Kick Off an Irreversible, Powerful Change in Your Approach to Learning

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Collin Jewett  0:01

To quote myself here, I use a pattern of learning. I talk to people through curiosity, it starts there, it moves to creativity and memory and an application. That’s it, it’s oversimplified, but it’s a really good way to put a framework to learning that is really approachable for people because curiosity is simply it’s a sense of wonder, and intrigue that gives birth to all questions. And it arises from a natural desire to understand oneself, and the environment, and we can ignite that. So if you’re an adult, and you feel like you’re not very curious anymore, and that’s kind of died off, you can ignite that by exploring the unknown, that will happen naturally, as soon as you start to recognize that there’s things around that you that you don’t understand, your curiosity will essentially revitalize itself, it’ll come back to life. And once you have those questions, then you have a reason to be creative. Because creativity is all about combining ideas in new ways and generating answers to questions. And if you’ve never asked anything, there’s no reason to be creative. And so one of the best things you can possibly do if you want to start that process is simply start exploring the unknown again, and that can just be as simple as, go outside and start looking at things that you’ve seen a million times in a new way, like, actually look at them, don’t just pass by them and ignore them because you’ve seen them so much.  Look at them again because I promise you, there are a million different details that you didn’t see before because you were just selling it out. Look at the bush next to your house, look at the tree, look at the bird, look at the squirrel eating an acorn. Whatever it takes, all of a sudden the unknown will open up again, the curiosity will come back, and that will ignite your creativity and then there’s no stopping you at that point.

 

Richard Matthews  1:49  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored, the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

 

Richard Matthews  2:45  

Welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews, and today I have live on the line, Collin Jewett. Collin, are you there?

 

Collin Jewett  2:53  

I’m here. What’s up, Richard?

 

Richard Matthews  2:55  

Awesome. I’m glad to have you here. I know we were talking before we got on the show. You said you were coming in from Colorado. Is it still warm out there? When does winter hit for you guys?

 

Collin Jewett  3:06  

That’s a good question. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It’s been pretty hot, it’s been in the 90s. And then this past week, it’s finally starting to settle down. But if last year is an indicator, then we could have a snowstorm next week or we could have warm weather through December. So you never know.

 

Richard Matthews  3:28  

Gotta love Colorado in the mountains, I love the Rockies. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada in California and downtowns are my favorite. If it wasn’t for them not having the ocean, I might live there forever. But the ocean and the mountains compete for me. We’re in Florida by the ocean right now. 

 

Collin Jewett  3:48  

Okay, that’s awesome. 

 

Richard Matthews  3:51  

Awesome. So I want to do a quick introduction for our audience who may not know who you are. So you are the founder of Curiosity Jump. And you specialize in coaching teaching people how to use their brain, how to learn essentially, how to how to hack the learning systems of your brain. Is that correct?

 

Collin Jewett  4:09  

Yeah, exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  4:11  

Awesome. So what I want to do just to start off with is why don’t you tell me what your business is about? Who do you serve? What do you do for them? Essentially, how do you earn income? What is it that you do?

 

Collin Jewett  4:24  

Sure. I started Curiosity Jump a couple of years ago, and I work very closely with superhuman Academy, which is a brand it’s been around a little bit longer. They specialize in courses, so they have online asynchronous courses, covering everything from accelerated learning and memory training, to fitness and biohacking. It’s the entrepreneur’s super toolkit or people who are really up on self-improvement and want the latest stuff so that’s what Superhuman Academy has been doing for a long time. That’s what Jonathan Levy, some people might be familiar with his podcast, the superhuman Academy podcast was a pretty big one till he ended it not too long ago, Episode 300. But personally at CuriosityJump, what I do is add that more personal element when it comes to improving your productivity, or especially accelerating the learning process and partnering more successfully with your brain. And that can look like a lot of different things. So I’ve worked with a huge range of people, everyone, from high schoolers to college professors, to nuclear engineers, pilots, psychologists just like a completely broad crazy range of people, which is super fun. Because everybody can really benefit from learning how their brain works, not just how the human brain works, but I really focus on how does your brain work? What’s special about it? How can you leverage the unique attributes of your brain and really embrace your superpowers in the theme of the show?

 

Richard Matthews  6:04  

Yeah, that’s really cool. It was fairly recently in my life that I started discovering how my brain works. And then really learning to lean into those strengths. And also learning that the way that my brain works didn’t make me less than if that makes sense. It gave me like you said a second ago superpowers. I remember thinking because the way I think, the way I learn, the way I do things doesn’t fit in with traditional methods that are taught and used in schools and whatnot that I was less than. And I struggled with that for a long time, even though I was successful on my own. I remember thinking like, I’m successful, despite all of that. And it’s because I have the hard work ethic, or whatever it is, and you realize it’s like, no, it’s not that there’s one right way to do things or learn things just because you do it differently doesn’t make it wrong.

 

Collin Jewett  6:58  

Yeah. That’s so true. I’m glad that we’re on the same page about that. That’s a really good insight.

 

Richard Matthews  7:06  

Yeah, awesome. So I want to start off with your origin story. So every good comic hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today, were you born an entrepreneur, or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into teaching people how to use their own minds? Or did you start in a job and eventually make that flip as an entrepreneur, basically, I wanna know where you came from.

 

Collin Jewett  7:27  

Yeah, I love the superhero spin on all this stuff, it’s great. So my origin story is that I was born into an entrepreneurial family, my dad is an entrepreneur, he started his company, I think, at the age of 22 or 23, and never looked back. So that was computer programming, back when it was first becoming a thing that individuals could do. And he was successful with that. So that was really cool. And he lived at home and worked from home. So I grew up with that as being, I always saw that as kind of an option, like that was a normal thing. And it took me a while to realize that there weren’t that many people whose parents worked from home on their computers and worked when they wanted to. So that was cool and that was some of my origins, I guess. And nowadays, a lot of my family has drifted into entrepreneurship, for some reason or another. My brother is a professional artist. And my sister does wedding invitations and calligraphy and watercolor painting. So she’s an artist, too. I’m the technical one of the bunch. So I actually went in a more traditional direction. I went to engineering school at Purdue and got an engineering degree. And then I worked as an engineer for 11 whole months before. I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go off on my own. So that’s like, a really big picture. I guess you could say I was born with some entrepreneurial spirit and some blood in there. But I think it wasn’t until you actually had a nine to five day. 

