An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Investing in Yourself

My guest today is a marketing expert, consultant, author, blogger for Fast Company Magazine, and a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section.

He is the author of Evergreen, which was an instant number one bestseller in the sales and marketing section of Amazon.

Evergreen describes how companies can become so obsessed with finding new customers that they lose valuable customers along the way.

Evergreen is a guide to customer retention, experience, and strategy … and my guest shows us how to cultivate enduring customer loyalty that keeps businesses thriving.

Now, let’s hack …

Noah Fleming.

In this 35-minute episode Noah Fleming and Jon Nastor discuss:

  • Taking risks and not being afraid of failing
  • Exhausting opportunities to their fullest
  • Investing in yourself and the power of mentors
  • How to write your own paycheck
  • Replicating your previous successes

The Show Notes

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Investing in Yourself

Voiceover: Welcome to Hack the Entrepreneur, the show which reveals the fears, habits, and inner battles behind big name entrepreneurs and those on their way to joining them. Now, here is your host, Jon Nastor.

Jonny Nastor: Welcome back to Hack the Entrepreneur. I’m so glad you decided to join me today. I’m your host, Jon Nastor, but you can call me Jonny.

My guest today is a marketing expert, consultant, author, blogger for Fast Company Magazine, and a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail’s report on business.

He’s the author of Evergreen, which was an instant No. 1 bestseller in the sales and marketing section of Amazon. Evergreen describes how companies can become so obsessed with finding new customers that they lose valuable customers along the way.

Evergreen guides us on customer retention, experience, and strategy as my guest shows us how to cultivate enduring customer loyalty that keeps businesses thriving.

Now, let’s hack Noah Fleming.

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Welcome back to Hack the Entrepreneur. I am so glad to welcome a fellow Canadian to the show yet again. Noah, thank you for joining me.

Noah Fleming: Hey, my pleasure. How many Canadians have you had on the show?

Jonny Nastor: I’ve had a surprising number of them actually, which is great, but it always, always impresses me.

Noah Fleming: That’s fabulous.

Jonny Nastor: Yes. All right, Noah. We’re going to jump straight into this.

Noah Fleming: Sure.

Jonny Nastor: Noah, as an entrepreneur, can you tell me what is the one thing that you do that you feel has been the biggest contributor to your successes so far?

Taking Risks, Not Being Afraid of Failing, and Exhausting Opportunities to Their Fullest

Noah Fleming: Sure, a couple things. It’s going to sound cliché, but I’ll share a few things. One is I really am not afraid to try something and fail. That’s been in my blood for a long time, so I’m willing to give anything a shot if I truly believe in it. If I believe in myself, I will take the opportunities, and I will give them a good shot. If it doesn’t work out, then so what. I move on to the next thing.

That said, I’m extremely focused, so I don’t jump from one opportunity to the next. I don’t jump from one vision of where I should go to another. I’m very focused, and I try to really exhaust every opportunity to its fullest. Dialing for dollars, jumping from opportunity to opportunity, I don’t do that. I try and stay focused, so when I say I’m going to build a business or a consulting practice or whatever it is I’m doing, I stick with it.

Investing in Yourself and the Power of Mentors

The second thing and the most important thing that I believe is the biggest contributor of my success is I invest in myself. I talk about this a lot everywhere I go — whether I’m being interviewed or writing — but I invest in myself.

If I need a coach, I get a coach. Even though I’m a coach, I’ve coached over a thousand entrepreneurs, and I’ve worked with literally hundreds of business owners in different industries, CEOs, executives, if I need help, I will spend the money and get a coach. I have a coach. If I need a mentor, I’ll find a mentor, and I’ll spend the money. If I need to belong to a mastermind group, I will do that. If I need to get better at public speaking, for example, I will take courses on that, or I will invest in myself to do that.

Too many entrepreneurs, too many people trying to grow their companies, become better entrepreneurs, they’re afraid to invest in themselves. To me, it’s a huge flaw, but it’s also one of the biggest distinctions I see between very successful people and people that fumble and struggle along. They’re not willing to invest in themselves.

