The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 093: Jon Acuff – Your Career Savings Account | Do Over

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Episode 093: Jon Acuff – Your Career Savings Account | Do Over This episode is brought to you by Mizzen+Main.  My newest favorite shirts are Mizzen+Main. I work out every day and I enjoy the feel of my workout clothes. These shirts feel exactly like my workout gear does. The 4 way stretch fabric is like no other dress shirt I’ve ever felt before. Originally I purchased one shirt to try them out. When someone told me they would feel like my workout clothes, I didn’t believe them. Then I ordered one… After feeling the shirt and wearing it, I immediately purchased 6 more button down dress shirts and two Henley’s. They are my best looking, best fitting, and certainly the best feeling shirts I’ve ever worn. I promise you will agree after trying one on.  A few Mizzen+Main shirts would make for a great gift for anyone who wears button down shirts.  After you try 1 or 3 out, send me a tweet @RyanHawk12 to let me know your thoughts!  When you go to check out, use the code “ryanhawk” for free overnight shipping or if you want to buy 3 shirts (which is what I do), use the code “ryanhawk3” and you will receive $50 off! Jon Acuff is a fantastic leader to follow for a number of reasons.  A few of them are:  His honesty – Jon will show you the great and the not so great parts about being an entrepreneur (author, speaker, etc…).  He’s honest to a fault and it’s very interesting.  He’s also very smart… When you listen to this episode, you’ll hear how Jon is a dynamic thinker.  He’s analyzed many different angles to problems and solutions.  His intelligence and brain power is evident.  And finally, he’s very generous.  Like most of the greatest leaders, he is a giver, both with his time and his advice.  I’m very appreciative for all that Jon has done for me and so many others.  Jon Acuff is the New York Times Bestselling author of five books including his most recent, Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work and Never Get Stuck. For 18 years he’s helped some of the biggest brands in the world tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey Team. Most recently he’s spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges, companies and churches. Featured regularly on national media, Jon has been seen on CNN, Fox News, Good Day LA and several other key outlets.  In addition, Jon is also a big proponent of social media with blogs that have been read by 4 million people and more than 250,000 twitter followers. In 2010 he used his influence with his tribe to build two kindergartens in Vietnam. Episode 093: Jon Acuff – Your Career Savings Account | Do Over Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “Leaders who can’t be questioned will inevitably fail.” In This Episode, You Will Learn: Humility and curiosity are the qualities of people who have achieved high levels of success A great example of Dan Cathy (CEO of Chic Fil A) emptying out the trash and why he does it The components to your career savings account Relationships Skills Character Hustle How Jon teaches his daughters to be entrepreneurs Starting a blog in 2001… The origin story Why he left Dave Ramsey and his company How Seth Godin’s endorsement for his book came about and the effect it had on his life Notecards – Why you should use them “Skills grow sharp slowly and dull quickly” Hustle – Focused… Not frenzied Write this down: What have people paid me to do?  What comes naturally to me? A Learning Leader is active… In motion.  You’re note done. “You’re Capable Of More Than You Think But It Takes A Lot Of Work” Continue Learning: Go To Jon’s website: me Read: Do Over- Rescue-Monday-Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck See why over 270,000 people follow Jon on Twitter: @JonAcuff You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 085: Jessica Lahey – Why Your Parenting Style Is Wrong Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Honoree Corder is leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio From Acuff.me Jon Acuff is the New York Times Bestselling author of five books including his most recent, Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work and Never Get Stuck. For 18 years he’s helped some of the biggest brands in the world tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey Team. Most recently he’s spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges, companies and churches. Featured regularly on national media, Jon has been seen on CNN, Fox News, Good Day LA and several other key outlets. In addition, Jon is also a big proponent of social media with blogs that have been read by 4 million people and more than 250,000 twitter followers. In 2010 he used his influence with his tribe to build two kindergartens in Vietnam. Jon lives with his wife Jenny and two daughters in Franklin, TN.