 

Richard Matthews  9:07  

You are unemployable as they say.

 

Collin Jewett  9:08  

Yeah, that’s actually definitely true. When I quit my engineering job, I asked my boss, “ Do you think I could be a good employee for anybody? And he said I don’t know. So I definitely get that. And it wasn’t that I was bad at my job or anything like that. I think I met expectations in a lot of ways and exceeded them sometimes. But it was just clear that I didn’t have a passion for that. And I didn’t like being cooped up, and I wanted to just kind of try new things. And the structure I was on just didn’t really afford me the opportunity.

 

Richard Matthews  9:49  

I know one time after I started my business that I shut it all down to get a job at a corporate spot. I did it as a business exercise. And I treated it like a business so I used my salary to hire employees that worked for me. And I remember my boss at one time was like, how do you get 10 times the amount of work done of anyone else that I’ve ever hired? And it was because I don’t treat my job as an employee and I treated it like a business owner. I can’t work that way. But I’ve also managed to work from home and a whole bunch of other things. So it still felt like I was running a business. And, if I’m going to have a job, it has to be very specific, like structure because I can’t really do the whole employment thing, either. But I did want to just sort of touch a little bit, on the whole, being raised in an entrepreneurial family. I know, I wasn’t, I was raised. My parents were employees still are and my dad to this day, he’s like, I think you’re crazy. But I’m proud of you, that kind of thing. We’ve reached that stage, we went through 10 years of just thinking I was crazy to now it’s like, you’re still crazy, but I’m proud of you, at least I don’t know what to do. And I know my son, he’s gonna turn 12 in a couple of weeks. And I’ve been home every day for his entire life. And it was not even just like, maybe six months ago that he was like, so I’ve realized, you’re home all the time and that’s not normal. He’s like, oh, no, I want to know what it is that you’re doing because none of my other friend’s dads are at home all the time like you are. And we just started having a discussion and he is starting to get interested in entrepreneurship and business itself. He listened to Robert Kiyosaki.

 

Collin Jewett  11:38  

Oh good for him. 

 

Richard Matthews  11:40  

Yeah, he just started listening to The Art of the Deal by Trump and some other things, he’s listening to heavy books for a kid who’s not even 12 yet. And I’m just curious, do you get some of that education growing up in a house full of entrepreneurs yourself?

 

Collin Jewett  11:59  

Yeah, I think so. And maybe it was similar to your son prior to a few weeks ago, or I think I was subconsciously being brainwashed a little bit without realizing it. My dad never actively pushed me towards entrepreneurship, he never really talked about it. I think it was just the fact that I always saw it as an option to work from home because that’s what I grew up experiencing. And to me, I was never really locked in the mindset that working means working for somebody else, nine to five and an office, I just didn’t have that perception growing up. And so I think once I did get into a role like that, very quickly, I was kinda like, you know what, I don’t really like doing this. And I know other options. So I’m going to seek them out. And I think I’d only been at my engineering job for, I want to say four months before I started my company. And then I worked on it on the side for another seven months or so before I took it full time. So it didn’t take long. And it was just like, I think a lot of people fall into that position where they’re not satisfied with their work. And they don’t like what they’re doing. They just don’t see them as being other options. And they’re not aware of them. And so they don’t ask the right questions to make that jump.

 

Richard Matthews  13:27  

Yeah. So I think that actually is a good lead to my next question, which is because I think asking the right questions is the kind of superpower but every iconic hero has a superpower whether that’s a fancy flying suit me by genius intellect, or the ability to call out thunder from the sky, or super strength. In the real real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that were born with or you developed over time, that really helped you to slay the villains in your customers and your client’s life and come on top of their own journey. And the way I like to frame it for my guests. If you look at all the skills that you’ve developed over the course of your life and your career, there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together. And that common thread is where your superpower lies. So with that sort of framing what do you think your superpower is in your business?

 

Collin Jewett  14:13  

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. I’m really thankful I had a business mentor, who walked me through that process and helped me realize how important it was to recognize your unique abilities. That’s how Dan Sullivan of strategic coach would phrase it. I have a kind of different take on it now than I did back then. But at the time, what I come up with and I’ve come to understand this deeper and I would encourage anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur, think about this, like before you do anything, maybe start jumping into this and especially asking other people what they think your superpowers are because they will often have a unique perspective. That is hard to get on your own. But I’ve articulated my unique ability or my superpower, as being able to identify and generate opportunities or generating ideas for opportunities rather, figuring out how and articulating how to capitalize on those opportunities and empowering teams and individuals to grow and perform at higher levels. It sounded like I was reading that because I had that written down. And I break down each of those pieces. I actually have like, 10 different components of that. But I’ve identified, if anyone’s wondering, how to go through this process, what I did. I actually sent out a survey and if your listeners might be interested, I can even share the survey I sent out if they wanted to copy and paste it to other people. But I just sent a survey and I asked.

 

Richard Matthews  15:42  

I think I have a version of that. 

 

Collin Jewett  15:45  

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  15:45  

When I was going through that process, I had a business friend like a mentor coach of mine. That was, knowing what your superpower is, you could call it your one thing. Knowing what your one thing is the most important thing you’ll do in business. She said, If you don’t know what it is, ask the people that you work with, your employees, your clients, your best friend, your wife, ask them what your superpower is, they’ll all word it a little bit differently. But you’ll see that common thread that we were talking about. And that common thread is real notice is everyone touched on that one thing, that’s where you find your superpowers.

 

Collin Jewett  16:18  

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And that’s exactly what I did. I sent the survey out to people who knew me from all different parts of my life. So I sent it to people who only knew me when I was a kid, people who knew me in grade school, people who knew me only in college, my employer who said he didn’t know if I would be a good employee, for anybody else, my parents, I just kind of sent it to everybody. And it was really insightful and fascinating to see those common threads, people who had known me and all these different times of life. And everything I just said, and all the 10 pieces that I wrote down all came from other people. It wasn’t stuff that I just made up or pulled out that I thought of, and those 10 components that came to me, I got a growth mindset, rapid ideation, taking instant action, and following through those are two, super learning, which is something I’ve developed over the past few years learning really fast. Building Systems, connecting to people deeply and quickly, integrating, welcoming people into new places, and transferring knowledge. So teaching and coaching. So those were the 10 different components that I pulled out from other people’s opinions and perspectives.

