Isaac Morehouse on Job Hunting, Honesty and Prioritizing Your Time

I had the opportunity to interview Isaac Morehouse on my podcast. Isaac is the founder and CEO of Crash, and the founder of Praxis. He promotes a vision of a world with more freedom where people can use their talents in the marketplace to enhance the lives of themselves and others. He is a visionary thinker who is constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Isaac shares his thoughts on job hunting, being honest, and prioritizing his time. You can find chapter marks in the description of the video or in the show notes on your podcatcher.

Highlights from the Conversation

Timestamped Show Notes

00:00 Intro to Isaac Morehouse
00:19 Inner Game of Startups
01:00 Praxis
01:02 Crash
10:25 My pitch to Isaac
10:50 Mindset shift in the job hunt
12:50 Increase your luck surface with a job pitch
16:20 Could a bad pitch harm your job search?
19:15 Be honest in your job hunt
20:15 A good salesperson is empathetic
22:40 Posting in the days of COVID
26:00 Posting on social media
28:25 Homeschooling and learning out loud
32:20 Twetch
34:00 Kids learning out loud
36:50 Prioritizing time
39:00 Don’t do stuff you hate
41:00 80/20 Rule
42:00 Don’t try to be everywhere at once
43:40 Tiny payments
49:30 Create more than you consume

Automated Transcript

This is an automated transcript and is likely to have some errors.

Hi everyone and welcome to the podcast today I’m talking with Isaac Morehouse he’s the founder and CEO of Crash and the founder of Praxis he’s written over 10 books and Isaac is the host of the Isaac Morehouse podcast his most recent book is the Inner Game of Startups which I have here it’s a very exclusive book only available on the Bitcoin Blockchain so I’m happy to have that but Isaac I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come on the podcast with me hey man for it appreciate you bring me on. It’s been it’s been fun to see some of your stuff over the last several months especially that you’re putting out there getting your podcast going.
00:00:40
A lot of your other content is really really top notch.
00:00:44
Yeah well thanks. So Isaac I wanted to hear some of the listeners probably haven’t heard about Praxis or Crash but there are two companies that I am really I really love. I follow all the everyday stuff that they that you guys put out on your Twitter feed. Um tell me a little bit about the germ of that idea for both Praxis and Crash because they’re kind of related.
00:01:06
Yeah definitely. It’s it’s all kind of part of the same thread. Um I mean the real Germany I starts when I was in college. Um and I just I felt like it was a huge waste of time and money and I couldn’t really figure out why is everybody tell me I have to do this why do people claim that you can’t get a job without a college degree is that really true you know I go on the job market and like yeah my degree is listed on my resume and yes job say degree required but nobody ever checked or asked or cared that didn’t seem to be at all relevant and so you know from that point I was really frustrated I thought this is just such a huge waste it’s so divorced from the real world it has really to do with career success in any way.
00:01:52
Um it’s just like college is just this totally separate thing and there’s you know there’s interesting like I had a couple classes that I liked. I really like philosophy and economics. I did a lot of study on my own but so so it’s not like the idea of like the idea of like having somebody who studied something you know teach a class on it is a bad idea.
00:02:12
I’m not saying that at all but the way that college is put together it’s just like it’s a joke frankly and it has and especially when it comes to the career component. That component of the college bundle that the idea that that’s supposed to help make you more valuable creator in the in the real world economy is absolutely absurd and I would argue in in pretty much every field even the fields where it’s legally required and even the fields where people say well it’s really good for the herd sciences or medicine or whatever I I actually disagree there as well I think that it is making people worse practitioners absolutely like I take somebody who you know apprentice in any kind of medical thing for years than somebody who went to me school or whatever like but that’s a separate point.
00:02:56
For the majority of people, they’re going into very generic things anyway. In terms of their degrees, it’s like communications, business, and it just has no connection to anything. So, I had this orientation. I had sort of ideas. I mean, I was very young at the time like, okay, what would be a better version of, you know, transitioning into a professional world, getting sort of a career job and I don’t really know where to go so fast forward a decade later I’ve been sort of just going through my own career doing you know pursuing what was interesting to me and I got the idea for practice which is essentially hey what if we could what if we could give people the basic training that they need to to to go from right out of high school to understanding enough about the professional world to be able to add some value from day one right not not not anything insane but to come in as a young person who at least you know how to use Google Calendar and spread and you know the basics and you can come in and create value if if employers if you can come in and say hey I’ll be an apprentice and it’s going to be very low cost for you I’m an apprentice for six months and if at the end of that six months I’ve proven valuable I can get hired on full time that was kind of the idea and you know put it together kind of like went all in quit my job just built this thing you know sort of from scratch it was really hard at first to get people to to be willing this is 2013 we launched it but not long after that the narrative started to Peter Teal launched his Teal Fellowship where you know he’ll pay you to drop out of school there started to be more of a narrative around alternatives to college in terms of getting your career started you know in these days it’s not nearly as radical as it was then to to kind of have the message so you know we got that going and just have had a ton of success with you know hundreds of hundreds of people who’ve gone through it and you know they do the boot camp they’re placed in the apprenticeship they earn in the apprenticeship more than what they pay in tuition.
00:04:53
So, the program at a year-long program is a net cost of zero. It’s actually a positive for the participants and there’s a 9-five percent employment rate immediately upon graduation of the program, right? Colleges will tell you, oh here’s our a graduate employment rate. You know, it’s like 48% and that’s and that’s in like a ninety or 1 twenty-day window after graduation. So, with practice, we’re talking the day of graduation, you already have a full-time job.
00:05:18
9090.
