Mohan Embar, CEO of PolyTripper | Top 1% Polyglot (8 Languages) & Entrepreneur

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and practical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. Without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Thanks again for joining me. Today, I'm sitting down with Mohan Embar, who is a polygot and a software engineer who's out to the store of the myths that are holding us back from one of the most low effort, high impact things we can do as an entrepreneur or as an individual, learn a foreign language. So he speaks eight languages himself, but that puts him in the top 1% of all polygots, and just to clarify, polygots is somebody who can speak many languages. He's co-founded the company called PolyTripper, which connects language teachers to language students. Now, think Airbnb for languages. Now, what started as a Naha experience while reading the back of a can of cocoa during his first trip to India when he was six years old, turned into a lifelong obsession for learning languages and showing others how easy it is. Mohan has lived, worked, and studied in several European countries and is out to share his discovery and passion for what he calls linguistic narnia to anyone who will listen. So thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate you sitting down. I'm excited to hear your story. Thank you. Thank you. So let's first, first, let's just discuss what is a polygot because I don't know if everybody who knows, listening knows what a polygot is. Sure. So you've got mono-lingual, which is most people in English-speaking countries that means you only speak one language, then there's bilingual, where you can speak two languages, and then polyglot is basically anyone who speaks three languages or more. So of course, I mean, within polyglots is 3, 4, 5, 6, some people speak 17, 18, 20 languages. So once you speak a certain number of languages, once you speak more than three languages or more than your polyglot, and sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no, that's very good. And when you say you're in the top 1% of all polyglots, I was actually pronouncing it incorrectly. I was pronouncing polygot, but it was polyglot, so I apologize for that. So the top 1% of all polyglots. So how many languages do you speak now? I speak eight languages. I think it's the top word for spend of all language speakers. I have to relook at that stat, but it's the top 1% of all language speakers, definitely. And I know that once you go beyond three languages, the number of people in the world that can speak four, five, six languages actually goes down dramatically. So I mean, I need to double check that, but I speak, I speak eight languages, I speak. And with various degrees of fluency, I don't speak Swedish as well as I do French, for example. But I can have unbounded conversations of any length in all of these languages that I speak, which is the English. In order of how well I speak, I mean, English, French, Dutch, my wife is Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. I think this is, I don't know if I left one out. I have a hard time in English. I said English, English Dutch, French, Dutch, English French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Swedish. That's it, yes. Yes, it is, yeah, yeah, very good, very good. So how do you become a polyglot? What, okay, so what's this, okay, I mentioned this story in India, I didn't give any context. So what's this story in India and walk, let's back it up to your life, how did you start, how did you learn your second language, for example, and go from there and also like career, like bring out who you are as an individual. Sure, sure. So it started out where, and I'll touch on this briefly because I want to, I don't want to dwell on myself so much as like, talk about the benefits that language learning can have for other people, but just, just for my perspective, what happened was I was born to Indian parents. They immigrated from India to the United States in the 1960s or so. And so my, they're actually 17 as far as I know, I'm not, I'm not that good with Indian culture because I was born here, but I think there's 17 different distinct languages in India, each with their own script and each with like, their own alphabet and stuff like that. So it's like a, it's pretty linguistically diverse there and they had two different mother tongue. So they always spoke to each other in English. So the only time I hear a different language is when my dad would talk to his parents or his sister, when my mom would talk to her, her brothers and sisters or to her parents. But already, that was like this fascinating thing. And as you grow up as your kid, you always hear about these things like secret decoder rings or secret, you know, you know, secret ciphers and secret codes and stuff like that. So for me, as a six year old, it was like, this is like, I'd really love to have like a secret language that I could talk that my sister couldn't understand and stuff like that. So that was, that was the start of like, how do I learn this secret code where I can talk about things that other people can't understand? And then I would always beg my mom to teach me, but I think she was concerned about me having an Indian accent and being made fun of in school, which is complete nonsense. People were bilingual, don't have an accent difficulty. And so those fears were unfounded, but she never taught me an Indian language. And I was always frustrated that I didn't know one like, and I wanted to, and I wanted to. And I think one time when I was eight, I beg her to teach me to say something in Telugu, which is her mother tongue. And she said, okay, I'm going to say it. And then she said it and I repeated it and she said, aha, you have an American accent when you say that. And that was like the last time I ever asked her for any kind of help or guidance. Very demotivating language. Yes, it was very demotivating. But that said, when I went to India, for the first time when I was six years old, I remember being my grandparents' house. And there was a can of cocoa. And on the back of that can of cocoa, there was the description of the cocoa written in Hindi and also in English. And I looked at my uncle and I said, this is a cypher where basically this word in Hindi is this word in English. And I thought it was like a one-to-one correspondence between the words in Hindi and the words in English. And he's like, no, it doesn't work that way. And I was like, oh, and it was basically the unpacking of why that wasn't the case that looked at everything else. I would say just basically that initial spark of why doesn't it work that way? If it doesn't work that way, how does it work? That kind of thing. And then I guess as you understand an unpack more languages, you understand that you start to go into the history of languages and the cultures and parts of the world where they come from. And walk us through, let's do a master class in languages very briefly before we get into the practical application today. Why? Why are they not one-to-one? Why are they not one-to-one? Well, I guess I'm not a linguist, but I guess just basically when different groups of people, I don't want to say grow up, but when the different groups of people are just actually developed language, there are different ways of that they find for expressing sounds. It's really interesting. And I'm not a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, but I think there are certain words like mama and papa, which are almost universal. They're in far-flung places, language like Chinese and Swedish, which aren't, and you even remotely related, they're pretty much the same words. I think it's through of Chinese because those are the first sounds that babies make. Mama, mama, mama, papa, papa. So I think those words kind of came from that, but aside from that, when you think about the grammatical structure of Chinese or Russian or German or English, they're just so different. And that's one of the things that I think can give people, this is like a really low-hanging fruit way for people to do something for a personal development that checks off so many different boxes. When I read one of your Facebook posts, which talked about things that you should put on your resume if you don't have any like hard skills, you were mentioning things like resilience, coping with pressure, punctuality, overcoming obstacles, all those things. I can't think of any one thing that checks off so many personal development check boxes as learning a foreign language. And that's I think the gospel that I want to spread. I know that your audience is primarily like people who are interested in business growth and business development, I think. Unless I'm mistaken or awesome. No, you're right, but I can, you know, I don't think that you speaking about the development of different languages is so out of line. