Hormozi's 20-Year-Old: How to Engineer What You Want with Jay Yang | The Grateful Podcast Ep. 135

The Grateful Podcast with Jack Wagoner guesting Jay Yang
Episode 135

Jay Yang is 20 years old. He cold-emailed his way into Beehiiv at 16. Sent a 19-page deck to Noah Kagan at 17 and became Head of Content at AppSumo. Wrote a bestseller at 19. Today he's the youngest Written Media Strategist on Alex and Leila Hormozi's media team at Acquisition.com, where he helped run the $100M Money Models launch that broke a Guinness World Record.

He didn't go through the front door for any of it. He doesn't ask for permission. And in this conversation he walked me through, for the first time on any podcast, the actual mental models he's used to engineer the last four years. The North Star question. The probability mindset. The Four Pillar Framework. The mad scientist principle. The 70/20/10 split for an entire career. The Pyrrhic Victory chapter from the second book he's writing now.

We go deep on why most 20-year-olds stay stuck even with all the information in the world, the only question to ask before you cold email anyone, the specific framework Jay used to decide between college and Hormozi, why quality is paved with quantity, and the closing line that compresses his whole thesis into one sentence.

If you're building something and you want to think more clearly about how to engineer the next decade, this one's for you.

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 — The mission
01:00 — The Cheshire Cat question (define your North Star first)
02:16 — Why we've been trained to seek permission
06:32 — The probability mindset: inputs that increase your odds
10:34 — The Four Pillar Framework (the decision that took him to Hormozi)
15:39 — Chapter two of his next book: The Pyrrhic Victory
17:21 — Leaving his twin brother for Las Vegas
26:13 — "Would you work with you?"
28:22 — Quality is paved with quantity (the mad scientist principle)
30:16 — A goals, B goals, C goals (the long game)
34:50 — Daily habits, idea compression, and the Picasso napkin
43:26 — Identity achievement and the 70/20/10 split for a career
49:08 — Where Jay is choosing to live next
52:32 — The line he wants to leave you with

🔗 Jay's Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jayyanginspires/
Website: https://jayyanginspires.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayyanginspires/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Just-Things-Permissionless/dp/B0F3GPZL1C
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jayyanginspires
Twitter/X: https://x.com/Jayyanginspires

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Jay Yang, you've wrote You Can Just Do Things. You're 20 years old. You've worked for some of the top creators in the space. I'm so excited to have you on, man. What is your mission in everything that you've done up to this point? And why is it important to who we're speaking to today?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Gosh, well, my personal mission has always been to make my life my masterpiece, to use my life as a way to inspire the people around me. I think one of the best ways you can inspire people isn't to like tell people what to do, but be a positive example that they can be inspired by. And so for a lot of my career, I've tried to accelerate my career and compress timelines. And hopefully in this podcast, we'll talk about how to create opportunities and how to stand out.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

What do you think the most important thing for us to start with for an audience who is 22% founders, owners, CEOs, people that are building things, people that are driven and ambitious in this age of acceleration? What's the most important thing that we can start with to set the scene today?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Well, you know, I think the most important thing to start with, and this is what I write about in my second book that I'm working on, is Defining a North Star. And there's this story in Alice in Wonderland, uh, you know, one of my favorite movies. And uh, you know, Alice is walking down this dirt path, and this trail splits into two different paths, and she doesn't know which path to go down. So she looks up at the Cheshire cat and goes, Mr. Cheshire Cat, which path should I take? And the Cheshire cat goes, Well, where do you want to go? And Alice goes, I don't know. And the Cheshire cat responds, then it doesn't matter. If you don't know where you're going to go, then any path will take you there. And my gosh, does that scene live rent-free in my head? How many times do we say to our friends and family, like, you know, I want to be happy or I want to be rich or I'm building my career, but we never actually stop to define what those things are. And so I think that's a great place to start.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Why do you think we've gotten to this point that so many people are so confused on what it is that they actually want? It seems like it's easier to go fast in the wrong direction than it ever has been before. Why is it so hard for people to actually sit down and figure out exactly what it is that they want?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I think it's been ingrained in us, and it's not our fault. It's not really society's fault, but I think we've been ingrained to seek permission or to outsource our agency to those around us. You know, in school, we're told you gotta raise your hand before you speak, you gotta ask to go to the bathroom. You know, it's a multiple choice test, there's only one right answer. Um and I think life operates slightly differently. And so once we graduate, once we get out into the real world, uh we have to start to reflect and define these things for us. Like, what does it actually mean to be successful? What does it mean to build a career you love? Um, and I think, you know, if if reflection is the first step towards change, I think uh being aware is the first step towards taking agency over your life.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

I think there's also something to be said that there's never been this much noise in the world. Me and you both played sports, right? And I know when I was 12 years old, I was playing on four different baseball teams. And so I that meant I had four different coaches that were telling me different things to do with my swing. And I was in a bit of a slump and they all gave me four different pieces of advice. And do you know what I did?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