00:05:19
Percent I think of participants right like it’s it’s incredible so after building that up you know for several years and getting it to be you know really well-oiled machine and you know working very well profitable I was like what can we take a part of this just the component where students are winning those jobs and we’re talking about practice participants are 181920, they’re getting hired at jobs that say for your degree require plus two to 3 years of experience.
00:05:51
They have neither of those and they’re getting those jobs. Over candidates who have those by creating pitches. By putting together a little pitch decks or a little video making a project for the company, Emailing it to the hiring manager directly. Hey, Aaron, I love what your company is doing. I’ve been following you guys. I went ahead and made this landing page for you and put together this FAQ because I noticed people on Facebook asking questions about it.
00:06:16
I didn’t see one on your website. Check it out. I would love to come and work for you. That Email, it’s like insane how affected that and then nobody cared. Nobody asks about your degree anymore. Nobody cares about it. They’re like, whoa, this is different. This is interesting. I want to talk to their person. So, we’re helping people get hired through that process with practice and I thought, could we create a vastly larger and scale a platform to help people do that, to help millions of people on the job hunt to essentially pitch themselves instead of just click apply with resumes on job sports and so we raised some venture capital Launch Crash Crash.
00:06:53
co about three years ago and you know, the core of it is a video pitch tool. We’ve had several different iterations of the product but that’s always been at the core of it is be your own credential. We like to say like burn your resume, be your own credential like don’t tell people, don’t give them bullet points of your static credentials and accomplishments, whatever.
00:07:12
Show them something that tangibly demonstrates why they would want to talk to you, why they would want to hire you like make them get excited and it doesn’t have to that big. It can be a little project. It can be a little video. It can be like it’s amazing how low the bar is to stand out and so we kind of built the platform to enable that and you know, I found along the way that the biggest hurdle is really mental like you can create all the tools and make it really easy to create a great video pitch but the vast majority of job seekers are going to they’re they’re they’re going to do what they have been instructed to do.
00:07:47
You get the grades, you do the things, you check the box, you format the resume, you send it out, and to break that mindset and to get people thinking more like they’re autonomous. They’re in the driver seat of their job hunt of their life, of their career that pitching themselves. Hey, you think that company is cool and you like their product? Why don’t you pitch them on working there? People don’t think that way.
00:08:09
They don’t think that way. They’re like, well, I gotta go to a jobs board. I gotta look at the job. I gotta look at titles that sound similar to my degree and then I gotta like put in the resume that the career center told me to use a tempo or wherever. I Google the template. I click submit and then I the best and it’s all in the hands of some HR bureaucrat, right? They don’t think, man, Spotify is my absolute favorite app.
00:08:30
Maybe I should pitch them on hiring me. I’m really good at making videos. What if I made a mashup video of like my favorite Spotify playlist and I and I Google around and I found who is the who the marketing director at Spotify or who’s the content guy, whatever. I do a little slew thing. I put together a little video and I say, hey, I made this for you.
00:08:47
I want to come, I want to do a, I want to for you for free for a month and let’s see if I can do anything for Spotify. Nobody thinks that way. So, to get people to use the tools, we first realize the mindset barrier is huge and so we kind of put a huge emphasis on content and we kept stripping it down smaller and smaller, okay? We have this really in-depth course which is amazing.
00:09:08
You can go through it. The the career crash course, the the job hunting crash course kind of walking you through everything step by step but it’s a but it’s a pretty big thing and then we kind of like, okay, we have career guides which are like longer PDFs. We have blog posts. We have podcasts and it was like we need to make this even smaller.
00:09:22
It’s too much for people. So, we stripped it down to the daily job hunt, a free Email every day. It’s really short and it just hits your inbox and we’re just giving you little bits of this mindset like just slowly introducing you to the possibility that maybe if you’ve applied 100 times and never heard back. Maybe you could think about something different and here’s an example of what that might look like and just really slowly trying to change the mind frame and that’s kind of where we’re at now and the Daily Job Hunting’s been very successful.
00:09:52
We have over 150, 000 subscribers. You can go subscribe for free at at Crash. co and then kind of utilizing that to sort of feed people in to to understanding and using some of the tools that we’ve built to go pitch themselves and win jobs. So, rambled for a long time but there’s the that’s kind of catches us up to where we are.
00:10:10
Yeah, Isaac, I love that and I that that mindset shift that you talked about is so important. The I I had been following Crash for a couple of years following your guys’ podcast and I kept thinking to myself how can I do something different I I I love this company and then finally I thought wait a minute I maybe I could pitch Isaac himself so I made a I made a little video for Isaac and gave him a pitch which you can find on my blog I’ll put a link to that blog post up there but you know then we we ended up working together on a few things but that mindset set shift is so crucial because then I started thinking okay well what else can I do maybe there’s other companies I can work part time for in in the evenings and we ends and and create value for them.
00:10:55
Maybe I could restart my my blog and podcast and and start putting out more value on that like for example I’m I’m putting out some books that I’ve written for free on my blog so that people I’m starting to build a brand putting putting stuff out there more and and it’s just like you get the ball rolling and you just start thinking okay what can I do next? What can I do next? How can I create more value? And that mindset shift.
00:11:18
Oh it’s so important. Who’s ever writing the the daily job hunt emails is really good. They they’re short like a paragraph or two with some good links at the end as far as resources that you can use but is that you writing them or is that Joel? So, it started as me and Joel has taken it over and he’s been writing it for a long time now for the vast majority of the Jay Lee Joplin’s been around for 10 months I think and it’s it’s almost all Joel.
