Louis' Learnings 4 - The Impossible List & Ten Really Great Conversations
The Reflection Habit
Happy Monday Morning from Henderson, Nevada!
If you are new here, welcome! This newsletter is my public journal: a place where I share what I learn as I go about my week.
If this is your first time reading, you can catch up on week’s 1-3 here.
The theme for this week is a term I call “the reflection habit.”
The Reflection Habit
“What can I learn from what just happened?”
The secret to constantly learning is to constantly look for opportunities to learn.
When we choose to adopt this attitude, we realize that there are learning opportunities everywhere.
Every conversation has a nugget of wisdom. Every marketing email can be analyzed.
There is always a lesson.
This mindset shift has turned me into a consummate note-taker.
After doing anything consumption driven, take 30 seconds to a minute to write a few short notes.
Some examples:
Name every character in the movie you just watched
Write down the best ideas from a conversation you just had
What is the one big idea from the lecture you just watched?
Learning Through Conversation
This past week, I put “the reflection habit” into practice following every major conversation I had.
Ten inspiring entrepreneurs. Ten takeaways.
Here’s the play by play.
(1) Alex Wiec (Alex & Books), Summit Interview, Monday 6:30 am
Alex is a popular creator in the non-fiction book world. He makes resources for people interested in becoming better readers.
Big idea: “If you read first thing in the morning you’ll never go a day without reading.”
I’ve been delaying my first cell phone check until after reading a chapter of a book and it’s really made for a more peaceful morning.
If it’s the first thing you do everyday, how could you not do it?
You can swap this out for your most important new habit (it doesn’t need to be reading).
(2) Joe Wehbe, Virtual Coffee & Schmooze, Monday 2 pm
Joe is a podcaster and blogger in Australia. We met because I heard him on a friend’s podcast, thought he had great ideas, and wanted to chat.
Big Idea: “I only do what only I can do”
The conversation focused a lot on prioritization. There are infinite things I could be doing to advance the podcast, this newsletter, or Aura.
Joe’s catchy affirmation “I only do what only I can do” really caught my attention.
Focus on what you are uniquely good at, delegate, automate, or eliminate everything else.
(3) Andrew Warner, Summit Interview, Wednesday 11:45 am
Andrew Warner hosts Mixergy, a business podcast with over 2000 episodes. In the 14 years he’s been running his show, he’s interviewed just about every shark tank judge, multiple billionaires, and both founders of Y-Combinator. He’s even had Tim Ferriss on his show… 4 times.
Big idea: Focus on finding one immediately useful idea per podcast.
For years, his interviews were way too general. Learning “about startups” was too vague of a mission for listeners, guests, and over time, himself.
He fixed this by trying to get at least one immediately actionable idea from each conversation.
(4) Frederic Stutzman, Podcast Interview, Wednesday 1pm
Fred is the CEO and Founder of Freedom.to Freedom is a productivity software that helps you reclaim your attention from digital distractions like social media, news websites, and other rabbit holes.
It accomplishes this by letting you irreversibly lock yourself out of distractions for predefined periods of time.
I’ve been using Freedom for 3 years, and talking to their founder was an absolute treat.
Big idea: Turn off the internet! If you don’t need it, don’t let it distract you.
(5) Taylor Pearson, Podcast Interview, Wednesday 3pm
Taylor is an essayist, hedge-fund manager, and crypto expert. His book, The End of Jobs, is one of my all-time favorite books about the power of entrepreneurship.
Big idea: Give good examples.
Taylor is an exceptionally clear thinker. His ability to break down complicated concepts into simple explanations is what draws people to his writing.
Interviewing him live was an incredible display of this skill. My strategy for the podcast was to ask him about all of the concepts he wrote about that I didn’t fully understand (e.g. ergodicity and smart contracts) and ask follow up questions until they made sense (genius, right?)
Taylor’s tactful answering of my questions lead me to a realization: explanation is just the art of giving examples until one makes sense.
Explain concepts people don’t know in terms that they do.
Smart contracts are just fancy vending machines… Who knew?
(6) Chase Maher, Summit Interview, Thursday 1pm
Chase hosts the popular “Life Worth Chasing Podcast.”
Big idea: Consistency
Chase’s podcast had a killer launch: tons of downloads and promotion from iTunes. Unfortunately, his content backlog was too small and he fell behind on his publishing schedule not too long after his launch.
The wave of excitement faded. By the time he had new content ready, he had to rebuild the hype. Stay consistent!
(7) Danny Miranda, Drive & Schmooze, Thursday 5:30 pm
Danny is a podcaster and writer on the come up!
Big idea: Bias toward the most engaging communication channel
The closer an interaction is to in-person communication the better. The more virtual, the worse.
Danny and I had been chatting on Twitter for a while leading up to meeting via Zoom for a summit a few weeks ago. We had a great chat for the summit and have been texting off and on since then about various podcasting topics. He then asked me a complicated question and I didn’t want to explain my answer with my thumbs, so I called him up which lead to a great chat.
The lesson? Exclusively communicating via text is a weak relationship builder compared to a phone call, video chat, or (ideally) in person meet-up.
