Jay Yang - Author & Hormozi’s Secret Weapon | No Permission, No Problem, Six Figures at 19

you can just do things is this idea that you don't need permission to change your life or to change your career the best opportunities come to those who do things not who those who wait i remember one day looking in the mirror and honestly just not being proud of the stuff i was doing so that day i literally googled how to make money online and one of those things was to start a youtube channel today's guest is living proof that waiting your turn is optional at just sixteen Jay Yang cold emailed a startup CEO with a bold pitch and landed an internship by 19 he built a six figure business and amassed over two hundred thousand followers without asking for permission why do you think the majority of people do not take action without permission it's just because it's safe we're ingrained to follow the rules to wait our turn but the truth is most traditional paths aren't designed for speed they're designed for stability and stagnation he's helped create a best-selling media campaign led content at app sumo and turned his own media ventures into exits all before college graduation his new book you can just do things challenges everything we've been told about permission perfection and play it safe learning is not memorizing information it's behavior change and one of the best ways to change your behavior is to actually engage in a real world project switch out the words or change the definitions it's pretty simple like what do you want not with society not with parents the clear you can get on that the clear everything else so Jay tell me what you can just do things means to you you can just do things is this idea that you don't need permission to change your life or to change your career it's about realizing that the best opportunities come to those who do things not who those who wait and so the idea of the book is stemmed from my journey creating different opportunities when I was young and in my career and also from studying those who have come before me and realizing that the common patterns between all of those who have come before us is this idea that they go out and do things they make things happen instead of letting things happen to them the people that I usually speak to on the show that that write and communicate and sort of philosophize on the world is for lack of a better term they're not 16 they're usually like much older so tell me what was what was what was the thing what was sort of the inflection point when you were around 16 or I guess a little bit younger when some of these ideas started to present themselves to you you started to understand them you started to understand their power yeah the the story starts back in covid 2020 I was stuck in my little room and I was playing video games for five hours a day and you know I remember one day looking in the mirror and honestly just not being proud of the stuff I was doing I know you know I was 16 and most kids my age play video games and so that was normal but I just felt like I was wasting my time so that day I literally googled how to make money online and one of those things was to start a YouTube channel so that summer I started a music promotion YouTube channel where every single day I'd post I'd promote an underground artists songs to help them get exposure on YouTube and grow and I do that every single day for the entire summer the the channel ended up not going like where I wanted to go but it did teach me a very important lesson and that was that power of permissionless work this idea that you don't need permission to go and do things I started that channel with knowns permission at all and by the end of it you know I was able to impact and inspire a few few dozen people and to me at the time that was incredible you know little meal little me from my room was you know impacting and inspiring people and so that kind of opened my eyes to the world of content creation and the world of of of creating things without permission from other people why do you think in my opinion at least the majority of people do not take action without permission I think it's just because it's safe you know growing up we're taught from society from school from our parents where we're ingrained to follow the rules to wait our turn raise our hands before we speak ask to go to the bathroom but the truth is most traditional paths aren't designed for speed they're designed for stability and stagnation that's how schools supposed to work has to accommodate to the average person and so if you're a little bit more driven a little bit more ambitious a little bit more energetic I truly believe you can compress your timeline for accomplishments and your career by simply not waiting for permission not waiting for approval from the crowd are your parents entrepreneurial at all like did this idea come from you just being like I need to figure out a way to create a life and architect a life that I'm proud of that you know sort of fulfills me and energizes me or was there input from your parents or input from your peers because the reason why I ask is because I think most people and you can agree or disagree tell me what your thoughts are I think most people what happens is their parents want safety and security for the kids they want them to be financially well off but they don't want them to like you know no parent wants their kid to fail really not really they want the kid to be successful so what they do is they go be a doctor lawyer go to school get your you know get your degree get your MBA get your PhD get in whatever and and then we as kids you know we are very impressionable and then we just assume that our parents view of the world is the world and then it's very hard for us to break out of that unless in some cases um parents are very entrepreneurial or they're they're high risk takers and they understand the value of risk or sometimes when there is no parent and then like the person hits rock bottom and then they have to find a way to climb out of rock bottom but I don't think you were either of those situations because you spoken about how great your household was how great your family was but they don't seem like they were risk takers am I correct or incorrect did they have influence on you and on these ideas or no my parents definitely had an influence on me but not in the sense of I'm going to take risks and I'm going to create my own career and be ambitious and be trying accelerate my career honestly I think the the biggest inspiration for that would be when I was in fourth grade I started playing basketball and a lot of my peers started in first and second grade and so right off the bat I was just not as great as them and I hated that feeling of not being as good as other people and so I remember when I was a kid I would wrap a basketball with a plastic bag to make it more slippery and I would prop up a little iPad and I would watch basketball YouTube videos of ball handling routines and I would dribble the ball for hours in the basement and you know eventually I got I got better at ball handling and then I became one of the best ball handlers on the team and I think even throughout my career it's been this sense of inadequacy the sense of not being enough and so when I felt that I tried to look for inspiration outside of the the people around me and I found that in in my personal heroes that I write about in the book the the Kobe Bryant's the Arnold Schwarzenegger's the the greats that have come before me and realizing that it's