How to Give Yourself a Pay Rise by Mastering High Income Skills

If you want to earn a bigger income and find more meaning in your work, you need to become a better you. 

Building a development plan is how you put the principles of the Earn Your Worth Framework into practice. And it's how you get the laws of income on your side. 

Without a clear plan for your own development, you're just working for money and waiting for a pay rise. This is why most people are disengaged with their work, there's no sense of purpose, and no reliable way to measure progress. 

So in this episode, Terry breaks down his four part protocol for building a personalised development plan. This is how you can tap into Tony Robbins level motivation and give yourself a pay rise

In the first part, you'll see how to cultivate a clear sense of direction, even if you're not sure what you really want to do as a career. 

Then, you'll sidestep the number one mistake that slows your progress the most. 

In the third part, you'll learn how to benefit from others experience in a way that compresses the hardest part of learning something new. 

And finally you'll discover the 'learning ladder' method for accelerated skill development that will make you unrecognisable to your peers. 

By following this four part formula, you will achieve a level of mastery that makes you magnetic to money. 

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Transcript

Tex: 0:29

hey there and welcome to the Money Minded Podcast. You're here with your host. Terry Condon and over the last six episodes, we've decoded the Earn Your Worth framework. Now, this framework is designed to improve your commercial acumen and help you get the laws of money making on your side. Your income increases when demand for what you do exceeds your capacity to fulfill it. This is called demand supply attention, and it's the only way to predictably increase your income. The Earn Your Worth framework shows you how to manufacture that demand supply attention by following three core principles. The first one is knowing yourself, and this is knowing the gifts that differentiate you and put you in the category of one. the second principle is serving others, and that's identifying those who place the highest value on your skills And figuring out how to help them. and the third one is amplify your impact. And this is all about using leverage to serve and save as many people as possible. so if you put these three principles into practice, you will get the law of supply and demand on your side and you'll decouple timeframe money. But how do you operationalize this framework and apply this knowledge to improve your outcomes? How do you actually put these principles into practice? That is the focus of this final episode because if you wanna make everything you've learned in this series stick, you need to build a development plan. Stepping back to decide who you wanna become and how you're gonna become that person is how you find your fit and hit those income goals. Without a clear plan for your development, you're just working for money and waiting for a pay rise. and I reckon this is why most people are disengaged from their work. There's no purpose, no sense of direction or progression every result is random and the only time you get real feedback is in your annual review. If you let money be the only reason you're doing something, it tends to crowd at any intrinsic motivation you have for the task. And for me, this is the rat race, working a job for money instead of making a contribution by building a career And going slow, waiting for things to change instead of getting on the front foot and making changes. And my experience is that if you make this a focus, you can dramatically change the trajectory of your career in less than 12 months. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the exact protocol that I've used repeatedly to put the Earn Your Worth framework into practice and how I've helped others use it too. Now, there are four main steps to this process, and they all work together to build the plan. think of how a championship coach builds a playbook for their game plan. They go to work studying success and the outliers. Then they map the characteristics of their team, the strengths and gifts and weaknesses of their team, the resources they have, and they map those to different approaches. And after doing that, they're able to design a game plan that fits the strengths and gifts of the group they have. And once they've done that, they design a program for developing the capabilities required to master that new approach. And those four steps are modeling. Mission, mentors and mastery. So let's start with modeling. if we want to take an informed action, we need an ideal to work towards and something that gives our decisions, direction that gets us somewhere that we actually want to get to. And modeling is how we do that. now when I realized I wanted outta my previous career in sport, I got fixated on one question. If I don't wanna do this anymore, what is it I wanna do? And I read all these books on career and watched all these inspiring TED talks and just consumed as much information as I possibly could on this topic But that didn't really help me, and the people who knew me didn't really help either. It actually made my parents really uncomfortable before they had this really compelling story to tell other people about their son. And now they didn't know how to answer the question. What does Terry do? and it was only about six years after I started this business did they actually sit down and ask me, Hey, what do you actually do? How does your business work? Talk us through it. So I wasn't really getting much help from the people who knew me. And I wasn't finding popular opinion very helpful either. And the longer this went on, the less confident I became. It created this kind of cognitive dissonance because there's so much conflicting information and opinion out there. Some people tell you to follow your passion. Other people say passion is stupid. And the more I searched for answers, the more questions I had, but I was convinced that when I had the answers to those questions, only then would I know what to do. And this went on for months. And honestly, the longer it went on, the more depressed I became. But eventually I figured out that I was asking the wrong question, which was leading me to look for the answers in the wrong places. And I think Will Smith's quote something that he wrote in his biography, sums it up perfectly. He says people's advice is based on their fears, their experiences, their prejudices, and at the end of the day, their advice is just that it's theirs, not yours. You are the first time you've ever happened. You and now are a unique occurrence of which you were the most reliable measure of all the possibilities. that really helped me'cause I had this epiphany, which was