(8) Adam Wozniak, Skinny Fatz & Schmooze, Thursday 6 pm
Adam was guest #7 of the Louis and Kyle Show! We finally met up in person for burgers after recording the interview back in April.
Big idea: Build a community of builders.
Adam is working on an awesome new platform for twitch streamers and wanted to show me how it works.
Halfway through our meal, Adam asked me one of my all-time favorite questions: “wanna see the beta?”
This question has a 100% chance of leading to a high energy, passionate conversation.
Having a friend-group focused on building exciting things is one of the best ways to improve your quality of life. Being around people with a passion project fills you with excitement and injects positive energy into the day to day.
(9) Stu McLaren, Summit Interview, Friday 9:30 am
Stu McLaren teaches people how to create profitable membership sites and hosts two popular marketing podcasts.
Big idea: Hyper specific calls to action (CTAs)
Unsurprisingly, asking marketers for advice about marketing leads to interesting discussions. In the past 8 weeks, I’ve asked 25 podcast hosts the exact same 5 questions and in the exact same order. At lucky number 26, Stu managed to give new and interesting answers to all 5 questions. It was mind-blowing.
His most impactful idea was the importance of hyper specific calls to action. Stu is interviewed on podcasts all the time. Eventually, he realized that generically asking people to subscribe rarely manifested into new listeners.
Instead, Stu makes an extremely context specific CTAs. If you aren’t sure what that means, check out episode 130 of the Marketing Your Business Podcast.
(see what I did there)
(10) Dee Murthy, Podcast Interview, Friday 1 pm
Dee Murthy is best known for co-founding the clothing company Young & Reckless.
We interviewed Dee about how he has built such an amazing network over the past 20 years. He replied with a few great tips.
Big Idea: Talk to strangers. Make friends with everyone. You NEVER know what will happen.
Dee is extremely accessible to his fans. If you want to say hi, he runs in the same neighborhood every Saturday and will give just about anyone 5-minutes for coffee.
His story about fast-tracking into venture capital because of his relationships shows the dividends that making so many relations early on can return. For the full story, watch this 3-minute teaser I made for our upcoming podcast.
Wins and Losses
Some Wins
I landed my first ever standing backflip. I was tossing a frisbee at the park and just felt extra springy. Luckily, I landed on my feet.
We broke many podcast audience/ listenership milestones. Though his team may have poured some gas on the fire (paid-advertising), our interview with Evan Carmichael went BOOM. It was our first video to break 500 views, then 1000, then 5000, and now it’s just shy of 10k. It’s been watched for over 1000 hours (a 2,000x ROI on time invested)
Assuming no cancellations, I will be done recording all 30 of my summit interviews by December 14th. (Reflection habit: asking for referrals from contributors 10x’d our effectiveness in outreach)
Crossing items off the impossible list. For the past 8 months, it’s been a goal to interview an author from a book I read before the podcast was even conceived. Thanks to Taylor Pearson (The End of Jobs), I can cross that off!
Some Ideas For CI (continuous improvement)
Talking with Fred from Freedom really made me look inward at my tech habits. I’m experimenting with blocking the internet (using Freedom) from 5-9 am everyday.
Completely irrationally, I’ve had a lot of ambient stress from not having answers to questions I haven’t allocated time to think about. If I set aside a 30-minute chunk to “think about xyz” it would probably help manage the stress.
Fitness progress stops when you show up at the gym without a plan of what you are doing and why. I need to spend some time (after finals) reorganizing my fitness goals and plans.
Gender bias. The podcast gender split has been bad: 40 male guests to 5 female. I’m open to your ideas about what awesome female investors, thinkers, and entrepreneurs I should be interviewing!
Some Recommended Content
(1) 254 Days of Motivational Videos (email list)
I’m now 10 days into Evan’s FREE 254 days of Motivation email list & I’m still loving it.
Making external motivation a daily habit is paying dividends. Sign up here.
(2) Jumpcut (productivity tool)(mac only)
Clipboard history. Saves the last 80 things you copied and pasted. This is an incredible CI (continuous improvement).
(3) Freedom! (productivity tool)
(4) Taylor Pearson’s essays (stuff to read)
Taylor’s blog is worth bingeing. I recommend his article about the theory of constraints. (Focusing on anything other than the bottleneck is a waste of time)
(5) Podcast with Adam Wozniak (stuff to listen to)
Adam’s been a professional engineer since he was 17. How did he do that? He walked us through the story in episode 7 of our podcast.
Photo of the week
I video all my calisthenics for 3 reasons.
If I have a catastrophic accident, at least I can get famous on Tik Tok
I can dissect my form frame by frame and make improvements
Pure vanity
Here’s a fun shot from my first standing-backflip.
Shoutouts
"The best way to open doors for yourself is to open them for others” - Joe Wehbe
If something great is happening in your world, let me know!
Here are some shoutouts from my network.
Congrats on the new YouTube Channel, Martin
Congrats on accepting the internship at Apple, Elijah
Happy 22nd Birthday, Shaun!
Closing Thoughts
I encourage you to try the reflection habit for this newsletter.
What’s one thing you learned from reading?
Reply and let me know!
☀️ Cheers ☀️
Louis
love reading these! I signed up for Evan's newsletter. Also told sara about Freedom. 😍🤩