes a different approach to learning. I would like to go back a little bit, though. Can you just explain where our desire to learn and like, why we should be lifelong learners, and how that can improve our lifestyles and even money? Yeah. I

Scott Young 4:44

mean, I think, I think that we're at our best when we're learning. I think that's a little bit of a platitude, but I think that it's true when we're learning new things, when we feel like we're reaching new levels of our potential, we feel motivated. We feel excited. I mean, part of the reason I'm obsessed with this topic is because it's so you. Link to our own sense of well being, and also the converse, when we struggle to learn. You know, when you are trying to get something and you're not getting it, those can be some of our lowest experiences. So that's definitely a big part. And then the link to our just personal well being is that, well, we often don't know how to approach something. We don't know how to get into it. We feel like we don't have confidence, so we want to build that confidence, or we're in the middle of doing it, and we get frustrated, we get stuck. And so I think having that roadmap to figuring out how to learn how to break down a big, complicated topic, break it down into a project that you can actually handle. I think that's so important for feeling fulfilled and having more of the good experiences and less of the bad ones. So

Jamila Souffrant 5:41

how does one then go about approaching what they learn, what they put energy into in their life? Yeah. So,

Scott Young 5:47

I mean, I think you highlighted there's sort of two reasons that we want to learn anything. One is, we have some goal we want to reach, and learning is going to be part of that goal. So we want to launch a business. We want to, you know, have a million dollars in the bank account and understand investing. We want to move into a new career, a new industry. And so in that case, getting really clear on that goal is very important for defining that learning journey. And one of the things that I talk about in both books, but particularly in the first book, was about how, if you have a particular goal, a very important thing to work backwards is to talk to people who achieve the goal, to figure out what are the steps that you have to do to get there. Because sometimes I think we can spend a lot of energy get really enthusiastic, but if we don't know what it is that we need to learn. I mean, there's just so much out there. You can go to the library and there's just a million books. There's so many things, you can feel very overwhelmed, whereas, if you you know, figure out, okay, to succeed in this role, I need to be good at x, y and Zed, okay, now you have a project, or if you know, I need to be successful at investing, I need to read these four books. Let's start there. And so I think that's the first thing. When you're doing this kind of extrinsically Motivated you're trying to reach a goal, and learning is the way of doing that. It helps to really map out what it is that you need to learn. And then the second thing is just things that you're excited about. So I often encourage people to just really think about, what are all the things that you were like, excited about learning, but you maybe felt like, you know, I don't have time, or I'm a little bit stressed, or I don't have confidence. And not to say, Okay, right now you should go out and learn French, or you should go out and learn painting or racquetball or whatever it is you want to do. But just let that feeling kind of incubate, let that feeling of excitement brew on that topic, because that's how you get the motivation to, like, you know, seek out the websites, figure out how it works, get that passion. And then once that's started and you're getting interested, then you can turn into a project and get serious about, like, Okay, how do I get better at this? But excitement, I think, really has to be the starting point for something that is, you know, it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be something that we're doing, to just feel more fulfilled in our life and not achieve something

Jamila Souffrant 7:45

in particular, yeah, and I can't help that but think back and to, like, my own personal like life right now and situation, especially because I have kids and they, you know, they are at their sponges right now. Really young, learning everything. And as you talk about, like, being self directed in terms of wanting to learn, like, I see it right? Like forcing them to do certain things, like they don't. They're not excited. They don't want to do it. But when they pick up the book that they want to read, even though I'm just like, does it have to be another comic book? But no, I'm like, can you read a book with, like, less pictures and more words? But they pick that book and then they're more excited, and they like, go through it fast, even with sports, right? Like, I think now, as a sports mom and our kids are becoming more competitive. I see it all the time that there's like, what we want for them, because we see their potential versus where they are in terms of their own maturity or what they want to do, and the difference between, like, a kid that wants to do it, versus a kid that you're forcing or doesn't want to do it. And I think that's a key even as adults like the self directedness, being excited about things.