If you’re not willing to invest in yourself, then why should anybody be willing to invest anything in you? If you don’t have the trust and the faith in yourself, then who’s really going to trust and believe in whatever it is you do? That’s the key number two, and realistically, that’s probably number one, the ability to invest in myself and the willingness to do that.

Jonny Nastor: I totally agree with you, with getting a mentor, having a mastermind group, hiring a consultant, but what happens, Noah, when you’re just starting out and you don’t have maybe the resources, and if you do have the resources — because I get this email a lot — where do you find a mentor, or where do you find a mastermind group when you don’t have a network around you at this point?

Opening Your Eyes to the Resources Around You

Noah Fleming: Sure, so I’ll answer that a couple ways. First of all, the thing that we tell ourselves that we don’t have the resources, for most people, especially living in Western societies, it’s not true. Unless you’re broke and you’re up on hard times, and I get that, but for most of us, we have access to resources.

We have car loans, so we buy a car. We invest in ourselves, and we trust that we will pay our car loan. We take out mortgages because we trust and believe in ourselves that we’ll pay for the mortgage. We have credit cards. We have access to capital. We have friends with money. We have family with money. I know some people don’t want to go down that road, but saying that you don’t have any access to resources or to funds, it’s a little bit of a cop out.

There was a book a few years ago, Chris Guillebeau wrote, The $100 Startup. Chris is a great guy. He’s a smart guy. He’s built an amazing business, but to me, that book is wrong. Is investing $100 in your startup a smart decision, or is it really not smart enough? Should you be willing to invest whatever it takes, whatever your startup needs to grow it? It’s the same for you. It’s the same for me. It’s the same for people in business.

We can find access to it, but we have to be willing to take some chance, take some risk, take some opportunities, spend the money, recognize that we can pay them back, recognize that we need to believe in ourselves. Just like we take on a mortgage, we will make the payments on time to pay back whatever it is we’re doing — whether it’s an investment business or personal development, etc. That’s the first answer to your question, and we can discuss that a little bit more.

The second part is, how do you find those resources? For me, when I was building a consulting practice, I didn’t want to fumble along and waste money on the wrong places, so I went right to the top. I figured out who is doing this really well, who’s the top person in the world of consulting? I kept leading down to this guy named Alan Weiss who wrote Million Dollar Consulting, Million Dollar Speaking. He’s written 50-something books.

When I started to look a little bit deeper at what he was doing, I noticed there was a big community of other consultants involved in what he was doing. I got myself immersed in that, and there was a lot of money to be spent to do that. I realized that these people were doing something different. These people were really knocking it out of the park, building insanely successful practices, so I went right to the top.

Whatever field you’re in, whatever it is you do, there are these communities out there. There are leaders in the field. You just have to seek them out. We can find them pretty quickly. Then instead of wasting all this time and energy trying to cookie-cutter things together, just go right to the top. Find out who’s doing it right, and go right and start working with them.

Jonny Nastor: That’s awesome. Those are two brilliant answers. The first one, which is correlating it to car loans and mortgages, which everybody has no problem buying a brand new fancy car, but then to build their business or to change their life in some way, it’s like $300 a month is too much or $500 a month is too much. It’s shocking to me. I’m glad you mentioned that.

Noah Fleming: Yeah, I’m not telling people, “You should max out your credit cards to pay for a speaking development course or some new Internet marketing course that costs thousands of dollars because you think it’s going to change your life.” I’m not saying that, but what I’m saying is, the excuse that we don’t have access to the capital, and again, in some cases, that’s legitimately true, but for most of us, that’s not really true. For most of us, we have some access and some means, and again, I really do believe it comes down to this concept of faith and belief in yourself.