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, because I, okay, so just I'm going to double down on what you just said and just to re-emphasize. I grew up in Ottawa where where, you know, you're in the States. I'm Canadian. I grew up in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto. Now Toronto is not so much a case, but Ottawa is a very bilingual city. So Ottawa is okay. Ottawa is so much so that if you don't speak, if you don't speak French, it's very hard to get a job that interacts with people anywhere. And if you want to, so my, my, my father worked for the federal government for his entire, he was, he was actually, and he's actually ex-police and then turned into a federal government. And in the federal government, you have to get your levels of language. So again, sort of like, you know, it's mandatory, it's mandatory levels and you have to pass tests to show that you have a certain proficiency in French, Canadian, Canada's second language. So you have a certain, and if you don't have that proficiency, you can't get a job. You can't have, you can't have direct reports. If you are a manager in the federal government in Canada, and somebody is reporting to you, somebody is one of you, you know, people on your team. If you don't have a proficiency in French, you won't get that job because they have the right to be able to communicate with you both written and, and, you know, orally through whatever type of language they deem fit, as long as it was as long as French or English. So if you can't speak French, you can't communicate with your employees. If one of your employees wants to speak French to you. So they're really going whole about that. Yeah, they're very gung-ho. Very gung-ho. So I, you know, that's one of the reasons I grew up speaking French. And I moved, I moved to Toronto for career opportunities when I was younger because I didn't want to deal with the language aspect. It was just, it was too much, it was too stressful. It was, it was like, it's something that, you know, I didn't know how to accomplish. Like I spoke French, but not at the level they required. So I just, I'm like, you know, it's going to change cities because, you know, bigger city less, less hurdles with different languages. I can just speak English and just be fine. So that's a real issue in in in Ottawa. And, you know, Ottawa is not by any means like the center of commerce in the world, but it still is, if you grow up in that city, you better, because if you want to, if you want to get into most opportunities, your most, most careers, you better be prepared to learn French, especially in the government. Isn't that through like, isn't, isn't it quite back? There's a rule that's that businesses over a certain size have to speak French every day, like on a day to day basis, whether conducting their business. I heard language laws are a little bit nuts. There's a few different ones. So I don't, I don't know the laws inside and out, but I do know that just through, you know, casually perusing different newspapers and media stories, there's some, there's some, there was at one point laws where you had to have French signage. You had to have like, if you had your storefront, you couldn't have like an English-only sign. You have to have French, French, like, and I think that there is something to be if you're over a certain size, like, you have to have so many employees that can communicate in French. And, and that was, that was predominantly in Quebec to be quite honest. I think that outside of Quebec, they don't have as such strict language laws, especially for private businesses, but I do know that one of the main concerns was, not so much in Quebec, there are obviously English parts of Quebec, but Quebec is predominantly French, but in Montreal, Montreal is a very diverse city. And there are parts of Montreal that are more English than Ottawa. So, you know, we're going through all this, all these Canadian cities and whatnot and people are listening and not from Canada, they may not know like where Ottawa is or Montreal is, but if, you know, the second, so the second you go to Montreal, you will have parts of Montreal that are completely English neighborhoods, completely French neighborhoods, and imagine telling an English business owner in an English neighborhood that serves predominantly English clients, because, you know, they're they're in, they're in Quebec, they have to abide by French language laws. And that was like a huge point of contention in a lot of, you know, political arenas and whatnot. But yeah, so just, I didn't mean to take you off track, there are apologies, but yeah, I've, I've, I've lived through the benefits and, and to me, it was, it was an inhibitor, but I can understand the benefits of, of understanding, you know, more than one language, for sure, obviously. Uh, I feel, I feel bad because it sounds like that was a source of trauma for you, and I think that, I think that for a lot of people who have taken language classes, or have been forced of that kind of situation, or also have taken language classes in school, for example, like one of my, one of my pet peeves is the quality of foreign language destruction in the United States, because when I, I love languages, and for me, there is a tool for, for human connection, and, and also, I, I find myself kind of boring sometimes, and I love learning about different cultures, and different people, and different things, and so languages are a tool for that, because they allow me to, to just see these other universes, these parallel universes. I mean, we don't have parallel universes in real life that we know about, but I think going to another country, actually speaking that language, and seeing things from their point of view and able to being able to communicate them, is the closest thing to a parallel universe that will get in this lifetime, and so it pains me whenever I hear stories that, for, for me, who loves this so much, to hear that you went through that experience of that being imposed on you, where people were forced to learn language, for whatever reason, where people have had these really dry university classes, I remember when I came back from Switzerland, I did my year abroad in Switzerland, junior year abroad in the French speaking part of Switzerland, and then I missed that so much when I came back, that I took a university language class with a person who wasn't a native French preacher, he spoke okay, but he wasn't, he wasn't a native, and I remember just being so disappointed in that class, we were, we were learning about this really boring as sin, French literature, these philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau, which is probably interesting for some people, but I just, I just like talking to people, you as a podcast, I mean, you like connecting with people here, we were just like reading these things in like these French grammatical tenses that people didn't even use anymore, because it was written in the 16th or 70th or whatever century, that was that stuff was written in, and my god, it's, I mean, people have such, for something that can give people so many positive things and so many positive benefits, people have such a skewed notion of what this thing is, and you probably see that a lot is someone who advises people on business development, it's really easy, anyone can say, I can coach you in your business development, you know, and they're probably like about, I don't know how many percentage of 90, like 90 percent quack coaches there are for like 10 percent gems, you know, and you have this in any profession, you have this in the medical profession, you have this in the computer profession, and the two common characteristics are, it's really easy for people in that field to speak in terms to lay people outside of that field that they're an expert and to convince them they're an expert when they're really not, and be there's so many wildly different theories and ways of growing a business or learning a language or writing a good computer program, that it's really difficult for a lay person to listen to those different approaches and say, oh, this is this guy knows what he's talking about, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, and typically, you know, you hire the consultant, the computer program consultant, the scrooge of project up, and then like, you know, gotten the most how much money out the window later, you realize that you made a mistake, but it's I really feel for people who don't have the clarity on knowing the right way to approach this, and the benefits that it can bring, and also the joy that it can bring when you're not forced to do it, where you're not pop things the wrong way, good I mean. I think, well, I think that's, I think that's genuine passion, I think that's what genuine passion is, it's when you really want to help people, irregardless of like monetary compensation, right? That's when you know you're doing something that you truly love, and I don't know if it was traumatic, I think that's, I don't know if it's, I think I probably could have just tried a little bit harder, but, and you know, just made myself learn a language if I really wanted to get a