 

Richard Matthews  17:31  

That’s fascinating, I know when I went through that process, one of the things that came back for me that was the common thread was the way that I see the world, I see the world differently than most people do. Most people see the surface of things, I see the systems that build things. And to the point, like, I don’t enjoy a movie the same way that other people are enjoying movies, other people are like they watched the movie. I’m like, I watched the movie and thinking about what cameras they’re using, and the lenses, and I count the amount of time between the cuts and what types of cuts they’re using, how long the actors would have prepared for certain things. And I’ll count the lights in the scene because that’s just how my head works if I look at the systems behind what’s in front of me. And it took a long time to realize that it wasn’t crazy. But it’s where my superpower comes from where I can see the systems and then help people develop systems. And you talk about Super learning, one of the skills that come out of that is that because I can see the systems behind how things are done, I can pick up skills really quickly. And I thought for a long time that I had no superpower because I had the ability to pick up skills so quickly. I was like, well, I’m good at this and good at that, I’m good at a lot of things, but I’m not amazing at anything. Turns out the thing that I’m amazing at is systems, It’s being able to see the systems.

 

Collin Jewett  19:06  

Yeah, I definitely think we have some commonalities there. I don’t think when I watch a movie, I’m not thinking about the cameras and the lighting.

 

Richard Matthews  19:15  

That’s because I’m a photographer, that’s just a hobby of mine.

 

Collin Jewett  19:18  

Yeah, there you go, for sure. But I think the perspective I’d say I love to write and Creative Writing is a big thing in my life. And when I’m watching something like that, or observing something like that, I’m always thinking about the logical rules behind it, like what are the rules of this universe that they’ve established? And where are they breaking them? And where are they following them? And when are characters making decisions that are not really in line with their character? When are they kind of breaking character and making something more convenient for the story? So yeah, it’s kind of the same thing as what’s going on behind the scenes.

 

Richard Matthews  19:54  

Does it give you an irritating ability to guess what’s going to happen next because it does for me, and it bothers my wife, she doesn’t allow me to talk to her while movies are happening because we always know what’s gonna happen.

 

Collin Jewett  20:07  

Oh absolutely, it’s exactly the same. My wife hates it when I talk about movies at all. I just ruin everything.

 

Richard Matthews  20:15  

Yeah, my wife is like, you just ruined it all. Just talk to me when the movie is done. And you can tell me all your insights afterward. If you haven’t watched it yet, the movie called Knives Out, came out last year. There’s a line in that movie where the detective says I just follow the arc of the story, and it inevitably ends up the truth. And I was like when he said that, I turned to my wife. And I was like, that, right there, that’s how I always know what’s happening next, because you just follow the story. And if you know how stories are written and how the systems for a story work, you know what’s gonna happen later.

 

Collin Jewett  20:56  

Yeah, that’s exactly true. And one thing that I thought of, as you were sharing that is kind of winding backward a little bit, is this idea that all complex things are made up of simple things. And that’s a realization I had a long time ago that every complex system can be broken down into simple components. Something I’ve realized more recently, though, to kind of add to that idea that’s been really valuable to me, is that all simple things are infinitely complex. So it’s this weird paradox of every complex thing that can be broken down into these smaller pieces, that appears simple on the surface. And that can be really helpful to think that way and break things down into smaller pieces. But then the next level is also investigating the smaller pieces and noticing the complexities of those things. And I think, for me, that’s been a really special part of this learning journey, like going back to things I’ve deconstructed before, and then taking a deeper look. Because I just assumed it’s like, alright, I’ve broken it down, now it’s in simple pieces, cool, I’ve got it figured out and move on. And then going back and looking at the simple pieces, and realizing they weren’t as simple as I thought. So being able to think from both of those perspectives is super valuable. 

 

Richard Matthews  22:08  

One of the things that I tell people is that there’s nothing more complex than simplicity. Because it’s a really complicated idea to make something simple. And I have a hard time doing that sometimes with stories. I tend to be wordy, and learning how to tell a story as brief as possible it’s a skill unto itself. And there’s so much that goes into any thought, if you’re working on building systems or anything, if you’re trying to make something simple, it’s almost the hardest thing to do. Which is connected to your paradox.

 

Collin Jewett  22:49  

Yeah, it is strange. And the people who helped me with marketing, that’s pretty much what they do. I write something that’s super wordy and complicated like this is never gonna sell anything. Nobody wants to read this, it’s too complicated. And they get rid of like 90% of it, like this is good and like wow, that’s amazing that you could do that and cut it down like that. I just couldn’t do it.

 

Richard Matthews  23:12  

Yeah, you have to get right to the heart of what it is that people want. I had that experience a couple of weeks ago with a guest on this podcast and I was like, I’m struggling with this thing in my business, we have a candle company and I was like, from a copywriting perspective you always have to write about features, advantages and benefits of your products. So the feature is the car comes equipped with an airbag, the advantages it deploys on impact to cushion your blow and the benefits are that most people forget what copywriting is that it saves your life. I was like, I know what the features and the advantages of our candles are, features are, they’re made of forest glass, they’re refillable, reusable, eco friendly and the advantages you light them and they make light for your room and all those things. They’re smokeless and odorless. I’m like, I don’t know what to save your life for a candle. Like I don’t know how to write that. And she’s been with QVC and the home shopping network for 30 years. And she was like, here you go, you’re ready. And I was like, yeah, and she was like, candles bring light to moments that matter and my head exploded.

 

Collin Jewett  24:19  

That’s it, that’s the kind of help I need too, it’s the same boat.

 

Richard Matthews  24:24  

Yep. So I always need to learn how to make things simple. And when you hit that. you know when you’ve hit those things, I don’t know, it’s a weird sensation when you’re talking about copywriting or when you’re looking at a system you’ve developed or you’re helping someone when you’ve hit that, that’s it, that’s the simple thing that I needed. It feels magical.