00:11:47
I mean, we we have a a vast catalog of hundreds of blog posts and guides and podcasts and whatever with kind of a lot of different content out there that he’s drawing from you know because he’s so immersed in all this stuff too it’s like once you get it I mean you know this once you sort of like have the the light bulb moment and you like understand the mindset and some of the ways of approaching things like job hunting and just your career in general then it’s sort of like it’s there and Joel is just phenomenal I mean he writes those he writes those in every day and gets them out there they’re they’re absolutely they’re absolutely awesome so and and man I gotta give you a shout out because like it is amazing to see you got on the platform and I saw you know hopping around in the slot group and asking questions and stuff and then you sent me this pitch and I sent it to the team and I was like oh my gosh I was like we’re not hiring right now but like I have to talk to this guy because like he gets it he gets and this is what we see by the way like when we look at our activation data and stuff so many people get on there and they like create a go to create a pitch and then they like plug in a few things but they never make the video or do anything and then that’s it and they abandon it and that’s that’s like the very common behavior else but maybe they’ll come back three months later or six months later and be like okay I was going to make this pitch but instead I kept sending my resume and I sent it another 200 times and I got nothing so now I’m finally ready I’ll put in a little work and it and it doesn’t have to be that much work I mean you can put in a ton of work if you want to and sometimes that pays off but even just a basic you know pitch Email directly to five hiring men you’re going to get at least one of them to respond.
00:13:26
I mean the response rate is like 80% but you can probably going to get the interview rate is like one out of three right? So but anyway once once you have sent one pitch. People who have sent one pitch they average like four pitches. Right? Cuz it’s like it you feel it. You feel the difference in whoa I get it. I it’s kind of fun.
00:13:49
I like think of what’s a little project. What’s a what’s a thing I could say and how could I pitch this person and and even if you don’t get the job you feel like you’re in control you’re proud of what you made it was kind of a fun process right you and it’s like it get something going it it unlocks a different aspect of you which is amazing so anyway your your pitch you sent us this absolutely killer pitch with a hilarious adorable video with your kids in it you gave us you gave us feedback on ways that you think we could improve some things but not in a way that was like arrogant and pretending that you know how to run the company just like helpful hey I’m a user I love using your product this would make it easier for me as a user so instead of just telling you, I went ahead and did it.
00:14:28
I went ahead and made this responsive website for your career guide like really really powerful. I had to talk to you and again, as I said, we’re not hiring right now but I I was like, alright, let’s do a project. Come on and do some projects for us. Um you know, you made us a great promo video. You gave us some feedback on the site and we made some immediate changes but we’re doing some we’re doing some major overhaul stuff on the site down the road and your feedback is a big part of that, right? Cuz like, hey, we’re too in the weeds.
00:14:57
Users coming and sharing this stuff. This matters. So, anyway, even though we couldn’t you you did a project for us and now if you want any job anywhere I know I will vouch for you I will go out there and I’ll if a job comes across my desk that I think it would be a good opportunity for you I’ll pass it along right like you’ve got an advocate now you’ve got somebody because you impress me so that’s why I tell people even if the company you pitch isn’t hiring if you send them a great pitch like that you know maybe that you do a project with them whatever it’s like you are building your your luck surface dramatically, right? I didn’t know who you were before this.
00:15:36
I interacted with you online but I didn’t know you personally. Now, I do. Now, you’re in my mental Rolodex when certain things come across my table and and if you come to me and say, hey, will you give me a reach out to this person? Hey, do you know this person? You know, I saw that you’re an investor who invested in your company invested in their company.
00:15:53
Do you know the CEO? I’m applying there. Can you get me an in? Like that’s how that’s how it works, right? And and it starts by just putting yourself out there. So, shout out to you for doing that and really embodying what we’re what we’re all about.
00:16:05
Well, well, thanks thanks for that. You know, I’m wondering I I I almost didn’t send a pitch to you and and like you said, once you do one, you you start thinking of more ways to do others but you know, just getting that mindset that just hey, experiment. Try things. I think that’s that’s a big part of it. Is there ever a time where putting something out there like a video or your resume online with all these different projects and things.
00:16:29
Is there ever a time where that could be a liability? Like if you’re literally just not that good if your pitch sucks Is there a possibility that it could hamper you in any way? I mean, look, it’s possible. We always gotta ask compared to what? So, you know, let’s say you you have a video pitch that sucks and you put it out there, okay? How’s that going to hurt you compared to not putting anything out there at all, right? Now, I mean, it may but most people who have that worry, putting something not very great out there would be no worse in fact it probably better than not having anything at all right like I mean if you just apply with your typical resume I can’t tell you apart from anybody else I Google you I can’t find anything if I find a video where you where you pitched you know and these pitches don’t have to be public by the way like you can keep you can just Email them to the hiring manager and not share them beyond that but let’s say they are public I find a video where you pitched you know Apple on and working for them and it has one view and it’s a really crappy video I I’m still going to be like well that’s kind of interesting that shows some gumption like they missed the mark but hey they got some swagger right like that’s not that’s not really going to bother me for the most part I mean look you can put stuff online that will hurt your reputation for sure right I mean if you have a bunch of crazy stuff like you usually it’s when you are thinking of your online presence as a consumer that you tend to do the most damage because you’re like consuming videos and then raging in the comments, right? You’re just kind of indulging.