job, and I'm sure that moving to a bigger city, where there's more opportunities for me, at least, wasn't traumatic, it was probably a little bit strategic as well, and if I wanted to say an auto, I could have figured it out, but I know that everything you're speaking about in terms of like these dry language classes, I felt that, I think everybody who's learned the language in a formal educational setting, I think it's felt that some extent, and let's, like let's understand like how, how do you learn languages, and what's the best way to learn a language? Why do you find that the way that universities teach it is just dry and mundane, what framework are they following? I'm curious to get your opinion on that. Sure, so let's, so before I go into like how to learn a language properly, let's, let's go into why people who think that they might not necessarily want to learn a language would want to learn a language, and so it's my thesis that, I mean, for me, I get personal joy out of it, I get the connection, to share my experience when I went to Montreal, I was, I hadn't been there since I was a kid, and so I wasn't sure to what extent I would be able to speak my French there with the people there. I thought it was going to be like this fake French or like, you know, but, but it was, there were places where I was just totally immersed in like, I went to some French-speaking neighbours, it was like total immersion, and I loved it. I loved being able to communicate with the people there. I loved being able to see, like, and when they spoke, sometimes their English wasn't even that great either. I mean, they could speak well, but it was clear that French was their foreign language, and they weren't just putting on, they weren't just speaking French for this big of speaking French, where they could have easily gone into English. Sometimes their, their French was markedly better than their English, and so it was like a total immersion experience, and I absolutely loved it. But aside from the joy that people who actually love languages can get by learning a language, I feel like this is like a really understated, like, underappreciated vehicle for personal development, that anyone who's an entrepreneur, who's, that anyone who's a business person, the qualities that, that you need to be a successful business person, that you mentioned in your Facebook post about, like, coping with pressure, overcoming obstacles, communication skills, problem solving, learning a foreign language, even if you don't learn it for anything other than that personal development aspect is totally worthwhile, because it's a really, is a really low-hanging fruit way of, of, of acquiring a skill that allows you to check off all those personal development check boxes. So I would encourage any entrepreneur, even if they think that they don't want to do that, to actually use that as a vehicle for those other things, because it's a really non-threatening way of doing it, and it checks off so many boxes at once. Not to mention the fact that, like, you touched on where it opens up more job opportunities in certain places, and even if you're not working in a place where they require the language there, I'm sure that if you put on your resume, I'm bilingual in French and English and French, or bilingual in English and Spanish, it's gonna, it's gonna jump out at an employer that, wow, okay, this person has this edge that other people don't necessarily have. And also, when you look at language from the point of view of increasing memory skills, they've done studies where they show that people, among people who get dementia, knowing a foreign language can actually stay off the onset of dementia by another four and a half years. When I look at people who are to understand that brain development is something that's necessary, and now you have these companies where you can go online and make turtles jump over other turtles in order to increase your brain power. I just want to go through the screen and shake them and say that there's a so much better, more satisfying way of doing this. Instead of like making turtles jump over other turtles, you could be going online and talking to someone in Italy, or you could be going online and talking to someone in Chile, or Peru, or Spain, and actually having like human interaction that's developing your brain that's, that's, you know, giving you all of these soft skills that you mentioned in that, in that Facebook post that you need as an entrepreneur, and having so much more fun than jumping over turtles. So that's, that's really why I think that people should look at this really often ignored way of of doing personal development. And then the touch on your point is to how to learn a language. Definitely not the way that you learn it in high school, in most high schools, and, and universities. And like I said, I don't know if I'm being unfair to these teachers because they're hamstrung by the curriculum requirements. I don't have the the clarity on that to know what they're actually going through as far as satisfying the curriculum requirements. But I actually look at the way this thing is, is, is, is taught, it's really taught, is really like this dry, sterile thing where you have to memorize on a much of grammatical rules that you're going to forget the second you walk up through, and to be able to read these boring works of literature that are really irrelevant. Well, I don't want to say relevant. I don't want to just do literature, obviously a bunch of people have decided that that literature is important, but, but, but it's not, it's not accomplishing the goal of learning a language. It's, it's a cultural, it's, so I've actually just to highlight that because I, I don't want to mincer words and I understand exactly what you're saying, but I want to, I want to clarify. So when they teach in school, I think they, they teach the, the verbal, like the oral, like the speaking, then they teach the proper grammatical structure so you can write it, and then they teach in celery works that just like compliment from like a, like a cultural or, or, or point of view, that sort of help to reinforce and bring like the whole culture and language forward over, over history. So all these, all these buckets are important, but I think that it's the, it's the, the, the three 60 approach that dissuades people from learning something that is, that is, a little bit more applicable in most people's lives. Most people are not going to quote Voltaire. Most people don't need to write a thesis paper in Pruske-Pafé, like French, right? Like they don't, you know, like there's all these different things that you learn in school that are not a book, unless it is a much larger conversation. I would love to have a conversation, but the things you learn in school that are not applicable in your day to day. But I think that language, if it was a focus on speaking as opposed to, because if I go to, if I go to Germany, if I go to, if I go to, well, if I go to, I don't know, if I go to, like Beijing, I want to be able to speak with people. I would also love to be able to write, but I'm probably only there for like a week, two weeks, and I probably want to be able to, you know, converse casually, you know, order food, like, go get directions. Like these are things that, as a, as a tourist, as somebody who is just trying to sort of break in, I would love to do. But instead, I'm, you know, I'm just either being obnoxious and just speaking English to people that obviously can't understand me, or I'm relying on like an app that translates in real time. And that's that, those are like my kind of my options as, as, as me, and I try and be sensitive, and I love to learn stuff, but it's like, I wish there was an easier way to do it. So that's kind of where you're saying, like, schools do a 360. It's, it's great if you want to understand everything about it, but for a lot of people, that's not the end goal realistically. I don't even, I think, I think schools touch on a number of important things, but I'm not, I'm not even convinced about the 360 part, because I know people that, you know, study their Spanish as their major, they can't really speak Spanish. I think some of the focus on the oral stuff, and I think here, for example, in Santa Barbara, there are a lot, it's a lot better than it was in Wisconsin, because in Santa Barbara, there are a lot of native Mexican speakers who are teaching in the schools versus I think those people are harder to come by in places like Wisconsin. That said, it's really easy to what extent you can hide behind literature and term papers and and final exams and stuff like that as like a crutch for actually not being obliged to speak. And that's, that's one thing I really find missing. When I, through all my university classes, through all my high school classes, there was never one moment, I think if I, if there had been like an actual German person there that I had to talk to, and I was just putting a room in that German person, it's like, if you don't find a way to communicate then, then