Scott Young 8:48

I mean, play is a very important part of learning. So I think that there is a kind of we often have had these experiences in school where we were like, grinding through something and it was sort of unpleasant that we put them in contrast. But I mean, the people who devote lots of time and do all those grinding, they often are doing it from a place of play, that they're just really excited about something. So I think the excitement has to come first, because it's very difficult to succeed on the long term, on some kind of project, if it's only just through, like rewards and punishments. It has to be something that's intrinsically motivating. So I think as a parent, you know, I have, I since, probably since we talked, I've now have two kids. How old are your kids? Jamila,

Jamila Souffrant 9:30

okay, so nine, seven and 697.

Scott Young 9:35

And six. So three. That says so you definitely deserve an award for that, right there. I've got two, and I already feel like, oh, man, I'm overwhelmed, but I have a four year old and a one year old, so a little bit younger, but I definitely feel the same way that a lot of what you're trying to do is guide them and help them with things. So you know, if what they need is that they don't know how to do something and they're frustrated, you come in there and you help them, or you find a way to make it fun or interesting. And I think guiding that motivation is a. Lot more successful than trying to be like, Okay, you're gonna do this now and then. They hate it. They resist it. And so the same thing with ourselves. I think we have to, like, look at our own inner child and be like, Yes, I know I need to do this, and I know I should be doing but how could I also make it so that it is something I'm excited about and finding, finding something to be interested in, even if it is like, you're learning it because you want to make money or you want to get a career, like, what's in like, what's interesting and what's exciting about it. So starting with that motivation, I think, is really important. Because, yeah, if you're going to learn French and you're going to be, you know, doing flashcards, you're going to in grammar exercises, to get to that point, it helps to, like, you know, Oh, yeah. But, like, I had this really great experience in Paris or something like that, you know, it's, that's the kernel for getting you started to do the work

Jamila Souffrant 10:43

right. And I think part of it too is how much of our getting better at something, or understanding and grasping something is part like practice versus application. And again, just going back to like, because I see it now very clearly with kids in sports, is there's a certain amount that they practice, and there's a certain amount that then they go out and they're in the actual game setting, and sometimes you see a discrepancy between what they do in practice versus what happens in a game. And sometimes you see a correlation, like, you know this is happening in the game because you don't do it that well in practice. And I know you have examples, and I'd love to hear some, maybe some real world examples of this. But the difference, or is there a balance between, like, the practice part, and then what happens when you have to go out and perform? Speaking

Scott Young 11:26

of athletics, I just actually recently had a podcast conversation with someone who's real big in the sports world, and we were having a big discussion about it. But there is, I think, this kind of tension some ways, that you can do these drills where you, like, get a person to okay, you're going to dribble the ball around these pylons and do it this very specific way. And that can be helpful for figuring out what the movement is like if you don't understand what the move, move, shoot for a layup is at all. That can be helpful. But part of the problem is that when you do it in this very constrained setting, when you go out in the game, you forget to apply it, or you don't do it the way that you thought you wanted to do it. And so I even have a chapter in this, this new book, where I talk about, there's a lot of research on variability in practice, and so doing the same thing in different environments in different ways, mixing up the order that you do it in some ways, making it more playful and making it more like these sort of natural situations, tends to actually make these skills more robust, because a lot of what you have to learn is not just how to do a layup, but when to do a layup and how to do Okay, I gotta do a layup and not, you know, shoot it right now, or not do every run. And so these things, I think, are very important elements for learning. So much of what we think about learning is just, well, that's how I learned it, so I'm gonna do it the same way. And there's just a wealth of knowledge out there about what works and what doesn't. And so I think having a little bit of that can often be, you know, can often be gratifying, because even if you are using a good strategy, you know why it works, you know when to use it. I think these are very important building blocks to avoid frustration and banging your heads against the

Jamila Souffrant 12:55

wall. Yeah, what is the gap between someone who does understand something and maybe knows it, but can't perform because of pressure or because of lack of confidence. I do feel like there's a gap for some people where, you know, maybe even, like at work, like they understand the topic, they should be the one speaking on it, leading the project, but they just don't have the self confidence, or they cannot handle being in front of a crowd, and that can, like, go to many areas of life. How does one get over that? Does one need to overcome that? Like, is it enough to know? Yeah,