 

Collin Jewett  24:48  

Yeah, I wish I had those feelings more often. Usually, I need somebody else to help me get that last step. But that also reminded me of something related to superpowers, and what you were just talking about is that oftentimes, maybe all the time, I don’t know if I’ll go that far. But I think most of the time, what you’re really good at or your superpowers and your greatest weakness are just flip sides of the exact same coin. And that’s a super valuable realization because most people are really good at identifying what they’re bad at. And they’re not as good at identifying what they’re good at. But if you can identify what you’re bad at, you can identify what you’re good at. It’s the exact same thing. How is that thing that you’re terrible at? How is that actually your superpower? Because if you see it from a different perspective, that’s exactly what it is.

 

Richard Matthews  25:41  

Yeah, which is a great lead to my next question about your fatal flaw, because I say the flip side of your superpower is your fatal flaw. And every Superman has its kryptonite. And wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. So you probably have a flaw, something that’s held you back from growing something you struggled with. I struggled with a couple of things for a long time. And to your point, my superpower is building systems. And the flip side of that is perfectionism. I want to make every little piece of the system exactly perfect. And the problem with that is that you’ve never actually shipped anything. My wife says, getting all the lights on the screen to be just right. And then never taking anything to market, which is a really low standard, because you’re not actually doing anything. I had to flip that script in my own head and realize that, hey, perfection is a low standard, a high standard is shipped with a good enough product that does what it says it’s gonna do. One of the other ones, I struggled for a long time with a lack of self-care. And that sort of manifested itself in having a poor relationship with buying time management and having a poor relationship with my clients, letting them walk all over me and that kind of stuff. So I think more importantly, what the flaw is and what you’ve struggled with is how have you worked to overcome it so that you can continue to grow your business and do what you do?

 

Collin Jewett  27:00  

Yeah, it’s a great question. In terms of fatal flaws, I would say it’s different from yours. I would say, I’m not a perfectionist. I’ve worked with a lot of people who say they’re perfectionists, and we work through that. And I can help them because I’m on the flip side of that because I love ideation, I love coming up with ideas. But for me, once I’ve created an idea, and I’ve kind of fleshed it out, I feel like I understand it well. I kind of lost interest. And this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. But I hate maintenance, I cannot stand maintenance. Once I have something and I feel like I’ve kind of figured it out. And I’ve seen the different angles of it, I want to push it off, I want somebody else to take it over. And I never want to see it again. And that can be a real negative sometimes because there are a lot of things you build in order for them to be really successful, you need to be willing to put in the extra time to maintain it. Or at least know who to go to and who to pass that off to. And sometimes I don’t even bother figuring out, alright, he’s gonna take this over. I’m just like, no, I’m done with it. I’m moving on. I figured it out, and that’s it. So that would be my fatal flaw.

 

Richard Matthews  28:20  

I have a similar issue. I never thought about that as my fatal flaw. But I do that frequently. Mostly because I’ve already learned how to overcome that. But in my business, at least, I know I do this all the time. Like, once I figured it out, I just don’t care anymore. Like I figured out the system for a video game. And I’m like, I know how to do it, I’ll quit a game halfway through, cuz I’m like, I figured out the systems, I’ve got it, it’s done, now it’s boring. And as soon as I hit that point where there’s nothing left to figure out, I don’t care anymore. And in my business, I’ve had to work on knowing where that point is, and build myself a system of knowing how to hire people and put them in place to keep things going that need to go. But I know in my personal life, I have the same problem with things like, I hate spending money on maintenance, not because I should, but it just really bothers me when I’m like, I bought tires already, why do I have to buy them again? Or why does the elastic wear out on my underwear? I went shopping for underwear 10 years ago, I never need to do it again. I mean, it’s a tongue in cheek way of taking that to the extreme. But that’s how I sort of feel about a lot of those things in my head, like, I already figured that out. I don’t want to have to do it again. I do that a lot in my own personal life and I have to remember, sometimes maintenance as you were talking about a minute ago, it’s a really important part of keeping life going. What do they call it? There’s a fancy word for it. A scientific word that means homeostasis. There we go, that’s what I was looking for, maintaining homeostasis, there’s an effort that has to go into that. And the fact that you have to put effort into homeostasis bothers me personally.

 

Collin Jewett  30:13  

Yeah, I’m totally on the same page there. And I’d say you hit on one of the key solutions there and it’s that, who not how the mentality of identifying people who actually do like that and are really good at it. And then putting them in places where they can exercise their superpower, which is the opposite of yours. Something else that I’ve figured out because I think that’s the number one solution, if you can do that, definitely pass it to somebody else whose superpower lines up with that. I think there are other different situations in which that’s not really an option. Or when that doesn’t seem like a healthy approach. And when it’s something you personally need to continue to pay attention to. Something that’s worked really well, for me, it’s kind of going back to that idea that all simple things are infinitely complex. The other solution, that the thing that you need to maintain is something that you should work on personally. So a couple of examples of this. This is really all about the idea of how do you make something that’s boring to you interesting again. And so an example would be like if you’re playing a game with your kids, and they want to play the same game over and over and over again because they’re still figuring it out. And obviously, you figured it out like 30 years ago. So it stops being interesting to you, going back to that idea of first, all complex things, or combination of simple things. So usually, that’s the stage I get to and then I lose interest because I figure out all the simple components, I figure out how it works, I figure out the optimal strategy, and then it’s over, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about winning, I just care about figuring it out, and then it’s over. But then the flip side of that is then going back to that thing and saying, okay, what are the simple components that are broken down into? And where’s the complexity within those? What’s that infinite complexity? How can I dig into this tiny detail? And what’s the world behind that? And for me something that’s really been helpful. And I think this is to talk about learning, this is a super valuable approach to learning that challenges your assumptions and the way that you’ve seen the world at a very, very basic level. So literally go outside and walk around. Like most people, when they go out and they walk in a loop or they walk in a trail, they’ve walked a bunch of times before they drive, if you commute, you’ve driven the same route over and over and over again, to the point where your brain completely ignores everything, it’s completely on autopilot, all that stuff gets tuned out, which is valuable. But for the sake of learning, go back and look at those things you usually ignore. So go on a walk and look at the bush that’s right by your house, and stare at it, get deeper, tear a leaf apart, and look inside of it. It’s what kids do when they’re first learning is they observe everything on these really deep levels. They pick up a rock and they stare at it for 15 minutes. Like what are you looking at? There’s nothing there. But the truth is there’s infinite complexity there. And you’ve just tuned it out of convenience over time. Once you feel like you’ve figured it out, you’ve left it but the truth is there’s an infinite rabbit hole, you could go down with anything. And it’s also useful to think that every topic is interesting to somebody. Like, tax law, for example, is something that I never had any interest in until I became a business owner. And then all of a sudden, it was relevant to me. And all of a sudden it became super interesting. So think about, if you find something boring, or you don’t want to work on it, figure out who is this interesting for? And why is it interesting for them? And how can I adopt that mentality? How can I become that person? As long as I need to be.