All four of those things?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

None of those things. I I had analysis paralysis, which is an actual psychological condition when we have so much information coming at us, we end up just doing nothing, staying the same. And right now, you can go on the internet and you can swipe and find millions of people making millions of dollars and telling you slightly different things that you should do to get there. And I think people see all of this success, and that's blinding them from what they truly want to do. And then they see that they know how to do it. They have the information. The information's out there for any of us to do what we want to do, to accomplish big things. So with that information, it almost increases this knowing-doing gap where we have so much more frustration because we know what we want to do, we know how to do it, but we aren't actually taking action toward it. And I think that we're paralyzed, not truly taking action toward it because we haven't made the choice to get clear on what we want. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

I would agree completely. I think, you know, even just this morning, I was scrolling Instagram and yeah, I saw a reel from a multimillionaire that, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you know, build a digital business and build digital leverage. And then I saw another girl, she's talking about build a boring business, do don't do any AI stuff, like do blue-collar work. And uh, yeah, I think there's never been so much noise. It's it's definitely difficult to find the signal. So, how do you sift through the noise? For me, you know, it goes back to defining your North Star. I think it is very hard to get what you want if you don't know what that is. And so step one would actually be not listening to the outside voices and taking a step back and looking inward. Um, what is it that you actually want? And so in the book, I go through an exercise of asking yourself, like, okay, well, what does winning mean? Like, you know, let's people so often say, like, I want to build a career. But it's like, okay, well, what do you actually want to do your career? Do you want to, do you want to work in an office? Do you want to work at home? Do you want to work with many people or alone? Do you want to work with your hands, with your head? Do you want to sit at a desk? Do you want to move around a lot? And I think like the clearer we can get on like what do we actually want, that's when we can start moving in the right direction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

So you got clear at that at a really young age. And once you did, you took massive action. You took action that most people have no idea that they can even take. Tell me about like the limits that we set for ourselves. Because I think that so many of us, like, we're about the same age, and we've been told our entire lives that there's a certain way that we should do things, right? And that way is what most people end up doing. And it takes a real sense of self-awareness to understand that, all right, I want a different result than these people, so I'm gonna take different action. And when you start to take that action, it was just a 180 degree flip from what most people do. Where did that awareness come from? And how can other people start to implement these hugely different actions into their lives?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Well, I don't think it's necessarily about huge actions or different actions. I think the reason why we started this conversation with defining your North Star is because I fundamentally believe that you can get a lot of what you want out of life if you figure out what you want, and then you ask yourself this important question: what inputs would increase the likelihood that I get the output that I want? Because once you know what you want, then every decision you can filter through that lens of like, okay, if I know that I want to be a successful entrepreneur, well, will learning from other successful entrepreneurs who came before me increase the likelihood I become a successful entrepreneur? Probably. Will going and going where the action is and moving to a city where there are other entrepreneurs increase the likelihood? Probably. Would working out and being in shape and having high energy increase the likelihood I get what I want? Probably. And so you can filter all of your decisions through that lens of what do I want and what inputs increase the likelihood I get what I want. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

And you seem to think really logically. You think like in I think it's almost a linear fashion. Obviously, you have different nonlinear goals for yourself where your progress hasn't seemed to be linear, but your thinking seems to be very linear and very logical, almost basic, which is not something we see a lot. By basic, I mean you're not overcomplicating it. Uh so many of us have a tendency to attach emotion to our decisions, to um have an idea of what we want, and then make this 36-step plan in our head on maybe why it might be hard for us to get it. Where did this simplicity mindset come from and how has it benefited you and your life?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

I do have to give a lot of credit to my parents. Uh, I think I am definitely more nature-wise, a more logical-based thinker rather than emotional thinker. Um, but I like to think of it as probabilistic thinking. Like if you know what you want, then you can ask yourself, okay, well, what would increase the probability I get what I want? So it's more math. It's it's it's logic. Um, but I'd say a lot of it was nature more than nurture.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I I grew up a pretty like math-oriented kid as well. Like math, sciences were always my fields. I thought I was going to be an engineer. Um, and then I found that in the past few years I've actually really shifted to my skill set being much more interpersonal, much more um like emotional intelligence and social intelligence. I don't know why it shifted, but it's just been something in my maturity. Uh it seems like that hasn't been the case for you. You've kind of just kept with the like mathematical analytical mind.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yes and no. I think it helps to be more probabilistic thinking in terms of like zooming out on your big goals. And then I think in terms of like interpersonal relationships and uh you know reaching out to people and working with people, definitely leaning more on the emotional side. Um, so I don't think it's an either or either. It's uh it's a both.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah. How has being analytical helped you in a way that like maybe leading with emotion couldn't have?

SPEAKER_00 9:36

I think the biggest example of this would be when I decided to drop out of college and work at acquisition.com. So for context, I was freshman year in college. Uh, I was running Sigger ghostwriting agency. I was a full-time college student and you know, I had some like work-life balance. I could uh work in the mornings and uh, you know, hoop in the afternoons and hang out with my friends at night. And then I got this opportunity to work at acquisition.com. And I remember having several nights of just sleepless, just thinking through these the decisions. Should I drop out and join acquisition? Should I stay? And I had a lot of FOMO of leaving college, leaving my friends. And I also didn't want to disappoint Alex and Layla. Like I really looked up to them. I've been watching Alex's YouTube videos since I was a sophomore in high school. And so I, you know, I had a lot of emotion. And so I said, okay, well, how can I just remove all the emotion and think logically? Like, this is a pretty big decision. Obviously, emotion matters, but like, how can I think logically about this decision? And so I came up with this framework that I call the four-pillar framework. Uh, and so basically I said, what matters to me in my career? Well, four things. Number one, learning, how much am I gonna learn? Number two is earning, how much am I gonna make, and how much is this gonna increase my capacity to make? Number three is network, who am I gonna meet by working at the company, like my coworkers, and who am I gonna meet because I was at the company, the people who come in through outdoors? And then the fourth thing was story is how much does this opportunity create future opportunities? And so I weighed each decision out of four, out of 10 for these four categories, and I added them up out of 40, and the acquisition.com won won. And so then I chose to take the acquisition.com.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah. With those four pillars, do you find that like certain opportunities or certain phases in your life are more meant for one of them than the other?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