There’s no greater investment than investing in yourself. If you don’t believe it and you don’t believe in trusting yourself that you will follow through, you’ll take action, you’ll take whatever it is you’re spending money on and learn and continue to develop and grow, then if you go into it with that mentality, you won’t succeed. If you go into it, whatever you spend, even if it’s spending $10 on a book, that’s an investment in yourself, but you still have to take the time to read the book. Then you have to pick a few things and actually implement. That’s the issue that I see. One, we’re afraid to make those investments, and then two, we don’t really follow through on them.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. That’s a good clarification to make. Okay, at the beginning, you said that you’re not afraid to try things and fail. You said this goes back a long way. I want to go back. There seems to be a time in every entrepreneur’s life when they realize one of two things: either they have this calling to make something big, make this huge difference in the world, or simply, which seems to be the case most of the times, they simply cannot work for somebody else.

Noah, can you tell me when you found this out about yourself, and which side of the fence you fall on?

How to Write Your Own Paycheck

Noah Fleming: Sure. I found that out a couple times in life. I made a few mistakes like that. I’ve told these stories in other places, and I’ll try and keep them short here. I always had the entrepreneurial bug. I always wanted to make some extra cash. When I was just a young little guy, I don’t even remember the age, I would guess eight, 10 years old, my mother would take me down to the local marina in the town where I lived, and I filled up a little red wagon. We all had a little red wagon, but I put coolers in it with ice and some pop.

My mom would take me to the grocery store. I would buy a case of Pepsi or whatever. I would walk around the docks, and I would sell it to boaters sitting on their boats. I would spend whatever it cost for the case of soda. It was $10 or something. I’d go home with $30, $40 on that, and I’d repeat that. Some days I’d make $100, $150. As a little kid, this was a lot of money. Then that snowballed into things like baseball cards and all the stuff that kids get into.

Then when went through school and I went through university, I started to believe that I had to follow the path, the career path set out and laid before us. I had to go to university. I had to get a job, and when I came out of university, it took me a year to find a job. When I finally found that job, I truly realized it within the first day. I got there, and I was just miserable. I realized that I had made a big mistake, but I stuck it out for about a year. Then after that year, I walked away from it. That was about 15 years ago now. I walked away, and I haven’t been back since.

There was another time before that where I thought I was going to take a break from school, from university, from college. My father, he said, “Well, if you’re going to do that, you have to do something. You have to work.” I went to work for somebody else. I woke up at 6 in the morning. I went to this factory, and by 10:00, I realized I couldn’t do this. There’s a mix of those things. It’s realizing I couldn’t work for other people, realizing I had to do it on my own, and then also realizing I wanted to be in control of my own destiny.

One of the things my father always said to me growing up is this quote he used to say, “Write your own paycheck.” He used to always say that. He said, “Write your own paycheck. My paycheck is determined by someone sitting in an office somewhere that accumulates how many hours I work and then writes me a paycheck for that.” He always said, “Write your own.”

I look back at that now, and my brother and I are both solo professionals. We both work for ourselves, so I think that quote, that thing that he said to us, really stuck with us. I’ve followed that ever since.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. I love that. Write your own paycheck. That’s good. Okay, Noah. We’re going to move into work now. You work for yourself. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you work from home like I do.

The Benefits of Writing Your Own Paycheck

Noah Fleming: I do. I’m actually in my basement office right now. I’m looking out my window, and I don’t know if your audience will hear it, but there’s a hum of a lawnmower. There’s somebody outside cutting my lawn right now. It’s actually my father-in-law who lives close. He’s retired, and he loves to cut the lawn and do this. I’m definitely not going to complain with that.

Jonny Nastor: Totally to remove the magic from all this for the listener out there, but I’m in my basement office as well. I’m fascinated by this because you have a daughter, a wife. You have things to do at home that you like to do, but you work from home and stay productive in some way. Let’s talk work.

Today’s a work day. You woke up at home. You had to commute down to your basement at some point, probably took you about 30 seconds. What do you do in say the first 30 minutes of your day, that’s a work day? How do you, from getting out of bed to getting to work, how you set yourself up to do the things that you need to do today?

Noah Fleming: I don’t know how big your house is, but first of all, it doesn’t take me 30 seconds to come down my stairs. It’s about 7 seconds from top to bottom.