 

Richard Matthews  34:02  

An identity shift? So here’s my first question. Do you have kids? 

 

Collin Jewett  34:06  

Not yet.

 

Richard Matthews  34:09  

I have four of them. So when you talk about playing games with your kids that you find infinitely boring, that’s a regular occurrence in my life. And just to sort of complete that thought for you. The way that I do it, that whole idea of I figured out the system that I know how it works is I have to shift out of I’m playing this game with my kids to I create my own game for myself. And the game for myself is how do I take what I know about this game and impart it to my children? So how do I teach them the systems that I know? Because that’s a really hard thing to do. And it helps keep me engaged with them. It also forces me to think on their level and put it down into words that they understand. So I think there are multiple exercises in there that really helped. One, keep me engaged and actually play with my kids. But also, it’s helpful for them. And it’s also helpful in working that muscle of learning how people learn, and how you can help them see the systems and all that kind of stuff. So I think there’s a lot of good benefits to that. So I really liked that thought that you heard about, how do you keep it interesting when you’re playing with your kids and thinking about it’s almost the same thing that I do in my business on a separate level is, okay, once I’ve reached the point where it’s boring to me is I have to start thinking about how can I take what I know about this, and turn it into steps that anyone could do in my business? So it’s the same sort of process of taking whatever I think I figured out and turning it into something that someone else can accomplish without my brain. They don’t need to have my ability to think and decipher things. They just need to be able to do the things.

 

Collin Jewett  35:54  

Yeah, absolutely. And if you do have kids, the reason that came to me, first of all, education is something I’m super passionate about. If you listen to me on other podcasts, sometimes I’m just ranting about education.

 

Richard Matthews  36:09  

We can talk about education in just a minute because we’re going to talk about your common enemy.

 

Collin Jewett  36:15  

Oh, awesome. I’d love to do that. So recently, I had the opportunity, my sister has three kids, my nephew, and my two nieces. And we got to visit them recently. They live in Indiana. So it’s pretty far away. But we met up in Michigan, I got to spend some time with them. And I don’t think my sister or husband will listen to this. I think I can get away with this. But the whole time I was there. I was kind of running these mini experiments on their kids.

 

Richard Matthews  36:43  

I tell people all the time, my kids are experiments I run on, that’s all I do is I run social experiments with my children.

 

Collin Jewett  36:50  

Yeah. And it was super fun. Because for me, I was playing silly games. Which obviously,  there’s really no skill involved at this point. It was kind of I know how the games work. I know how to win this. There’s not a challenge to that. But it was going to the next level of thinking about how their brain works? And what’s the process of discovery for them learning how this works. And observing that because that is a great way to get insight into how you learned behind the scenes you’ve just forgotten about because you’ve done it for so long. And then even recognizing flaws in your learning or ways that you’ve stopped doing something that’s really beneficial is to watch a kid do it. Like, oh, wow, I can actually learn from the way that they learned this process. And so like one of the things that I did, this was kind of mean, but I don’t think it’s perceived as mean. We were at this restaurant, we’re sitting there where there’s nothing to do. And there was a checkered tablecloth, like red and white checkers on the table. And my nephew sitting there kind of twiddling his thumbs doesn’t know what to do, kind of getting antsy. And so I got the salt and pepper shaker and I put the pepper on one of the white squares. And I put the salt on one of the red squares. And I told him I explained, I was like, you can only move the salt diagonally. First of all, he didn’t know what diagonal meant. So I had to explain that it’s like, okay, so you can’t move it side to side, you can’t move it up or down, you can only move it in this slanky direction. So he got that he picked up on that really quickly. I was like, okay, so you can only move the salt shaker diagonally, which means it can only go on the red squares, essentially, it can only move diagonally and red squares. So you have to get it into the square with a pepper shaker which was on a white square, which of course is impossible, but he didn’t know that. So I was trying to see how quickly he’s going to recognize this impossible, what process is he going to go through to figure this out. It’s a really fun game, go ahead and try it. And so it was super cool to watch because he didn’t immediately recognize it’s impossible, he’s very young. And so he went through the process of moving it. He moved it on one channel diagonally. And he got to a spot where he was stuck. And he couldn’t get it there. So he went back to the starting point. And he moved like a different path. And he still couldn’t get it there. And he went out from every angle before kind of like looking at me and squinting his eyes. And I could just see the wheels turning in his head as he was figuring it out. And it was so fun to watch that process. They’re like, that’s what we do all the time. But we don’t recognize it. And oftentimes, I think one of the biggest mistakes adults make in their learning is they do that first step where he did that pattern the first time and he hit a wall and then they stop there. And you never actually come to the conclusion or realization whether it’s possible or not to do what you want to do, because he didn’t try the alternatives. So his pattern was I’m going to just keep trying everything until I get out of options. As adults that often we get into this dichotomous thinking of either, it works or it doesn’t. And once I’ve seen that it doesn’t work one way it just doesn’t work. And that’s it and we stop there.

 

Richard Matthews  39:47  

So I have a funny story that goes along with not realizing that you’ve already learned how to do a process and then having to relearn how to do it so you can teach your kids. So this is just a fair warning when you do have children yourself. My first child was a boy, teaching him to pee super easy and stand in front of the toilet point name shoot, super easy. And I have three daughters. The first daughter, potty training, my wife is handling potty training all the way up until one day she’s like, hey, I’m busy in the kitchen or something. Can you take her to the bathroom? And I was like, Sure, no problem, I’m a dad, I’ve got this, I already trained one kid how to go to the potty, how different could it be with a girl? So I took her and I sat her on the toilet. And then I knelt down in front of her, and went through the whole going potty process and then promptly got peed on in the face. Which I was unaware was a possibility with girls. Because I thought it just came out bottom, little did I know. And I came out to my wife with pee drenched down on my face. And I was like, what did you not tell me about putting her on the toilet? Because obviously, I’ve done something wrong. And she looks at me and she laughs and she was like, I don’t know, she said her down. What did you do? I was like, how did you set her down? She was like, I sat her down. And she had to go through the process in her head. Because she’s been peeing for longer than she can remember how to pee. Like since before memory. Because you learn that skill before you actually have memories that you can pick up, you pick up memories, four or five, but you potty train it like one and a half, two. And she’s like, I don’t know. And she had to go through the process herself of like, you actually have to as a female, you have to rotate your hips forward. And when she puts her daughters on the toilet, she does that for them automatically. It’s just part of her process wasn’t part of my process, because I don’t have to do that. She had to go through that process of relearning how you’ve learned something so that she could teach it to her children. Anyways, that’s a funny story to go along with that skill.