you're not going to be able to say anything interesting, there would be a much more meaningful than trying to like go through the German regular verbs, and then in order to be able to take the final exam on that. And I think that's the part that's really missing from a lot of schools. The notion of like this could be a vehicle to understand a different culture to understand for people and to make yourself be able to express yourself in those languages and really just have like this this window into like a fascinating alternate reality that that I don't know, I just find that just so fascinating that language can be a tool for that if you approach it with that mindset, and if you learn it properly. So how do you, okay, so how do you learn it properly then? So let's, so I appreciate that. Yeah, how do you learn it properly? That's a very good question. So first of all, you have to start with your personal goals because everyone has different reasons for learning a language, and that's one thing, somebody I got, we did a Facebook live yesterday, and then I got the question from one of our listeners, there's a school in Denver that says you can learn Spanish in 15 days, is that true? And I was like, I think you should Spanish in five seconds if your goal is to say, oh, and I just teach you, oh, and then there, I talk Spanish. So what do you mean, like what do you mean teach you Spanish? Like what, you know, it all has to start with your personal goals, which are going to vary differently from person to person. And then once, and this is true of anything, you know, you know, you know, those two, you start with your specific goals, and then you reverse engineer that to find out the how from that. So if we look at the desire of a person, okay, so someone, someone just who just wants this for personal development, and I would say, okay, let's use the compliment case, let's use the comment case, if I want to go and I want to travel to a country and I want to be able to speak a language to the person, okay? The first question is to what degree do you want to be able to speak? Do you want to be able to speak it when you go to the restaurant or order food, or do you want to be able to actually like live with a host family? And do you want, or do you want to go work in the country for six months? You have to look at your specific goal. And then that leads to a goal of proficiency, how proficiency do I want to become? And I reason, when I, the recent proficiency, I reason according to the common European framework for language proficiency, which starts with A1 being like a total complete beginner who knows nothing. And then it's A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, where C2 is like basically near native, it's basically as close as you can get to being a native without being a native. And so once you figure out what level of proficiency you want, there's also like speaking with writing, you know, I want to be able to speak it and I, but I don't care about writing or I want to be able to write it, I don't care about speaking, I want to be able to read medical texts because it's really important for my field, but I don't actually care if I speak it. Once you figure that out, then you then you reverse engineer that. And I would say reverse engineering that always involves some combination of self-study and online language instruction. And it's the online language instruction that people who don't, and this is my, this is my gospel that I want to preach to everyone who does know about this stuff. For people who don't know about this stuff, our common friend, the one who actually referred me to you, at one point of time he asked me this question, like, why wouldn't I be able to use Duolingo and then just be okay with that? Everyone, I think basically everyone knows who with Duolingo is, this is free app that you can use for drill in practice in order to learn in order to get some proficiency in a language. And Duolingo is great, drill in practice stuff is good, but if you divorce that from online language instruction, and I'm assuming basically that people here won't have the luxury of just going and upping and living in Italy for a year or two years, you know, because because the best way to get proficiency in a language is actually go living the country itself. That's undisputed, but if we assume that people don't have that luxury, then the best way to get proficiency is to get a feedback loop. People know this with piano, like people, people who learn while learn how to play musical instrument, would be unthinkable for them to just get a bunch of books, and then just try to learn how to play the piano without a teacher saying, hey, you know what, you're not arching your hands properly or you're not, you need to do your scales or, you know, what, let's focus on these exercises for your left hand, because in order to be able to play this piece, you're going to be able to like increase your left hand muscles. This literally obvious for people who have taken music lessons, who have like forced their kids to take music lessons, they know that this feedback loop is necessary, and yet people will go for months or years, if they actually stick with it for that long, and that's another thesis of mine, because the as you know, with any learning, any new skill, the most important thing is this technique or this technique, the most important skill for something that you are not forced to learn is to not lose interest. That's the most important thing. If you lose interest, you're going to stop and then it's game over. So that should be the overarching thing of anything that you're forced to, anything that you want to learn that you're not forced to learn. How do I find a way to not lose interest? That's number one, okay, and then with the number one, it's reverse engineering your goals, and then with that, it's, I need the feedback loop. I need it's actually absolutely insane to think that you can do this on your own without a feedback loop, because if you're just imagine, with piano, and this is something that I did, I used to skip to, I didn't have the patience to when I was taking lessons to do my scales or to do the simple pieces, I wanted to skip straight to Scott Joplin and the entertainer and stuff like that. And once I managed to just, it's like freaking, I'm just going to do this, spend several weeks on it, and I learned how to play Scott Joplin. I learned how to play the entertainer, and I went to my piano teacher with that, because she had basically given up on me, because she, I never, I never used to practice. I would never, she'd give me these assignments, and I would never practice them. I just come there and we just be doing the same pieces over and over again, because I would never practice them. And then one day I said, oh, I can do Scott Joplin, and I played the entertainer for her, and she was both impressed and horrified, because she was impressed that I actually was able to like muscle my way through it, but horrified, because my technique was just so god-awful, horrible. I was just really just using my putting my fingers in the wrong place and doing things that were instead of doing other things, and you could just see the look on her face, like how am I going to get into unlearn this stuff now, so you can actually play this thing properly, because he's just, he's just reinforced his bad mistakes over and over and over again without actually learning, just having the little tiny interventions point interventions along the way in order for me to be doing that properly. And so that's why people who think that they can do this alone without any kind of feedback loop are just a missing the fundamental truth that this is the kind of stuff that you can't do without feedback loops, and b, there are also for going a very big opportunity to have like an additional degree of human contact and also accountability. There's some, when you look at it's like it's not maintained in languages, and there's weeks that I neglect some more than others, and when I look at, for example, Swedish, Swedish is like one of my most probably unloved languages, like I said, I can speak it enough to have like an unbounded conversation, but I don't focus on it nearly as much as I could, because like in some ways it's more flankless than the other languages, like all Swedish people think they have the god-given right to speak English with with other people, and and and with a few wonderful exceptions, there's some actually wonderful expressions exceptions that I hope if they're listening to this, that they know that they don't fall into this category on those Swedish people, but but unlike Spanish people and Italian people, where if you just make a little bit of effort to speak their language, they're like, oh my god, this so amazing, good job, go get them, you know, Swedish people in Dutch people are like, why are you doing this? You know, we all speak English, like why would you ever want to do this? And that gets back to be extremely demotivating. That said, I found a couple of