Welcome to “The Looking Glass”, a weekly newsletter journey of personal growth into mindset, meaning and mastery in work.
#35 – 23 Dec 2022
Hello friend,
Thanks again for being here!
I started writing this week’s newsletter before scrapping it and changing my plans after being super inspired by a podcast episode:
The Danny Miranda Podcast – #290, David Senra: 10,000 hours with the top 1%.
Danny interviews David Senra, the creator of the “Founders” podcast. He deconstructs lessons from the world’s greatest entrepreneurs after reading their autobiographies.
There is so much business wisdom and life lessons to be unpacked from the conversation.
Side note:
I want this to demonstrate how easy content creation can be when you pay attention and follow your curiosity.
This newsletter’s inspiration came from listening to 30 minutes of a podcast and then applying it to my themes around mindset, mastery, and meaning in work.
Here’s an insight, a question, and a quote I reflected on over the last week.
💡 Build in time for connecting the dots
You aren’t a machine.
You can’t continuously process endless information without any consequences.
It would be like trying to drink from a fire hydrant hose.
You won’t have any great ideas if all you do is binge information.
Last week I mentioned “tutorial hell”, where all you do is learn, learn, learn, but with no action.
You need to build in space for connecting the dots.
Your mind needs to wander.
Otherwise, there is no creativity.
After absorbing information, allow space for processing.
Read a book chapter, then go for a walk without your phone. You will be surprised how many good ideas come to you.
If you’re stuck on a work dilemma, maybe a difficult conversation, go for a drive or ride your bike. The solution will probably come to you.
We all know some of our best ideas come in the shower or while doing the dishes, but this method from David Senra shocked me:
He said he sits in the shower for 20-30minutes most days, purely for creative thought.
And remember, it’s not all about information input and creative work output.
Living an interesting life
David reminds us to live an interesting life. He used Jay Z as an example; he’s not only super-successful, he’s led a crazy life.
Wouldn’t you love to have a dinner conversation with someone like that?
It makes me think how my life has become monotonous in certain ways since creating online and having a baby.
We hear a lot about “saying no” and how it is the key to getting things done. I have written about this. But there are seasons to life.
Sometimes we need to “say yes” if we want to stay sane.
I need to challenge myself to say yes to some of those exciting events that pop up, and to seek out new experiences which push me to grow.
And so should you.
That makes for the best content in whatever you do.
For example, the writer shouldn’t be isolated in a reading cave. They should also get out and live an interesting life. This will inspire them to improve their craft and provide endless ideas for impactful work.
Follow what excites you, and lead an interesting life, whatever it is for you:
- Racing cars
- Sailing boats
- Running a marathon
- Mentoring troubled youths
- Creating a pop-up market stall
- Adventures with the kids in a forest
- Travelling to wineries on the weekends
Those experiences will teach you things. Insights will occur while you’re not thinking about “work”.
Connect the dots.
You will find your best work hiding there.
❔ Going all in on your mission
The best entrepreneurs aren’t money driven. They are mission-driven.
David Serra
On The Danny Miranda podcast, David Senra explained how he had a dream to try and make a career by reading books, something he loved doing.
His vision was simple: he reads biographies and then does a podcast about lessons from high-performing entrepreneurs (Founders Podcast). This idea was inspired by Jocko Willink’s successful podcast, where he riffs on leadership and lessons from his favourite Military history books.
David was onto something. There is power in the knowledge trapped in books. But you have to be willing to take the time to extract it. Why not do this and share key learnings with the world? And make some money along the way.
There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc.
They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives.
At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book.
For very little money and a few hours of time, you can learn from someone’s accumulated experience.
There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realise.
You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time.
Marc Andreessen
This was David’s idea of work that doesn’t feel like “work”.
It was his passion.
I’m sure you have some version of this in your life.
You probably have something you would love to be doing as your full-time gig, but you can’t yet see a way to make it a viable career.
This is how I was when I started coaching – brimming with excitement to help others achieve their goals, but unsure how to get clients and build an online business.
Have you gone crazy?
Back to David
His friends thought he was crazy.
In 2018, when David contemplated going full-time on his podcast idea, one of his best friends said:
“I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard”.
Ouch.
We can all relate to that kind of burn.
It cuts deep.
Especially from a close friend.
It hurts.
We doubt ourselves even more.
But that friend who tore down our dream doesn’t understand the whole picture.
They have no idea of the depth of our vision.
They can’t feel what we can feel.
It’s a calling.
Opportunity is knocking on our door.
To you, it is an obsession.
Fast forward
Fast forward four years after going full-time on his podcast idea, and David’s friend was now exclaiming:
“I can’t believe you pulled this off. I thought it was the stupidest idea I had ever heard. Yeah, ok, David, you are going to make money by reading books. This is insane.”
But David did pull it off. His podcast was now making money and doing exceptionally. It had grown to be one of the top entrepreneurship podcasts.
He even had random super-fans cold-reaching out to him, asking how they could pay him money because he had enriched so much value into their lives.
The realisation
In 2018, David had done about 30 episodes of the podcast, and he realised he loved doing it.
He was obsessed with doing it.
But he didn’t know the path how to make money. He was married with a daughter and another kid on the way.
Exciting and scary, right?
But he had been a decent saver, putting cash aside for a rainy day. He had some resources to get him through this podcasting experiment.