okay to feel different or it's okay to not feel enough right now because you can actually use those things as fuel to accelerate your journey. So when you jump into this entrepreneur mindset what works what doesn't and talk to me about the journey from and I know there's various parts of the journey with beehive with no cake and I mean I love these guys because they are people that I've looked up to and people that I've studied as well um what's the journey from how to make money online to uh to to really your body of work now. So I started that YouTube channel and at the end of the summer I decided it wasn't going as the way I wanted to go and so I started a bunch of other things after that I started Instagram theme pages I tried to start a clothing brand I started a Twitter account none of those ventures really took off and I realized I was missing something there was there was a reason I kept getting blocked or I kept getting discouraged or I kept not getting to where I wanted to go and so I realized one of the best ways to overcome that was to then go work for somebody who knew what they were doing and so I could learn something and so I chose my favorite company at the time which was beehive because I had also started a weekly newsletter using their platform and from an outside-in perspective their team was incredibly impressive I mean they were shipping new features every week and I still think they are and so I knew that I wanted to surround myself with people who were ambitious who were driven who were a players so I went to the beehive website and I looked for any internship job opportunities on their application site unfortunately they were none and so I said you know what maybe it's not for me but then I and then I thought about this idea that I heard in a podcast called Backstage Careers from Jeremy Mary this is where he interviews people who are working behind the scenes with some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs and he talked about this idea of the permissionless apprentice which is from Jack Butcher and it was this idea of doing the work upfront and so I said you know what why not I'll just give it a shot and so I put together three projects or three ideas that I could do for beehive and I sent them over to Tyler Denk I called email them and I said hey here are three things I can work on over the summer like you don't even have to like talk to me like I'll work by myself in a silo I just want to work with you guys and so he loved one of the ideas and that's how I land my first internship at beehive do you believe that it's very useful to to work for somebody to work in like a high growth startup before starting your own thing or do you feel like people should just you know not just figure it out to just jump into it to learn to iterate to fail repeatedly you mentioned your first YouTube channel fail like it's going to be candlely first of many failures and I said in the best way possible because anybody who's built anything meaningful fails an exceptional amount of times um but do you think that um that's actually a smarter path for somebody who's an early stage entrepreneur for me it made sense there's this idea that Alex Ramosi talks about uh he calls ignorance debt which is if you're making $50,000 a year and you want to make a million dollars a year every year you don't know how to make a million dollars a year you're missing out on $950,000 and so the the the most valuable thing you can do is pay down that ignorance debt to learn the skills, character traits and beliefs to get to a million dollars a year and so for me I realized that I I was missing so many pieces and so I could learn them by myself through more trial and error more beating my head against the wall or I could go work for somebody who already knows what what is needed to get to that level um absorb that and then accelerate my journey from there and so I've I've used the apprentice approach several times now and it's it's paid off dividends there's there's no right or wrong answer I think it's different for everybody but I think an underrated way an underrated approach is to to to lower the ego and realize that sometimes working for somebody else being a being a nine to five wage slave monkey is sometimes a great way to learn I agree what what would be some of the more important lessons that you learned from working with beehive and Tyler that you think or you know in Tigrill and sort of what you've built now I think the two biggest lessons are number one a deep understanding of your customers and number two working in sprints so the first idea uh understanding your customers when I worked at beehive one of the key observations that I learned from Tyler was his his deep understanding of what his customers wanted and how he could then craft his marketing to speak to those people and so over the summer I worked on a project called beehive 101 which was a free course teaching users how to better understand unlock and maximize the beehive platform when we sent that launch email um he came up with the idea to make it more humorous because a lot of the beehive users are creators and they're kind of they're kind of rebels per se and so the email was the subject line was shh please don't tell my boss and then it was just me saying like hey I just hacked into my boss's computer um I wanted to share this project that I've been working all summer on um check it out if enough people like it maybe my boss won't be mad at me and something like that and it it was it got a lot of impressions and uh it did really well and so I think that number one is understanding how you can tap into what your customers want and then the second idea is working in sprints before beehive my time management was all over the place I had no idea what what I was doing and so a lot of projects where a lot of things I was working on got delayed but beehive worked in two weeks sprints um and so that decreased deadline uh increased my productivity and it's something I still do to this day um when I was writing the book instead of saying hey I need to finish this book in one year that'll never get done I said hey I need to write two pages every day and setting those deadlines uh more deadline more frequent deadlines and decreased time uh really helped my productivity when you think about the first point you made about knowing your audience because this is a very this is interesting to me why in business it's so important to know your audience you're not going to sell your product but I find a lot of creators when they're first starting out they don't realize the importance of defining their audience and they almost create content for everyone they like create almost like they they just want to talk about everything that's going on in their life um can you if you if you thought through how you have sort of taken this idea and applied it to the work that you do as a creator um I think that's really interesting because you've grown as a creator very quickly so we'll talk about other ideas that have impacted your workers of creator but this idea in particular uh did you when you first started writing which I think is really that's kind of how most people know you for the stuff that you push on on Instagram and and now your book but did you very carefully almost diagnostically define who your audience was to the same degree as like what Tyler would do with beehive was that something you carried over into your content yes 100% when I first started I broke down my audience based on the demographics and psychographics