100%. Uh, you know, these four categories are the things that matter most to me in my career based on my North Star goal. Um, it can be different for others, like maybe proximity to family uh or you know, certain circumstances like that. I think the important part isn't that you adopt my four, it's that you think deeply about the four that matter the most to you.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah. I think that's one of my favorite parts about your content. You're one of the people out there that really isn't teaching per se. You're sharing your lessons. You're sharing lessons that you've said are for yourself two or three years ago. I really I appreciate you saying that because I think that as a 19-year-old, I can get caught up in the like, I want to be able to teach and I want to prove that I have something to share. And my best moments and the moments that resonate the deepest with other people are those where I'm literally just saying what I've done in my life and what's worked for me and sharing my story. Storytelling is becoming so much more important in this age of everything teaching-wise, all the information out there is automated, is accessible, anyone can say it, right? But we all have our own unique stories, and the way that you're able to share that in such actionable ways, I think is it's really inspiring, which uh is is your name, Jay. And I'm curious, do you think that everybody has that opportunity, that everybody's story is worth sharing, that everybody listening to this could start posting about their life and their story, no matter where they're at, and that could be valuable for other people?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

I think one of the most underrated parts of creating content for me has been what I've uh been more aware of by creating content. By knowing that I have to write a weekly newsletter that will come out every Sunday, then I become more observant about stories and things and amazing experiences that happen throughout the week. And so for me, while creating content has been a way to accelerate my career and meet awesome people, it's also been, in some senses, therapeutic. And uh, you know, one of my favorite quotes from Orson Scott Card, he says, uh, you know, the great story, you know, everybody walks past storied stories every day. The great storytellers probably pick up five or six stories. And I think creating content is a way to become more observant about the world around you. What's the moment where you've like felt that observance? I would say every day. So at the end of every day, I sit down and I do what I call my reflection journal. Nice. And I ask myself, like, what happened that was cool throughout this day? Uh, what did I learn? If I had to rate this day out of 10, what would that be? You know, what am I excited about for tomorrow? What am I worried about? Kind of like a journal, but also it allows me to then kind of activate my memory and go through the day, like what actually happened sequence by sequence, what stood out to me. And that has allowed me to create better content, but it's also allowed me to appreciate uh how much depth that actually goes around around us.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah. Alex talks about, Alex Mosey talks about like you need to do cool shit in order to be able to talk about it. And a lot of people are spending their entire days like trying to write content about something that might not be too exciting. Um and I think one way I've thought about life is like do the most fun, exciting, cool things and then have those stories to tell to people because that's what's exciting to people. People want to hear about life lived. And a lot of our generation, especially those of us in this entrepreneurial space, I feel like we've sacrificed a lot. And obviously every decision is a sacrifice, but I think that people are sacrificing a lot of life, a lot of experience, a lot of relationships to continue to push forward, to continue to achieve, because that's what they've tied their identity to. How have you uh kind of worked uh against this entropy of uh achievement tied to the identity?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, I think it goes back to you know how we started this conversation. What do you want? Like define your North Star. Maybe you do want the money and the fame and the success and you know the material wealth at the expense of everything else.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

But I think anyone really wants that though.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