Jonny Nastor: Well, with traffic, heading out the back door, or something.

Noah Fleming: Just to clarify, I actually have two young girls.

Jonny Nastor: Oh, excellent.

Noah Fleming: Yeah. From 6 am until 9 am, my house is pretty crazy, but I have the luxury where I’m able to take my kids to school. I drive them to school almost every morning unless I’m away on business or speaking somewhere. I drop them off, then I come back to my office, and I have a big glass of water. I’ll probably check my email.

I’m not a slave to email. I run at inbox zero almost every day, and I’m truly a believer that anybody that says they can’t, I just don’t believe it. Seth Godin, who we all know in the marketing world, will respond to almost every email he gets. If you email Seth, you will likely get a response. If Seth can do it, there’s no excuse for any of us. I’ve lived with that for a long time.

Then I’ll check my calendar, and I’ll see what I’ve got to do today — what are the big priorities to get done, what are the things coming down the pipe. I use a paper calendar. I have a Filofax, which is pretty old school for a young guy, but I have little leather Filofax where I’ll write down the night before a couple key things I want to do today. I try not to overwhelm myself. I try not to pack in hours and hours and hours of things to do.

I’ll write a few specific things, so if I know that I’ve got to write a blog post or an email newsletter for Tuesday, then I’ll make sure that Monday, I’ve scheduled an hour on my calendar to do that. Then I will treat that just as I would treat a client meeting or a client phone call. That hour is specifically scheduled to do that. So I will sit down, and I will do that.

The flexibility of this is incredible. I will probably take a lunch after we finish up here, probably take half an hour, 40 minutes for lunch. I’ll typically go down to a local restaurant. It’s a good place to run into some people, to schmooze a little bit, to talk to others. Then I’ll come back. I’ll do a few more things in the afternoon, and then I’ll pick up my kids at 3:30, 4:00. That’s sort of my typical day when I’m home and in the town where I live and doing things. If I’ve got a client meeting, I’ll do that. Sometimes I have a Skype phone call with a client, but otherwise, this is a remarkable time we live in. It’s really, truly remarkable.

I just said to somebody this morning, I said, “Yesterday I was sitting outside in my backyard in a chair, sipping on a beer, and I ordered a mattress from my cell phone.” I ordered a mattress from my cell phone, and it’s supposedly arriving at my house tomorrow. There’s nothing worse than mattress shopping, but it was a fantastic experience. This really is a remarkable, interesting, awesome time that we’re living in.

Jonny Nastor: It is. I fully, fully, fully agree with you. Okay, so at the beginning of this conversation I asked you what your one thing is that you’re good at, so now every blog post, every expert talks about 80/20. Do 20 percent. Get 80 percent of the results. Do what you are good at. Delegate the rest. Noah, in your business, can you tell me something that you are not good at?

Making Habits Work and Beating Procrastination

Noah Fleming: Yeah, sure. There are a lot of things I’m not good at. Look, I procrastinate with the best of them. The best of your listeners out there, I’m with you.

Jonny Nastor: Thank you. It sounded like you didn’t for a while there. It’s like, who is this guy?

Noah Fleming: I’m a born and bred procrastinator. That’s why when I told you a few minutes ago, I have to schedule specific things in my calendar. I do that, and I get them done. I treat them, again, like client meetings. My mentor calls it ‘sacrosanct time.’ When you schedule these things, there’s nothing else that should interrupt that, but I am a procrastinator.

I have to be really good at getting things written down and actually doing them. That’s something I’m really bad at. If I don’t write it down, if I don’t make notes on it, if I don’t schedule the things, and I know something is due next Thursday, I will wait till Wednesday night at 11:30 and try and do it.