wonderful exceptions, and like with the Swedish person that I do my bi-weekly conversations with, he's basically the only reason that I'm making forward progress, because there's there I would say most weeks I do absolutely nothing except talk to him, and that's the only that's the only forward progress I'm making, and I know for a fact that if he were not in my life, I know for a fact that if my Italian teacher who I meet religiously every Sunday at night o'clock in the morning, regardless of how stupid I was the previous night, and watching YouTube video of pistol three in the morning, and it's like, oh my god, I want to cancel this because I'm not going to get enough sleep. No, it's like a gym buddy, it's like an accountability partner, you have to show up, and if you have to show up, then it's an accountability partner. It's a reason to actually make forward progress, even though you would have probably been inclined to drop that or give up on your own. So that's that's what I would say, a combination of to answer to go back to answer in your question, which is like a roundabout way of doing it, I would say reverse engineer your goals, and then find some combination of self-study in an online language partner, unless you're able to live in the country, which is signing a likely that will that will allow you to achieve your goals. So it does it definitely answers my question, and how does Polytripper accomplish this? Because that's I'm assuming what your software, what your company is achieving. So you're trying to create all those points, or you're trying to touch on all those points that help reinforce the right behaviors, help bring accountability, and you bundle that up into something that is not just a type of software that like you mentioned, I can't remember the exact verb you said, but you said where it prompts and then you respond, and that's the only interaction you have with the software. So how does how does Polytripper, because I reference it as like the Airbnb of language teaching, I don't know if that's accurate or not. Oh, it's totally accurate. So yeah, so how does it how does a software actually accomplish that? So what layout, how it actually works, if I was going to like sign up for it, what does it do? Sure, sure. So the the term you were looking for with apps like do, willingo is drill in practice, which is definitely as a place, but that those are actually a sterile thing. So with with Polytripper, what you do is it's like an Airbnb for language teachers and language learners. And so say you're learning Spanish, you would go online and you could basically all the teachers, people who want to teach and we have two types of teachers, we have professional teachers and informal teachers. Anyone can sign up to to teach a language on Polytripper if they if they speak a language natively and also non natively people can like their Italian teachers who teach English to other Italians so they can sign up for for our site too. But they basically, you anyone can sign up that we accept and they indicate whether they teach professionally or informally. Informal teachers have no other obligation other than to be able to engage their students and carry on a conversation in their native language. So so anyone off the street could say I want to sign up to be an English teacher and we would accept them probably. If they, I mean, obviously wouldn't accept them if they didn't know what I mean, they would accept most people. Professional teachers have an additional requirement that they be able to create more structured lessons for their students and also we require some professionals to handle total beginners. So if you were a complete beginner with Spanish, I'm not saying that you couldn't use an informal teacher, but chances are, you know, you see, I've seen informal teachers who who sign up and say, I don't do grammar. I don't actually know grammar. I mean, how, how well are most English people able to explain the grammatical rules of their language? So that's I know I can't to, you know, maybe some, but like really if you're going to drill me, I probably, I probably wouldn't do so well. Exactly. So if I were to, if I were to ask you a grammatical question, you would be Lancer, but that wouldn't mean that you wouldn't be able to be a valuable conversational partner for me as an informal teacher. So we have those two mix of teachers and the teachers can sign up as a professional. Unlike competitor sites, we interview all of our professional teachers and this goes back to the point of us being passionate about this. This isn't just like, this isn't just a business for us. People are not just numbers for us. We really want people to have a nice experience on our platform because we want people to experience some of the joy that we've felt when we've learned a language. And so with a lot of sites, it's funny because one of our, one of the competitor sites that we're dealing with all the time people are coming from that site and they have to report that they have a, you remember I was talking about the different levels that that you have the A1 to C2. They're not allowed to teach on that site honestly. They have a C2 level. And so, and it's basically a very easy, you've heard of the Teppel maybe or the Tofu. There's these test of English as a foreign language test. People can take in order to certify. So you've got all these diamond dozen rinky dink online places where you can just basically buy a Teppel diploma. You have to maybe just check a few multiple choice boxes and then suddenly get your Teppel diploma and they can actually take this diploma to that site and say, look, I have a C2 level in English and that's I was like, okay, yeah, sure. Come on in, you know, and so, and they don't actually vet the people. They don't, they don't, oh, no, no, no. And so, actually, they've got the people by asking for certificates, but they don't actually have an interview with these people. They don't actually, I've heard the interview process of that company is basically like the Zoom call where you have like, you know, tiny little squares of a whole bunch of people showing up and then Zoom call, where it's just basically like an orientation session versus actually vetting the people. So we vet anyone, first of all, that says that they want to be a professional teacher and anyone that says that they have a C2 level in English, because I'm very protective of my language and people misrepresenting my language especially because of the ubiquity of those fake, not fake, but those rinky-dink technical diplomas that you can get online. We've actually had to like break the news to several teachers who were signed up as a C2 on that other site that dude, you'd be a great teacher for our site, but you're not, you're not a C2. So either you bump that down level or you say you don't teach English, but we won't accept you if you say that you're a C2 in English. And other languages too. So we vet our teachers very carefully. We select professional teachers with the great care and we really want our students to have a nice experience. So basically a teacher signs up, they go online, they set their schedule just like with Airbnb, you can say what days of what days are available, they say what dates and times that they're available, they set their calendar, and then you as a student can go and select the language and browse teachers who are teaching the languages if you want to teach, see what their prices are, see what their availability is, and then once you see that you can say I want a book of lesson for Saturday and nine o'clock in the morning with this teacher and then you submit your lesson request and then just like Airbnb, they either accept you or they deny you and then you go on Skype or Zoom or Hangouts or whatever and you do the lesson with them. And that's, I can't stress enough how wonderful that feedback loop is and also I feel like I can't stress enough the additional advantages that we bring to the table over our competitors because A, we are passionate about this and they're two actual polyglots who are at the head of this and every decision we make is informed by wanting people to have this wonderful experience and benefit from this. And B, we also, if there's a vetting our teachers, but also we take less commission than our competitors from the teachers. We take 33% less commissions from our teachers than our competitors because we want to take care of our teachers, we care for them, they're an integral part of this experience and so why wouldn't you want to take care of them? There's one competitor side which makes teachers give their first lesson for free to every student. So every new student that they get as a student, they have to give that, they don't get paid for it. Like, what the hell is that? Who does that? They're just so many different ways that we feel that we are better. We do these weekly Facebook lives. I'm in the trenches with my students. I've got, I've actually started learning Russian, which is one of the most difficult languages that you can learn because I want to go people on these Facebook lives every week and say, Hey, I'm, I'm in here with you and Russian is like down hard to learn. It's, it's very, very difficult. They've got a completely different alphabet. Their grammar is insanely different. They've got these weirdo sounds that you don't have in English. If you want to, if you want to language partner, you can speak to my girlfriend. She's, though, she's doing it. Yeah, yeah. Is she really? Is she from? She's, uh, used back a stand and Israeli Russian. