👋 Good morning from Kuala Lumpur! I'm Connor Swenson, and this is #81 of One Percent Wisdom. This is where I explore my curiosity and share simple practices for health, happiness, and sustainable productivity.
What’s new?
KL & Bali: Claire and I are wrapping up a 5-week stay in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia visiting her mom and family. We also took a trip to Bali and I absolutely adored my first experience on that magical island.
Here was my tweety takeaway from the trip:
London > Lisbon: We’re going to back to the UK tonight for a couple of weeks, where we’ll pick up our visas en route to Lisbon. We’re planning to arrive back in Portugal to settle and start our next chapter there in March.
Italy: I’m spending a couple days in Milan this month for an in-person workshop at L’Oréal. Send recs if you’ve got ‘em, haven’t been there in years.
Sustainable Productivity: we’ve had a ton of positive feedback our our new course, which is available online as a self-paced learning experience. If you want to build healthier habits in your work & life for the year, it’s not too late to sign up. Linky link.
Don’t be afraid to pay to get ahead
Every so often, you have what I call a frame-breaking conversation.
A frame-breaking conversation changes how you view the world. It opens up a new perspective. It literally breaks your frame and makes you see things you didn’t see before.
They are fun and exciting, but also terrifying because once you see the world in this new way, it’s impossible to unsee it.
Last year, John Zeratsky introduced me to
, a badass entrepreneur who is the CEO at AJ&Smart, a product design, strategy and innovation studio based in Berlin.Jonathan has done some big things in the world of online courses, so I was coming to him to learn about that as we were preparing to launch Sustainable Productivity and also trying to chart the next evolution of the Make Time online course.
(If you want to learn from Jonathan, check out his Substack and listen to his new podcast The Unscheduled CEO (Spotify / Apple). Both are 100% worth jumping into if you're interested in entrepreneurship, business building, that sort of thing.)
Claire and I were supposed to have a nice 30-minute chat with Jonathan, but it lasted two hours. Not only did it last two hours, I’m still processing the insights two months later!
I’m not going to get into the whole conversation and all the nuggets of wisdom in this post, but there is one lesson that stuck out that I’m going to integrate into my life in 2023.
Jonathan said he’s never afraid to pay for help when he knows it’s a shortcut to getting ahead.
But he didn’t always operate with this lesson in mind.
In fact, during the first 7 years of running AJ&Smart, he built the business by doing things himself, learning the hard way, and grinding. It worked, but it nearly burned him and his team out.
It was really in the second iteration of his company, when he launched the online course side of things (called Workshopper) that he decided he would buy those valuable lessons with money.
One of his rules is that every time he has the opportunity to pay to spend time with somebody who has what he wants (meaning they’ve achieved some level of business or personal success he wants), and it won't ruin his life to pay for it, then he pays for it.
There isn’t some overly complicated cost-benefit analysis that he does. If there is someone who has been where he wants to go, and he can pay to learn from them, he does it. Done and dusted.
He told us about a mastermind group that he pays tens of thousands of Euros to be a part of each year, simply because the access to the guy who runs the mastermind is so valuable.
He told us he spent thousands upon thousands on other courses, mentors, etc. all in the spirit of getting to where he wanted to go, but faster.
And look, it seems to be working for him. So I’m very intrigued.
Now in my life, I have long struggled with asking for help, and while it’s something I’ve gotten better at, there is still a lot for me to learn.
As the owner of a small business, there is SO much I don’t know how to do. I love this. I love having to figure out some marketing thing, some client problem, or whatever it is.
But I also recognize that sometimes, I get stuck, and I don’t know how to move forward. And it’s easy to fall into a pattern of just doing what I already know how to do, and procrastinating on what I’m struggling to figure out.
It’s also easy to be overly cautious with the business finances. To be conservative. To be frugal. To figure everything out on my own. It seems “smart.” And sometimes it is.
But sometimes, it’s limiting.
Sometimes, the smarter move is to pay for expertise, for experience, for the ability to see around corners.
This year, I want to challenge myself to be bold with investing in people, experiences, or programs that will catalyze my growth or the growth of the business.
I want to surround myself with more people further along in the game than I am.
I want to take Jonathan’s advice, find the person that is where I want to be, and then do whatever it takes to learn from them, to spend time with them, and to grow.
I’m writing this to help keep me accountable, but I’ll throw in an ask as well — have you been mentored, been in a group, taken a course, or anything like this that has truly changed your trajectory? Please tell me! If I get enough interesting replies, I’ll share it back out in the next newsletter
Putting It Into Practice
There are lots of ways you might adopt this approach in your own life. I’m actively looking for the right person, and who could help me will be different than who can help you.
Hire a coach. Paying someone with expertise in a subject you’re trying to learn is probably the most straightforward way to learn faster. I’m using “coach” in the most general way, so this could be a life coach, a personal trainer, a writing coach, etc.
Pay for a mentor. Maybe you know someone who has been where you want to go, but they aren’t a “coach.” Perhaps you can go directly to them and ask for help. Maybe they’ll let you buy them dinner so you can ask them questions. Maybe there is another way you can bring them value. Don’t ask, don’t get.
Pay for a course. There are so many great online courses on marketing, sales, copywriting, design, etc. but very few people take full advantage. Personally, I’ve found tremendous value in buying courses, even on topics I could have learned about through books, because of the added accountability and the access to the subject matter expert.
Join a group. There are some amazing online (and IRL) groups, communities and “masterminds” that can you join, many at a more affordable price point than a coach, mentor, or course. For example, I recently joined Marissa Goldberg’s remote work community, Work Forward Society, as a way to learn from the best-of-the-best in remote and hybrid working.
One Internet Link I really enjoyed
Ego Death: Addressing our mental health crisis
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