One of the things I tell, whether you're 25 or 45, is there's two things I know about you. You're capable of more than you think, and it's going to take more work than you think. And if I can get you to believe that first one, the hope one, the power of what if, then I can talk to you about the hard work involved. The problem is a lot of people in my space, other writers, other speakers, some of them only do one of the two. They'll say, you're so capable, you're amazing, it's the best ever, but they never talk about the work. so you get excited and then you realize it didn't work and you get disappointed. Or some people on the other side write really boring books telling you to have an exciting life. And they talk about all the hard work, but there's no hope to drive you through.

And so I try to communicate in a way that touches off both because I think it's really dishonest to get somebody excited and pretend it's not going to take hard work. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, guys, before we get to this great conversation,

I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Mizzen and Maine. You'll probably remember from episode 64, I spoke with a CEO of Mizden and Maine, Kevin Lavelle, and we promised to continue that dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have. we formed a partnership and Kevin and his great companies and support and people that he works with have agreed to sponsor my podcast. But for me, I'm very picky when it comes to this.

I only wanted to work with people who I truly believed in their products. So this is not just a sponsor to me. This is an endorsement. I absolutely believe in everything that Kevin and his company stands for. I love who they partner with, whether it's Tony Shea's Vegas Tech Fund or the loan Survivor, Marcus LaTrell's Fund, or Chris Kyle Frog Foundation. I love that, but I also most importantly, love the product. Their shirts are my absolute favorite shirts. They feel very similar to the clothes that I wear when I go and work out. And I didn't really believe that was possible until I tried one.

But the four-way stretch fabric is literally like nothing I've ever felt before. And so originally I bought one just to try them out to see if this is really true. A button-down shirt that looks great with a suit or in business casual. I'm like, there's no way this thing is going to feel like people tell me it will. Well, it felt even better than that. And so after I bought that first shirt, I ended up buying six more shirts and two Henleys. And so we've set up a deal for you guys to go to Ryan.misen and mane.com. So that's Ryan.com.misen and mane.com. Pick your favorite shirts. I love the button downs. You'll see on that site my favorite shirts. And when you're checking out, use the code Ryan Hawk to get free shipping if you're only buying one shirt.

If you happen to want to buy three button downs like I've done a couple times, use the code Ryan Hawk 3 and you'll get $50 off. Again, I love Miz and Maine. I love everything they stand for. And I promise when you try the search, you will too. Hey, welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thrilled to be with you tonight.

And our featured leader, it's John A-Com. John is the New York Times best-selling author of five books, including his most recent one called Do Over, Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck. For over 18 years, he's helped some of the biggest brands in the world tell their story, including Home Depot, Bow, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey team, among others. Most recently, he's spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges, communities, and churches. He's been featured regularly on national media like CNN, Fox News, and Good Day, L.A.

On a really interesting conversation tonight, we got into a number of topics. A few of them were building your career savings account, why you should do this, and then tactically how you can do this. Love this part. And then making the transition from working for Dave Ramsey's team and being under that umbrella and having that support, to then leaving and going at it alone as an entrepreneur. I asked him specifically why he decided to do this, and I loved his response. And at the end of our conversation,

we discussed the 30 days of hustle challenge and how this can help all of this. There's so much packed into this 30-minute conversation. I know you guys are going to love it. Ladies and gentlemen, it's John Acuff. John, so excited to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. I got a quick question to get a start, and that's around leaders who have,

sustained excellence over an extended period of time. And you obviously fall into this category, and you've spent a lot of time around others who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. My question is, what are some of the common characteristics those people all seem to share? I think they share humility. I think that I've seen success wreck more leaders than failure. One of the ideas I talk about sometimes is keeping people in your life that can tell you, the truth, which is really easy to put on like a mug. Like leaders love the phrase servant leadership, but so if you actually do that.

And so I always tell people, leaders who can't be questioned end up doing questionable things. Because if you can only be told yes, you just, you go off the deep end. So I think humility, constantly fighting for it and keeping people around you that can tell you the truth. My dad really convicted me on that and said, you know, be in close relationship with people whose livelihood isn't dependent on your salary. So if people are making money from their relationship with you, they have a lot of incentive not to tell you the truth.