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Man, that's all to those people. Like, I feel like if Russians have this massive edge as far as a people who speak Russian have this massive edge because I think if you can learn Russian, you can learn any language. I'm Mandarin Mandarin like all those Asian languages are also a different story. That's like, that's a completely different universe. That's my Mandarin Chinese is my next and final language in this lifetime of that and then I'm going with learning languages. But, but yeah, I'm, I'm in the trenches with these people. I'm doing these weekly motivational videos for people. Just, just to fire them up for the, for the coming week and we treated our teachers better. And also we, we listened to our students and teachers. The, there's this one competing platform that had this one. Really amazing feature called instant tutoring lessons. We're instead of booking a lesson in advance. You could just go on and see which teacher has turned on their instant lessons switch and just instantly book a lesson with them and have an half an hour lesson with them on the spot. And then one day they dump this feature and people were up in arms and like, why did you do that? And they're like, yeah, we'll replace it with something better and some unspecified kind of point of the future. This is like over a year ago. People are instilling that conversation that are like, what is that thing that you said you were going to replace that with? Where can I go to find instant lessons? Everyone is listening. We do instant lessons. We come to us because we do instant lessons. And so, and so I think with a combination of like being polyglots who, who love this stuff, with me being in the trenches, with, with us screening our teachers very quickly, with us paying them, we're taking 33% less commissions for them and then us actually listening to the feedback of our students and teachers as far as like what they put that form with Qua, which is recently rolled out two features yesterday, which allowed people to book to teachers to actually configure the time before which they, they want to accept the lesson. It used to be 24 hours in advance, but we made that 12, 24 and 48 hours configurable by the teacher because teachers wanted that and we actually listened to them versus saying, oh, we'll send this to our deaf team and they'll prioritize it or something like that. We really hope that a combination of all these things are the reason that people would want to choose us over someone else and also the understanding that you guys really, really, really need this feedback group, A, in order to make you not lose interest, B, in order to have like an accountability buddy, and B, in order to, you know, yeah, the feedback group that is all integral parts of this process. And why is, why is now like the golden age of language learning? Why, like, you know, it makes sense. So there's a couple of things we touched on, you know, we spoke about how to learn a language, we spoke about your like your business practices, like the passion and what differentiates. But like, why do, why is now the best possible time for somebody to pick up a language and actually roll with it and learn it? That's a very, that's a, I totally forgot I wrote that and this, that's a good point because, because I've been doing this for a long, long time. I mean, I know I have these youthful, good looks and everything like that, but I've been doing this for a long time. And so when I was learning languages like in the early 90s, for example, it was such a different, I remember, I remember when I came back from France in 1994, we bought this video camera in France, while then I, we came back and I bought a car in North Carolina because I was, I didn't want to buy a car in the Midwest, we should have corroded salt, everything just messed up and everything like that. So I bought a car. It's very smart. Yeah, it was really cheap use car and then I drove it to Pittsburgh to visit my dad and we were filming the whole process. I met his girlfriend for the first time and we were filming it and one point in time I was getting into a fight with my dad because, because he thought a raccoon was a rodent and I didn't think a raccoon was a rodent and so we were like, we were bickering about that and then we were like, so how would we go about finding out whether a raccoon is a rodent or not? This is in 1995 and we all paused and then his girlfriend was like, well, there's a bookstore down the corner. I guess we could go there and try to find, I mean, so just think about what that universe was like and that's, that's the universe that I was, that I was doing my language learning in. I would buy these method cassette tapes and I would just read the cassette tapes and that feedback wasn't there and when I actually wrote, I actually wrote this guide for people to how to learn a foreign language in 1994 and my tips and tricks were get a get a method with books and cassettes, try to find a video in the foreign language section of your video rental store, buy a shortwave radio because you could definitely pick up maybe foreign language broadcast with a shortwave radio. This was, this is my universe back then and just, I mean, just to let there are videos on YouTube, the ability to actually go online with a the ability to do what you and I are doing right now, just just talk to each other and I can hear you, I can hear your Canadian accent actually, you know, and I love the Canadian accent, by the way. But I just, just the ability to do this, I, when I went to Italy, my, my original plan because when I went, when I did my exchange program in Switzerland, what I did was I took a university language class the year before in French and then I met up with a bunch of French people, Swiss people who had done the exchange program in the other direction. I just held around with them and I, I mean, friends with them and then I went to Switzerland and I took three, three-week language courses at the university there and they were with a bunch of foreigners and we were all just kind of muddling through this together and learning this together and so on and so forth and that was my dream for Italian. I thought, with Italian, I'm going to do the same thing, I'm going to go to this group language class with your former Italian and that was my lifelong dream. I just didn't have the time, I didn't find the spot in my life that I was going to do that but that was the plan for years and years and years and years and then I discovered online language learning and in two years, just with self-study and with the online language teachers, I was able to get such a good level of Italian that it no longer made sense to, that is my goal to go, to actually treated myself, I rewarded myself with having achieved a certain level of proficiency by going and doing like a week-long language class in Genoa, Italy at a language school but I had to get a private teacher for that because it wouldn't have been satisfying and they agreed with me that the level I had achieved even before I had ever gone to Italy to take the language class was just so great that I achieved with the online language learning that that a private teacher was the next logical step in that progression and the fact that you can get that level of proficiency, the fact that you can get that feedback, because the feedback loop was the thing that was missing 25 years ago, the fact that you can get that nowadays with video conferencing is amazing. If I had known that this was the way things were going to shake up back then, I would have just been so excited and a lot of people, when you're actually in the midst of like existing technology, you don't realize how amazing it is and how many doors that opens up to what was previously possible but that's why we're in the golden age of like a flange learning now because of video conferencing because the internet and because the ability to get that feedback loop of people living in the country speaking that language that you can talk to right now. You know you're so you're so on point and you're so right with that and I think that we also forget given you know our current our current landscape with pandemic and no one traveling anywhere. Imagine if the imagine if coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic happened 30 years ago how cut off we would be and and I think that we're understanding and people are being forced to understand it and use new technologies and it's there is I say this with