I think if you reflect deep enough, I think it is often a proxy for something deeper. It is a uh temporary solution to a, you know, a permanent pain that I think isn't filled. Um and so, you know, chapter two of the book is I and it's called Avoid the Pyrrhic Victory. Because uh, you know, back in in Greece, there was this uh country called uh Emperor called Emperor of Pyrrhus, and he battled against Rome and he he beat them twice. And for context, Rome was like, you know, the the biggest, the best. And so, you know, all his generals and soldiers were cheering, but he wasn't. And a soldier came up to him and was like, Why aren't you cheering? We just won. But he said, another battle like this, and we will be utterly defeated. And a Pyrrhic victory is when the cost of winning exceeds the value of what you've won. And so, for an example, be like, think of the investment banker that made partner at 35, but came back home and you know, his wife left a note saying I can't do this anymore. Or an entrepreneur who got so caught up in work that she didn't take care of her health and she was really overweight and depressed and and lethargic. Or think of the the researcher who spent all his years like trying to, you know, solve cancer, but he came home and you know, his kids said they grew up with a stranger. And I think there is there is often a cost that we don't think about when we're trying to achieve uh some of these material goals. Yeah. Have you felt that in your life? A little bit. I think when I dropped out of college, uh, I moved to Las Vegas. So I moved from Illinois to Las Vegas, and I left everything behind. I didn't know a single person in this new state. And so uh I left my parents, I left my friends, I left my grandparents. I also left my twin brother. And so for context, my twin and my my twin and I, we were gonna rent an apartment for the following year so we could stay together. And I remember having to break the news to him being like, hey, like I'm actually leaving. And over the year, working at acquisition.com, you know, away from my family, I definitely didn't feel as close with my brother. I think our relationship kind of wasn't as deep as it was, you know, from going from spending every day together to not seeing each other in it. So I think there's there's often some cost there.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Yeah. I felt that I've spent two years of the past four years abroad, away from my family. And there there is some cost. Um, but I'm so grateful for like the opportunity to travel so much and to be in all these incredible places and meet all these incredible people. But there's something to be said about just cherishing what it is that you were given, what it is that you already have. And I really do think that our our our truest fulfillment comes when we can like pursue the things that we really do want once we've identified that while still keeping close to us and really valuing and being grateful for the things that are already here. I I I have this thesis that everything that we need to make us happy is already here right now. We have all the key ingredients to feel happy, to feel fulfilled, to present, in the present moment. And it's so easy to say no, I need more to feel that feeling. And I really think that you can only truly be present in the pursuit of more and feel the whatever true success and winning is when you recognize that you do actually have the capacity for that feeling now, and you want more because you want more. It's as simple as that. You don't have to want more to feel a certain way. Yeah. That's been literally what I built this entire platform on because man, it's a painful thing to be chasing something, especially at a young age when we're we're accelerating our our career paths four, five, six years past who our peers are. And you have to constantly ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Because if you're not clear in the why, I think it's really easy to just to burn out. Have you have you had a burnout moment?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

I haven't, and I think I'm definitely very lucky that I've been more of an introspective person, and so whenever I feel that something isn't aligned, I try and ask myself, how can I correct this? Um but I can see for a lot of people how that could occur.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yeah. So you've uh you've done some audacious things in your life, emailed founders directly to get a job, built complete uh marketing campaigns before you even get a job to show someone that you can do the thing that you're applying to do. Where do you plan on taking all of this forward?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, I think uh, you know, going back to the how can I increase the likelihood I get what I want, I have tried for the last five years of my career to find the best people I know at the skills that I am lacking and get as close to them as possible and absorb as much of their mental models and operations so that if I want to do something similar in the future, uh I can. And so the last five years I've been asking myself, if I know that my goal is to, let's say, be an author or be a successful entrepreneur, well, what skills do I need for that to occur? Well, I probably need to learn how to work, right? If you're working hard but not getting what you want, I would argue you don't know how to work. And so that was my case. I was, when I was 15, I started what I like to call my portfolio of failures, where I would start, I started a YouTube channel, I started Instagram theme pages, I even tried starting a clothing brand, and none of them went anywhere. And that's why I wanted to work with Tyler Dank and Beehive because when I was using their platform, I saw how Quickly they were shipping new features. And I said, okay, that's a company that knows how to work. They're working hard and getting the right output. And so I said, if I work for a fast growing startup, I'll probably learn how to work hard. Same thing with Noah. It's like, all right, well, if I know how to work, I probably need to know marketing. Well, who's the best marketer I know? Well, Noah Kagan. And so try to learn for Noah Kagan. It's like, okay, I learned marketing, I started a marketing agency, but I kept hitting that like that plateau. I didn't know how to scale past where I was at. So I'm like, okay, well, who's the best at business that I know? Oh, well, Alex or Mosey. And so each try, each person I've tried to identify like, what is the thing, what is the skill that is constraining my career and how can I debottleneck it as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I think an important part there is also you're not just asking these people to help you. You're actively helping them in the process, right? You're learning from them by providing them value at the job. And a lot of people just want information, they want help without really giving anything out. So I think from uh a perspective of like a listener, like, how can I get the same results that Jay has gotten? It's by making yourself valuable to those people. But a question that I imagine you get, uh that I imagine a lot of people are curious about is how did you how did you communicate your value to, for example, Tyler Denk at the beginning, before you'd worked for any of these companies, when you hadn't really done anything before? What did you say that you could do for him when you had no experience?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

One of the biggest traps I see a lot of people who are at the beginning of their journey make is finding someone they want to work with and then asking, hey, how can I work for you? Or I want to work for you, I'll do anything for free, just you know, help me out. And what that does is it puts the burden on the other person, it puts the burden on the target to figure out, well, who is this person? How can they help me? Are they a weirdo or not? And that's a lot of burden. And so the question I like to tell people to ask themselves is how can you reduce the friction it takes for the other person to say yes? How can you make this a no-brainer for them? And so for Tyler's example, uh, you know, I wanted to work for Beehive. I looked up the website, I was like, is there any internship positions? There were none. I was like, okay, well, maybe I can create my own. So when I cold emailed Tyler, I knew that the number one friction point for landing an internship would be Tyler thinking, okay, this kid seems okay, but like, what do we do with him? Right. And so instead of waiting for them to figure out what I could help with, I created a pitch deck of three things that I could help them with over the summer, like three project ideas. And so I said, hey, Tyler, here's who I am. Here's three things I can help you with. I really want to work with you. Like if you need a busy bee, like I'm your guy. And that reduced the friction it took for him to say yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

There's three things. Were they things that you'd done before that you had previous skill sets to apply to?