Scott Young 13:29

no. I mean exactly what you're saying. Anxiety plays this huge role in a lot of skills. You know, in the beginning part of, like, if you're too anxious to practice something, you don't usually tend to get very good at it, but then also the reverse of like, you are good at it, but you just can't perform into that stressful situation. So I kind of like, I'm mentioning the chapters in the book, but I have a whole chapter where we talk about anxiety in the book. And one of the things that I found really fascinating is that, well, there's a couple things. So one thing is, you said, like, why do people choke? Like, why do you know something? But then you're in the stressful situation and you can't do it. And one of the reasons is that we have this thing called working memory in our brain, and this is like, what we're thinking about at the time. And anxiety tends to have this, like constricting spotlight, so we tend to become more focused. And that can be good if the task is simple. So if you have to be like, you're sprinting, and you're like, at the starting line, and then you just have to hear the gun, and then you just have to run like, it's very run like it's very simple, and you're just listening for it. Being in a very alert, tense kind of state is actually pretty good, because you're going to have very good reaction time. You're only paying attention to that. If there's, you know, a man walking in a gorilla suit on the other end of the field, you don't even know that that person's there. But if you're doing something complicated that requires creativity and thinking and problem solving, or, you know, being fluid and speaking like we're doing right now, being really anxious can be bad, because now all of a sudden, your sort of window of attention is so narrow that you can't reach those ideas that are outside of that. So anxiety can have this real important effect on your performance. And the question is, what do you do about that anxiety? How do you do deal with the fact that you don't feel comfortable? While on stage, or, you know, you're worried about speaking another language, or, you know, taking a shot in a big game. And one of the things I found very reassuring from the research is that there is a lot of evidence showing that exposure, meaning that being in a bit of a stressful situation and nothing like catastrophic happening, like, meaning, like, you know, you don't go up and give a presentation like, every single person your audience, just like booze you off the stage, like, just basically what normally happens, you know, okay, you did okay, that kind of thing. It causes you to reassess, at this sort of unconscious level, reassess the level of threat, like, how much fear should you have in those situations? And it makes you less anxious over time. So one of the things that I advocate for people to do is that if you're dealing with a situation where you have stress, you want to go through what therapists call exposure therapy, which is this sort of graded, like introducing yourself to this stressful situation with the goal of not like being the best performer on the planet in that situation, but just getting through it, and then you'll be a little less afraid next time, a little less afraid next time. And I mean, I can, I've done a lot of podcasts now, but when I started doing podcasts my first book, I remember being I remember being a bit nervous and like, Okay, I've got to talk about things. And then you do enough of them, and you're like, Oh no, it's fine. And it's just it is really this almost mechanical thing in your brain that goes over time. So I think that's the right way to approach it, is to just get yourself used to it, and you will feel more comfortable, even if it doesn't seem like that's possible right now, is

Jamila Souffrant 16:21

there an another example from your book, like a specific story or person that you can share, that maybe had difficulties in a certain topic or subject of learning, that excelled eventually?

Scott Young 16:32

Yeah. I mean, there's lots of people. There's lots of people who really struggled with things. You know, one of the one of the little like anecdotes was the German poet Johann wolfeng on Goethe. He he was like deathly afraid of heights, and so what he used to do is he used to climb up to the top of this cathedral and sit on the ledge, which, I mean, there's no railing, so this must have been pretty terrifying. And he would just sit there until he wasn't feeling afraid anymore, and then he would get down and he would do it again. And this inoculated him so that he was able to climb heights and do things like this. I can even think about myself. I mean, we talked about this maybe a little bit my previous book, I talked about some of the language learning projects that I did, and one of them was that I went with a friend. We went traveling, and when we would land in the country, would only speak the language we learned. So when we go to Spain, we're only going to speak Spanish. When we went to China, we only we're going to speak Mandarin Chinese, and it's a little bit intimidating to try to speak to people, especially when you have, like, a fairly low level of ability to speak to people in Spanish or mandar, this kind of thing. But what was really surprising about that is that the fear and the competence are different. So you can be anxious about a skill that you're really good at, but you can also be fairly comfortable doing something that you're quite bad at or not that good at. And so it was very interesting to have this, like extensive exposure, where, you know, after a couple weeks, we felt very comfortable speaking broken Spanish or broken Mandarin Chinese, even though we weren't, like, at this high level of fluency, it was just because the part of the brain that was saying, Oh, you're making mistakes. You're embarrassing yourself, had just a quieted down, and so it wasn't interrupting us, and it was a lot more comfortable to do that. So I think that's a very useful thing to think about, is that sometimes we try to lump them together, that like confidence and anxiety, like they should be the same, that if I'm if I'm skilled, if I'm really skilled, I shouldn't feel anxious about it. But they're, they're probably controlled by two very different parts of the brain, and so you have to think about them separately.