And so you have to go outside of your circle. So I think they have humility. I think they have curiosity. I think they have hobbies outside of the thing they're leading. I think that a lot of leaders get burned out because it's fun. Like if they find something they're passionate about that they're good at and they have that rare privilege of getting paid for something they enjoy, joy, it's really easy to become a workaholic, especially in a world that's never off.

Like, you'll never feel done with social media. You'll never feel done with, you know, growing a platform or leading a team. And so I think you need hobbies that are separate from the thing you're doing. I love it. Who are the few people that pop in your mind when you think of sustained excellence? Dan Kathy is somebody for me. I spent a lot of time with Dan Kathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A. I worked closely with him for about a year.

and he's the real deal. He's emptying trash at Chick-fil-A's, not so that people see him doing that, but because that's what he feels like his job is. I'd be at events with him, and somebody would ask him what he did, and he'd say he was in customer service. And he's a billionaire.

Like, he's a, you know, very successful person, huge, massive company. So he was really good at that. And I remember one goal, like, he has a goal for every year. And one year the goal was, 8 in 08 and that meant he wanted to get eight nights eight hours of sleep um every night in 2008 and to me that's such a great sign of a leader who doesn't buy into the garbage of sleep is for the week you know like oh you should just hustle all the time that's just so stupid and i just thought if a billionaire

is curious about sleep i should also be curious about sleep i love it that is a great example and a great definition too so john i want to dive into you real quick obviously i think a lot of people listening priority, you know who you are, but for those who don't, obviously New York Times bestselling author, a number of books most recently called Do Over, Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work and Never Get Stuck, a book that I'm a huge fan of amongst your other work. And it's funny, I was just talked to my nanny earlier today and she said, John Acuff, you've got to be kidding me. I love his, since he's been blogging.

And from your earlier work years ago, John, so it's interesting that you have fans from all over and all different aspects of life that have been with you for quite some time. I'd love for you to distill down, though. When people say, what do you do on a daily basis, how do you answer that question? I guess one of the ways I answer it is that I put handles on ideas so that people can pick them up and actually use them. So we have so many ideas, so much content. And so what I like to do is find a way to look at something and express it in a way that

somebody can actually use it and actually pick it up and take it forward. And one of the ways I do that is with humor. I try to communicate a lot with humor and say hard things in easy ways. So when I go, you know, I spoke at a college a couple days ago, and I told them college students, especially juniors and seniors feel this pressure because people in their 40s come up to them and say, what's your plan, what's next, what's your plan? And they say it as if they had a plan when they were 21. And so I had fun kind of making fun of that and saying any 45,

year old who asks you what's your plan and tells you they knew what they were going to do when they were 21 is lying. No, we didn't. We didn't know. I didn't know at 21 that I'd be doing this. And so I like to communicate in unexpected ways. And sometimes that takes the form of a book. Sometimes it takes the form of a speech. But those are kind of the two main things I do is I get to travel the country and share ideas in conversations and then I get to write books. What advice do you give to a 25 year old when they come up to you? If they ask, a vague question about how can I have a great career, John, or what can I do? What are some of the things you instantly will say to them?

Well, I mean, the big four things are the ones I put in do-over, what I call it. The career savings account. Yeah, the career savings account, which is built off of relationships, skills, plus character, times hustle. Everyone I know that's got long-term success, long-term careers, has invested, invested in all four of those things. And then, I guess, you know, specifically for a 25-year-old, I'd encourage them to be patient. I think culture puts a lot of pressure on 25-year-olds to have it all figured out

or to expect things that their time hasn't earned yet. We have a really fast culture. It's interesting that our phones give us everything we want instantly for 20 hours a day, and we, of course, we expect life to do the same. We've practiced expecting fast demands all day with every form of media. So what I like to tell 25-year-olds is pace it. Like, give you a Give yourself some time, but also know that it's going to take hard work. One of the things I tell, whether you're 25 or 45, is there's two things I know about you. You're capable of more than you think, and it's going to take more work than you think. And if I can get you to believe that first one, the hope one, the power of what if, then I can talk to you about the hard work involved.