instead of getting stuck on what to do, the easier way is to focus on who I wanted to be and let what I do come into focus through action. This stopped me from looking for answers outside of myself, thinking that some sort of occupation would solve my internal discomfort. It made me look within to really consider what I wanted outta life, the kind of contribution that I wanted to make, and that helped me to take the pressure off the what and allowed me to be more open and flexible with my thinking to look for signals instead of solutions. And there's two parts to this process. The first part is modeling the exemplars. Sometimes it's easier to think about other people's situation and how it applies to you than to think about your own situation.'cause you don't see your own self in 2020 and your own situation context. So what I do is I look at the exemplars, I look at people who I respect and maybe even admire, and I look at their work and I ask myself questions like, what job would I kill for? Who has the dream job? What is it about that job that I really like and I really think is awesome? What do they do that I'd love to do? What do they not have to do that I don't wanna have to do? What's their income? What's the lifestyle that it affords them on a day-to-day basis? but also what choices have they foregone and do they forego to achieve and experience this lifestyle? Would I trade places with them knowing that they make these trade offs? To be able to experience that? Those questions really help me to think about people who have what I want to have the experience. It's not so much a job. it's an experience I wanna have. And by doing that, I was able to think through a number of individuals, really place them and say, okay, these are the kind of people. And once I looked at those people, then I delved into their body of work. I asked myself questions like, what are these people known for? What did they do to become known for that? And what do they have to learn to be able to do those things? What skills have they developed in pursuit and in the process? by doing this, I was able to build an avatar. And an avatar is essentially just the ideal person. think about assembling like a player in a game. What are the ultimate skills this person has to be able to achieve and maximize their playing of this game? and the way that I did this was to take an inventory of all the meta skills that are common to these exemplars. Now, if you don't know what I mean when I say meta skills, just go back to the episode before this one and you'll hear me talk about meta skills and leverage and how these things sit above. normal skills that we think about. they're ways to accumulate leverage. But I wanted to take an inventory of these meta skills that are common across all the different exemplars. And I had like five people and I think one of'em was like Tim Ferriss. Another one was a guy called Seth Godden. and there was a couple of others that I can't really remember now. But the important thing is there was sort of like five people. Some of them I knew, some of them I didn't know. But it was really just people who lived the life that I wanted to live and were creating the contribution that I wanted to create. And so I took that inventory of their meta skills that are common across all of them. And then I determined the qualifications required. and when I say that, what I mean is. They're all doing these particular jobs, having these particular careers, but there's a body of work that sets them up to do that. So when I say qualifications, I don't want you to think, I mean degrees or courses that you have to pay for, or certifications that you must get. It's more so. The body of work that's been done, the experience that's been developed, that has set you up perfectly for that thing. really good example of this is Jimmy Carr. I've been just been listening to his biography and he he did a lot of TV work, but he did a lot of standup comedy beforehand. And so presenting, standing on stage, engaging in audience and entertaining people was a set of skills that he developed before he got into tv. And then he was able to come and write shows and pitch these production, teams and then sell these shows as well. So he developed all these skills on top of it, but the qualification required for him was actually to be presenting, to be engaging, to be entertaining, and humorous. All those things kind of set him up for that opportunity. And so what I wanna know is what experiences have these people accrued over time? In their backstory that qualified them for the career they've created for themselves. And I'm looking for common threads amongst all these people. What are the common threads that have set them up to have these similar careers? And then the last thing I wanna look at, is there any results or outcomes common to these people who've excelled in these areas and created these opportunities and experiences for themselves? And then what I did was I put their name, their likeness, and then just made a list of these things. And I looked across this list and identified the skills, qualifications, and results that are common across all these people to develop an aggregated model where it was like, if you want to create that career, here's what you need to do, here's what you need to know and here's how you actually get there. And what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to understand what they have, who they are, and what they know. That's different. To me at the moment, at that period of time and being able to do that. Look at where I was, who I was, what I knew, what they were, what they'd done, what they know. It helped me to identify the gap between who I was and who I needed to become. And that becomes a starting point in this process, The first part of modeling is to understand who you need to become, But the next part of this is we need to get emotionally connected to the payoff, What would it actually be like to live that life? How would it feel? You need to experience that in your mind to know that the juice is worth the squeeze. So the next part of modeling is once we know who we need to become, we need to model the experience and sit in that experience get connected to it on an emotional level. So here's how I did it. I actually wrote down the ideal week, what I was doing hour by hour, day by day, on every day of the week. And I'm like, what would that ideal week look like? And then zooming in each day, what does the pattern look like in that day? What am I doing? who am I doing it for? Who am I doing it with? Where do I work? What environment, and what do I make each month? And how and where do I spend that money? And so the activity here is actually to create a mock calendar. You wanna create a mock calendar with the ideal week empty, and then play around with it until it feels really light. It's really inspiring, really energetic. So