If I don’t schedule that blog post that I mentioned that I write for my newsletter subscribers every Tuesday morning, if I don’t schedule that time on Monday, there are multiple times when Monday night at 11:30, 11:45, I’m sitting there at my computer trying to figure out what the heck am I going to say. Most times, I’ll get it done in 10 or 15 minutes because I want to be in bed. So that’s something I’m not very good at. I have to schedule. I have to write things down, and I have to stay on top of it. I try not to become a slave to things like email. As I said before, I really do keep my inbox at zero. I don’t think it’s impossible to stay on top of that.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. That’s cool, and I’m glad you clarified the procrastination because it was hard to listen to you: “I have a blog post due Tuesday. I sit down Monday and write it.” I was like, “Really? The day before?” I’m going to think about you because, about a month and half ago, I started writing for Entrepreneur.com, and I’m supposed to submit on Monday. Every single Monday so far, except for the first week, actually, I’ve been like 11:59 pm Monday night submitting it to their backend system, so I’ll think of you now. “He’s probably writing his blog post, too, right now. It’s cool. It’s not just me.”

Noah Fleming: Right. But if you do start to make the habit of scheduling that time and treating it as the only thing that happens during that time, then you will get better at it. While I said I’m bad at that, I have gotten remarkably better at that. For years, procrastination was the killer, was the death of me because I would procrastinate on things to the point where I wouldn’t get them done. I would be speaking at an event and I wouldn’t even start thinking about what I was going to say until hours before the event. Now, I’m much more focused. I’m much more diligent. When you are that way, your results change. You do better. Things improve. You reap the rewards of that.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. I’ll be better I’m hoping soon. When that new project came up, I was in the middle of three other big projects, and I could only do it then. I’m looking forward to getting, say, a week in advance even being like, “Oh, it’s already done. It’s already done.”

Noah Fleming: You’re going to feel good if you’re able to do that.

Jonny Nastor: I hope so. We’ll see, though. We’ll see. Let’s move to projects. Projects can be anything that you take on — any new endeavor, a new book you want to write, anything that you decide at this point. Right now, within your business, Noah, what is the process you go through to determine when a new project is something that you should invest the time and effort and possibly other resources into taking on?

The Power of Chunking Projects into Quick, Actionable Steps

Noah Fleming: Sure. I’ll give you a tangible example around that. My first commercially published book came out in January. It’s called Evergreen, and it’s been doing remarkably well. That process took a long time. There was probably two years between creating the proposal, writing the book, and then waiting for the book to be actually published and released. It’s a long time.

It’s not like self-publishing where you can write it today and release it tomorrow. That said, the impact of a commercially published book has dramatically opened numerous doors for me that I could not open before. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get those doors opened. The magic of this thing, this collection of paper and ideas with a hard cover on it really changes the way things go for an entrepreneur or a professional like me, a consultant, or an expert.

I want to start working on a second book, so again, that’s a new project. It’s a big project. It’s a big undertaking. Now, this is going to sound repetitive to everything else I’ve already said in this podcast, but I’ll treat that exactly the same as I will everything else. I know that the book proposal has certain components. There are nine key components. I think it’s nine. Nine key components of a book proposal, so I will give myself deadlines that I’m going to have one section of that proposal done. Then I’ll chunk that down, and I’ll say, again, “Tuesday I’m going to do this little part of that proposal.”

For example, one section of a book proposal is a competitive analysis where you find five to seven books that would be competitive in nature to the book you want to write — whether they’re new bestsellers, classics in the industry, or even a little bit different but you can create a tie-in. You need to find those books. You need to write about them about why they fit into your proposal and your competitive analysis.

I might decide that, on Tuesday, I’m going to find one of those books, and I’m going to write that section. That’s how I’ll do it. I’ll just chunk it along like that instead of trying to take the big amorphous blob of the book proposal and saying, “I know I need to do this. How am I ever going to get this done?” Then I never get anything done.