So he said, “alright, I am willing to spend my last dollar to try and make this a full-time job, a business, and my life’s passion.”
He also had the confidence (and arrogance) to believe it would work if he worked solely on this project with discipline and consistency.
He would devote seven days a week to realising his dream.
Trust it will work
David trusted he could make it work, even though he had no idea how to make it work.
He referenced the famous Steve Jobs commencement speech quote:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs
Sometimes we have to trust our gut and follow that calling.
Back ourselves.
Take the chance.
We may have no idea how we will pull this off, but we definitely won’t know if we don’t try.
Most people never make the jump
So if you are going to make the jump, you have to put your faith in something: God, the universe, yourself, whatever.
But you’ve gotta jump!
And most people are never going to make that jump.
David Senra
David decided he would work seven days a week on this and put maximum effort into the project.
His podcast project was studying the best entrepreneurs in history. He was learning powerful lessons he could apply directly to his building business.
A handy side benefit.
He realised the worst-case scenario was that he would run out of money, but then he would get a job and work on his podcast after work hours.
He was 100% committed.
People exclaimed to him that he does Founders podcasts for free. But he corrected them, “I paid to do it”. Two years of unpaid work, piling money and effort into it.
It paid off
In 2020, the podcast finally made enough money to pay his bills.
That’s two years after he went full-time on it.
Stay in the game long enough for you to get lucky.
David Senra
Today, the podcast is doing well financially and has a large audience, including billionaire entrepreneurs.
That’s how I knew I was onto something.
Where it’s like, these people can learn from anybody they want, and they are choosing to spend their very valuable time listening to my podcast.
And that’s why I am fucking obsessed with making it as valuable as possible.
David Senra
Familiar story
I could go on, but I will stop there.
This story resonates so much for me because I am now at a similar crossroads to David in 2018.
I’ve been balancing two careers for the last couple of years, one foot in my finance career, the other dabbling in online business as a coach and creator.
To move forward successfully, I must drop the distraction of managing two careers and go all in on the coach/creator path.
The finance career is sapping my energy and creative resources.
I have been experimenting with coaching and online creating for two years, while working hard on the side to save up a buffer.
I have now made the call to finish the finance job in 2022 and start the new year solely focused on coaching and creating for 2023.
New year, new me.
I’m giving myself one year to see what I can make of it.
Sometimes “you’ve gotta jump”.
Reflection
- What feelings does this stir up for you?
- Is there something you holding back from?
- What is it that will require your complete focus and commitment to grow into something special in 2023?
- How could you make that happen?
💬 A quote to ponder
– On doing what you love
In 2018, I just snap.
I’m reading Paul Graham’s essay, How To Do What You Love.
He talks about:
“Listen, man, there are billions of people who have ever existed. Maybe a few hundred thousand ever figure out how to do something they truly love.”
In a 24-hour day,:
- You sleep for 8 hours
- You work for 8 hours
- You do whatever you want for 8 hours.
So that means our conscious life is 16 hours a day, and we are going to spend half of that working, on average.
And you’re telling me I’m supposed to spend half my life doing something I don’t want to do.
David Senra
📣 What happened this week
What would your 80-year-old self wish you did?
My final insight from David Senra for today is the Jeff Bezos “Regret Minimisation Framework”:
Make decisions today so that you will have the least amount of regret at the end of your life
Jeff Bezos took a massive risk to quit his high-paying job in NYC and start an online bookstore (the beginnings of the behemoth Amazon). People thought he was crazy.
But the bigger question in Jeff’s mind was, do you really think the internet is a life-changing revolution?
YES!
Then he pondered:
“Ok, so when I am 80 years old looking back, what should 30-year-old Jeff do?”
In the context of his whole life, he realised he was not going to care about quitting that high-flying executive job at age 30 and missing out on a quarterly bonus.
At the end of your life story, that won’t even register.
There’s always another job and another bonus to hunt down.
What would the 80-year-old you regret?
But Jeff knew he would regret seeing the opportunity for the internet and not taking the risk to play a role in its explosion of growth.
He realised he was taking this chance at a risky time. There were a lot of internet doubters back then.
But he returned to that reflection that if he tried and failed, his 80-year-old self would be like, “at least you tried”.
And that would be ok.
But if Jeff didn’t try because he was afraid, that would be a massive regret.
Stirrings
This stirs up some feelings for me, as I also feel like we are in a time of enormous opportunity in the creator economy and online business.
At the moment, it’s the wild west.
The landscape is developing and evolving before our eyes. Many are experimenting online, racing to snap up digital real estate.
It’s uncertain where things are going.
But there is a sense of possibility.
And I know my 80-year-old self would be kicking me to have a crack.
People always justify not acting by saying we’re too late.
The boom has already occurred.
But we’re not too late here. And it’s just getting started.
We are on the tip of the iceberg.
What opportunity are you snoozing on? (that your 80-year-old self may regret)
I’ll leave you with one more quote from David Sendra.
He realised he had the opportunity to participate in a groundbreaking technological revolution, a special moment in history, like the invention of the printing press, but for audio, through podcasts:
I know I would regret this.
I think this is going to be a fundamental asset and importance to people’s lives, and I want to play a role.
And so I snapped, and I was like, that’s it!
I’m going to do this every day, and I have not taken a day off since then.
David Senra
💭
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
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Cheers!