you can see it, look at it, feel it, and go, what would that week be like to work that week? And once you've done that and you feel like that's a really good starting point, then the other part that I've done was actually just design the kind of people that I'm working with. I've gone, I wanna work with this kind of people. These kind of people that inspire me, these kind of people that I want to serve and really just get clear on that. And I just talk about the kind of things I'm doing with these people. I'm not getting super, super specific. So I might say something like, I'm solving complex problems with high stakes on tight deadlines, and I'm doing it with people who are driven to. who really get it, who are pushing me, who are dragging me towards excellence, who are fun also, and enjoy the light side of this. I'm getting specific about those kind of things because I'm trying to train my brain as to what to course correct towards. But there's another part of this as well. We know what we're doing with our time, but what about money? the next part of this is to come up with a mock budget at your desired monthly income. And what I did was I actually built a bit of a tool. I vibe coded this tool and the tool. Allows me to basically put in my monthly income and look at how much is active versus passive, and then go into each single category the way that we, do our income mapping now and actually assign that money, give every single dollar a job through the month. How much am I putting towards my investments? How much am I putting towards holidays and adventures, and how much am I using to live the good life now? And really does help you step into that and go, man, what would it feel like to do that? What would it feel like to have, for example, a thousand dollars allocated every single month just for health and fitness in that category? how would that be to know that every single month you're gonna get these foods shipped in, these supplements always gonna be coming to you? How much better would you be feeling on a day-to-day basis about that? and what would it be like to have a budget for 20 KA year for holidays, every single year? Where would you be sending it? Put that down. And what would it feel like to know that more than 50% of your income came from assets that you'd invested with the extra income that you'd earned, through the contribution that you'd made? How would it feel to know that You could say no. To the kind of work you didn't wanna have to do that you could change course really easily. what would that be like for you? What would it do for you? And once you've done this, it starts to really help you understand, okay man, I know what I'm working towards. I'm becoming this kind of person, living this kind of experience. And the last part of this is. To really bake this in is you use this to write a self portrait, the details who you are, what you do, how you live, and it becomes the likeness that you can start course correcting towards. It gives your decisions, direction, and allows you to really understand how to navigate the path forward. Because none of this stuff is a straight line, but you need something to help you way find your way towards this over time. If you don't have that, you really are just reacting. You're on the back foot just reacting to what's happening in life. And so that's really, really important. The first step of modeling where we actually just look at the exemplars, we pull out the most important parts, the common threads to understand the gap between who we are. Who we need to become, and then we actually think about the experience, the experience that we want to have, sit ourselves in that experience, break it right down to a very concrete level that we can actually see, feel, hear, and touch. The more connected we are to that. We understand the person we need to become the price we need to pay to be able to come that person and the payoff, what that actually means for us. Once that's super clear, you are gonna feel a level of commitment that you would never have had before, and you are also gonna feel a level of engagement to what you do now. Because now what you do is a pathway. It's on the way towards who you're becoming, and you just gotta figure out how it's on the way. And if you need to make a change, you'll start making those changes. That is absolutely going to happen. Once you've done this, it cannot not happen. If it matters to you, you are gonna make changes to make those things happen. So that's the first part. Okay, that's modeling. Now let's talk about mission, which is the second step in this process. Having a mission is really important. I'll explain more about what it is in a second, because if we don't have a mission that we're working towards something that actually gives our actions direction, we just mindlessly pursue formal qualifications. We assume that we need to go to school to get other people's badge of approval, to let other people give us the permission to do the things we wanna do, and that's only really true. In careers that require specific credentials. For example, you need to pass the bar. If you wanna practice law, you need to go through medical school to become a doctor. You need to have an engineering certification if you wanna be an engineer. Those things, absolutely, you need to pursue those formal qualifications, but my argument is the majority of the time, we do not need to do that. We need to have self-directed learning. So instead of spending inordinate amounts of time and money getting these qualifications and credentials, I hope that one day people will give us permission. We need to do something different. We need to create a learning mission that forces us to fill the gaps that we've identified between the person we are and the person we need to become. The exemplars that we model, that aggregate avatar that we created. And if you do this deliberately, this will build the body of work you need to succeed. And so a learning mission is essentially a self-directed project that if successfully completed, would require you to build that body of work, would build the experience, would create the capability, which develops the confidence. You need to be able to get to that point that we identified in the modeling process. It will force you to build those skills, qualifications, and create the results that you need to know that you actually deserve to live that life. And believe it or not, this podcast actually started as a learning mission in my modeling. I identified that the common thread amongst all these people was that they're all exceptional communicators. They knew how to break really complex topics down, make things useful, and share their information really courageously, putting themselves, out into the world, putting this information out there to be criticized. But they all seem to be masters at synthesizing information, making it accessible