00:18:14
You’re just doing it as like a a fun thing. When you’re doing it in any kind of concerted way to like, hey, I want to pitch an opportunity. I want to experiment. I want to design a landing page and tell people about it. That kind of stuff, I I cannot think of examples where I think that’s hurt somebody’s reputation or ability to get a job, right? It’s more like I can’t control myself from raging about political debates on Twitter or Facebook that might hurt you because people don’t want to work with a psycho or somebody who’s you know got crazy beliefs or whatever right so like but but I think the main thing here there’s a sort of a broader point behind your question I think the main thing is being being at unity being at one with yourself that sounds really that sounds woo woo but here here’s what I mean like people feel like on the job hunt, they have to pretend to be someone that they’re not and that’s kind of how you’re coached and trained, right? Like, make your resume make you look better than you really are.
00:19:18
That’s kind of the idea. You you you puff up the words, you know, oh I was a sanitary engineer, you know, know you were a garbage person, right? Like, that’s the whole idea of like the whole game with resumes and stuff trying to like trick people into thinking that you are and then that’s sort of like a lot of what people think of social media as trying to like portray this image That will only make you stressed and uncomfortable and if you get the interview and what people experience in the interview is different from what you projected, that’s going to hurt you in the long term, right? Being honest about who you are is not the opposite of selling yourself and selling your skills, right? And selling and pitching yourself is not the same as exaggerating and lying about yourself.
00:20:08
You gotta get that out of your head. Like a good sales person never lies. A good sales Person is empathetic not sociopathic, right? A good sales person understands who are they talking to? What are they value? What are they interested in? They’re genuinely interested in you. They’re asking questions about you. They’re curious about you and if they identify something or something they offer that they genuinely can can deliver on actually would be valued by you even if you don’t know it.
00:20:36
They try to help you see that. That’s it, right? And so like, when you think about companies, you think about them. If you it about them. Hey, I’m interested in you. I think you’re really cool. I made this project for you, for your company because I love the mission. It’s really hard to be embarrassed in that way. It’s really hard to have anything, right? Cuz you’re and you’re and and you’re being honest.
00:20:59
You you don’t say, hey, I can come in and I can do blah blah blah if you don’t have those skills but you can win jobs even if the job says that you need, I mean, I’ve had people do this before. You need a certain type of skill that you don’t have. I’ve seen people win job by saying, I’m so in love with your mission, I’m so in love with your company, and I’m a fast learner, and I’m super curious.
00:21:19
Here’s indications of that. I once wanted to learn this so I read three books and wrote a blog post. I’m going to bring that same mentality to your job. I don’t know this skill but I’m going to learn it. I’ve never used Salesforce before or any CRM but I already started taking free classes on it and I want to learn it. People will take that honesty and that eagerness and they’ll say, okay, great, right? So, that’s where you don’t want to put out stuff that’s not true but you can still demonstrate what is true and say look I’m honest about what I don’t have but here’s what I do have and why I think it can still be a fit like I think I think that’s where you can relieve a lot of that tension it’s just like be who you are and focus on your strengths in an honest way and then you don’t have to worry so much so yeah I know it’s like sort of all rambling all over the place but I think if you’re never if you’re never being phony then you don’t have all that stress of what do I put out there, what do I allow people to see sort of goes away.
00:22:20
Yeah yeah. I mean there’s been a lot of it seems like more and more people are worried at least people I’ve talked to you know who’s going to see my what’s on my Facebook? What what if I posted something you know related to COVID that that’s not doesn’t go along with the norm? Then I’m not going to be penalized during an interview or have you posted anything on Twitter? I know you’re pretty active on Twitter that has stopped you from getting any connections that you were hoping to get? No.
00:22:51
You know what? That’s crazy. Um I’m super radical. In terms of like beliefs that I hold that I’m not shy about. That are well outside of the sort of mainstream of beliefs. Like I disagree with every political party and every government policy because I think government itself is immoral. That’s really radical. Right? That’s like you know I I think every single every single government action taken over COVID is awful and none of them should have been taken, right? Like that’s that’s pretty radical stuff.
00:23:24
Now, I have found that you can, you know, there’s certain people and places that would probably never hire me and I don’t mind that because those are places that I wouldn’t want to like if you wouldn’t hire me just because I have certain beliefs on things that are unrelated to the job, then, I don’t want to work in a place that’s that’s that hostile to me anyway, right? But I I think it’s not so much what you believe it’s it’s how you behave about it right if you’re clearly like addicted to arguing with people on Twitter and you’re insulting people and you’ve there’s something there that people don’t want to work with that’s not just about what you happen to believe now they they may give a pass to people who are **** on Twitter about things that they agree with that they’re comfortable with but that’s not the point I think you can you can be honest be who you are without just being like a rager or an **** or you know like just clearly incapable of of ignoring trolls or whatever so that’s one thing but the other thing is if you again like when I when I go pitch venture capitalist as I have many times in the past for for funding or try to recruit a really high-level talent to come work for me or you know anything anything in the business world try to try to land customers I’m so on them and their needs and my vision and how those things can align and they either like it or they don’t and if they really like it if I do my job well and then they go on Twitter and they see that I also am like not a fan of the Federal Reserve or whatever right yeah I haven’t had a case where someone’s like well you really won me over with your vision but then I realized you have like different political beliefs now I have a I have had cases where people have been like hey I really like your vision but I think you should make your company focused on getting government contracts and I’ve said no I will never run a company that relies on government contracts because I would hate I would hate that life and they’ve said well then I don’t want to invest in you because it doesn’t seem like you you care about winning you care about your beliefs and I’m like well that’s fine right there’s there’s certain things that I just don’t want to do I don’t want to compromise on right so there’s a cost but it but the cost doesn’t come in the form.