Jamila Souffrant 18:24

I agree with that, because I people are still amazed when I say that I still get nervous or don't always feel confident or comfortable speaking or even doing, like solo episodes for the podcast, but I still I do it because part of me feels like that's just a part of who I am. So I think also like identity, how do we improve our self identity or self worth, and what we feel or think about ourselves, despite maybe what is happening or what we're even feeling or about ourselves, or what other people are saying, so that we can perform? You

Scott Young 18:54

know, one thing that I got from the research and a lot of this research, I also recommend another book, Stanley Rockman, who's this clinical psychologist, and he wrote this book called fear and courage, and he was talking about the experience of people in like, really harrowing situations. So we're talking about, like, soldiers during World War Two, you know, people who were on these fighter pilots where they had like, a, you know, only, like a 10% survival rate, and stuff like, just real terrifying situations. And one of the things that he noticed from these observations is that even though these were objectively terrifying situations, people, you usually perform their job and actually go through with it. And so his comment was that we are more kind of more courageous as a species, and we often give ourselves credit, and that anxious people, in particular, according to his research, often overestimate how anxious they will be when the feared situation arrives. So if you tell me, Oh, I'm really, I'm really uncomfortable public speaking, and you're thinking about a public speaking event that's like a month from now, you're like, oh my god, it's going to be so awful. I'm going to, you know, I'm, maybe I'm going to throw up, I'm going to have a panic attack. But very rarely is it that bad when you actually get to that situation, and you probably. You will be able to stand on stage, and you probably will be able to do it. And so when you were talking about identity, the main thing that I thought about is like thinking about ourselves as being courageous, thinking about that as being part of who we are, and that you can do that is, I think you know, the mechanism of fear and anxiety. This is very subconscious. This is like, not so identity based. This is just from exposure, from experience, but the sort of higher order belief about ourselves. I mean, that tells you whether or not you're going to get exposure. If you say to yourself, Well, no, I'm just a timid person and like, if I confront something that's really hard, I'm going to just fall apart, then you don't get that exposure. You don't go out there and do that. So of course, you don't overcome your fears. Whereas you tell yourself, you know what? Actually, I am someone who can, who can get through this, even though it's scary, even though it's something that, I think, for me personally, is very scary, that will encourage you to get exposure. It'll actually like, it's this self fulfilling prophecy, in a way,

Jamila Souffrant 20:52

yeah, part of what I talk about a lot is this ability to achieve financial freedom and happiness on your way to financial independence, this idea that you can have control over your time and energy, because you don't have to work for money, because you have enough to live off of. But until then, until people get to that promised land and that big goal, people have to live their lives. And I think one of the things that I definitely picked up on on my journey, and had me shift a bit once I started, and even to where I am now is that I didn't want to wait, you know, just like I didn't want to wait for retirement, like standard retirement to be happy. I don't want to wait until I'm completely financially independent to be happy. And I know part of that is just like having self fulfillment and doing things that I enjoy. And so for people right now who are working, maybe not in jobs they love, or maybe not doing things where they feel like they're doing to the best of their ability. They have skill sets in other areas. How can they begin to incorporate learning more in their life to be happy so not learning like to pass a test or like something mundane that they don't enjoy? But how do they identify projects or things they want to learn and incorporate that into their current life to have that fulfilling life that they want today. Yeah. So