and interesting and usable. and I looked at myself and I realized I had all this specific knowledge, really deep, specific, deep domain knowledge around behavior goals, habits, and the psychology of achievement. And I knew that this could be helpful when it came to money, but people weren't just gonna stop what they were doing and go, Hey. That's amazing that you did that, that you know how to do that. You need to be able to demonstrate that, and I had to acknowledge myself as well that I actually wasn't a strong communicator. Believe it or not, I'm actually quite introverted. If you meet me in real life, you will probably find me a little bit standoffish, particularly in a face-to-face setting. I really like who I like and once I've gotten to know people, I call'em all the time. I get really involved in their situation. But when I'm meeting new people, it doesn't come naturally to me. And standing in front of a group wasn't something I was super comfortable with. I didn't know how to. Command attention in that way, and I didn't know how to synthesize, articulate my ideas in a really clear way. And so I always felt really nervous when it came to that. And so I figured that by starting a podcast, I would have to get better at broadcasting these ideas, breaking them down, making them accessible, and I'd have to learn all these skills I was gonna have to get better at communicating by doing a podcast. And what I said to myself was, I'm gonna give it six episodes. I will commit to doing six episodes. And then I broke it down and said, I'm just gonna get one episode online. and I don't care how I do it. I don't even care if it's about the thing I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna get through the process and then I'm gonna take that process. I'm gonna do it six times. And if I feel. Like I'm enjoying that process and I feel like I've made improvement. Then I'll continue to do it now, 130 odd episodes later. I can tell you I'm a much more effective communicator, and the reason I know that is'cause of how the audience has grown, the reviews that we get, and also the folks who listen to what we're talking about and then actually come through and get help. There are always people who wanna be able to do this stuff themselves. And I create these episodes for people who wanna do it themselves, but also the people who want help. They end up coming through and actually getting that help. And so that has differentiated us in that way. We're not giving you high level, you know, here's vaguely how to do it. What we try to do is give you the actual how to do it. And so if you do wanna do it yourself, you can follow this episode and do exactly what I'm talking about, get the same result, but if you want my help to do it, you know how to get that as well. So this earn your worst series, it's another learning mission, You probably noticed this, but for the last six years I've been doing this podcast more conversationally. It's either been Ryan and myself going back and forward, or it's been me and a a subject matter expert, and this is the first time that I've decided to really package something up and really deliver it solo. and a big reason for this is that I'm about to take the podcast onto YouTube. And this platform, does require a lot more solo content and it requires a lot more thought scripting, structuring, it's not as free form in a lot of ways. So I've been producing this series more like YouTube videos, which means much tighter scripting. for the last two months, I've spent at least one hour every single morning copying word for word the first 60 seconds of the highest performing podcast intros that I can actually find. And So I've been getting tighter and tighter on that.'cause I can see that the number one skill on YouTube is actually capturing people's attention, getting them engaged. So I'm deconstructing the patterns of the highest performing videos and building these systems for creating content that gets clicked and gets viewed. And I've been producing short form videos on socials as well, just to get my reps up on camera. go through that ideation process more quickly. understand the research required and some of the retention editing stuff, not because I wanna become some sort of retention editor. I just need to be able to guide and direct people who are editing for me as they do it. So I don't really care how my content performs there. I'm just doing it to accumulate volume. the important thing here is not the specific result. It's the progress I'm making against my previous self and the confidence I'm building in the process itself. And the best learning missions have four key characteristics. The first one is there's real world outcomes or output generated. You should be able to point to it and say it's done, and also assess how well it's done based on some reasonable comparisons. The second characteristic is the outcome or output depends on the skills that you want to learn. So the process of pursuing and completing this project will mean that you have to learn. These meta skills that close the gap between you and the avatar that you've built, the exemplars that you've modeled. This is what makes it super relevant. The third thing is that the process itself builds the experience and the qualifications you've identified. So if you think back to my last episode on leverage building on my sports rehab system, that forced me to develop labor leverage. it helped me build experience leading and managing junior staff, not just athletes. and that turned out to be very important to me when I interviewed for a more senior role, which would require leadership and management. Now, I didn't think through that deliberately, but it actually just happened organically in that sense. And so that was a really big part of it. fourth characteristic or the best learning missions, is that there's stakes and there's a deadline. People are gonna know whether you did or didn't do the thing because there's a timeline for getting it done. This changes it for something that you might do to something that you are doing. Now I committed to having my sports rehab system done before the beginning of the next pre-season because this was the only way I'd have the time and space to collaborate effectively with my peers and then educate athletes on their return to training. So if you're thinking through this and the activity of the thing you need to do is after you've built your avatar, you wanna craft a learning mission that stretches and engages you, and it meets those four characteristics. there's a real world outcome or output generated. That outcome or output depends on the skills that you want to learn, the outcomes build, the experiences, the body of work, the qualifications that you've identified, and there's real stakes and a deadline for this project. My advice is if you work for somebody, try to come up with a learning mission that