The problem is a lot of people in my space, other writers, other speakers, some of them only do one of the two. They'll say, you're so capable, you're amazing, it's the best ever, but they never talk about. to work, so you get excited and then you realize it didn't work and you get disappointed. Or some people on the other side write really boring books telling you to have an exciting life, and they talk about all the hard work, but there's no hope to drive you through. And so I try to communicate in a way that touches off both because I think it's really dishonest to get somebody excited and pretend it's not going to take hard work. You know, it's interesting.

I've found, I love your following you on Instagram and all your social media. I think it's really, you really do bring out the humor in what you do. And so I think when people say, oh, he's a bestselling author and he gets to go around the country, giving speeches and probably making lots of money. But then you'll sit there on Instagram and post a picture looking outside of the window at a random parking lot in some random place in America saying, wow, yeah, this is a really glamorous life. So you show both sides. It's not just, you're not just showing the side of look at me on stage with thousands of people listening to my every last word.

hey I'm sitting in a hotel room by myself looking out the window at a parking lot. Yeah, and I always try to do that because it's funny. Everybody does like the photo of their feet and the ocean and they go, today's office. And they go, and especially if they're trying to sell you something, they say, this could be yours too if you just take my webinar. And so I try to balance that. You know, like there are definitely some awesome moments, like without a doubt. And I think you should be excited about those. I think I can't stand that we have a humble brag culture where if you share an exciting

thing online, somebody says, oh, it's a humble brag. Like, that's just, I can't stand that because what it does is it shames you for being excited about something good that happened. So I want you to celebrate. But on the same turn, I don't want somebody to see the snapshot of my life and go, okay, my life isn't as good because I'm not doing these exact things. There's so much behind that that I try to share behind the curtain a little bit because, you know, Otherwise, it's so fun to act one way online and then the reality is different.

I don't know. I don't want to become two people. It's really exhausting to be two people to be a persona online and then a different person offline. So to the best of my abilities, I try to be consistent. You also seem extremely family-oriented. Talk to me about that. You talk about your wife, Jenny, a lot and your kids and your awesome summer and the hashtags you've created. Talk to me about your family.

Yeah, I mean, Jenny is the smartest person I know. She has an undergrad in photojournalism and then went and got a full scholarship to Georgia Tech to get a master's in construction management in an industry that is male dominated. And so she's just really smart, this crazy background, and just so fun. And so I love being married. We'll be 15 years this April. And I've got two kids. I've got a 12-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old daughter. And it's really fun to have family partners. of this conversation. And I'm trying to figure out as a dad, how do I, you know, how do I show them that work matters but that it isn't everything? How do I, you know, how do I lead the family in a way that lets them know they're important? How do I connect the things we get to do to the work I have to put in? How do I balance the time I'm gone speaking to the time I'm at home? And so, yeah, it's definitely a big, it's definitely a big conversation we continue to have. But they're hilarious. They're so much fun. I couldn't imagine doing any of this without them.

What advice do you give most to your daughters? Do you want them to be entrepreneurs? Do you want, I mean, I assume you want them to do what they're passionate about. But I'm curious this from a dad perspective, or do you lead more by actions than what you say? I tell them, you know, I don't necessarily want them to feel like they have to be an entrepreneur, but I don't want them to buy the same rules I thought you had to live your life by. And I really do believe you can do great work inside of a big company. It's always, and I've said this before, it's always so weird to me when an entrepreneur

shames the nine to five job as they try to build a company where people will have a nine to five job. Like, that's just the stupidest thing ever. Like, your goal is to scale and build a company. Why are you criticizing companies? And so I don't want them to feel the pressure that they have to do what I'm doing or do it the way I'm doing, but I do want them to understand what took me years to get to, which was, oh, wait a second, you mean I can do stuff, like stuff I'm interested in? I don't, you know, I don't have to trade 50 miserable weeks for two weeks of vacation. Like, wow, I didn't know that that was allowed.