here is uh Charlie and he is 21 years old he's ambitious driven and he has so much energy but he doesn't know where to direct that energy and he lives in you know he lives with his parents still he's kind of in the Midwest and I just I created avatars to speak to um but what I did realize over time was as the as my interests changed sometimes the avatars changed and so the most reliable way to write to an avatar was actually to write to myself two years ago um and so when I write to myself it helps me helps me stay consistent because I don't need to feel like I'm performing for anybody I'm simply writing reminders to self and oftentimes that's what resonates with a lot of people because it's real it's wrong I'm not trying to go viral or or be performative I'm just writing reminders that I know I needed two years ago and I know that I need right now is the gap two years is that the best gap and I've always thought about this because I actually agree with everything you said and uh I've seen creators do it differently some creators speak to people that are you know them 20 years ago some creators speak to people like to your point that are them two years ago how do you understand because I think by the way just as at a high level the concept of creating content for your younger self yes that thousand percent I just think that people have a hard time figuring out which version of their younger self is the best version to create content for that's actually going to hit if we were to break it down tactically I think it would depend on your age uh the truth is 99% of people on social media are beginners and so if you are 60 years old writing to yourself two years ago may not resonate with a ton of people um it may resonate with the people you want to reach out to so again I think it depends on what you're trying to optimize for but if your goal is to reach an impact as many people as possible it makes sense to uh write to yourself as a beginner and that doesn't mean your cycle your biological age maybe super young it could be your psychological or your career age for say you've gone through a few of a few of these sort of um what did you call them permissionless apprenticeships um which is really you're you're you're trying to pick up skills from these uh you know these great learning environments like beehive um I guess a question for you but also just a question for the audience who's listening who is following your path how do you know when you have learned quote unquote enough and you can go and go build your own thing because that's also this point that I think a lot of people have trouble with they never know when they can just take the jump or maybe they de-risk the jump by starting the thing while they're still working I don't know what you did in particular so let's unpack that when do you leave beehive and what do you do next and how do you know when it's time to leave so I left beehive um after three months which was pretty short damn that was like super but I was I was obsessed with this idea of uh learning more about newsletters at the time and so I started another project uh called the newsletter nerd where every week I would deconstruct a piece of advice on how to grow monetize or engage your newsletter subscribers I eventually sold that project but I think it's for me it's always been how does this align with my north star and so you can kind of tell when there are diminishing returns in what you're learning with beehive it's not that the learning was diminishing I think it was more so I was so obsessed with starting my own like newsletter project now that I've been working at a newsletter company that I wanted to go full-time and work super hard on that project um so yeah I don't think there's a framework but um with beehive it was it was more so I was so excited that I needed to to go full-time on that project hub spot is a success story partner now think about listening to this podcast right now you're probably multitasking you're probably catching 70 to 80% of what we're talking about but let's flip that and imagine you're only catching 20% that'd be crazy right it's really not a good use of your time if you only remember 20% of what we're talking about but most businesses most entrepreneurs are only using 20% of their data all the most important details and call logs emails chat with their customers it's just left floating in digital space not being used to hub spot it gives you the access to those insights to help you grow your business because when you know more you grow more visit hubspot.com to get the full picture of your business today net suite is a success story partner now what does the future hole for business if you ask nine experts you're gonna get ten answers bull market bear market interest rates are rising they're falling honestly at the end of the day we just need a crystal ball but until then over 42,000 businesses have trusted and future-proofed themselves with net suite by Oracle the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting financial management inventory and HR into one cohesive platform with one unified business management suite there's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control that you need to make quick decisions with real-time insights and forecasting you're peering into the future with actionable data and when you're closing the books in days not weeks you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next if i needed this kind of business management system net suite is exactly what i'd use so whether or not your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges in your business and seize your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunity you have to download the cfo's guide AI and machine learning the guide is free for all listeners that's net suite.com slash scott clary indeed is a success story partner now say you just realized your business needed to hire someone fast how can you find amazing candidates fast it's easy just use indeed when it comes to hiring indeed is all you need stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites indeed sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire fast and with sponsor jobs your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference according to indeed data sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsor jobs plus with indeed sponsor jobs there's no monthly subscription no long-term contracts you only pay for results there's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility just go to indeed.com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed.com slash clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need how many more permissionless apprenticeships did you actually take part in before you are now full-time entrepreneur so after behive and after the newsletter nerd project I actually reached back out to Jeremy Mary and I I DMed him on Twitter I said hey like I don't need and want anything I just wanted to say I appreciate you and I appreciate your podcast it inspired me to cold email Tyler we got to talking and at the time he was also head of content I have content head of YouTube for Noah Kagan and he mentioned that Noah was looking for someone to help pros newsletter because he had a book that was just about to come out and he wanted to get as many people as possible onto the email list and I was like hey that's perfect I just came from a newsletter company and so I dropped everything and I spent the next 50 hours putting together a 19 slide pitch deck deconstructing his