you can do in the job that's gonna move something forward for that organization. Get this going in the flow of your work to improve yourself. and if they don't support it, that's okay. Just do the project after hours. Think of it as your investment in your future self's happiness. So that is the second part of our process, which is about crafting a learning mission. And we've covered so far the modeling, and we've talked about the mission, which was step two. That brings us to our next step, which is mentors. So when you start learning a new skill, you are the worst you are ever gonna be at it. You can't really skip that phase, but you can spend less time in the sucky part, and that's why mentors are so important. A mentor is somebody who has either walked the path that you're walking or has the skills that you're building if you are pursuing a learning mission in earnest, you are bound to come across at least one person who fits that description. And when you do, it's worth spending time and money to be around them. working with a mentor can be an extremely effective way to shortcut the learning curve. But if you use their experience the wrong way, you can easily end up worse off. See as a society, we are addicted to prescriptions. Think about five second rule, Mel Robbins, seven minute abs, four hour work week. We are suckers for anything that promises to minimize efforts and make the what to do clear and categorical. But there's a flawed assumption that underpins this. We assume that there's only a few things that work and many ways to fail. So we clinging to these prescriptions like life rafts because we think this is the only way we're more likely to succeed. And this is what's called the narrative fallacy. It's our brain's tendency to create a neat story, to explain events, even when the world's messy, random, or full of hidden variables. this is what causes us to use mentors like general practitioners. We tell them our problem and we ask for a prescription. Now, this is a terrible way to leverage someone's experiences, and the reason why is because it assumes that what worked for them under a certain set of conditions will work for us under a different set of conditions. It also assumes that they've been able to correctly diagnose the thing or things that made them successful. If you wanna be an action movie star. Should you do as Arnold did and become a world champion bodybuilder first, or should you become an elite kickboxer like Van Damm? Or maybe you need to be a wrestler like Dwayne Johnston, Jason Statham? He didn't get there by doing any of that. He got there by modeling Chris Pratt and Will Smith. They might laugh at each other because they know that the path to action stardom is actually comedy. And then Mark Wahlberg might walk in and say, hang on. No, you need to be a pop musician, Keanu Reeves would probably just smile to himself knowing that mastering the craft of acting is the ticket to success. And then Sylvester Stallone would scoff and say, master the art of script writing, and then create your own opportunity instead of waiting to be picked. hope you can see the issue here, right? We wanna believe that there's only a few paths to success and many ways to fail. Here's the reality. There are many paths to success and only a few ways to fail. I love that quote from Mark Twain. He said, good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is a result of bad judgment. So the value of a mentor is in their good judgment, not their advice. I don't use mentors for direction. I use them for guidance and perspective. Direction is about telling you what to do. Guidance is about teaching you how to think. Guidance is about steering you away from failure and perspective is about showing you what you're missing. So we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. Getting an outside in view from somebody who's been there, done. That gives us a more objective view of the situation. This is why when I'm working with a mentor, I'm not trying to be smart. I'm trying to be less dumb. I'll give the context of the situation, I'll explain my objectives, and I'll ask questions like this, what am I missing? How do you see it? What have you noticed? What do you see that I don't? Where am I completely sidestepping the main point here? these are all questions that help you get good guidance. I also like these questions from Dickie Bush. What is something that most people think is important that I can skip entirely? what is one daily action that you do that has compounded most for you across the years in this situation? What is something you did differently to your peers five years ago that got pushed back then, but served you in the long run? What can I expect to struggle with along the way? What is something you believed early days that you had to unlearn to take the next step? What is something that you didn't pay enough attention to early days and then had to learn the hard way? The bottom line here is if you use a mentor as a guide and not a general practitioner, you can collapse decades into days and spend less time being bad at the new skill that you're building. So the activity here is that as you are pursuing your learning, look to engage at least one mentor to guide your efforts. Ideally, someone who's good at making observations and asking questions. If you can find someone in your industry or organization who fits the category, you'll build valuable social capital at the same time that you're building these new skills. Because these people are gonna build a better relationship with you. They're gonna understand what you're up to, what you're doing, and you get to tap into their network as well. that's why I think mentorship is one of the most. Exponential investments you can make if you think your way through it, but you've gotta make it easy for them to help you as well. If you come with an open mind and you try, you do things before deciding what you think about those things, and you reflect on what's happening and you use them as that sounding board, these people are gonna get really engaged in your process. They're gonna be as invested in your goals as you are, and they will hold you accountable to your goals when you want to give up. So what I like to do is I like to start informal. I move it towards more formal arrangements, and I start by asking yes, no questions. And I'm actually doing this right now. I'm gonna be investing probably$20,000 this year in mentorship, but not in the normal way. Throughout the process of this year, I've been looking at our business, our business model, and I've been able to build a mentorship relationship with somebody a long way ahead of us. I talked about him earlier on in this series. He's the guy that actually offered the buy our business. And I really kept in touch with him and really just started to use him as a bit of a sounding board And in that process he's asked