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Yes. Uh I don't remember the exact projects, but one of them was like start an internal podcast interviewing newsletter creators. Uh, one of them was building Beehive 101, which was a course on how to better understand the platform. And there was another one. Um, but it was things that I have tried for myself. I tried starting courses and Instagram theme pages. Um, but I think one thing I, you know, I just caught up with uh EJ White, who was head of growth at Beehive, and he was telling me like the one thing that convinced him to want to work with me is he said, this kid has a lot of Twitter followers. He's like, at the time I had 22,000 followers on Twitter. And he said, okay, well, you know, this kid's young, he's he's 16, but he knows how to build an audience. So he knows he understands some sort of marketing. And so I think a lot of that reduced the friction. Um, right.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

So it's almost like you had to go out on your own and prove something that you could do it by yourself a little bit to then get the boost and be able to provide value to others that's then been able to accelerate you from opportunity to opportunity. And now on your own, you're about to you're about to go crush it. Do you think do you think about it like that? Like you have to kind of prove something that you can do it by yourself and then provide value to someone else that's ahead of you and almost like ladder up from there.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

You know, the question I always ask people to reflect on is would you work with you? And I think like, you know, I can teach you the frameworks on how to write a cold email or how to ask for a referral or how to start creating content, but all of that does not matter. Like you can get in front of your target and still not get the opportunity that you want if you are not competent, if you're not good enough. And so, as harsh as that sounds, like visibility is only one step. You know, 100 times zero is still zero. And so you still need that skill building aspect.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. What does it mean to increase the surface area of luck?

SPEAKER_00 26:51

For me, increasing your surface area for luck is probability. And so if we know that we want good things to happen, then what would increase the likelihood that more good things happen? And so uh for a lot of my career, I've created content. I've written online. And it wasn't because I wanted to be an influencer, it was simply because I understood that attention was on social media. All the people that I wanted to reach out to, work with, be my future customers and investors were on this corner of Twitter. And so I knew that if I just kept showing up, if I just kept sharing my ideas, sharing what I was learning, sharing what I was building, uh eventually people would start to notice.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah, I think that we often think that quality is the opposite of quantity, where when we are if we take more time on something, we're going to make it better. And something I've learned in my journey, and I imagine you have really learned through the people you've worked with and the things you've done on your own, is that in this creator economy, quantity leads to quality because it's not what you think you want. It's about actually doing more, putting more out there and being analytical about it, figuring out, okay, what to if I sent out like a hundred cold emails and I did two different formats, which one got more? And then you double down on that and you start testing and you figure out the quality from quantity. And I think that's is that kind of what you're going for in the increasing your surface area of luck?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yeah. One of my favorite quotes from the first book is the path to quality is paved with quantity. And I think one of the most helpful mental reframes for me is that true failure is not failing, it's never trying. And so rather than reframing failure as not getting the outcome that I want, what I've tried to help people realize is that you want to pretend that you are a mad scientist, right? When scientists do things, they have an hypothesis, they test it, and if they don't get the result that they want, that's not a failure, that's a data point. And then they can iterate, they can double down on what works or cut what doesn't. And I think I've tried to view my career and view content the same way. It's like, if you don't know what will work, then try everything. See what works, put it out into reality, test before you invest your time, energy, and resources into an endeavor. And how much should you test it?

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Like, what is the quantity we're looking for? I think a lot of times people are like, Yeah, I posted three videos, none of them, none of them hit. I don't know what I don't know what uh what to double down on. It's like, at what point is the quantity becoming actually enough data to go from?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

You know, someone asked me that question. Uh, I was speaking at my college uh, you know, a few months ago, and they said, Yeah, how much quantity is enough? And I I felt kind of you know snide and I made like a you know quippy remark, I said more. But I do think that's the answer. You know, there's at some point you will know when how you have enough data, but for every single situation, uh it's context dependent.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah. I think we both know people who have been like, Boy, I posted like five videos and like I none of them hit. I don't, I don't understand. It's like so many people take hundreds, thousands of of videos, of episodes of whatever you're doing to figure it out. And that's where really understanding what you want and your why behind it is so important, because uh you're gonna have moments where like nothing's working. And if you're not emotionally attached to what you're doing, you're going to quit. One of my biggest mentors, I never met him personally before he died, but Bob Proctor, are you familiar with who he is?

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah, he uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah. So Bob, I've done a bunch of his programs personally connected with like a lot of his close peers in this space. And Bob talks about A, B, and C goals. And an A goal is something that you know how to do, you've already done it before. It's like if you have a Chevy in the garage and your goal is to get a new Chevy, you already know how to do it, you've done it. And then the second one, a B goal is something that you've never done before, but you know how to do. For you, for example, that was probably when you wrote your first book. You'd worked around people writing books previously. You'd never written your own, but you knew realistically how to do it. And then a C goal is something huge. It's something that you don't know how to do, but you truly understand your why behind it. And you go because you're so emotionally connected to it. And the difference between a B and a C goal is often the fact that a B goal, you're doing it for something else. Not always, but oftentimes people have these goals that they're doing it for the success. They're doing it for the money, and that's what they actually want out of it. The idea of the thing they're working toward itself isn't emotionally resonant enough to keep going if they don't see the money or the success. And I think in today's day and age, it's so easy to start because we see other people making money. We start because we see other people getting famous doing something. And so when we don't see ourselves doing that, when we don't maybe get lucky and just get like an instant viral hit, we quit and we move on to another thing where we see people doing that. But the only true way to success and the fastest way to success, ironically, seems to be the long way. It seems to be the I'm committing to this no matter what I see, because I am committed to the end result, because I am emotionally attached to this. For you, I see it in your work. You take a path that so many of our peers at our age don't, which is the long game, where you think about, all right, I need to develop the skill. So then you take a year or two to work under these people. And I just want to dive a bit deeper into that. I want to understand how we can replicate that idea. Because I've only started to switch to that in the past year. I really fell into the trap of like, I want to find a quick money grab. I want to do YouTube automation, like I was telling you. What do you think it is that's allowed you to, is it just the clarity of the goal that we talked about at the beginning, or is there something deeper behind it that allows you to play this long game and have this patience to let things unfold in the way that's going to get you to this end result?