entire social media and email funnel here's what your website is here's how it can be better here's what your Instagram is doing well but here's what someone else is doing that you can improve and then I sent that to him along with nine pieces of ready to be published content all all free like all you have to do is click send and I said hey Noah if you love this like let's work together if not like no pressure no harm no foul luckily he loved that idea he loved that project was showing it was so the advice I like to give young entrepreneurs or young people who want to work with their dream company or dream entrepreneur is you have to show two things you have to show number one that you want the opportunity and number two that you can do the opportunity and the best way to do that is to do the work upfront and so I think what was smart about the pitch deck was it showed Noah my thinking processes because it was outlined in a pitch deck and it also showed that I could do the job because then I gave him pieces of content that all he had to do was click publish and so if you're trying to work for your favorite entrepreneur or favorite company the question you want to think about is how can I make this a no-brainer for the other person how can I decrease the friction so they say yes how can I make it so obvious that they want you to join their team and so that's what I do with Noah and then three months later I became his head of content when you when you work for no keg and then he's a great entrepreneur he's I mean the guy is super dynamic what was how long did you work with him what was the time for him and then you eventually left was it under like absuma or was it his actual like personal brand it was under Noah directly and I I've been working with him and I just ended working with him this past month so it's been a year and seven months so definitely a lot a lot longer time most important lessons that you learned from working with him behind the scenes because I know that he's very he's a very smart entrepreneur and then also why did you leave that that was the point that was the point where I'm assuming you go full-time betting on yourself so there's a ton of things I've learned from Noah and Noah is an incredible entrepreneur an incredible marketer an incredible human being there's I could write a whole book probably about the lesson I've learned from Noah but for me particularly the two things that impacted me the most and I think changed my behavior and how I operate today number one was data-driven growth before working for Noah I was a qualitative marketer which basically means I didn't know what the heck I was doing after working with Noah he taught me how to be a quantitative marketer how to identify the key metrics that we want to be tracking to grow the newsletter or to grow the social media and then more importantly how do we double down on what's working and cut what's not which sounds like a super simple concept but most people don't do that they don't put common sense in a common practice and so just internalizing the idea has led me to grow my own following that way has led me to work with all my ghost rate and clients and grow their followings and it's completely changed the trajectory of my career the second lesson would be it's possible to live your dream life and the sounds kind of floofy but for the longest time Noah wanted to be a husband and a dad and this past summer in August he had his first kid and he got married and seeing him transition from you know work 80 to 100 hour weeks like grind grind grind Noah to stepping back into a different phase of his life a different season of his life truly made made me realize that there are more than one definition for success and so that is one of the reasons why I stepped away from working with Noah is because he paused content he stepped down his CEO for absumo and he's being intentional about trying to be present and be there for his family and I admire the heck out of that I think that is the absolute greatest thing and so those two lessons I'd say impacted me the most I'll let you just comment on the importance of mentors and just like sort of fulfillment across all areas of your life have you put thought into this even though I know that you're still kind of early on in your journey um what are your thoughts on this and I'm sure you study entrepreneurs too so you see it with people both good and bad examples yeah I think for the mentorship aspect there's this idea that I love it's called the golden circle of friends and so you're in the middle of this circle and above you is mentors someone one of two steps ahead of you that's the Noah Kagan's the the Tyler Danks of the world right and then to your side of you you have your peers these are your intellectual sparring partners the people who hold you accountable the people you can grow with the people you can bounce ideas off of and those are also really important and then finally you have your students someone who's wanted to step behind you maybe that's what the people you're trying to write for but when you have this golden circle of friends you you have different people and different models that you can bounce ideas off of and you can put yourself in their shoes and ask like you don't even have to talk to them you'd be like hey what would Noah Kagan do in this situation what would Tyler Dank do in this situation and that's just a super helpful mental model in terms of different seasons of life and like work life balance I think for me as a 19 year old um I think it makes sense for me to work really really hard when I'm in my youth because I believe hard work compounds over time and so it makes sense to try and like get that machine going get that flywheel going so that it can reap benefits in the long term but at the same time I'm trying to be really intentional about not being that workaholic person who hides in their room all day and has no friends and and sunlight sunlight right and so I try and double up activities like I'll try and eat dinner with friends or go to the gym with a buddy and try and make sure I'm you know being aligned with what my goals are but also not losing out on on the people around me because there's a quote I love uh I think it's from big panda tiny dragon and tiny dragons like what's more important that the journey or the destination and big panda replies the company have you thought about what people used to round yourself with in terms of like value alignment or ambition meaning like you're very very ambitious for a 19 year old uh I can only imagine that most of your friends are not killing it the way that you are at your age I would assume that people still drink a lot still party a lot um have you found it hard because now at my age I don't spend as much time with like single people to go out and you know get bottle service and get shit face every single weekend I just don't it's like not helpful for me but have you thought about how you manage relationships and friendships especially when your peer group more often more likely than not is is probably not working like 16 hour days right now it's a delicate balance for sure I mean I have friends who yeah go out every Thursday every Friday um sometimes every day and I think it's it's about realizing that you can learn something from everybody and that friends serve different purposes for different parts of your life and so yeah I have my friends who we go out and play basketball together and then I have friends that we go and study together and then I have my more