for help from me for a few things that he wants my help with in terms of the way he engages customers and how he builds new offers. we've kind of worked together on a few things and really strengthen that relationship. And I know that he is on a similar pathway to me in terms of moving towards YouTube next year. And one of the things I've been doing this year is scoping out a way to build a studio outside of my home. I've got a studio in my home now, which is good, helpful, but I also need a studio outside of my home. I want to compartmentalize work a little bit better. my kids are getting older, they want more space, but also, working out of the house, it's sometimes really hard for me to switch off at times. So I've been looking at a commercial space and in the process of looking for a commercial space, I realized that if I built. A podcast studio, a proper podcast studio where you had multiple sets, an in-person interview set, a talking headset, and a workspace to go from there. I think I can make that space quite productive. And I realized that this mentor is actually on the same journey. And so in the process of looking, I found a few places and I said, Hey, would you be interested in going into this with me? taking on a lease with me because you are gonna need to do a lot of content. You are doing a lot of content next year. So am I, I think we'll go a lot faster if we're going back and forth, back and forth. learning from each other's results. We'll go way faster and, He was pretty open to it. So we've been through a few different properties, looking at different spaces to lease, here in Geelong. and we found a few places, and we're looking at that and my kind of outlay is gonna be somewhere between 10 to 20 grand. this is quite unique in this way because in this way I'm gonna be putting myself. In the environment of somebody who's way ahead of me, somebody who sees it completely differently, somebody who sees what I don't see. but we're gonna be able to be contributing in this way as peers as we're moving into this new environment of YouTube. So we're gonna be fast tracking our results through that. but I'm just gonna be able to tap into that wisdom, really on demand. And so this ticks a few boxes for me because, there's a real business outcome that I need from this. And at the same time, there's gonna be, that social gravity working for me. We're gonna be moving in that direction, and there's probably four or five other businesses that we're gonna be able to go to and say, do you guys wanna become members of this space where you can use these facilities? What we're trying to do is create a little community. So that is a really good example of spending time, energy, money in a space that gives you that level of mentorship. And on a side note, I think the most important investing account that nobody really talks about in personal finance is the one marked professional development, You know, I'm really not big on prescriptions, but if I was going to give you one prescription for the rest of your life, that's gonna pay off better than anything else. It is to go into your bank account right now, get an account market professional or personal development, and start allocating some money towards that account. You don't need to know what it is for yet. You just need to start allocating money towards it so that in your mind, that mental accounting starts to work for you and say the job of that money. Is to make me get better, help me get better, put me in a space where I'm gonna get stimulate, where I'm gonna get engaged, where I'm gonna get better, and excel and advance. If you do that, you will start investing as much in yourself as you have in other people's ventures, and you'll go a lot faster if that's the case. Okay. So at this point, we've built a model for success. We've identified the gap between that model. Who we need to become and who we are now to know what skills, meta skills we need to be able to become that person. And we've also come up with learning missions that force us to acquire these skills and engage a mentor or mentors for guidance along the way. This really does help you avoid predictable stakes, but how do you accelerate your progress? How can you stack these skills so fast that you become almost unrecognizable to your peers? And this is where the final step in our development planning process comes in, and it's all about mastery. It is easy to get hyped up about the possibilities without considering the practicalities of putting your development plan into practice. And the reality is developing yourself is not usually part of your daily responsibilities. It's not a line on your job description that reads spend at least an hour improving your knowledge or capabilities every day. For this reason, it tends to be treated as an add-on, and most people already feel overwhelmed by what they do, so they don't put their best laid plans into practice. They wait for windows of opportunity to start this stuff. They're always waiting for the right time to make things happen. When this thing calms down, when that settles down, we don't actually get on the front foot and say, no, this is not an add-on. It's something I get to do and I'm gonna make it happen.'cause those windows never come. Life is not going to create the space for you. You've gotta create the space for yourself. So Here's how I do it. To go a lot faster. I build what I call a learning ladder. And I talked about this way back in season one, seven odd years ago. Learning Ladder is something I developed to help me ascend from amateur level to expert level by organizing my efforts. and it works because we're embedding learning in the flow of life as it is, not as we'd like it to be. It's not an add-on. It's a part of my day to day. And here's how learning ladders work. There's three rungs on these ladders, and they each represent different levels of learning. Rung One is immersive learning. Rung two is interactive learning, and rung three is independent learning. So let's go through these rungs one at a time so you can see exactly how and why they work. rung one is immersive learning. our instinct is to start with accumulating information I used to do it that way. I now think it's the slow way. The fastest way is to learn through results. Your brain only learns through getting a result. Think about it like this. You can tell your kids as many times as blue in the face to stay away from the stove. Stay away from the stove, give them information, give them information. But the first time they touch that stove and they burn the hand, that is the time they learn. It is the result that creates the learning. It is not the information. The information only becomes useful after the result. that's why we start with immersive learning. And immersive learning happens when you act, assess and adjust your approach based on real world outcomes, not theory. The good news