00:25:56
I mean, I’m out there saying drop out of college. I’m out there saying like like public schools don’t even need to exist, right? No, I don’t make that my I don’t make that my entire identity. Um because I care about who who’s my customer and what do I what am I focused on there but I think my point is I think you can and the further you go in your career and the more valuable you become the more theoretically the more freedom you have to express yourself what typically happens is the further you go in your career if you have been sort of hiding your beliefs then you keep hiding them because now the cost of revealing them gets higher and higher so that’s why it’s like be be honest all the way but in a quite way like you know I go to people’s blogs who I’ve hired and I read they’ve got blog posts and they have radically different policy positions than me I mean I’ve hired people who are more or less socialists in terms of the policies they would like to see in this country I haven’t had a I haven’t had a problem with that if they were good employees and they did their job well that’s what I that’s what I care about right like that’s fine I’m not I’m not going to bother about that now if they’re if they’re always attacking people on social media or something like that and they’re just like unhinged then no I I don’t want to hire that person right but it’s not so much about the belief so yeah I think it’s just like here’s like a great uristic.
00:27:16
If you ever click post or send or whatever on something that’s going online or in an Email, and you walk away and what you just sent stays with you. You keep thinking about it. You keep being irritated about. You keep wondering if someone responded and you come back and somebody did respond and then you can’t rest until you respond to them.
00:27:39
That’s a sign that that’s probably something you shouldn’t have posted because what not because it’s immoral or wrong or factually incorrect but because it’s making you not at peace with yourself. Now, I’ve had this many many times where I’ve posted something and then it’s like it stays in my mind for the rest of the day and not in a way that’s making me happy And I’m like hm.
00:28:03
I shouldn’t have posted that if that’s what it’s going to do. I don’t want to carry that around with me and that’s a good sign that like you’re you’re you’re getting out ahead you know in front of your skis a little too much. Do you know what I mean? Yeah yeah absolutely. Um you know one thing that both crash and practice focus on a lot is this idea of learning out loud and I’m wondering if you use that same concept as you homeschool your kids because I know you have I think is it kids? Four kids.
00:28:35
Four or five kids.
00:28:36
Okay. Do you and how do you use that concept when as you’re homeschooling or or do you? Are how much how much of the ideas from practicing crash transfer over to homeschooling? Yeah, I try. Uh my my kids, kids will always keep you humble. They can always sniff it. They’ll be like, oh it sounds like all your practice stuff or all your crash stuff, whatever.
00:29:00
Um you know, they they like to they’ll be like, oh you’re you sound like, I’ll be like, no kids, what you should do is this to be like, oh you’re doing all this business talk now, dad. Uh go away but no, that is definitely a part of it like the idea of learning being confined to an enclosed like literally a cinder block cell in the case of schools and universities, right? That is literally detached from the commercial world by very very long driveways, extensive campuses, and often barbed wire fencing and like IDs to be scanned.
00:29:35
I mean, literally, it’s like completely enclosed, completely detached from the world. You put yourself in a literal box with one Person in front of it or whatever and now here is where you do this thing called learning and it’s very private and you you turn in what you have learned to one person to tell you in private and then maybe share it with your parents whether you learned properly or not.
00:29:59
That whole concept is like absurd. Can you imagine if companies and and like people who are trying to innovate you know did things that way? Like okay everybody you know who’s working on open source software or whatever.
00:30:13
You all like go into little cells and you write your little code completely separate from everyone else and you give it to one person who tells you whether or not it’s good and useful. Whether it’s correct. You know what I mean? It’s like absurd. Learning does not happen that way. That’s not how humans learn anything effectively except for the one thing they learn is how to live like slaves or obedience surfs.
00:30:35
That’s what you’re learning. Not the content. Not the subject matter. Whatever you may or may not retain about the subject matter is irrelevant. What you’re learning is the conditioning of You’re learning the idea that that is how learning works. That is how authority works. That is what your role is is to do what you’re told and then when you’re told you’re expert enough then you’re allowed to do the next thing which is crazy.
00:30:53
So learning out loud is really just being human. I mean it’s like watch little kids who are haven’t gone to school yet. How do they learn? They watch they watch their parents talk and then they then they just start babbling. They start trying to talk. If you ever been to a foreign a foreign country before where you didn’t speak the language and you’re with a group of Who’s the person who picks up the language the quickest and ends up getting around and finding where the food is and all this stuff by communicating with locals.
00:31:19
It’s not the person who studied the most. It’s the person who is the least embarrassed to try talking to someone in a language that is not their own. Who’s the least embarrassed to sound like a dumb gringo when they you know are like ah right? Like you just try. You just do it. You don’t care. And then people will be gracious with you. They’ll help you.
00:31:39
And so like that’s how kids naturally learn So, keeping that learning out loud thing alive is very important and I think part of one of the reasons why we’ve, you know, homeschooled is not so much to like deliberately instill in you that you must learn out loud. It’s more like to remove the artificial constraints that make you think that there’s any other kind of learning that makes sense, right? And so, yeah, we sort of like inculcate it but it’s more like just letting it happen, just letting it blossom, letting kids play and experiment and try stuff and ask questions and be curious and just do what they naturally want to do and trying to make a space for that.