The idea of chunking it down, there’s no real system or magic to this. It’s just a matter of taking little parts of it, getting them done, and then putting them all together. It’s the same way I wrote the book. I used Scrivener, which is a really great tool for writing and keeping things organized. I knew exactly what needed to be written and where it went, and I could move things around. It’s the same thing. You just need to structure and chunk projects down to quick, actionable things that you can do. Any progress on those little action steps is going to move you closer to the end goal.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. Excellent. I love it. Okay, we’re going to end off, Noah, on something I’ve termed the ‘entrepreneurial gap.’ You just got to release your first commercially released book, which you said has opened up so many things, but something I found with us, as entrepreneurs, is that we are always looking forward. One month, three months, six months, a year, three years, five years, 10 years down the road, we set goals like writing our first commercially released book.

As soon as we hit that goal, or even sometimes before, we set two, or three, or five, or 10 more loftier goals into the future, and we’re always looking ahead. We never stop to look where it is we’ve come from and to pat ourselves on the back and just take it in. I would love, Noah, if you could right now stop, turn around, look at where you’ve come from, what you’ve done — not what you’re going to do, but what you’ve done — and tell me how you feel about that.

Replicating Your Previous Successes

Noah Fleming: This is a great question. It’s something that I think we don’t do enough of. I’ll give you a personal example and business example. One of the things my mentor taught me, which is something that’s hard to do, but read your own testimonials.

Very often, I’ll go back and I’ll look at testimonials that clients have given me on specific projects — projects that I didn’t think were such a big deal, projects that I was able to help with quickly and affordably, but projects that changed their lives, changed their companies, or changed their businesses — to see that they’ve written that or they’ve said that about you, I think that’s important to give yourself that pat on the back, give yourself that opportunity to go back and look at your successes.

Then the more tangible things like writing that book, I like to take time to sit there and just admire it and sort of smell the roses. When the books first arrived, too, I was mentioning this to somebody else, but I don’t open a book often and look at the fibers of the paper, smell it, and things like that, but I like to do that with my book. There’s a lot of hard work and sweat and tears that went into that.

The first time I ever ran a half marathon, 21 kilometers or whatever that is in miles, I had never run more than 10 kilometers. I had never run more than 10 kilometers before the day I was going to run 21 point whatever. I trained myself specifically that way.

I figured if I could run 10, then I know I can run 21 or whatever it is. I got to 10, and everything was good. Got to 12, everything was good. Got to 13. I don’t remember what happened after 13, but I know that I finished the race. I know that my body, my mind, and everything was able to get me from 13 to 21. When I look back at that now, it’s kind of a weird feeling, but I really don’t remember my thought process, the crowds, the people around the race between 13 to 21.

When I look back to the process of writing the book, I remember getting the deal. I remember the hard work going into writing the proposal. I remember starting the book, but there’s that gap in between, where somehow I got from point A to point B. I think sometimes we need to look back and just trust the process and trust that things do work out. If you really set your mind to doing something, you can do it.

You can look back at those successes, and you know that you can replicate them. I know the things that went into getting me to the finish line. I know that I was able to run 10 kilometers, and I know I can do that again. Does that make sense?

Jonny Nastor: It does. It really does. That’s a great metaphor for it. Normally, most people would run 30 kilometers over and over and over again so they could run the 21, but you’re just like, “I can run 10. Obviously, I can run 21.” I don’t know what the conversion is into miles either, but I know it’s a lot. I’ve ran seven kilometers once, and it’s a long ways.

Noah Fleming: I look at anything in life and I say, “If I’ve done it once, I can do it again.” I can replicate that success, and I can probably learn something from it. I say I don’t remember anything that happened in between writing the book, but obviously, I do. There was a lot of hours spent at a coffee shop. There was a lot of coffee drank, a lot of ideas that didn’t make it. So that’s the thing. You need to look back at your successes, look back at things that you did, things that you were good at, things that you did for others, and then say, “Okay, how do I replicate these again? How do I do them again?” Because you know you can do them.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. Exactly. Excellent. Okay, Noah. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you so much taking the time to stop by. Can you explicitly let the listener know where they can go find out more about you and where they can find this great book, Evergreen?