And I want them to have a curiosity about life in that way. And then I want them to know the value of hard work. There's all these studies that say, you know, when your kid is young, you shouldn't say you're a great artist. You're a great artist because then the next time they draw, they're afraid to lose the title. You're supposed to praise the effort and say you worked really hard on that painting. So I try to establish as a dad, like, you're working really hard. That was a great lesson. I really saw your effort there.

I know you lost that swim meet, but you did your best and you were swimming at a level above your head. And if you want to level up, that's what you have to do. You have to go do difficult things. and not be good at them for a while. So I try to teach stuff like that, and then they teach me just as much because they're so funny. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you've gotten to this point,

like where you started in your career, the doovers you've had throughout your career, to where you become now, you've built up a pretty large following of your tribe, so to speak. I'd love to hear really the origin story as far as where John Aikov started to get to this point. Yeah, the first thing, like I started a blog in 2001, but it was just this silly little thing that a friend, Billy and I started. So I dipped my toe into the internet back then, but then I didn't do anything for years and years and years.

And then I had a job for AutoTrader, this great company in Atlanta. And there was an interaction designer there, a programmer who said, hey, I think you should start a blog. I think you might like it. A guy named Ryan Sweet. And I said, all right, well, I'll give it a try, and that was 2007. And so I had this blog for about a year, and, you know, I had, I think 80 people a month reading it really, really small. And then I started this other blog in 2008, the satire blog that just went viral and took off. It had, I think the number was 4,000 people showed up on day nine to read it.

And it just grew bigger than anything. Like, I hadn't done that. It wasn't that I knew 80,000 people and sent him an email campaign, and that turned in the first. And so that was kind of the start of, oh, wow, there's an audience and there's an audience of people like me that are curious like me that have a similar sense of humor or similar work ethic. So I did that for a while, and I got a book deal out of that. I got to publish a book in 2010.

And then during that time, I went and spoke to Dave Ramsey's team in Nashville. I was living in Atlanta, and he said, hey, come talk to my staff. And so I went up, and it went great. And I had so much fun. And then a year later, I did it a second time. Then a year later, I did it a third time. And after the third time, he said, hey, it'd be fun to think about what it would look like for you to work here as a brand, as an author, as a speaker. And we went on this wild three-year journey.

It was just a lot of fun, and it was a huge educational process. Sometimes I think people will say to me, oh, you're, you know, this success happened to you because of Dave Ramsey. And I think they think I'm going to argue. But he fast-forwarded my career 10 years without a doubt. Every time I do a speaking engagement, somebody says, I first heard about you through Dave Ramsey. So that was this kind of lightning in a bottle moment that I really learned from and really had a good time with. And two years ago, fall of, yeah, fall of 13, really felt like I wanted to try it on my own. It was hard to be in such an entrepreneurial environment and not want to try.

And so I realized, okay, you know, I've got this opportunity to really kind of jump out and it'll be harder in some ways. I mean, it's easier to sell a book if your boss has 8 million radio listeners. Like, you don't have to be a marketing genius to figure that out. But the risk was something I wanted to try. And I wanted to be able to write books daring people to take risks knowing that I had to. And so two years ago went off on my own. It's been a lot of fun sense. Why would you leave, though?

I mean, you had a great thing going on. Why leave Dave Ramsey? Well, I think for me, I wanted the freedom of trying a bunch of different things. Yeah. I was an employee. and that was, you know, I was an employee in a company, and I felt like if I really want to become the author I want to become, I really want to work with other publishers. I really want to be able to chase an idea down. I really want to see what it's like to grow it on my own. You know, as soon as you step out of a situation like that, you have to wear every hat.