00:32:17
Yeah yeah one area that my daughter’s been learning out loud in is there’s a social network that we’re both on called Twitch and she saw your daughter post a beautiful painting that she did and sell it on there for some Bitcoin and so she’s like hey I want to do that too. So she’s now making NFTs and selling them on Twitch for a few dollars and she’s just like the whole idea of adding monetary component to her artwork is just really invigorating for her but do you encourage your kids to to put stuff out there like are they do they each have their own blogs and YouTube channels or is it just kind of whatever you know whatever they’re interested in you know I sometimes I say to my kids okay don’t just watch YouTube make a video too you make a video of something yes yeah absolutely so you know I’ve I’ve at various points I’ve done more pushing and prodding than others I try to sort of let it be mostly guided by their interest but I will I will encourage like so with my daughter she loves doing art and she doesn’t know anything about NFTs and all this stuff and like you know I think most NFTs are kind of silly but the concept that that your art can be more than something you just do for yourself that people would actually pay you for it and that there’s a value to it and that in the digital world all kinds of people will pay you for designs and stuff that’s something that’s new to her so I wanted to kind of introduce that to her so instead of just telling her I was like I’m just going to take take this picture picture she did and I’m going to post it up there and I’m going to say hey my daughter here’s this NFT and then I’m going to show her hey look people started buying this she you made like money look at your hand cash wallet and she was like oh this is really interesting right and so letting her experience that and when my son was younger he was really into like food and he was like really like making all these different things and drinks and stuff and so I had him I had him like bartend when he was like 12 at a work party that we did I know it’s probably illegal because he loved mixing like he wasn’t drinking alcohol he loved like cocktails and like mixing flavors I had him he made sandwiches like deli sandwiches and he bring them to a different company’s workplace at lunch time and sell them and you have people like preorder and he would sell these you know sandwiches.
00:34:37
He did that a couple times and he he made a little money but he realized since he was super into like it needs to be really high-quality meat and all this stuff. He realized without knowing the lingo that the margins weren’t good enough that you can’t sell a deli sandwich for a high enough price to justify like boar’s head, salami, and like you know, fresh baguette at every it’s not worth all the time and the work and like so yes I have definitely encourage my kids you know to to to not just keep it to themselves to to to share those things you know to to post things but at the same time they’re they’re in a culture that kind of values like constant sharing of like sort of cheap flam flam stuff and I probably sound like kind of an old person saying this and it not not saying that’s all bad but like okay let’s just post some dance to TikTok.
00:35:33
Let’s just which can be like oversharing, right? It’s like no, I don’t want you, you know, I don’t want little kids posting dance videos that everybody in the world can see and stuff like there’s privacy concerns or whatever but I do want you thinking about being creative, being creators like you know, my son, my kids have never been super into video games but my son had a phase where he was really into Mario and we have Mario Maker which is awesome because then you could make levels and share them with others.
00:35:59
So, it’s like the the creative component and that’s it’s cool about games like Minecraft you know there’s a there’s a creator component not just a consumer component so so yes a very long when it answered your your question I tried to I could probably do it more honestly and that’s something that’s a struggle like as a you know you’re working all day and you’re creating a bunch of content and stuff yourself and at the end of the day you’re just like I’m tired.
00:36:25
I could I could try to do this YouTube thing with my kids or set up a podcast. So like pushing myself to do that more deliberately is something that I think I’d like to do more of.
00:36:37
Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah. Well, I try I try to get them to to get them started and get the ball rolling and then kind of leave it in their hands but it it is a struggle and that’s one thing I wanted to ask you about is how do you divide up your time with everything you’ve got going on? You know, how do you know whether you’re going to jump into a new project like you’re doing with this tiny payment series or whether you should optimize your current stuff for, you know, every single different social media you know, each one has a a different size image they should have and and should you write more blog posts or have put out another podcast? There’s so much that you could be doing but how do you divide up your time personally and and decide whether a project is worth pursuing? Yeah, that’s that’s a great question because I do I do a ton of stuff and I I I like to I like to build things.
00:37:27
I like to create new things. Um so I’ve usually got a lot of different stuff.
00:37:33
That’s that’s one of the I don’t know if this is just wired into me or if it’s more that I’ve learned it over the years. I know I have learned it over the years but maybe I’m wired that way anyway but I think that is one of the superpowers that I have or one of the strengths that I have that I’ve I’ve realized it’s I can I can manage a lot of different things more easily than than some people and the way that I’ve done that, I don’t say that to brag at all like that’s not like an amazing skill.
00:38:00
I I have very few genuine skills. Basically, I talk and I write a lot and and I figure how to find really talented people who can actually do real stuff but I have kind of two two rules that help me one first and foremost is don’t do stuff you hate so if I’m like promoting one of my companies or something and I’m like well I you know I gotta promote it on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and all these channels we gotta be on all of them if I hate being on those channels myself why why would I make myself go and and be phony and go like you know alright well we’ll spin up a you know account on Instagram and pretend that we like doing it and like if it makes me hate it then it’s it’s not going to be effective anyway and what’s the point like why am I building a company anyway well because I want to have a better life and be fulfilled and if if I’m doing a bunch of stuff that I hate like I’m I’m I’m not going to go to a podcast interview that I’m going to hate right I said yes to this interview because I I knew I would enjoy it and That that is something that I really try to stick with.
00:39:16
I don’t ever want to be stuck where I’m sitting in a meeting and trust me, this happened to me many many times. I’ve gotten pretty good at making it very very rare. I don’t ever want to be sitting in a meeting where I’m like, I hate this. I wish I wasn’t here like or dreading it. Oh my gosh, I have this meeting coming up. Uh it’s like ruins my whole day.
00:39:35
I wish I didn’t have to do that or or an activity, right? Uh I gotta write this article that I don’t want to write or whatever. I gotta log in to LinkedIn or Facebook and do a bunch of stuff that I hate doing in there. So, I tried to not do stuff that I hate and find stuff that is more enjoyable like and I go through phases like Facebook was a huge marketing channel for practice early on and that was primarily because I was very active on there and I loved being active on there.