Noah Fleming: Sure. The best place to find me is obviously my website, which is NoahFleming.com. They can find me on Twitter, which is @NoahFleming, and they can also email me, Noah@NoahFleming.com. The best place to find Evergreen is really anywhere you like to buy your books. Whether it’s Kindle, Audible, hard cover, soft cover, whatever you want — there is no soft cover yet, so scratch that — but wherever you like to buy your books, you can find Evergreen. Thanks again.

Jonny Nastor: Excellent. I will link to your website, your book, and everything else that we mentioned on the show today on the show notes, so they’re easy for you to find. Make sure to pick up a copy of Noah’s book. Noah, thank you again. It was a lot of fun.

Noah Fleming: Hey, thanks, Jon.

Jonny Nastor: Noah, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. You probably know already. You’re out there listening, and you know how much I love talking to fellow Canadian entrepreneurs. I love talking to all entrepreneurs. I really do, but I didn’t even actually know Noah. Noah lives not even, well, he lives cities and cities over, but still, it’s pretty awesome. When we jump on the call and it starts like that, I’m always extra excited it’s a Canadian. I’ve got to support my own Canadian entrepreneurs, come on.

Noah, that was a lot of fun. That was a great, great conversation. He said a lot of smart things. I have this giant list actually. I have this giant, long list of things that I need to include in show notes for you, so you guys can find it easily.

I have this giant list of things he said, but there’s this one that’s circled and has this asterisk beside it. It’s that one thing. That one thing that Noah said. Did you get it? Did you hear it? Let’s do it. Let’s find the hack.

Noah Fleming: I really do believe it comes down to this concept of faith and belief in yourself. There’s no greater investment than investing in yourself. If you don’t believe it and you don’t believe in trusting yourself that you will follow through, you’ll take action, you’ll take whatever it is you’re spending money on and learn and continue to develop and grow, then if you go into it with that mentality, you won’t succeed. If you go into it, whatever you spend, even if it’s spending $10 on a book, that’s an investment in yourself, but you still have to take the time to read the book. Then you have to pick a few things and actually implement.

Jonny Nastor: And that’s the hack.

Noah, Noah, Noah, thank you so much. I absolutely fully, fully agree with you. Investing in yourself. It really does come down to having the faith and the belief in yourself that you can do this. I hope that you’ve listened to enough episodes now, and I hope you get what I’m trying to do. What I’m trying to convey to you through these interviews is not to brag and show how smart and brilliant all these people are — even though most of them are. They’ve done really cool things, but they’re really just normal people.

Entrepreneurs aren’t born. Entrepreneurs are literally people that decide to step up and create something out of nothing. They’re willing to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations, and this stuff doesn’t come innate within any of us. This is all things we have to develop and things that are super rewarding when we do it.

Noah goes on to explain how even buying a book for $10, that it’s a great thing. The investment of $10 isn’t even about the money at that point. It’s about the time. It’s probably going to take you four or five hours to read a book. That time is really, really well spent, but only if you then implement what you’ve learned. Invest that into yourself. Don’t just read one book and then determine that you have to do exactly that. That’s not it at all.

That’s why I try to pull out a hack each time. It’s not so that you can directly copy each of these hacks, but hopefully, part of one here and there is something that will work with you. Not everything works with everyone. Some other person who’s successful can’t tell you what they did and you can just do the same. You just have to pick these things, try different things, and see what does work, but you have to actually try it. You have to actually do it. You have to actually step up and do that.

I just love, Noah, that you say that and that you do agree with hiring consultants, buying a product that can teach you something, or going to school if that’s what it is. All those things need to be done, but only if you then do something with them. Thank you, Noah. So very, very well said.

All right. That’s the end of another episode of Hack the Entrepreneur. Again, I thank you so much for taking the time to stop by. It is always my pleasure. HacktheEntrepreneur.com is the website. Please stop by. Right beside my shaggy face is a place to put your email. Put your email in there, and I would love to be able to send you some of my best writing I’m doing once a week, every Sunday between morning and night.

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All right. Thank you again. I really, really do appreciate it.

Please, until next time, keep hacking the entrepreneur.