entrepreneurial friends that many of them I found through online from Twitter and Instagram and so I think it's about realizing that uh you don't have to like like every part of that person as long as they're not detracting from your goals and so when my friends say hey we're gonna go out Thursday you want to join us I'll just politely decline hey I have something that I want to be working on instead and as long as they're not like actively detracting you from that trying to drag you down I think it's okay to to to have some of those in your life because sometimes like sometimes the best things we learn aren't what to do but what not to do and I think it's important for me to have people who are quote-unquote normal or average to to kind of to kind of center myself and realize that uh because I sometimes I get you know that that trap of looking ahead of at people and and feeling like I'm not enough right there's there's the no-okins in the world why aren't I there and then realizing that oh maybe I'm a little bit ahead because there are people behind me that would dream to have the life and business that I have now when you think about how you write and how you create content now um how does that idea of being data driven impact what you do I mean is there do you are you measuring how every single piece of content performs are you testing content in short form before you turn it into long form like what is your current sort of evolved strategy of content creation and and the book even when you think about the topics you write them about in the book I know that there was some sort of process to measure whether or not this particular idea is going to hit which is why you spend so much time writing a book about it you did not just write a book at hawk so talk to me about how you as a great content creator and a writer I'm you include these ideas so that you don't just write and you don't just create you actually do it with intention yeah so there's a definitely an ecosystem of testing grounds that the first all ideas start on Twitter for me Twitter is my my playground for ideas I shoot off the hip and and see what sticks once a tweet say takes off a little bit more than the other that's when I start to I try to analyze there's obviously there's there's two different ways to analyze a tweet it's structure and topic so was why do why do we think this tweet did better than others was it the structure of the tweet and oftentimes you'll find that the top tweets have juxtaposition to them it's not x it's y stop doing this start doing that don't do this to do that and then the topic is it self improvement is it going in the gym is it like whatever topic would be I then I flesh out that idea into a medium sized post and that goes to Instagram and that's probably some of the posts you've seen and then from there if it still resonates that then we try and turn that into a newsletter and we try and flesh it out into a little bit of a long form longer form and so it kind of operates on this small testing small testing small testing what I love about my Instagram page is I use black background white text so if something pops off I can be pretty confident it's the actual idea of the post it's not the design it's not the music it's not some fancy thing it's it's the actual words and that's what's resonating and so just like a scientist tries to eliminate confounding variables I think that's what I've been trying to do as well and why did you choose writing as like your content medium I mean you could be doing video you could be turning a tweet into a script that you could read and put up on YouTube like Dan Coe or something like that which I've no doubt you know who that is just because of the title of content why did you choose writing as like your primary format writing for two reasons number one because the act of writing serves as a way of clarifying my ideas there's this quote I love thoughts thoughts disentangle themselves when passed through lips and fingertips and so the act of writing is clarifying the jumbled mess of thoughts I have and making it real and so even if I were to do scripts and to record video the foundation of that even the scripts itself that's writing and so I never try and like outsource my writing to AI or anything I try and like that writing is mine because that's me figuring out like what I actually want to say um in terms of videos honestly like the honest answer is I did a few videos uh the start of the fall um but I got recognized a lot and right now like I'm not trying to like be stopped in the sidewalk all the time so I'm a pretty private guy so I like to to stay pretty private um but I do have some plans for long form video in the future. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story partner now a quick podcast recommendation I've been listening to truth lies and work they're in the HubSpot podcast network just like success story it's this husband and wife team Al and Leanne Elliott they break down why people actually do what they do at work so if you have a business if you manage people if you have to hire people at any point you have to listen to the show I just listened to an episode on my good employee suddenly quit that's an issue that we all have and it totally clicked for me one of the reasons I explained is why it's not usually about the money it's about all these little promises that we as founders entrepreneurs managers leaders we break without realizing it like when you tell someone you just hired that they're gonna learn all these new skills but you just keep giving them the same tasks over and over and over again it made me realize that I've probably lost a lot of good people for dumb reasons that I never noticed and hiring is one of the most important things you can figure out so if you manage people or if you just want to understand what makes your co-workers tick it's worth checking out listen to truth lies and work wherever you get your podcast chip station is a success story partner you know what separates successful online businesses from literally everyone else it's not just having great products it's delivering an amazing shipping experience that keeps customers coming back all of my friends that run the biggest e-commerce companies they use ship station and it has completely transformed how they handle orders they save thousands on shipping costs thanks to their rate chopper tool that finds the best discounts and what makes ship station brilliant you never need to upgrade because it grows with your business no matter how big you get and they offer discounts up to 88% off UPS DHL express and USPS rates and up to 90% off FedEx it integrates seamlessly with every selling channel you're already using and your customers get branded tracking updates that keep them happy and informed when shoppers use your products you turn them into loyal customers with cheaper faster and better shipping no credit card required cancel anytime that shipstation.com code success story hub spot is a success story partner now the future of business is happening right now and you don't want to miss it that's why you have to be at inbound 2025 they are bringing together the brightest minds in marketing sales business entrepreneurship AI for three incredible days in San Francisco the global epicenter of innovation and technological disruption picture this you are learning directly from Amy Poler about creative leadership you're getting AI insights from Dario Amote who's literally shaping the future of artificial intelligence here's what makes