SPEAKER_00 33:13

I have to preface this by saying I am definitely a perpetually impatient person. I don't think that I have a lot of patience. I think I have just found things to do in the meantime. And for me, I think the reason I've kind of adopted this long game approach is because of the people that I've looked up to. So, for example, Kobe Bryant, when he was 13, he kind of sucked at basketball. He scored zero points for an entire summer of this summer league. And he knew that he wasn't going to beat these kids in a year. Like he wasn't gonna, you know, practice a lot and beat them in a year, but he knew that if he he could stick to his routine and work out and practice and shoot his jump shops and learn over five to six years, that's when he could beat them. And so I think it's operating from a longer time horizon. So J. Paul Getty was once the richest man in America, and he had this young man come up to him. He had a barrel of oil that was $4,000, and he sold it to J. Paul Getty for $8,000. And so the young man walked away bragging that he doubled his money in in uh in a day. But J. Paul Getty went on to sell that boy to hold that barrel of oil and and over the next 20 years sell it for $800,000. And so I think it just goes to show the the power of zooming out and and playing the long game.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

What habits do you have that have compounded over time, that you do maybe on a daily or weekly basis that you've just committed to in this pursuit of the long game that have put you in the place that you are now today?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

It goes back to what you want and what inputs increase the likelihood you get what I want, what you want. If you know that for me, my goal is to be a successful entrepreneur or a successful writer or author, then what daily habits would increase the likelihood I get those outputs? So for me, my habits are pretty simple. Uh, I have to write something every day, I have to read something every day, and I have to lift every day. And if I can do those three things every single day, I know I will be inching my way closer towards the goals that I want. And you might be thinking, like, gosh, that sounds so boring, so trite. But you know, one of the biggest things I've learned, especially working with Alex, is that success is not a magical list that nobody knows. It's an obvious list that nobody does. And it's often the common sense that we don't put into common practice that prevents us from getting what we want.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Do you memorize those things? Like how that, that right there, I know you've tweeted that exact thing. Does that just like come from within, or is it something that you've read over and over that you've now just memorized? Have you purposely memorized it?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

I am definitely more of a nerdy type of person who collects quotes and questions. Not intentionally, it's just I just pick up things and remember it. But I think the most important habit has been writing tweets and tweeting a lot. You know, when I first got on Twitter, I would tweet 10 plus times a day. And people often think of tweets as like concision, being concise, but tweets are actually idea compression. It's taking this big concept and compressing it to the most concise possible form. And so when I say things like success is not a magical list that nobody knows, it's an obvious list that nobody does, what I'm really saying is do obvious things. But when you say it that way, it makes it memorable. And that's something I've learned from writing online, writing on Twitter.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

I I really like that, like that framing behind that. It almost reminds me of this story about um, I believe it was Picasso. And he was in a restaurant, and this lady said, Picasso, Picasso, come draw something on my napkin. So Picasso comes over, takes 25, 30 seconds, draws something on her napkin, and goes, that'll be $40,000, please. And she goes, What? It took you 30 seconds to draw. He said, It took me 30 years to know how to do that in 30 seconds. And in the same way, tweets that are so concise, it's so much effort, it's taken so much time and so much knowledge, so much reading, so much experience to be able to concisely uh bring such a big idea into such a small two-line thing that sticks with you. How how important is like uh being concise in your words? How important has it been to be able to say big ideas in in small precise ways?

SPEAKER_00 37:47

What I've learned from people who are much uh ahead of me in the communication game is that people remember three things stories, steps, and sentences. And so obviously we remember stories more than facts. Uh steps are like step one, two, three, like step one, define what you want. Step two, avoid the Pyrrhic victory. Step three, increase the likelihood you get what you want with the inputs. But sentences, that's the third one. That, you know, I think Morgan Housel had that quote: people don't remember books, they remember sentences. And so I think one of the reasons why Atomic Habits was vastly successful, aside from being a great book, was that it had a high density of highlightable sentences. It had a lot of memorable sentences that people could take away, share with friends, talk about the book. And so for me in my career, I've been trying to get better at that craft.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Yeah. It's almost like if you build a book of like how many sentences go into a book? I have no idea. Many. Many. If you build a book of all like tweetable sentences, then that's gonna be one hell of a book, right? Um, instead of just building one book as one piece, you you can almost think of it as like this sentence, this sentence, this sentence, all crafted independently. Did you do that? And um you can just do things and then the one you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Yeah, so with my books, uh, I remember hearing this story of how I think it was Mark Manson tested a lot of the chapters that he wrote on his blog first. Really? And so that story stuck with me. And so when I wrote the first book, and now that I'm writing the second book, a lot of the frameworks that I include, a lot of the stories, sentences, ideas that I include in the book, I first actually test online. I test it on Twitter, I test it in my newsletter. When things get more likes or more impressions or more engagements, I can see like, okay, this framework mattered, like this framework resonated more than that framework, so I'm gonna include that in the book. Or this story really did well. I'm gonna front load that and put that into this chapter.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah. What do you think are the most important things that going forward you can do that maybe you haven't done so far in your career to continue to leverage you in the correct in the in the direction that you want to be going in?