And so even though it's really hard, I wanted to wear a lot of hats and try it on my own. And so that was, yeah, fall of 13. And two years later, here we are. Fall of 13. So here we are in 2016. What moments along the way? Are there specific ones that pop out into your mind to where you say, where you've looked around, maybe it's on stage, maybe it was at a book signing, maybe it was when, you know, you've hit a certain list,

or you've been recognized by people that you really respect as heroes of yours where they're talking about you? But are there specific moments inflection points in your life that you, you can point to to where you sat back. Maybe you're with Jenny on the couch and you're saying, wow, like, can you believe what's happened? Like, can you think of those specific moments? Yeah, I think one would be Seth Godin's endorsement for do-over. Yeah, the best, this is the best career book ever written is a pretty nice endorsement.

Yeah, that, and that just blew us away. And it was so kind. How does that happen now? So, like, do you write Seth a note saying, will you read it and endorse it? Or how does it? I love to kind of get behind the curtain on that process. It depends on the relationship you have with the person. Seth, like the first moment was Penguin portfolio wanting to publish my book.

Yeah. That was a huge, you know, because when you leave an environment where a lot of your fame, so to say, and it seems silly to use that word because, like, it's so small. But a lot of the attention was related to Dave. And so there is that question of when you leave that situation. Will people still be interested in what you have to hear? So the first big moment was portfolio and penguin saying, hey, we published Simon Seneca, we published Seth Godin. We publish all your heroes.

We'd like to publish you. And so that is how that, like he's on the same publisher. So usually an endorsement happens like two or three different ways. The publisher goes, hey, we have these five authors that we think are in the same space as you. We're going to approach them. Seth had endorsed my last book, too, but nothing like this. So then another way it happens is that if you have a relationship with them, you'll email them and say, hey, you know, would you mind endorsing my book? And so those are kind of the two paths usually.

And if you don't know the person, it's almost impossible. Yeah, there's got to be a relationship built and trust. And that's one of the parts of the career savings account that you talk about when you say relationship, skills, character, and hustle. Can we dig into that a little bit into what it means, what is it when you define it and going a little bit deeper, deep, and more practical here for our listeners. When you talk about someone says a career savings account, what does that mean, John? How do you distill that down for people?

Well, a big part of it, and I put a ton of exercises in the book, so it's been fun to watch people online go, hey, I didn't know how many people I knew until I did the note card exercise. Yeah, I love it. So with relationships, it's about understanding who you're connected to

and who you want to be connected to and how to be deliberate about those and not in a cheesy way. We all get like, oh, when we hear the word networking. But in a deliberate way, to build relationships, to understand that, you know, there's going to be boomerang relationships, people that you work with that you don't hear from for three years, and it's not that the relationship ended. It's just that it boomeranged in a different direction, and it might come back. You know, every industry is smaller than you think.

And so with relationships, it's about being really deliberate about who you know and how you treat people with skills. a big part of skills is keeping the old ones sharp and learning new ones. Skills grow sharp slowly and dull quickly. So, for instance, if you were a musician in Nashville where I live over the last 10 years, you've had to learn a lot of new skills because 10 years ago, my friend would sell 400,000 copies of his album.

Now he'll sell 40,000, and that's considered good. So he's had to, and just the most successful musicians, have had to recognize that the industry's changed, and changed along with it. It doesn't do them any good to go. I refuse to learn social media, or I refuse to tour more, or refuse to get excited about merch or Vimeo or whatever,

because I still want to make my living off of record sales. Well, that doesn't exist anymore. And so you have to learn the new skill. With hustle, a lot of it, I always tell people it's focus, not frenzy. That's how I think about hustle. It's not about becoming a workaholic. It's not about saying yes to anything. It's about figuring out these are the things I need to focus on,

and this is how I'm going to do it. And here's some things I need to say no to. And then with character, a big part of character are things like humility that we talked about at the start of this generosity, that, you know, how you treat people. Empathy, empathy is gigantic when it comes to character, and it's got so many practical business applications. And empathy I define as understanding what someone needs and acting on it.