is you already know how to do this. When you do a learning mission, that is immersive learning. Because you're forced to observe results, reflect on those results, marry that up with information, and then apply it to your own context. You're not figuring out what works, you're figuring out what works best for you. And as with my example earlier, starting a podcast, creating these first six episodes to get better at communication, that would be an example of immersive learning. Or maybe you wanna learn how to build software. So you start by vibe, coding apps, using ai, or maybe you wanna develop your leadership. So you take on a scout group on the weekends or coach your kids' netball team. The big idea is that we need to learn by doing it is the fastest way to learn. The more doing, the faster your brain can process those outcomes. The quicker it updates its assumptions, and then the quicker it adapts its approach. So that's the first rung on the ladder, immersive learning. The second rung is interactive learning. interactive learning is where we tap into the power of social gravity Learning is as much a social phenomenon as it is an iterative one. If you're in the right room, you don't just learn from your own results. You can just as easily and sometimes even more effectively learn from the results of others. Mirror neurons in our brains develop to help us mimic what we see others do. So by deliberately putting ourselves in an environment where people like us are doing the things we wanna be able to do, that's one of the fastest ways to accelerate learning. The reason why is that when you see someone like you doing the things you don't think you can do, it breaks beliefs that are holding you back. And by being around others doing the things that you wanna do, it normalizes new behaviors that feel foreign or threatening and as you act on new information and insights, you expand that comfort zone. So on the immersive rung, you wanna spend time and money to put yourself in the room with three types of people. First type is the person who's walking the same path, but a few steps ahead. the second type of person is somebody who's a peer, somebody who's at the same stage learning at the same time. And the third type of person is somebody who's a few steps behind you. Now the reason you wanna be in the room with those three different types of people is because the people ahead of you are gonna help you see what's possible and start to normalize those new behaviors for you. The people who are beside you. these are kind of people who you can compare notes with along the way, and the people who are behind you, these are people that you can actually teach as well. And one of the fastest ways to learn is to teach. That's the other side of this podcast is I teach myself every time I put this stuff together. even by producing this episode. I had to spend the last month decoding the process I've used repeatedly to understand. What it is that worked and that process itself taught me as I'm teaching you. so if you're in the room with these three different types of people, someone who's ahead, someone who's beside someone, who's behind you, are gonna learn as quickly as you possibly can. and if you think about the example I just gave you before about the investment that I'm making into that commercial space with the podcast studio, the workspace, what you're gonna see is that there's three different types of people there. The mentor is gonna be there, and at times I'm gonna be discussing and debating and deciding with them what to do, Because there are a few steps ahead of me in the game, but at different times I'll also play the role of peer because we're both learning YouTube at the same time. And other people that come into that space. These are people who are actually gonna be behind both of us. None of these people really do much content, but they want to get into content, and so by having them in there, we'll be teaching them stuff and learning as we teach. So interactive learning is such a powerful way to do this. You really are just speeding up your feedback loops, normalizing those new behaviors, breaking all beliefs, holding you back and building new ones that push you forward. Now we've talked about immersive learning and we've talked about interactive learning. The last rung, rung three is independent learning. Now, what's interesting about this is I used to do it the other way. I used to start with independent learning and walk my way up, go into interactive, then go into immersive. now I completely reversed it because I recognize that independent learning is the lowest efficacy learning. Information by itself is not useful. It's action, then insight, and then information. Because if I'm trying to learn, for example, YouTube, it's going to be creating those videos, it's going to be writing those intros, it's going to be seeing what actually hits. Paying attention to those results and then going and learning from other people who are ahead, how to interpret those results and understand what to do to iterate my approach. So I always do independent learning now, just in time, not just in case. There's a massive distinction between those two things. I think early days when I was more insecure, it was more about accumulating information. trying to learn just in case I need to know it, instead of I'm trying to learn this and now I need to move forward to understand this. And the good thing about independent learning is it's so easy now. You can read watch lists so much, so quickly that if you are actually acting at the same time, making sense of this, having very tight feedback loops, you can become very, very good at something in six months. You just need to organize your thinking. And on the third rung here with independent learning, it's about organizing your thinking. Most people aimlessly consume information to feel good, to get a bit of a dopamine fix and get entertained, maybe get engaged, but they don't organize their information and set it there ready so that you're actually coming in and going, well, I've got some time and space here. Now I'm gonna learn. So. think about if you go into a gym, you see people who actually have a program know what to do, and then you see people who wander in the gym and go, what should I do today? Who do you think gets better results? It's always the person who's organized their thinking has a purpose, a focus, and actually makes use of that time and the resources while they have the time. And that's essentially what Rung three is all about. Instead of aimlessly consuming information, I actually wanna get ahead of it and say, Hey, I'm learning YouTube. Let me line up all the experts. Let me find the best books. I'm gonna start to see these are the channels that are really working at the moment. Let me follow all those channels. Let me unfollow all the other stuff that's not that. And every single