00:40:00
It was very valuable to me. That started to shift. It became less and less valuable and more and more annoying and I suddenly realized I hate going on Facebook now. I’m just going to stop. I don’t care. I don’t care if it cost me. I had, you know, I had maxed out on whatever their is on friends on Facebook and I had really high engagement but I just started to hate being on there and I was like okay I’m just not going to I’m not going to do it I enjoy Twitter right now I’m sure at some point I’ll start to hate Twitter I don’t know but so I’ve just that that’s one is is try as much as possible to eliminate things that I hate and focus on things that that actually return energy to me that are a net energy gain like when you’re done with them you feel better than when you started right I always feel that when I write by the way.
00:40:43
Always. When I’m done writing a blog post or anything, I click publish. I always feel energized and hyped up and I feel great like so that’s why I know I gotta keep writing because I love writing. It makes me feel good. Podcasting is is similar most of the time. Sometimes I can get tired but and then the second rule is just basically the the 8020 rule.
00:41:01
You know, the like and this is huge with business marketing especially.
00:41:07
Find a channel that just works really well and double down on that channel more and more and more and more until it stops returning additionally and until that, until you’ve tapped out the most effective channel and you’ve gotten it and maximize its effectiveness, don’t even worry about other channels and I think I’ve done, I’ve made that mistake of being spread too thin. Okay, we gotta be everywhere.
00:41:31
We gotta have you know, this and to this and to this and a profile on every social media account and we gotta be running ads here. We gotta be doing this. We gotta be, you know, oh clubhouse is here. It’s a new thing. Everybody’s on clubhouse. Well, now I gotta start doing clubhouse meetings and in addition to a podcast and well, now everybody’s moved over to TikTok.
00:41:46
We gotta be on TikTok.
00:41:48
I’ve I’ve learned that like you gotta know yourself and your market your audience like ideally you have to be a member of your target market because then you then knowing your market’s easy and if you genuinely live where they live, then just keep living there and doing that and trying to go and like be everywhere at once usually does not pay off. You can you can expand as you get success in a channel and go beyond that but like like for Praxis for example, I love using Twitter personally and I use it all the time.
00:42:25
Praxis gets very little attraction from Twitter. Their target audience is largely not on Twitter. Facebook still works very So, the company does a lot of activity on Facebook. Um I don’t. Crash, their customers are more on Twitter than they are on Facebook. Facebook doesn’t do very much for Crash, right? But but Twitter does and so just figuring that out like where do you get the maximum returns and with Crash, we figured out we tried SEO driving people to our own site.
00:42:52
We’ve tried paid ads on this all these different things and we figured out that Email is actually better than everything like blows em all away which we never would have expected. It took us two years to figure this out. All the same content we’ve been putting out for years. We just packaged it up as an Email and it’s gone crazy. It’s gone way way more attraction than it did in any other chance.
00:43:12
So, it’s like, okay, great. We’re all in on Email. I’m not worried about doing how many Twitter followers we have or any of that stuff. The Email is the channel that’s working. That’s the channel we’re going to put our focus in like 8020 rules. So, those are kind of the two things that I that I do. Like, where am I going to get the most return and where am I going to get have the most fun and be the least bored, you know? Yeah.
00:43:32
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mentioned the tiny payment series that you’ve been doing which I’ve been really enjoying and you’ve gotta spun up a substack over there where people can follow. I’ll put it in the show notes but it’s basically, it seems like there’s there’s some genuine interest there but there’s some potential experimentation with maybe some business models you’re interested in. Um what’s going on with Tiny Payments and why are you so interested in them now? Yeah, man.
00:44:01
This is this is how it always works in my life. If you just keep pursuing things that are interesting to you even if they all seem disconnected from each other. Somehow they have a way of like coming together in weird ways. That was the that was Praxis’s launch was this confluence of all these different things that seemed unrelated to each other that I had been doing and pursuing in my life and they all melted.
00:44:22
It was like, oh my gosh. All these things actually fit together. So, I see something similar that’s unfolding right now. So, what I’ve Learn through practices and through crash and through some other projects that I’ve been working on recently. Um I can’t talk about yet is basically and I’ve learned this the hard way like the crash it was like oh we’re going to build this product company.
00:44:44
I learned the hard way like and that was a deviation from what I do well naturally. What I really do well is content and community. So I can I can create a content around an idea, around a vision, around a brand, a a concept or or try to shape a new category and rally people around that and once you have that, you’ve created your own market, then, rolling out products and services to them in a in an iterative fashion becomes easy because you’ve already got the market, your go-to market strategy is go to my market that I already own and say, hey, what if we did this? Hey, what about this product, right? And so, kind of learning this like community first product second approach which works really well for me because I’m I’m I’m not a technical person myself and combining it with the learning out loud just like don’t keep it to yourself if you’re curious like I’m curious about Bitcoin stuff has nothing to do with Crash or Praxis has never benefited those companies at all that I that I do videos and podcast buying but I’m interested in them and I love that interest and I’m not I’m not afraid to hide it like it doesn’t hurt those companies the fact that I have a bunch of YouTube videos where I’m talking with my friends about Bitcoin that’s just me being curious and interested and that’s not my I don’t get paid for it or anything it’s just like a fun thing but doing that over the years and being really really curious about this and more and more curious especially about nano payments and the ability of really tiny payments what they can open up I just keep thinking I’m just thinking out loud I’m just sharing these thoughts and I keep thinking like where are the business opportunities here there’s gotta be some cool stuff that can be built and so I’ll go talk with developers I go like I want to talk to anybody that’s smart a lot of those conversations I’m doing this podcast I’m sharing publicly and it’s sort of like things sort of like coalescent come together so it’s like well I might as well like sort of you know I’ve I’ve really come down to focusing on this tiny payments component of cryptocurrencies being the most interesting to me so let me just do a whole series where I’m just openly exploring this like why do I think tiny payments are a big deal who else thinks that are a big deal what can be done with them what is being done with them let’s talk let’s look at it and it sort of attracts other talented people to you when you’re loud about things and and and they say hey I see you’re doing this I’m working on this and so you know I’ve I’ve working with some developers on some that like hey maybe if we got a bunch of people who are interested in tiny payments that are kind of part of this little community who are kind of watching these videos subscribe to the substack and just kind of following along as we’re going through this maybe then if we if we have ideas for products we can say hey try out this product hey is this helpful to you hey what works here so it’s kind of you know I’ve got some ideas and some little side projects that we’re tinkering with in the background but it’s more of a unless and until the big idea is there for a concrete product or company why wait until then I’m interested in this space and no matter what I’m not losing anything by having these conversations and and setting up a little you know community with the substack and whatever I might as well do it and then it increases the odds that I will have some successful idea or something that is worth building and and you know rolling out so that’s kind of it it’s like find the market, start talking about talking to that market, talking about the interesting things in that market, you know, create create interest and and a network of people who are who are similarly interested before you even have a business idea or product idea like there’s no need to wait and I think it just it just increases again and increases the increases your optionality and increases the odd uses key to something.