And there's a lot of great companies that only do one. They understand what you need. had this experience you call up a customer service line and tell them your problem. They go, we're so sorry. We're so sorry. And you go, are you going to fix it? And they go, we're so sorry. They've only understood what you need. They haven't fixed it. There's other companies that are great at acting on things that people haven't asked for. They launch projects and products and then are surprised that the market doesn't respond to because they never did the first part of understanding what someone needs. And so those are kind of in a quick way,

the four practical ways to approach those. And so, yeah, they're big. What's fun about him is that everybody is familiar with those words. None of your listeners right now are going to go, oh my gosh, this guy said skills matter. I'm so glad he had him on this podcast. I've been focused on being unskilled. He really changed my perspective. But you need all four. Most of us have never applied all four in this way to how we think and work about our careers.

It's in the book, too, you dive into this and give, like you mentioned to the practical tips. to go and do it. And I think that's one thing I really love about, I love trying to tease out from people is to understand what are things I could implement immediately that will help me. And that's why it's such a useful book and why you've gotten so many great endorsements.

Another part I highlighted recently is when you wrote, you're a perfectionist and the drug of choice for a perfectionist is failure. Talk to me a little bit more about that. Yeah, a friend named Kyle really called me out on that. I was planning the marketing of the book, and I said, I want my goal to be that it sells well. And he said, oh, that's a perfect goal for a perfectionist because you'll never hit it.

You're guaranteeing failure right out of the gate. And he said, sells well. What is that? And so with perfectionists, you really struggle with that. With that, if you leave it undefined, you don't have to worry about it actually getting done. Your fear of it not being perfect won't come to fruition because you haven't defined it at all. And my big issue with perfectionism, because I think about it a lot because it's something I definitely struggle with, is the idea that it shouldn't be a goal because perfectionism means you're stuck,

because it means you haven't done something new because new things never go perfectly. So when I launch something new, it's not perfect. There's things I couldn't have guessed at that I go, oh my gosh, I had no idea. Like, that's a really great point that person brought up. Like we looked at 17 possibilities. Here's three we didn't know. Now, where you get to improve is incrementally you go, okay, these three problems, we're not having again. Like one of my goals is to only make the same mistake once.

Now, it's very difficult, obviously, because sometimes it takes you a while to recognize a mistake. But a perfectionist never gets to that incremental growth because they're afraid to launch something because it won't be perfect. When you launch something new, it won't be perfect. There's going to be mistakes. That's how you learn. Yeah, and you briefly mentioned earlier about the note card exercise, specifically around skills and things that come naturally to you, what are things people would pay you to do and things that maybe you're afraid of. And also you touched, and this is from my pre-work here,

research, what are, if you're going to write an e-book, what would it be about? Talk to me a little without the note card exercise and how everybody listening to this podcast could do it today. Maybe perhaps if they haven't read Do Over yet. Yeah. So it's really, really simple. I do it both with relationships and with skills. And what I find is that when somebody wants to get better at their job, because the myth of do-over is that it's a negative thing. It doesn't have to be a negative thing. It can be a great thing.

If you won the power ball, you're about to go through a do-over. Your life is about to change. So if somebody sat down with me and said, hey, I want to get a promotion at work, or I want to start my own company, or I just lost my job, what do I do next? I would have the skills conversation. And I'd say, well, what are your skills?

And 99% of people will go, I don't know. I'm good with numbers. Maybe they'll have one or two. So the skills exercise pulls those out of people. So the whole goal is that you sit down with a stack of note cards because your brain is triggered in different ways when you physically write something. I love Evernote. I love my computer, obviously. But there's something different and something powerful about physically writing something down. So you sit down with a stack of index cards, note cards, and you go through a series of really simple questions. Questions like, What have I been paid for? In my working career, what are things that people have paid me to do? And then you write down one skill per card. So maybe you were in QA, and you write down, okay, quality assurance was something I was paid for. Another thing you write down, like you said, is what comes naturally to me? And the reason you write that down is because most of us disrespect the things that come naturally to us.