SPEAKER_00 40:09

My answer right now would be not anything new, just more better of the same. And so one of the biggest concepts I learned from Alex is one of the best risk-adjusted strategies is to just do more of what's already working. And so a lot of entrepreneurs in general, they they do this marketing strategy, it works, and then they get bored and then they want to try something new. But before doing new, it makes more sense to do more of what you're doing until you can't physically do more volume, and then try and do better of what you're currently doing until that gets diminishing returns, and then you do new. And so I think for my life and my career, I try and operate from the same lens of like what's working? Can I do more of it? How can I do better? And then do new. Because I think it it kind of uh it's easy to get shiny object syndrome of like, you know, going from zero to one is easier than one to ten. And so when we get stuck from the one to ten, we're like, okay, let's do something else because I know how to go from zero to one. Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Yeah, I think that's really important. And again, it's just been the past year that I've been able to realize that because I I think from uh age 16 to mid-18, I was stuck in the all right, I I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump around. I was just having B-goals, right? I wanted to get the quick success. And what I was actually chasing without knowing it was this dopamine hit of instant success and going zero to one and understanding how to do that, like it's so much more fulfilling to be in it for the long run and just like commit to yourself. Like, all right, there's I'm I'm not not quitting. Like, there's no option to to come out of the other end of this without having the result that I'm looking for, right? And I think if you just commit to that, if you're just like, it I'm I'm not getting out of this without uh without getting the thing. It's almost like this old story of the the general in the one of the Greek wars who shot flaming arrows at the boats that they arrived in the island on, saying, we're burning the boats, we're not getting off this island alive unless we win. It's almost that freeing feeling of, all right, I only have one direction to go now. I don't have to worry about what everyone else is doing. Because I think self-comparison is one of the most debilitating things we can have going on in our minds when we haven't truly committed to the thing that we're working on. Um, I don't know if you feel this, but I used to, you know, see other kids our age, maybe they have a sales agency or they have some, they're doing some marketing thing, whatever they're doing, social media marketing. Used to be like, oh, well, if they're making more money, then me, maybe I should be doing that too. And once you get really clear on what it is that you truly want, that uh that thing that we started with, it almost eliminates that self-comparison because you're like, okay, I'm committed to this. This is what I'm doing. I don't feel like I want to go chase that quick zero-to-one buck anymore. Have you have you felt that? Like that clarity around no more self-comparison.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Yeah, one of my favorite quotes from Jeremy Giffin, he says, if you don't know whether you want to be a quarterback, chef, or entrepreneur, then you'll envy all three of them. And I think there is a lot of solace that I get in understanding what I want. Um, one of my favorite quotes is if you commit to nothing, you'll be distracted by everything. And so I think a life without commitment is a life hugging the x-axis of always bouncing around to different things, but never actually getting that exponential like curve and never actually getting meaningful results because you always stop compounding, interrupt it, and do something else and do something new. And so for me, like I know that I want to be a successful author. And so that you know, I can see other people running a software company or raising millions of dollars or uh you know being a being a podcaster, which which I think is really cool. But I can see that, admire that, and not take my eye off of my goal.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah. It's also really important when you're young to explore for most people. And there's this, uh, did you ever take like a psychology class?