a you know a lot of disclaimer as to there's no benefit to obviously COVID-19 but saying that the benefit to COVID-19 is people being forced to adopt new technology being learning how to you know transact internationally learning how to conduct business remotely learning all these new skills that are quite literally going to like change business forever so that is that is the end result of of COVID-19 and I guess you know the ability to connect and feedback loop and learning and access to information and and everything this is what we're living through now and this obviously you know the ability to learn new things language being one of them is just emphasized by our ability to connect with a click of a button quite literally so it's very very very easy to go and learn new things now so make sure that you know if you if I speak about this as well and I appreciate you pulling up my Facebook post but you didn't have to do that that's very kind of you but I speak about like using opportunity now and understanding that we're so connected and we have the ability to go learn and if you are sitting at home and you have extra time if you don't that's fine but if you have extra time to go take the opportunity to go learn something language could be one of those things but there's a million but just now like the ability to do and the ability to learn is is is there it's right in front of us and if you aren't upskilling in one aspect of your life or a variety of aspects in your life you're you're really missing out and you're missing that opportunity you're missing that you know you're missing the boat on that so I think that now's a great time you know with with the services like like a polytripper and whatnot to and even like you mentioned like the having that feedback loop polytripper lines you with teachers but you still if there's there's if you're just not even going on YouTube and and watching videos and learning new things that's already an issue but the polytripper just reinforces reinforce so greater extent like the ability to go learn online so very yeah it makes a lot of sense to me um now one thing one thing I would add to that is that is that for a lot of people the feedback loop can be scary because they don't want to look dumb because they're afraid of looking stupid um not only is okay they're two kinds of people even the people who are not afraid of looking stupid and they're like they just don't care they they'll get up and do public speaking or whatever you know more power to them those people are going to make the the best progress in a language because they realize part of the language involves being vulnerable making mistakes not being afraid to look stupid and so on so forth for the people on the other hand what kind of get hung up about hung up about the stuff this is a beautiful beautiful our teachers are so patient understanding have experienced working with beginners and so on so forth and so there's no better group of people to guide them through this process which is scary for some and and overcome those fears you know what a better way to overcome a fear than just being afraid of looking stupid and then realize not that bad realizing that there's a patient person that's guiding you through this and and that's that's I think the value of being able to do these online language lessons versus just watching a YouTube video the YouTube videos are great and they're definitely a plus in our day and age compared to 25 years ago but this opportunity to actually have the feedback loop and overcome ones inhibitions um I can't help you that they'll make people a better person in so many different aspects of their life other than just their language learning agree agree um I think that even if you watch a YouTube video and you and you do pick up on some things you're still going to have that apprehension when you go and speak to somebody if it's the first time right um that's very good I want to I want to uh I wanted to you this up with a couple just like life lesson questions that you've sort of picked up over your career in your life before I move back to you know focusing on you was there anything else about uh language learning currency of language learning or polytripper that you wanted to touch on or do we do a pretty good uh review no you did a great job no thank you you're all welcome and I'd love to I'd love to have you and guide you through this journey because I absolutely love this stuff no thank you um okay so so a couple life life lesson questions that I like to ask sort of a rapid fire session at the end sure sure um one question is a life lesson that you've learned over your career both working with individuals as a teacher and as an entrepreneur um that you wouldn't part on someone else that you would tell your younger self sure definitely I think one of the most important life lessons that I would that that I would teach to people is if you're not an expert in something then you're high and it's going to be difficult we talked about this at the beginning of the of the conversation but when you're not an expert in something and you're seeking guidance from people who are supposedly experts it's very very very difficult to actually figure out the BS people from the real deal and so basically do anything you can to figure that out before you actually hop on the train with an expert and then start taking that ride with them because you could waste so many years of your life going down the wrong path or being led by the wrong mentor or or or doing the wrong things um that's that's what I would tell the younger version of myself I know if I I I've completely articulated that no I think that was very that was that was very well put um I think that that's great advice uh because you know I always I also always speak about um getting a mentor mentors in different aspects of your life which is a great thing to have but a lot of people that are foolish you know like they're in their full of it so you have to make sure that you align with the right people and it is difficult it's very difficult because another side effect of internet and online and and being able to to go online is people have the lowest uh the lowest barrier to entry to to putting themselves out there yeah so it's you have to be very careful when you're paying somebody anything for any advice ever I think that that's probably I I find so for me you know it's funny you mentioned I just want to that's one one thing I don't mean to take away from that yeah that's a very good point but like for myself I've even found it hard to like you know I've done consulting work for companies in the past and I even find it hard like when I build out like my brand online to to monetize it like I you know when I put out podcasts I put out YouTube videos I put out social even after I've worked in so many different companies I've worked in so many different environments and I'm sure that a lot of the stuff that I do uh could be monetized but I feel like there's this like there's like a negative energy that comes with people that put out paid monetize online information that I just don't want to be a part of and I don't know how I you know it's it's a shame but I think there's a lot of bad actors out there that's really my main point so I think that if if you are paying somebody for some advice could be online or offline I think I think that both of them have their you know have their bad actors unfortunately and I think you mentioned a really good thing and I don't even know if it was recorded but you said it was like 10% of experts actually know whether it's something like that I can't remember the quote but it was a good point um but that's just just do diligence on everyone who you you know you subscribe to including anything that you know you listen to here like any of the people that come on the podcast anything that I say like just like I don't know what I don't know I don't know everything I hope I hope I have some advice but I don't know everything so like everyone who you take advice from just make sure that um you do enough do diligence that you get some like sound grounded advice and and you can find other people that can hopefully speak to to their efficacy I think Philip softly speaking I think cracking that code of trying to figure out the BS people for the real people if we were to be able to crack that code somehow that would be the most destructive thing I could possibly imagine I know the things like Yelp and stuff like that are just taking a swing of that like like a really kind of small baby swing of that but what if they're away we're away of like looking at all these business development people and saying oh you know what this is this is the right person and it's actually proven like I don't know like I don't know any other way of doing new diligence right now it's just doing a whole bunch of reading and research and stuff like that and in the end it's like a coin toss anyway because yeah and you you do your best and you don't know what you don't know that's problem so you just