inbound special it's not just the great keynotes you're going to dive into breakout sessions where you can immediately implement what you learn and plus San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs decision makers industry leaders peers who are actively shaping the future of business from September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone Center you're going to be surrounded by forward-thinking professionals who turn insights and ideas into breakthroughs don't just watch the future unfold be part of creating it visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today I am very curious how do you become a good writer I mean I look at Seth Goden who has been writing for years and years and years and years you have really blown up in a relatively short period of time so when you think about what good writing looks like you understand what you know short form Twitter juxtaposition makes sense when you start to bring that into long form and you start to bring it not even to like the Instagram posts but also the newsletters what is your process for becoming a better writer and for creating stuff that really is so shareable and just speaks to the human condition because that's the way that I see your content it's like it's universally applicable yet it's not uncommon knowledge but the way that you see that knowledge and the way that you phrase it it's so clear and so different than anything that I think most people have ever seen or read which is why it resonates so so deeply but how did you learn how to write like that was it just reps at the end of the day there's this the framework that I've been playing around with so so bear with me I like to call it the five C's so the five C's the first C is consume there's there's no way you can be writing self-improvement ideas if all you're consuming is brain rot tiktoks and so the first step is if you want to think differently you have to consume differently and so I tell all my friends who are like trying to be entrepreneurs are ambitious like you got to get on Twitter Twitter is one of the best places where you get raw thoughts from the world's greatest entrepreneurs builders and creators so that's consumed step two is collect as you scroll Twitter some tweets naturally pop out to you they stop your thumb and so the question you want to ask yourself is okay let's collect these and then connect the ideas why are these tweets standing out and just like I mentioned before like maybe it's the maybe it's the structure maybe it's the idea maybe it's the topic so consume collect connect and then copy work would be the fourth C this is how I got better at writing is I would hand write hand copy word for word books that I loved and so I would hand copy the boron letters by Gary Halbert because he had this conversational rhythmic style of writing and so every morning for 30 minutes I would do copy work and then over time I developed a understanding of like sentence structure and there's some flow and even some things like subconsciously don't even realize it's it's it's untraining what you've learned in school which is like the boring five paragraph essay don't use me you or us like like random rules like have no basis for the real world and then fifth step would be create a lot of great writing is a function of a lot of writing like if you look at some of the most prolific writers on Instagram or Twitter or even the most prolific anything like it's just a ton of output and it's a ton of iteration yeah that's very very good okay so when you think about when you think about the topics that you do focus on I'm curious just as a creator have you put thought into why these ideas resonate so deeply with an audience what is it about these ideas and I want to frame it as for another creator as someone who's up and coming they don't want to copy exactly what you do for a living but how do you think through framing ideas in a way that will resonate with an audience a lot of people talk about the three common content types which is educate entertain or inspire but I'd argue there's a fourth category which is resonate and so there's this incredible line uh from the one sentence persuasion it's a book it's like one short book but basically it goes people will do anything for those who encourage their dreams justify their failures a lay their fears confirm their suspicions and help them for rocks at their enemies and so in the back of my mind when I'm writing a piece of content the the number one not thing I'm trying to to think about is how can I make people feel the same for feeling different especially for the type of people I'm trying to write for I write to driven ambitious people who know they're they're meant for more but don't know exactly like where they're gonna direct the energy or maybe they do and they they're feeling discouraged they're in that that that dip as Seth Golding would say and so I write to the people who are experiencing those things and I believe it resonates because I've experienced those things I know what it feels like to watch other people win and and feel bad that I'm not winning I know what it feels like to be on that journey and then have something bad happen and feel discouraged and so I write to myself one or two years ago and I really try and put myself in little jays shoes like what was he feeling in that moment and so that's that's the secret to me when you think about even like how you've taken these ideas and then focused on one for the actual book like that's a significant portion of energy and time what was what was so powerful about this particular idea it's obviously resonates and we spoken a little bit about why it's impacted your life why was this the idea that you chose to focus on it of all the ideas that you write about it was the idea that I couldn't not write about it was the idea that was screaming in my head and it needed to get out into the world it was the number one idea that changed the trajectory of my career of my life of how I operate in the world this idea that you don't need permission and fundamentally changed who I am and so I hope to write many books in the future and I will only write a book when I can't not write about the idea when it's so fundamental to the core of my being it's a value that I just need to flesh it out and get it out to the world and so you can just do things was the number one principle from Beehive from No Kagan from starting a business in school and and so that was principle number one of Jay Yang is like you can just do things I love it when you think about we spoken a lot about like creative process and how you think through content but for creators who again are just getting started are looking at how you operate what are some of the more daily practices or rituals that really help you be creative is it you know finding times when your energy is highest when you can actually achieve flow is it I'm trying to think is it meditation is it going to the gym is it going for a run like what are the things to be like the best possible creator that you found really worked for you so that you're not distracted so that you can't have the best output I'll tell you what worked for me but I think to preface that the the only correct answer would be do what works for you and do what you can do for a long time I think like just like working out a lot of people like oh which workout push pull legs or five days split or only three days a week like the only workout plan that really matters is the one you can keep doing for the long haul but for me