 

Collin Jewett  41:55  

That’s absolutely true. And something I’ve really realized, more recently about learning, which I’m always super excited about because I talk about learning constantly. That’s what I work with people on. And I’m always picking up new things about learning. So that’s super fun for me. And one of the things I realized recently is the importance of learning as a personal journey, which is something I knew, but actually articulating that and understanding why that’s important. I think again, about my nephew in the salt shaker in the pepper shaker, I could have just told him right off the bat, hey, this is impossible, you can’t do this, cool. He probably wouldn’t have learned anything from that. And maybe what he did learn was kind of pointless, but that wouldn’t have been a learning experience. And I realized along the way, as I’ve been working with people that learning is not a fact finding exercise. That’s not what learning is. Learning is experience, it’s going on a personal journey of discovery. And if you don’t go on that personal journey of discovery, you haven’t really learned something. So just having somebody tell you, hey, this is impossible. You didn’t figure it out for yourself. And so you don’t really understand why it’s impossible, you haven’t gone through that process. And so your understanding is very shallow. But my nephew, he figured something out, because he went on his own personal journey of watching that happen and playing out the different scenarios and figure it out, through that process in a way that he couldn’t have, if I had just told him, hey, this is the thing that’s impossible, so don’t bother.

 

Richard Matthews  43:30  

I had a discussion with my son about that the other day. And what I tell people is the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. Head knowledge is something that you know, if someone tells you that the stove is hot, if you put your hand on it, you’ll burn your hand, you know that up here. But until you’ve touched it, you burned your hand, you don’t have the heart knowledge. And as soon as you burn your hand on it, then you know, you really know. And the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge is that heart knowledge changes you, physically changes who you are as a person and it rewires your brain and it makes you into a new person. Head knowledge doesn’t do that, it doesn’t have that power. And it’s an interesting thing. Probably the most potent things that I’ve ever experienced are two things. One, the first time that I got married and two the first time I held my child in my hands when you realize that sometimes that heart of knowledge is when you said I do the first time and you realize that, hey, I’m responsible for this person. That changes who you are. And every time that you run into that, when you run into the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge, it has that kind of impact on your character. So anyway, that’s how I’ve talked about that. That same idea.

 

Collin Jewett  44:56  

Yeah, totally on the same page there, and one practical takeaway from that, especially for entrepreneurs, is that when you are seeking out information, you need to think about what you’re doing, don’t just, like, here are the facts I need to gain. Think about, what is the personal journey of discovery that you’re going on. And I run into this all the time, because I lead courses. I recently led a four week cohort based course, it was all live. And I remember as I was marketing for that, and as I was reaching out to people, it was not just one instance, there’s multiple times when people asked me, couldn’t I just look all this stuff up on the internet? Which just made me laugh, it’s like, okay, I’m probably not going to get through to this person, I don’t think they really get it. Because it’s like, yeah, maybe you could look up some things, you could look up just about anything on the internet, if you know what to look for. But so much of learning is figuring out the right questions to ask. And you can’t look that up, you can’t go on Google and type in like, what questions should I be asking to reach the next step in my life? Like Google can’t tell you that? That’s a question that only you can answer. And you’re never going to ask that question until you run into something that forces you to ask it, some real-world experience. And when you approach courses, if you have a backlog of online courses, so many people who buy courses, especially entrepreneurs, you get all these courses, maybe you start them, maybe not, but they just sit there and they collect dust, and you ever really learned anything from them. And I think a big part of that is seeing those things, as I’ve got this kind of repository of knowledge. I’ve got these facts, I can jump into it when I want to. And it’s kind of like that look-up mentality, I can look up the information. But they’re never asking themselves, what questions should I be asking right now? Or the questions I need to answer? Because that’s not going to happen until you’ve run into a wall. And one thing, one thing I like to say is getting stuck is a choice. And the reason I say that is because you get stuck, not when you run out of answers. But when you stop asking questions and asking questions is a choice. So I’m always telling people to ask relentlessly. Ask relentlessly just keep asking questions. And you’ll never really get stuck if you do that. 

 

Richard Matthews  47:17  

Yeah, I’m not sure why. But it reminds me of, we travel full time, which my audience would know because we talked about it constantly. But when you travel full time, everything breaks all the time. It doesn’t matter what it is, it will break. And what I’ve noticed is the more I learn about all of these things, the less stuck you feel. And so every time a system breaks, and you’re like, I don’t know anything about that system, but you have to get it like okay, how does it work? What does it do? How do I touch it? And where can I get to the pieces of it, the more you get into each of the systems that break down. You can make that choice, either I can be stuck, like when you’re traveling you’re legitimately stuck, I can’t move until we fix those things. And it’s easy sometimes to just be like, I’m going to hire someone to fix it. But I’ve noticed that as an entrepreneur who makes good money, I can afford to hire people to fix it. But I’ve also found that learning how to work on the systems makes me feel freer because they don’t make me stuck anymore. If that makes sense. So when something breaks out, I’m like, oh, I know how that works, I know how to fix it. I know what’s going on next. So anyway, I think there’s a lot of power to that.

 

Collin Jewett  48:45  

Yeah, and I think you were mentioning it was a common enemy is that what he called it?

 

Richard Matthews  48:51  

Yeah, the common enemy. So I want to talk a little bit about your common enemy. Every superhero has what I call arch nemesis, it’s the thing that you constantly have to fight against in your world. In the world of business takes on a lot of forms, but I like to put it in the context of your clients. And it’s the thing that you constantly have to fight to overcome so that you can actually help them get the results that they came to you for in the first place. If you had your magic wand and you could just bop every client on the head the moment you had their first interaction with you. What is that common enemy that you have to deal with?