We go, oh, that's just something I like to do. Everybody can do that. No, we can't. That's something unique to you, so you have to pull that out. Another way to do it is to ask a friend. I mean, what a great way to expand what you're able to do is to sit down with somebody at coffee that you trust and say, I'm doing this exercise to figure out my skills because I'm thinking about changing my job or expanding what I do at work. What are some skills you see that I might not be seen?

And that's not a cocky question. Don't let fear tell you, oh, that's so arrogant. No, that's you asking a friend for help. and they're going to say, you're really good at planning events. Like, I know you think that that dinner party you do once a month where we all watch movies is easy. It's not. There's 47 missing pieces that you have to figure out. You're great at planning events, and you'll go, oh, you're right.

It's just something that comes naturally to me. I just do it. And so the goal is at the end of that exercise, you have way more skills than you ever thought you had. That always happens. That's always the case. And then you get to start to look for patterns. You get to start to look for holes. Maybe that'll lead to you to take a class because you'll go, oh, I really am interested in this one field.

But looking at my skills, there's four things I'm missing. I want to get into programming, but am I a network guy? Am I an HTML guy? Am I a developer? Oh, I better go figure that out. I can see a hole in my skills. And so that's what the exercise does. Love it.

John, one more question. We're up against it. The question is around the phrase learning leader. When you hear that phrase, what's the first thing that pop up? into your mind? That it's active. That, you know, learning is an active process. It's learning is in motion.

You're not done. I think one of the things that cripples a lot of leaders is that they get successful at something and sometimes fast success. They get successful. And it's just like we talked about with the kids. They get told they're a great leader. You're an amazing leader. And then they're afraid to lose that leadership title.

And they're afraid to grow and they're afraid to look embarrassed. They're afraid to keep learning because to learn something, there's some degree of embarrassment to it because it's you admitting you don't know how to do it. For you to ask, you know, for me to ask like the 22 year old at the place I get my hair cut. Like, hey, how do I do this thing on Snapchat? Because I don't know. I feel like an old 40-year-old who's confused by technology. Like that's not a fun feeling, but I'm learning. And so that's what I hear about learning later.

It means you're not stuck in the previous success. and that you're willing to keep growing. Love it. Thanks so much, John. Where can everyone go to find you online? Yeah, you can go to acuff.me. Just John Acuff on Twitter, which is J-O-N-A-C-U-F-F. And then I've got a course called The 30 Days of Hustle, and we're about to launch a new one starting February 1st.

So depending on when this airs, go to 30 DaysofHustle.com. And if it's after that, go there anyway, get on the wait list, 2,500 people from around the world are changing the way they look at resolutions. Real quick. Real quick. What are some of the little things we'll do in 30 days of hustle? I'm going to be signing up. Yeah, so it's a 30-day video course.

And actually, it's 90 days of content. So there's no way you're getting through it in 30 days. But it helps you with things like trying to figure out the what behind what you're doing. Your why doesn't need to be perfect. A lot of times people hear you got to know your why. And then they sit down and try to figure up their life calling for like a week and a half. and they never do the work they're supposed to do. It'll tell you how where is important.

Where you're going to work matters. Where and when, if you plan those, you're 72% more likely to actually accomplish something. So it'll help you go, okay, where's my win? And then the other thing, the thing that I think is the most powerful is that as a member, you get access to a private Facebook group. And what I've learned over the years is that encouragement and community wins.

And it's really hard for a lot of your listeners right now because they want to lead, They want to change something, but they feel like they're the only one. And so I love creating these communities where you get to rediscover what the internet used to be like. Like for an hour or two, the internet was full of kind people that were encouraging before the jerk showed up. But in this community, you go, wait a second. Like, this guy's trying to do what I'm doing, and he's in Ohio and he's seeing something I'm not seeing either. So those are kind of to me.

I mean, there's a workbook. There's all this stuff that comes with it. But I think the videos that I walk you through step by step and then the community are two best parts. Love it, man. John, thanks again for being here. I really appreciate it. And I definitely want to keep this dialogue rolling as we both progress, man. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Ryan.

I really had fun. Great. Thanks, John. See you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request. your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.