in particular the habits that have impacted my creator journey the most number one reading reading books in particular I think it's just this idea that you have to sit with this initial boredom or this initial agitation like when you start reading a book it's like it's kind of uncomfortable and I think that has helped me be able to sit with boredom more better and then second one would be a daily writing practice when I first started I would write for at least 30 minutes every single day and I did not skip a day people often talk about the difference between quality and quantity but the truth is quality comes through quantity and so you can only get to quality by putting in the reps and like you can't skip the actual like people talk about like oh get the right pen and use a key like the only tool that will make you a better writer is to write like you have to write so that's probably number one actually I talk about going to the gym a lot just because I truly believe going to the gym will change your life but it's also helped my writing ability when I'm in the gym I am not doing anything else but lifting weights and so that allows my subconscious to then wrestle with the idea in the background so that's what I would say is reading writing and going to the gym I think I mean those are the things I talk about a lot but and they're simple and they're obvious but again we need to put common sense in a common practice talk to me about sort of your learning process your ability to not just consume new ideas but actively apply them I know you speak about learning machines and I want to understand that concept I know you speak about the monkey research method I want to understand what that means but just help people I think they'll help creators who are actively creating because if you are a creator you have to be consuming and learning but it will also help young entrepreneurs who are just trying to understand new concepts but under the the the the main thing that I want people to take away from this is not just that you learn but that you actually that you actually take action I feel like we have this obsession with consuming knowledge and and not enough application of said knowledge and I feel like it's almost like we can end up being lazy or or we can make excuses for not working because we're saying that we're actively reading 10 books and listening to 20 podcasts and we're not actually taking any action towards our goal so that was a lot but let's start with just your learning process your ability to consume new knowledge new information and then I want to talk about the importance of action and how you bridge that gap so being a learning machine comes from the idea from Charlie Munger it's a quote of his he says I constantly see people who rise fast in life who aren't necessarily the most intelligent or the smartest but they go to bed every night a little wiser than when they first woke up and that's that idea that like you're either learning and growing or you're dying and detracting and so a lot of people will become complacent or think that they know everything but the truth is we all have stuff to learn and so that's that idea it's not a tactical idea it's more of a north star idea to ingrain yourself into the monkey research method is in my opinion one of the fastest ways to get to the core of an idea and so the monkey research method is take your inspiration say you have one person you look up to who is three people who inspires that person and then you start to climb your the climb the tree of inspiration who are three people who inspire those people and now you have a a personal board of advisors that you can go seek into you can read their books you can dive deeper into their ideas because what you'll find is there's not really anything new under the sun everything's already been talked about or mentioned but we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught in terms of making it practical and bridging the gap between learning and action my number one tip would be engage in project-based learning when I first started writing I started a weekly newsletter where every week I would write and I would document my learnings it when I wanted to learn copywriting I would do copywork every day and that was the project I had a notebook and I'm like I'm going to fill this entire notebook with words and so that's what I did and so when I wanted to dive deeper into the principle of permissionless action I wrote a book about it and you know people often say like you'll learn a lot from reading a book try writing a book like you'll learn a ton more from writing a book and so it's about realizing that learning is not memorizing information it's behavior change and one of the best ways to change your behavior is to actually engage in a real world project if you think about I want to pull out some some last ideas just some sort of words of wisdom from your journey and how you've evolved as an entrepreneur but I do want to just give a plug to the actual to the actual book so if people are actually first of all they can download it a Kindle they can go get it on Amazon so anywhere you get books you can just go get you can just do things right now when this is live is there any other places that you want to send people like website social any of that best place to keep up with me would be my weekly newsletter janginspires.behyve.com perfect what's it what's your Instagram I can't remember what your actual handle is I'll drop it in the show notes as well it's called at janginspires as a creator your identity is a superpower because it allows you to put yourself into your content it allows you to speak to things that you've personally gone through but at the same time when your identity is so intertwined and woven into your content I think that it can be like mentally stressful for people because that means that when people don't like your content it's almost like a direct hit at your identity as a human versus if you have like a product or service and a business and yeah it's still your baby but it's like if somebody doesn't like the socks that I'm selling I don't really feel like they hate me as an individual I think a lot of creators get stuck up because their identity is so intertwined with their content so when they get a negative response or reaction it's difficult so how do you navigate that I mean how do you navigate putting all of yourself into something and using that to create good content at the same time not letting you know the hate the negativity which even if you write mostly positive stuff it's gonna come regardless how do you not let that really throw you off for lack of a better word I like to view myself as a scientist like we were talking about that data driven approach any piece of feedback on a piece of content is exactly that it's feedback it's I try and view it not as criticism or hate of me but of the idea of maybe the way I articulated it maybe I said everyone when it wasn't everyone it was most people and so just realizing that there are nuances to it and then adjusting from there I think the second part would be realizing that I write to myself and so it's not for everyone and so like if someone doesn't like the idea it's not for you you know like and that's okay you know I don't think I know a single brand in the world that's for literally everyone I think they have pockets of people they speak to and by definition they'll also have pockets of people they don't speak to you speak a lot about permissionless action and just and you don't have to