morning I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna watch these videos, I'm gonna copy these things down, and try to understand this process. If there's any podcasts, if there's any blogs, I'll read, watch, listen, whatever I need. But I'm really focusing narrowly on this space, and I can tell you that by doing that, it doesn't take long at all. I think somebody else has quoted this, if you just put 20 hours deliberately into something, you can get to a point where most people could never dream of because they're just not doing it deliberately. But if you are, you're essentially creating this very tight feedback loop, which is the conditions you need for deliberate practice. Think about it, You're acting on the immersive level. You're assessing and adjusting along the way, and you are really discussing, debating and deciding what to do next and how to iterate your approach at the interactive level. And then you're actually collapsing time by going out and getting the best information from the people who have condensed all their experience and put it into a book or a video or something like that to help you think about how to adjust your approach better. That is the way that you improve at a rate of knots way faster than anybody else can. So those are the four steps. If I go back through them for you, we start with modeling. We wanna build an ideal or a likeness that we wanna start working towards that can give us direction for our decisions. Once we have that likeness, then we wanna start to think about creating a learning mission. Something that helps us start to fill the gap between who we are, who we actually want to become. The third thing is we want to consciously cultivate mentors, work with people who can help us avoid the pitfalls, give us good guidance along the way. And the fourth thing is we wanna really be pursuing mastery. And that's where these learning ladders are absolutely gold. Wanna build these learning ladders very deliberately so that we can create that deliberate practice environment, really get fast feedback, and accelerate our learning as quickly as we possibly can. This is really how a development plan is created. Start with the likeness, move through those four steps. build a bit of a system for that so you can track what's happening over time, and gamify it a little bit and say, look, here I am, I've just bolted on this skill. I've been doing that for the last six months. I feel like I'm pretty good. I'm gonna move to the next meta skill, and here we go. That is what gives you purpose. That is what gives you direction in your work. It's what gets you engaged and once you're engaged, it's amazing how quickly things can change. And hey, if you've been listening to this series and you know you wanna make a change because you're not that engaged with your work at the moment and you're definitely not earning your worth, then I wanna offer you an early Christmas gift. I'm gonna be opening up my calendar to work one-to-one with one person for the next 12 months for free. Throughout January, you and I are gonna work through the principles of the Earn Your Worth framework. We're gonna uncover your superpower. We're gonna find the environments where your specific knowledge is highly valued, and then in early Feb. We're gonna build out a full development plan together. First, we'll build out the avatar and understand who you wanna become. Then we'll set some stretch goals for your income and step into that experience so that you get connected to it emotionally. And after that, we'll design your first learning mission to help you fill the gap between who you are now and who you want to be. And then we'll use that as a stepping stone to be able to build out the full learning ladder for the first meta skill that you're gonna require throughout 2026. And throughout 2026. We'll catch up every single month to measure progress and plan your next steps. And I'm gonna show you how to build these meta skills to increase your earning power through leverage. And to accelerate your results. I'll connect you with anyone in my network who can help you along the way, and by the end of next year, your income will have increased significantly, and you'll be unrecognizable to your peers, but you'll have something else as well you'll have the confidence that comes with knowing how to reliably increase your income because you know how to create and capture value. And I'm doing this because I wanna pressure test this framework with more people across a longer period of time. Because up until now I've mostly done this in an ad hoc way with less of a formalized structure with folks just going through the mentorship. But now I wanna see what happens when this is done more deliberately so all you need to do to apply to be the person who wins this 12 months, one to one mentorship with me is to hit the link in the show notes that says, earn your worth in 2026, and then just take a few minutes to tell me a little bit more about you and why this should be you. I'm gonna review each and every application personally, and I'll choose the person who I believe will back themselves as much as I will. The person who will do what's required to win, and the person who can be another inspiring example for the people around them. Applications will close at midnight on New Year's Eve, 31st of December, and I'm gonna be announcing the winner in the first week of January. We'll get straight into it after that. So if you've been looking for a reason to take yourself a bit more seriously, this could be it. Just hit that link of the description and I hope that you and I'll be chatting soon. Now for the rest of this series, I'm gonna be sharing with you some other inspiring examples of folks who've been able to put these principles into practice and taken the opportunity that is the internet. I've been banging on about this the whole time, but really there is one opportunity for every generation, and it is the internet. It creates that leverage, it creates that opportunity and a global marketplace where you can really, take whatever interests you take, whatever you're good at, and create your own opportunities. You don't have to wait for somebody to. Tap you, give you permission and say, here's your pay rise. You can give yourself a pay rise. And so I'm gonna be sharing some of these examples of people who have done that and put these principles into practice. Some of these folks I've worked with and some of these people I've learned from, and I'm gonna be hitting you in rapid fire succession with these'cause I want you to see that there are people like you doing things that you don't think you can do. So if you're not subscribed to this podcast, make sure you do that now cause I'm gonna be dropping these episodes in rapid fire succession across the next couple of weeks. So that's it for this episode. Stay tuned for the next one, and I'll see you soon.