Scott Young 22:05

you got to kind of look at those things you were excited about. You kind of pull away the layers of stress and fatigue and overwhelm. I mean, you have three kids, I'm sure you feel this way. Sometimes at the end of the day, you've had a long day, you've been working hard, you you know? You get the kids ready their dinner, you get them to bed, and then finally, you're just like, ah, you know, an honorary to have energy for is Netflix, or all I really have energy for is to scroll on Instagram. And I sympathize with that. I'm not here to, like, chastise anyone who feels that way. But I think what we need to do is sort of step back a little bit and think, Okay, what were the things that I would be excited about if I had more energy, if I had more time, like, what would be the things that, you know, I always really wanted to do this. Maybe, maybe you did art classes when you're in high school. You, you know, you always want to do painting, but just it's, you don't have time for it. Or, you know, you always wanted to, like, shift into a new career. Maybe you wanted to, you know, do programming, or, you know, do one of these things where you have some exciting job and you don't want to do what you're doing right now. Or it could be even just reading books, like just things that you are interested in. And so start from that enthusiasm, start from the thing that like, Wouldn't it be cool if kind of starting point? And then from there, I think you need to make small tweaks to your schedule so you can start to incorporate it. And I think especially if you feel overwhelmed, especially if you don't feel like you're in that place you said in your life, where everything's all together, everything's lined up. You just have tons of ample time and energy to do everything. Making those small shifts is important. And so how can you spend a little bit more time? You know, get rid of the Instagram app on your phone, and put the Kindle app and then read some of those books. Or, like, if you're doing some sort of art project, set aside a place in your house where you can do a little bit or you can download a course to do some tutorials, if you feel like you're not that good at it yet, do these kind of little things. And then once you start to build that, that sort of, you open up that crack for it, and you start to feel the genuine rewards for doing something that's actually fulfilling, and not just, you know, using up time because you're tired, then you can start to explore deeper projects and bigger things. I really think it's all about, like, find that crack of enthusiasm and then widen it up so that you can eventually fill up more of your life. Because I do think it's the case that even when we do feel kind of weighed down by all the other things we have to do in life, we are still at our happiest when we are doing some project goes like, you know what? I did this for me. I did this because I like this and I'm interested in it, and not just because, while I didn't have energy or time to do anything else.

Jamila Souffrant 24:25

Hi Jamila here, host of this podcast and author of the book, your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. Just a few years ago, I was in a job I didn't like, with a long commute, feeling stuck. I knew there had to be a different, better way, then I found the pathway to financial freedom and financial independence. Today, I have more money options and freedom than I ever thought was possible. And in my book your journey to financial freedom, I'll show you how you can achieve that too. You'll learn how to spend and save responsibly all. While enjoying that spicy Margarita and exercise of guacamole, determine where you are on the journey and evaluate your spending and saving goals accordingly. Quit your job, retire early or reach financial independence. My book your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness, is out now and available on Amazon bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble and more, you can leave and listen to the audiobook narrated by me. Go to your journey to financial freedom.com. To get a free bonus when you order the book and see all the places to buy it once again, go to your journey to financialfreedom.com. So you brought up social media aspect, and kind of our attentions being split, right, with life and real responsibilities, and then wanting that downtime to, you know, veg out. I call it sometimes like PTSD after, like, dealing with the kids and dropping them off, it's like I have to sit in the car for a bit, like I can't, I just need to decompress. And sometimes that scrolling. But with that, I feel like we are in a society of showing what we do a lot, right? Like, this is idea that you kind of like show your work like it's sharing while you're learning or showing the end result, and that's applauded, that's like, that's loved, you know? It's almost like, if it didn't happen on social media, it didn't happen, right? Versus like, you know, 1015, 20 years ago, like people were doing things all the time that other people had no clue about. It was really just for the me, right? Like, if I was traveling or learning something, it was like, it was just for me. It wasn't to show other people that I was doing it. So, what's that like? I don't know, fine line or what is that balance between taking on something and it being like yours completely versus sharing it like sharing what you're learning and what you're doing. And I don't know what the motivations you know it's different motivations for that, whether you want to be an influencer in some way or make a business out of it. But what is that? Is there a different way you go about those two things? And what are your thoughts on those approaches?