00:48:28
So, that’s kind of that’s kind of the whole thing there and it’s like I’m seeing this sort of like community building through content and learning out loud curiosity and Having companies be market first instead of product first and I learned the hard way like it’s all kind of melding in these various ways. Um so and and and nano pay is part of that.
00:48:49
Awesome. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of that if if anything does which I’m I’m I’m sure it will. Um. Yeah, we’re we’re taking it to the end of our Oh, that’s great. You know, we’re getting told towards the end of our time here together. Is there anything that we’ve talked about or anything that you want to help promote this idea or encourage people to actually get out there and do or is there anything that we haven’t hit on that you are hoping to hit on before we leave? Man, you know, in terms of just encouraging people and I I say this as an exhortation to myself as well.
00:49:25
I try to every day. Um you can feel like being online for lack of a better phrase is this thing that like will destroy you or or you’ll experience the negative effects of being too plugged in. All these current events, all this horrible propaganda and **** happening on Twitter and whatever else and you be like, okay, this stuff sucks. I gotta like not be online anymore, right? So, you can feel like you get sucked in all the way and become really negative and jaded and you’re just like an angry redditor or you’re like I gotta unplug completely and and I think like if you can constantly white pill yourself I mean like look yeah there’s tons of **** who cares I’m going to ignore all that I’m not going to pay attention to any of the **** I’m not going to do anything that makes me angry like if I’m just getting angry all the time it’s not good but I’m not going to throw away there’s something really cool that we’re experiencing in the world the fact there’s this constant stream of interesting ideas going around and and you can go tap into it on Twitter or whatever else that we can do this podcast like like that’s actually really cool I don’t want to be afraid of that I don’t want to be so incapable of controlling myself that I have to be all or nothing right so if something’s not serving you like cut it off right like turn it off log off of a social media platform where all you ever do is get dark and negative when you’re there but try to find the product of the creative.
00:51:02
Like you said, if you can switch from being a consumer to being a creator, half of that mindset goes away immediately. Like when you’re just a consumer, then you become a critic and then a critic is one step removed from a cynic and then a cynic is one step removed from like a psychopath, right? Like if you’re on online all the time. So you’re just consuming, consuming, and then you’re critiquing what you consume and you’re getting really cynical about what you consume and then you and it’s like this spiral.
00:51:27
If you create more than consume, almost all that goes away. If you start the day and say, okay, I’m not going to be a not online person. I’m not going to go move to Wald and Pond but I’m going to write a blog post first thing every day. That’s the first thing I’m going to do. I’m not going to get on Twitter. I’m not going to read my Email. I’m going to create something.
00:51:45
I’m going to write it. I’m going to publish it. I’m going to I’m going to record a podcast. First thing that I do every day or once a week or whatever and I’m going to create it and I’m going to put it out there. Now, you’re in this positive creative mode. Now, when you go engage with the world online, it’s actually kind of fun and it’s kind of interesting and you kind of you less critical too because you know you’ve put out stuff that’s not that great so you’re not going to sit there with your arms folded and be like I thought that blog post was terrible you’re like yeah I’ve written terrible blog post too but I but I’m doing it right I’m writing we’re all just trying stuff and it’s like getting that so that’s what I would say like don’t reject the world of online discourse and all this kind of stuff just because it can destroy you don’t let it destroy you either and one of the best ways is to create first consume later create more than you consume in fact you can go so far is to only create and never consume I mean I have had phases where I said I am only going post tweets and I’m not going to read any tweets at all and I’m not going to read comments on my tweets or notifications or engage with them.
00:52:44
I’m only going to use Twitter to post to create stuff for a while because I’m just getting too sucked in to mindlessly consuming or getting in comments and there are times where I’ve I’ve done that or I’m not even going to go on any social media. I’m only going to go and do my daily blog post on my personal blog and that’s it. This blog every day, right? And it kind of gets you back into that frame of mind where you’re in control.
00:53:03
You’re being creative. You’re utilizing these digital tools in a way that’s empowering and not just powering. So, I guess I would leave you with that.
00:53:11
Oh, I love that. Isaac, it’s been great talking with you today. Thanks so much for coming on the call with me.
00:53:18
Yeah, man. Keep up the great work, Aaron. Absolutely love what you’re doing.