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Yeah. Do you know, do you remember um Marcia? I don't. So I'll explain it. Um Marcia uh talks about how when you are uh an adolescent, you kind of go through it piggybacks off of Eric Erickson's idea that our adolescence is a time of identity exploration. It's we're either uh identity achievement or role confusion. And those are kind of the two outcomes that we're going toward. And uh James Marcia expanded upon this, giving kind of four outcomes. So you have like a grid, right? And the x-axis is commitment, and the y-axis is exploration. Okay. So when you have exploration, that's a lot of what we're doing as adolescents. We're trying new things. We're gonna play different sports, we're gonna try out different friend groups, we're gonna go to college, we're maybe gonna go to parties, or then we're gonna experiment with studying all the time. We're gonna start a business. A lot of what we're doing is trying to explore to figure out what we want to commit to. And so that's normal for an adolescent. And a lot of times we can get stuck in this period of moratorium, which is what he calls all uh all exploration and no commitment. Some kids get stuck in commitment with no exploration because their parents told them, you're gonna be a doctor, you're gonna be a lawyer, you're gonna take over the family business. And that can kind of create a feeling of uh just feeling stuck for the rest of your life. I'm running this podcast, I'm running a business, and I'm also a full-time neuroscience student. Sometimes, no matter how grateful and ambitious I am, my brain just doesn't want to keep up. And I know that you know the feeling of having all these things you value so much that you just don't feel like you have the time or the focus to get done, and that's exactly why I take Magic Mind every single morning. It's a mental performance shot. It's got the adaptogens, the nootropics, and the time-released caffeine so you don't get the jitters or the 3 p.m. crash, but you get all the energy, all the clarity, and all the focus to accomplish your goals. And I've been taking it every single morning because of those exact things. You guys know that I would never promote a brand that I didn't fully trust would get you the results that you're looking for. So if you're looking for more performance, more clarity, more focus, then go to magicmind.com slash wagoner20, put Wagner20 in at checkout and get 20% off a package of these shots or 48% off a subscription. Go try it and let me know what you think. Let's get back to this awesome episode. And then you can get this uh the other idea, which is identity achievement, which is when you have both commitment and exploration at the same time. And I think that's something that from observing you, you've achieved, and you've achieved that faster than most people. I'm at the point where I've achieved that as well. And it's hard for people in that phase at our age because normal mentors, normal professors, the normal people that we'd be hearing from trying to learn, they tell you, don't commit yet. You have so much time, you gotta keep exploring. And it's almost an uphill battle as someone under 22 to say, I've committed to what my goals are. I know what I want. Because a lot of people don't know what they want. And so you've done a good job of putting yourself in positions around people, other people that do know what they want. But I do think that it is somewhat of an uphill battle for uh for our peers. Um, I don't know if you've experienced that at all.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Yeah, I think uh I've heard similar dogmas of you have time, you're a baby, like, you know, keep exploring, keep trying things, don't commit. And I think there is some truth to that. I think, you know, it is unwise to work commit on the wrong thing. And so, you know, exploration is important. The the helpful framework that I've tried to have around this is uh, you know, Google's 70, 20, 10 rule. And usually it's for advertising, you put 70% of your budget towards the thing that is working the most, 20% of your budget on variations of the thing that's working your most, and 10% of things on just wild experiments, right? But I think the same can apply to our career, especially if you know what you want. You can spend allocate 70% of your resources towards the one thing you are committed to, 20% on variations of that, playful things, and then 10% on trying things, explore things, do a podcast, travel to a new city, like explore. And I think uh it is helpful to have a little bit of everything. Is this one of your wild things today, right here? I'd say more wild than most, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah, yeah. What's your uh yeah, what what are your novel experiences looking like these days?

SPEAKER_00 49:08

These days, uh, I'm actually in the process of trying to figure out where do I want to live? And so uh similar to what we've talked about before of test before you invest, uh I've tried to visit the cities that I'm interested in, and not as a tourist, but as like a as a resident. And so, you know, I was in SF uh a few months ago, and now I'm in New York, and I try and stay for at least a week and go about my routine as if I was working in this city. I you know, wake up, go to an office or go to a coffee shop, do work, come back home, like you know, walk the streets, like figure out if this is the the vibe, if these are the people that I want to surround myself with. And uh I think that's how I've been operating. Yeah. What are you leaning toward? Well, no decision yet. I'm only halfway into my trip uh with New York, but between you and me and I guess the rest of the internet. But uh I'll say I'm definitely leaning towards New York. I think the conversations to me are a little bit more diverse than uh some of the conversations I've had in in SF.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'd wanna Yeah, I don't know, man. I I've been in a lot of different cities and like I love Europe, spent a lot of time there now. Um don't want to live there. And New York's great. I love it here. Uh I haven't spent a ton of time, but just like you got everything you want. I mean, you can hear the train going by. It's a very vibrant city. A lot of just there's a lot going on. To me, that's fun, that like constant stimulus. Yeah. Um, well, Jay, I so appreciate you coming on, man. For everybody that is watching, listening to this, this has been an insane setup, an insane day. A lot of things have gone astray, and I think it's all led to the perfect conversation. And I just want to end on a personal note, which is like your ideas, I've been following you for a long time, and your idea that you can just do things has been to anybody that's in my life right now one of the things I've been saying the most. Because just last summer, I was booking podcasts with people in New York or two hours away in mass, and we do it online. And I didn't understand that I can just like drive here, build out a set in a place when I left my camera gear in my car, and like Uber eats a tripod to put my phone on, all that, and still do it. Like, you can just do things. You can you can just walk up to someone in the middle of the street that has a Stephen.com shirt on and get a tour around the headquarters of Flight Story. You can just do it. Like, there's really no limits. All the limits that we set on ourselves are just so unnecessary. They're not real, they're made up. And I really, really appreciate that perspective that you've shared with people.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

I mean it's a lot. Yeah. What message do you want to leave with my audience? What question do you want to answer that potentially I haven't asked you yet? What do you think is the most important thing that we could say to leave my audience on a note that will help them create positive change in their lives?

SPEAKER_00 52:20

You know, I I try and end many of my conversations this way, which is that I just want to be a reminder that if you know what you want and you go after it relentlessly, the world will reshape around you and conspire in your favor much more easily than you might think.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Thank you, Jay. This has been The Grateful Podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Grateful Podcast and staying until the end. You're committed. I respect that about you. If this conversation meant something to you, subscribe to the show and share it with just one person who could benefit from hearing this today. Thank you so much. Stay grateful, stay hungry. I'm Jack Wagner. This has been the Grateful Podcast.