Scott Young 26:59

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I'm definitely not the person to be giving advice on, like, well, you should be, you know, holed up in your own like, I'm on a podcast right now talking about, you know, in my own experience, I have a blog, like, in some ways, I'm like, I'm shameless in that way as well, that I like to share things that I'm good at. And I think that's fine, you know, if you want to, like, start making sourdough bread, and it's just it's fun for you to post the pictures on Instagram, I'm like, more power to you. That's great, but I think I understand what you're talking about, which is that sometimes what we can do could feel performative. It can feel like we're doing it for someone else. We're doing it to get the like we're doing it to and we're not doing it for ourselves anymore. And so I do think it's nice to like hollow out, even if you do like to do that for some things, to haul out some space for Well, I do this for me. I do this because I like it. And so I have my own, like, hobbies that I don't share online, that just for me, you know, that's just something that I like to do. And so you just have to decide for yourself and and I think for, you know, you and I, because we live online, and we have, you know, online presence and this kind of stuff, definitely that pressure to be public and the business, you know, motivation to be public about things can often be strong, you know, I don't know how much you share about everything, but I know lots of people, they they feel in this sort of authenticity culture that we're in, like, I need to be giving, you know, this is what I ate for breakfast, and this is how tall my kids are, and this kind of thing. And so I think it's totally fine to just define areas of your life that, you know, like, these are the things they're going to share. These are the things they're going to just be for me and to be okay with that, and to be okay with like, you know, I'm gonna have a hobby, but I'm not gonna post about it, or I'm gonna share this, but I'm not gonna share that. And I think everyone has to make that decision for themselves. Now

Jamila Souffrant 28:29

I'm gonna, like, kind of maybe switch gears a little bit to just like, entrepreneurship or being creative, right? Like, so you being able to like, blog and write articles and write books and seemingly make a living from it. Right? For someone who is thinking like they have an interest, they have something they want to share with the world, can you just talk a little bit? Because I'm not, I don't think we talked about this in your first interview, but how you were able to sustain yourself, are sustaining yourself as a business and being creative and like doing the things that you love?

Scott Young 29:00

Well, I mean, I've been doing, I've been doing this for a really long time. It's so funny, like, I feel like an old timer in the online space, because I, you know, as I mentioned, you mentioned the buy, I've been doing this from 2006 so it's like, getting close to 20 years now. And I started, you know, in the early days of blogging, and now the internet is just totally different. Like, there was no there wasn't even YouTube, there wasn't even like now there's like, Tiktok and Facebook was just only, only for college students. Like, it's just a different world we live in now than when I started, I was definitely interested in business. And I think, you know, that idea of like, oh, maybe I'd like to do this for living. I don't think it's a bad motivation. But I think because being successful online, making content is, you know, it really is like becoming an actor or a musician or one of these professions, where you can work really hard and not make it or, you know, some people will and some people won't. I think it's going back to what we were talking before. It's really good to start with. Well, I want to make this like I want to write, I want to make these videos, or I want to do something that like this. Meaningful for me, and if other people like it, great. And if other people are sort of like, you know, that's okay. That's okay too. And so I think that's often a good starting point, because, you know, for me, I was probably writing online for maybe five or six years before I was able to make enough money to live off of it. Now, I wasn't, you know, I was also in university. It wasn't like a problem at the time. It wasn't like I was doing it full time. Doing it full time, but it just shows that it was like a long period of time where I was, you know, doing this because I like doing it, not because it was making me tons of money. And I think that's sort of the right attitude to have. I think we live in a little bit of an instant success culture where it's like, well, if I'm not, you know, Instagram famous in six months, or I'm not, don't have a huge YouTube channel. I think the thing you have to ask is, like, do you like what you're making and do you want to keep making it and stick to that? And then, if you can do that, and I think, I think people still respond to stuff where they can see that the person who was doing it like they're passionate about it and they like it and and I think that's what we resonate with. That's what we're still, I think, seeking online, you know, there's a lot of sort of phoniness out there, but I think authentically people who just, you know, I'm interested in this, so I'm going to make stuff about it. I'm going to write or make videos or whatever you I think that's that's very important.