ask anybody to just do what you want to do but on the flip side of that when you do take risks when you do build something there's always sacrifices so for somebody who is going to go on this journey this is like a not a I don't want to scare somebody from from not asking permission and just doing things the thing that's a beautiful idea and mindset but what are some of the unexpected sacrifices that they should prepare for when you start to to go on this on this path I think the number one fear that stops most people from doing things is this fear of judgment this fear that you know those around them will make fun of them or hate on them or not support them but the actionable piece of advice that I'd like to give people is like be super clear who are you actually afraid of the judgment from not people but like who in particular and I think when you what you'll find is number one there's not that many people not as many people as you thought that you're afraid of judgment it's actually really just one to two people that you had in mind and then I think number two it's then you can kind of confront that not in like a combative way but you can kind of you can bring it up to them hey like here's what here's what I'm trying to do here are my goals like I'd love for your support and I think when you ask for that you'll find that a lot of people are more willing to support than you first thought and when you say that you actually show them you're serious and you show them that you're committed and that creates a lot of fans and supporters long away the last thing that I thought was really interesting that you speak about and I've never heard somebody articulate energy this way but I think energy is so important I mean I speak about energy all the time I always I'm telling people like it's not about time management it's about energy management like you have to figure out like you're your energy and how it ebbs and flows throughout the day but you have an energy test explain to me where that test came from why it's so useful and how people can apply this sort of three step energy test in their life I'm assuming to figure out not only how to work best but also if the thing they're working on is even what they should be working on yeah it's a shout out to Zach Pogrob he's the follow obsession guy on Instagram love his stuff and the whole thesis of obsession is the people who have gone on to achieve the greatest things not only did they not wait for permission to start but they were absolutely obsessed with their craft with their mission and when you are naturally obsessed with something you do it more times because you're obsessed with the details and when you do it more times you get better than other people which means you get a better positive feedback loop which means you want to do it more and it just kind of creates the self-fulfilling prophecy and so the tactile advice I like to give people to identify their obsession I three tests number one would be the p test so pay attention to what you get so absorbed in that you forget to take care of basic needs like pying and I've definitely I've definitely been there myself the second test would be the midnight test what keeps you awake at night not out of stress or because you have a deadline but out of excitement that you're so absorbed in what you do you don't want to go to sleep and then the third test would be the energy test what do you find fascinating that other people find boring oftentimes the activities that you enjoy but others avoid holds that holds the clues to your unique strengths so an example would be I write a weekly newsletter right and my brothers like has no he has no like no idea why I would intentionally give myself a weekly homework assignment he's like why would you give yourself a weekly essay but to me I'm just so energized by writing writing lights me up and it's something that I can't not do what would be your advice to people who are running so fast in their job or in their career and they are just inundated with with stress anxiety responsibility and for the first time after listening to this podcast they finally go through these three tests and they realize that they are so far out of alignment and nothing that they do lights them up I think I'm pretty much describing like the majority of people by the way it's sad as that sounds I think that we are in a small cohort of people that actually really love what we do and probably pass these three tests that's not a hard and fast rule but I can only imagine how many people don't pass these three tests I think it's the majority for sure what's your advice to that person and I assume this is when a midlife crisis with it but when they go through and they don't pass these three tests how do you at a later stage start to re-architect your life in a way that is not super disruptive but starts to get yourself into alignment what would be your best advice for that person in the book I talk about there's this line that I love most people don't lack motivation they lack clarity and once you are actually clear on what you do want and what does give you energy I think you'll find it's a lot lower friction to do the thing than you thought and a lot of people like view work as boring or something that's bad only because they don't find joy in meaning in it and so that's what they associate work with but when you're clear on what you actually want I think that's when you start to you start to work longer and harder not out of commitment but because you just can't stop you just love doing it so much and so step one would be how can we get clear on what your north star is if you could design your dream life what would that look like and I like to tell people to be super specific like write it down what does your ideal look like where are you what are you working on who surrounds you like write it down every detail and the goal isn't to be perfect right off the start because you won't be the goal is simply to get your first iteration down on paper and be intentional about trying to to be clear on that and then I think step two would be as simple as it sounds it would be stop digging in your current direction and start digging in the direction you know you want to go once you have that general idea of your north star how can you align your actions towards that north star and so every action you want to think like does this get me closer or further away from my north star and it doesn't have to be big things it can be small things like maybe it's wake up an hour earlier to to write weekly news under maybe it's stay up later one not one more hour to to to bring some of your podcast idea maybe it's spend your lunches creating the pitch deck to the entrepreneur you want to work for instead of you know going out and eating lunch if you want if people read this book and they only take one big idea away what would that idea be obviously outside of outside of the title what would that idea be like what would you want somebody to walk away with I think the second idea if I couldn't tell people that you can just do things I think the second idea would be to clearly define your north star I think you know it gets you know people often make fun of like oh find your purpose find your calling like what's your passion but like switch out the words or change the definitions like it's it's pretty simple like what do you want not with society not what parents not what your teachers told you but what do you want and I think the clear you can get on that the clear everything else will be