pick someone but what if what if somehow that code were crackable I don't know I'm just I'm just I think a lot of people would lose a lot of money if that code was crackable can you imagine how many like investment advisors would lose their job when people realize yeah I mean Warren Buffett says just just there's this one I'm going off on a tangent here but Tim Ferriss you know you know yeah I know sorry yeah so he there's this one thing that he talked about where basically he got he got into the meeting of the Berkshire half the way and he was he had all planned out where he was going to figure out the most strategic microphone in order to be able to ask Warren Buffett this one question and he did it and he got the one and he calculated this and he and he actually got the question and he triumphantly went up to the microphone and he said if you were an investment advisor if I had a hundred thousand dollars what are the actual asset classes specific asset classes I would invest in for blah blah blah blah you know if I if I just got this in here if it's I didn't have to go back work and Warren Buffett looked at it and he said just buy an index fund and invest in the S&P 500 and go back to work you know and if if most people knew that just investing in the S&P 500 were like the best investment strategy and said like listening to all these investment just imagine how many people would go out of business you know the S&P 500 has has traditionally outperformed almost every investment advisor ever historically right right so right and that just simple truth and yet and yet you have all and yet these investment visors are just still in business like you just boggles my mind with with with the billions trillions of of of under yes of assets under management you know so yeah it's interesting anyway that's a whole other conversation and last last question I like to ask is one resource could be book podcast audible person that you have read consumed listen to in your in your life that you would recommend people people check out um that's a good question one resource book podcast everything like that I would say I would say for me it's like a it's like a my two my two biggest idols are Warren Buffett and Dave Brubeck and Dave Brubeck is a jazz pianist and he has nothing to do with business development or anything like that but but the takeaway that I get from both of those people were like a two different lines of work is like I saw a concert with Dave Brubeck and he was eight six years old uh he didn't need to do this he didn't need the money Warren Buffett doesn't need the money if he's like he says he he says he feels like he's tap dancing to work every day people that have actually because there are a million different ways to make money in this lifetime there are a million different ways to to to earn a living um the people like truly truly truly admire and aspire to be like are the people that that say that they wake up every day and they just absolutely love that what they're doing and they don't believe that they're actually getting paid for it um anyone like that and Warren Buffett are David two examples that I think of um man what what a what a place to be in in life where you're just doing this till you're in your late 80s uh you could have stopped long time ago but you don't because you're actually loving it and money isn't an issue for you because you found the sweet spot where your passion aligns with what people are other who are willing to pay for um I think that's the the highest degree of fulfillment that anyone can get in this lifetime and I would love that to be the case for me too yeah that's a that's an incredible advice and it's not so much it's not so much like a resource but it's just like a person to emulate and aspire to to live your life similar to the way that they've been able to set up theirs and it's it's it's difficult for a lot of people of course to be able to just pursue your passion that's yes you can't be naive about that but you still have to say like that that is something to definitely aspire to whatever that looks like in your specific circumstance I think it's very good advice um very good advice uh and last last question would be where did they where do they go people that are listening where do uh they go to go find out more about poly poly tripper yourself uh is there a website I think I pulled it up over to speaking but um where are all the resources to go find out more sure sure so our main website is polytripper.com not polytripper is spelled with one hell not two owls whenever it is it's a really badly chosen name I think because whenever California people hear polytripper they think polyamory and acid trips uh so we're we're fighting that uphill a bit I think I'm I'm hoping that the fact that the name is searchable enough or maybe raises eyebrows compensate and I also found out later on that tripper means a venereal disease in German so oh no the name has got a lot of big stack it gets it but we we love the name we personally love the name we already designed a logo so that that ship but yeah the website is polytripper.com P-O-L-Y-T-R-I-P-P-E-R dot com one L-2-P's polytripper.com um and also I've got a free mini course which uh is is free for it's like four part tiny video course which talks about the mental game that you need for language learning it doesn't focus on one specific language would it focus on how like what me polyglots like me um hyper polyglots I should say there's I got I just recently I'm proud to say I got recently accepted to be international association of hyper polyglots um congratulations I I hope they only accept people who speak six languages fluently or eight languages conversationally so I don't know which of those they they chose as the correct area for accepting me but I'm I'm part of this elite I don't I don't like brag about myself but I mean I guess for for getting eyeballs this is a good thing that that's for a while yeah I think I think if you if you run a firm or a company focused on language learning it's not the worst accolade to have so exactly exactly so anyway I I teach a course where I unpack the mental game about why you want to learn language and also the mental game of how to learn language and that can be found at HTTPS colon slash slash polytripper.com with one L slash secret dot HTML S-E-C-R-E-T dot HTML and it's like a free mini course it becomes really nice PDFs and you can use that as it's just my gift to the world there are no screens attached to the kind of learn about how to learn a foreign language and finally uh I think yeah I think that's a poly polytripper polytripper.com oh yes finally you can always email me and support at polytripper.com one of the things that's that I'm really happy about right now with the stage of business development that we're in is that we're very small and I have the luxury of doing individual outreach and I absolutely love doing individual outreach so there's going to be a time two three years from now that I'm not going to be able to do that practically with everyone anymore and then it's going to be a very sad transition for me it's going to be good but it's going to be sad because I absolutely love doing the individual outreach so if you have any questions at all even if there's not a financial transaction at the end of it write me at polytripper at support at polytripper.com you can also go to our Facebook page facebook.com slash polytripper post a question there be part of our Saturday Facebook lives who do this weekly Facebook lives like I said I'm out in the trenches with everyone else doing my doing my Russian um struggling through that and so we really want to make this uh over the like supportive amazing community where people can find out how amazing this this this this language learning thing is uh for their personal development for the doors it opens as far as being able to understand especially in this environment also the sad environment with with racial discrimination and everything like that I can't help thinking that if people actually learned the reason that they need in need in order to understand other people's viewpoints understand other people's ways of speaking understand other people's communication styles that a lot of the insanity we're having in the world today wouldn't be there because people have actually like strengthened their empathy muscle and I think it's under the wonderful non threatening way of doing that that's over today thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast you can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and many others you can also watch this podcast on YouTube if you haven't already please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers and peers please leave us a rating on iTunes it takes about 30 seconds as it allows other people to find our podcast and let's our amazing guests reach even more people with their message and remember any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars i'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast signing off