Jamila Souffrant 31:12

And you talked about entering this world, this space, like years ago, which, you know, the point of entrance, I think is important. Even starting, when I started when I started my podcast, it was like a really good time to start a podcast, and now with just the democracy and the flattening of access, which is like good because anyone can create an account, a blog, a podcast, but I think with that, it's, you know, there's just more noise. So how if someone is starting today, if you were starting today, what would you do differently? Or is there a different strategy you would use? Would you not even start with strategy? Because you're going off of passion to get your work into the world. For someone who's like, Okay, I'm interested in this thing. I think I want to share it with the world. But how do I even start? Like, Jamila and Scott have been doing this for years. So is there a point for me, because I feel so like, far behind?

Scott Young 32:00

I think one of the things, and this is sort of a central message in my in my new book, that I think is really important when you're embarking in like difficult pursuits, is that you want to be able to learn from other people. And so I think if you are going into it with a certain level of seriousness, as I said, you should be doing something you like to do, because you might be doing it for a while without getting financial rewards. So if that's the field that you want to go into, I mean, if you just want just wanted to make a lot of money, probably getting, like, a relatively boring job and then just, you know, saving all the money, that's maybe a more efficient approach than trying to be an online entrepreneur for most people. But if you really want to do it, then I think that's good. But I think that the learning from other people is really important, and I think especially online, because it changes so frequently. I've had a lot of friends, and I've benefited from having friends that have, you know, and I've seen different errors where, like, there was the era where this thing was the way that you were able to build something, and like you mentioned, like starting a podcast was really big, and now maybe the field is more saturated. It's a lot harder to stand out. And there's been waves of different things. And so I think what you want to find is a sort of a community of people who are also starting out, or have started out recently, that you can, you know, talk with, you can share ideas, you can hear about things. I think that's very important, because one of the things that's really difficult is, if you are doing something and it's just for whatever reason, not going to work, and you don't realize that, and you just get stuck, and then you don't really know where to go from there. You don't know how to improve. So I think the more you can find groups of people who are also doing what you want to be doing, and be friends with them, and, you know, join the WhatsApp groups, or join the meetups, or do that kind of thing, it's very important for for making progress.

Jamila Souffrant 33:41

And I think that's like, one of the advices that, like, stands the test of time. Because I would say the same thing as finding a community or people who have done the thing that I wanted to do, and kind of reverse engineering where they are versus, like, what they did that work versus what works for my personality was key to me being able to do some of the things that I've done. So I definitely would echo that as advice for anyone finding other people where that goal is the norm, or where they have broken through a ceiling that you cannot yet break through is really It's understated how important that is, and that goes not just for entrepreneurship, but just like in your career, if you were for traditional nine to five

Scott Young 34:20

anytime you're pursuing a goal that, like people don't just achieve by default, which is most goals, but I mean, anything that you're trying to work on where there is a large amount of people who tried it and didn't have it work out. I think it's very important to learn from success. It's very important to learn from people who are doing things and not just the platitudes and not just the work hard and keep at it. I mean, we're talking about a lot of them now. We're talking about passion, we're talking about things then those aren't bad, but what you need is this specific advice. What you need is the like, Oh, this is how you make your thumbnails on YouTube, or this is how the algorithm works. You want to make sure you're doing this. Like, these are very specific details, and I don't want to say that. You know, they should be driving every single decision that you're making. We I still think it's important. And to make things that you genuinely like. But I think often we're in a world where the people who really get obsessed with this stuff, and they really understand how it works, and they know a dozen people, and they know what they're doing, and this kind of thing. I mean, there's often a world of knowledge there that is just otherwise invisible. If you don't actually actively seek it out and make friends with people and do that kind of

Jamila Souffrant 35:22

thing. Is there any just more anecdotes or just things from the recent book you can share before we go that could be helpful for someone who wants to learn more or be excited about something? Yeah.