 

Collin Jewett  49:26  

Yeah, there are probably a couple but I think they kind of boiled down to the same thing. And it’s what we were just talking about. It’s being primed to see problems in terms of information that you need to obtain or thinking in terms of there is an answer. And I just need somebody to tell it to me. And once they tell me the answer, I will be able to move on or my problem will be solved. And I think that kind of mentality is absolutely detrimental to learning, and it holds people back like crazy. And so that’s one of my big beats with traditional education, is it really prime’s people to think that way. You just get trained to think, alright, there are answers for this test, I need to figure out what the answer is like, there is an answer, there’s an answer key. There’s an answer key somewhere, and they’re gonna compare my answers to the answers on the answer key and if it’s right, then I get points and if it’s not right, then I don’t get points. And I fail. And we really get primed throughout education, if you go to most traditional schools, and it is Teacher dependent. I mean, some teachers are really good at training people to seek out and really go on a learning journey. But just overall, I think the way that it’s structured, often prime’s people to think this way. And I run into this with my clients all the time, it’s one of those first things, it’s a really hard barrier, to push through and break out of that thinking. And instead of thinking there is actually an infinite number of answers, there’s an infinite number of ways you could solve any problem. And what you’re really after is, what is your solution? What is your unique solution to your unique scenario, and the only way you can figure that out in an effective way that’s sustainable and meaningful, is by going on personal learning, journey, and self experimenting. And that’s another thing you really don’t learn to do effectively in school, at least I think most people do not learn to do experiments on themselves and take that scientific perspective of okay, what do I expect to happen? What are my expectations? And then knowing alright, what is the experiment I can run? What’s the data I can collect to validate whether my assumptions were true or if they’re false? And then thinking there is no failure, there’s only feedback. If something’s not working right now? What is the feedback I can take from that? What can I learn? And then what are the questions I should be asking right now? It’s a very meta question. But I think it’s one of the best ones, you can ask what are the questions I should be asking right now? If you’re constantly asking that question, you will never get stuck. There will always be more questions, and that will keep giving you movement and movement is progress.

 

Richard Matthews  52:17  

One of the things I really like about the whole idea of self experimentation is we don’t learn to do that in school, what we learn is how to act in socially acceptable ways. So whether that is everything from food preferences, to who you like to hang out with, to how you talk, to sexual preferences, the whole gamut comes down to how we are programmed socially, essentially. And as an adult, I started questioning all those things. Like, why do I like the food that I like, growing up I had a list of foods that I deem acceptable because it’s the stuff that was given to me all the time. And it wasn’t until I got older and got married, that my wife and I started experimenting with food and learning to cook and then learning to go to new places and try new things and get to a point now where we’ve become foodies, but it’s that same kind of process of self experimentation of, well, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t necessarily mean at a core level, I don’t like it. It’s just maybe I haven’t done enough with it. We’re done it the right way. Specifically in the food space, one of the things I’ve realized is that pretty much all food is good if it’s cooked and prepared properly. But that’s a thing you only learned through self experimentation. And you can apply that to a lot of things. That’s just the thing that popped into my head when you were talking about it.

 

Collin Jewett  53:54  

Yeah, totally. An example from really recently, I think this was maybe last week, I was working with a guy and he said, I’m only productive in the mornings, I cannot be productive after 12 o’clock noon. And I said, Oh, that’s really interesting. Why do you say that? He said, well, I’ve just I’ve never been productive after 12 o’clock. I always hit a wall and then I’m super distracted, and I can’t get anything done. I’m a morning person, I’m productive in the mornings and that’s just how I am. And I challenged him I was like, okay, so what are the consistent factors throughout your day? What are the things that you always do? Because those things are contributing to this result that you’re getting? But it’s possible maybe if we tried some different things, you might get a different result. Is that conceivable? And he’s like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. So like, okay, so let’s just look at some basic stuff like, what time are you waking up? What are you eating first thing in the morning, he’s like, oh, I don’t eat first thing in the morning, actually, I don’t eat until around 11 o’clock. I was like, okay, well, that’s really interesting. So you don’t eat and you feel great, and you’re really productive in the morning, and then you eat, and then pretty much everything after that just goes downhill. He’s like, oh, I didn’t think about that, there’s this kind of connection there. I wonder if it’s tied to the food I’m eating? And maybe so. And so my encouragement was like, okay, let’s see, what you’re eating? He’s is like, I eat oatmeal at 11:30 or something like that every single day and I’ve done that for a super long time. It was like, okay, let’s just try switching it up, see what happens. He was like, all of a sudden, he switched to something that was more high protein, high fat. He just tried some different things.

 

Richard Matthews  55:34  

High-fat content food works well for your brain.

 

Collin Jewett  55:37  

Yeah, absolutely. And all of a sudden, he was like, oh, I can actually start to be more productive later in the day, that’s really interesting. But he had just made the assumption. I’m not somebody who’s productive in the afternoon, full stop. I have my answer. He had an answer and then once he had the answer, he stopped asking questions. When you run into an answer, you need to start seeing it as this is an answer to a question. But it’s not the answer to all questions. And there is to ask some other questions.

 

Richard Matthews  56:07  

42 doesn’t exist. 

 

Collin Jewett  56:11  

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  56:11  

It’s a really nerdy reference. 

 

Collin Jewett  56:13  

No, I totally Gotcha. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s my favorite book.

 

Richard Matthews  56:17  

It’s a great book. But you know, 42 is the answer to life, universe and everything. And it doesn’t actually exist.

 

Collin Jewett  56:22  

Yeah, but nobody knows what the question is.

 

Richard Matthews  56:26  

Yeah, so if your common enemy is hitting the wall that question, not doing that self experimentation, the flipside of that is your driving force. So if you fight against that driving force, what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham, or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. You have a mission, something you fight for. What is that?