Scott Young 35:33

So the book get better at anything. I divided into these 12 maxims. So the framework of the book is, see, do feedback. So this is the basic idea of how you get better at anything. So seeing is learning from other people. What we were just talking about about, there's a lot of research showing how we are a cultural species. What we are really good at is learning from the examples of other people. So if someone solves a problem, we can figure it out much, much more quickly. And that's a very powerful vector for getting better do is doing the right kind of practice. We were kind of leaning on that a little bit before. But like, what kind of drills should you be doing in sports and this kind of thing? But practice is obviously very important for learning, and I think having a good mental model of, like, what is it that you're doing when you do a lot of practice? How is it making you better, and maybe also how it's not making you better? So that sometimes just doing a lot of repetitive practice is not the right way to get better, I think is very important. And then, of course, feedback and feedback not just like the teacher telling you what you did right or wrong, but what we're talking about, like, if you're an entrepreneur, for instance, feedback is critical because you're doing a new business that has to be different from other businesses. So you need to get feedback from customers, from the environment of like, well, this sells. This doesn't sell. People like this. They don't like this. Super important. Another one that I think is relevant to what we were just talking about is the maxim is called, creativity begins with copying. And I have a longer discussion about how, in the Renaissance, when people were, you know, really the start of very realistic paintings, there was a long tradition of apprenticeship, of people learning from observation, from masters. So the tradition in a lot of places, for a really long period of time was copying painting, seeing how a painting was done, watching it and copying it yourself. And this is a very important pedagogical technique that nowadays is a little bit less common. Now, we kind of expect people to be creative and original and not actually follow anything that was in the past. And I think that was a bit of a mistake. I think that we probably do better if we are able, in the beginning, to imitate other people and copy people. You know, there's some psychological theories that talk about this as well, but I think it's relevant, particularly if we're talking about, you know, what we were just talking about, like business success and things like that, that often what you're doing is looking out in the world, looking at the things that people are doing, learning those moves, putting them together, and then making them your own, making it original. And rather than just trying to, like, well, I have to figure this out from scratch and not have any any guidance or any kinds of examples to work from.

Jamila Souffrant 37:54

Yeah, I love that. And just to add on, I think part of that still goes back to this, whether it's your ego or, like having a bit of humility and like not having to, like, start from scratch. But also, you know, you're not stealing someone's work, but you're using it as a source, and being honest about what that feels like and looks like. Because I think some people, they don't even start because they're like, Oh, someone else is already doing that. Or I don't want to feel like I'm copying someone. Or, you know, there's all these like thoughts that, like, just, we don't even start certain things just because of what we feel or what we think other people will think about what it is that we're doing.

Scott Young 38:32

Yeah, you know, the science fiction author Octavia Butler had this really good advice, which I really liked, which was she, had a long, struggling kind of period to reaching success in her career. And so when she was successful, she really paid it back by mentoring and helping budding science fiction authors. And one of the things she said is that, you know, if you're struggling with something in your work, you're struggling with openings in your stories. For instance, go and copy word for word, about a dozen openings for stories, and the point is not to copy, the point is not to like copy and paste what they wrote, but to see the possibilities that are out there. And I think that's the right attitude to have, that often when we are stuck, when we're struggling, is because we can't see the possibilities. We can't see the moves that we could make. And so if you go out and you look at a dozen people who are doing things and really look at what they're doing, what is it that they're doing? Now you have 12 options, and you can pick one, and you can figure out you can find your own path. It's definitely charting your own path, but it is also something that you build on the examples of other people. Yes, love

Jamila Souffrant 39:30

that, Scott. Please tell everyone where they can find more about you, your work and the new book. Thank

Scott Young 39:36

you. Yeah, so you can check out my website, which, as I mentioned, has been around for almost 20 years. There's a lot of articles there at Scott H young comm. That's s, c o, t, t, h, y, o, u N, g.com, and then also you can check out the books. So the get better at anything is the new one. It's available Amazon, audible. It just came out probably a couple weeks ago, depending on when this episode airs. And then they can also check out ultralearning, which is the basis of the previous. Conversation we had, if you're interested more in learning and learning better. Thanks

Jamila Souffrant 40:04

so much, Scott. Thank you. Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this and you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jumpstart

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