 

Collin Jewett  56:53  

I really think it has come to its questions. It’s getting people to start asking questions because that’s what people hire coaches for. So many of my coaching interactions, it’s really interesting. Because if you would go back and watch the recordings of those coaching sessions, people are paying a bunch of money for these sessions. And they’re coming back over and over and over again, what is it that they’re actually paying for? If you were to watch those calls, you notice I talk, for most of those relationships, I talk way less than the other person. They spend most of the time talking. And what I do is I pipe in every once in a while with a question. And that’s it. Like that’s what people are paying for. They’re paying for somebody to ask them questions every once in a while. 

 

Richard Matthews  57:37  

Questions that melt their brain. 

 

Collin Jewett  57:39  

Yeah, that’s what changes everything. It’s like, that unlocks everything. And I do more than that because I teach specific skills and so it goes beyond that. But that’s what coaching is, a lot of the time, it’s just somebody asking the questions you’re not thinking to ask. And I think if people just got in the habit of asking, what questions should I be asking right now? What questions could I be asking right now? Or what would this other person be asking if they were in my situation, and just having that thought experiment, letting it play out in your mind, you might find that it unlocks all sorts of new perspectives? Like all of a sudden, that problem that you thought you had isn’t a problem at all. You just weren’t asking any questions. And so you felt stuck.

 

Richard Matthews  58:26  

Yeah, one of my favorite principles I live my life by is if you ask better questions, you get better answers. So you have to get good at asking good questions.

 

Collin Jewett  58:37  

Yeah, I often frame it. So if I quote myself here, I use a pattern of learning. I talk to people through curiosity, you start there, you start with curiosity, it moves to creativity, and then memory and an application. It’s oversimplified, but it’s a really good way to put a framework to learning that is really approachable for people, because curiosity is simply the sense of wonder, and intrigue that gives birth to all questions. And it arises from a natural desire to understand oneself, and the environment. And we can ignite that. So if you’re an adult, and you feel like you’re not very curious anymore, that kind of died off. You can ignite that by exploring the unknown that will happen naturally, as soon as you start to recognize that there are things around you that you don’t understand, your curiosity will essentially revitalize itself, it’ll come back to life. And once you have those questions, then you have a reason to be creative. Because creativity is all about combining ideas in new ways and generating answers to questions. But if you never ask anything, there’s no reason to be creative, and so you won’t be. And so one of the best things you can possibly do if you want to start that process is simply start exploring the unknown again, and that can just be as simple as I said earlier, go outside and start looking at things that you’ve seen a million times in a new way like actually look at them. Don’t just pass by them and ignore them, because you’ve seen them so much. Look at them again, because I promise you, there are a million different details that you didn’t see before because you were just zoning it out, look at the bush next to your house. Look at the tree, look at the birds, look at the squirrel eating an acorn, whatever it takes, and all of a sudden, the unknown will open up again, the curiosity will come back. And that will ignite your creativity. And then, there’s no stopping at that point.

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:25  

I tell people if you want to be interesting. I put this into context being an interesting interviewer. When I teach people how to do podcasts, we run a podcasting agency, but it fits into all sorts of things. If you want interesting things in your life, the way that you get interesting is curiosity and ignorance. Because curiosity doesn’t go really well when I know everything. But it goes really well with ignorance. So like you’re talking about putting the bush next to your house. I mean, you think you know, everything there is to know about that bush. But if we approach the bush with ignorance, like, I don’t know anything about this bush. It’s that process, curiosity and ignorance are how interest is born.

 

Collin Jewett  1:01:14  

Yeah, if you want to be interesting, get interested, I think that’s the way you could do it. For me, I think one of the best things that I’ve done is not just for my business, but also just in my personal life. Every morning, I start my day by walking the exact same path, I go outside my house, there’s this big circle, it’s probably half a mile. And I walk that exact same path, and I just observe, I just look at stuff. And that habit for me has been so incredibly powerful because it keeps me in that mindset of there is an entire universe of the unknown that the totality of what I know is a tiny little speck. And that is such a useful and exciting perspective to have of the world. There’s an infinite expanse of the unknown out there. And it starts right from my nose, maybe even behind my nose, you know? And  I mean, that just opens you up in your business, both to be so much more creative and explore options you’ve never explored before. But also just to have so much more joy in your personal life. And for that spark that really makes learning work to come back and turn into a fire. My advice to anybody is to go walk and look around.

 

Richard Matthews  1:01:23  

I know the thing that I’ve learned probably more than anything else is that the more I learned, the less I know. So I want to talk about some practical things on the show here, and I call this your hero’s tool belt. And just like every superhero has their gadgets, like, their batarangs, their web slingers, or magical hammers, I want to talk about the top one or two tools, you couldn’t live without your business, it could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to your marketing tools, to something you use for product delivery, something that you think is essential to getting your job done on daily basis.

 

Collin Jewett  1:03:11  

Okay, so we’re talking more like physical tools?

 

Richard Matthews  1:03:14  

It could be something that you use with your clients, like one of your actual tools you use to help them get what they’re going for, it doesn’t matter what it is, just a practical tool that you use in your business.

 

Collin Jewett  1:03:27  

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. There are so many different ones. But I think what it really comes down to it, I’ve had a bunch of different workflow apps, and they kind of come and go, and I’ve had different note taking tools. I have all these different apps that flow in and out of my life. So I’m not going to pick one of those because I think those are transient, and they’re kind of temporary. I think what’s really important is pencil and paper and there’s a lot of reasons for this. It’s not just, okay, yeah, it’s cool to write things down. One thing I’ve recognized to be a very common trait in people who feel stuck is that they don’t externalize enough. And if they do externalize they’re externalizing somebody else’s thoughts instead of their own. So an example of that would be I’ve worked with several people who say, in my job, I go to meetings, I write everything down verbatim that people say, because I know I’m not going to remember any of it. If I just sit there and I don’t take notes, I’m not gonna remember anything. And that is a super counterproductive practice for a couple of reasons. First of all, everything you do is input to your brain, it teaches you who you are. And so if you start taking copious amounts of verbatim notes, you’re essentially telling your brain, hey, you don’t remember anything ever. And that’s why we have to take notes. And so it adopts that identity and then you stop remembering things. You don’t remember anything because your brains like, oh, I don’t need to do that, what’s the point. And so that type of note taking, I very strongly discourage, that’s not useful. For most people, I highly discourage that. However, there’s a different kind of writing that I think is incredibly powerful. And I think it can beat just about any tool, I think you could throw out their apps or anything like that. And it’s a stream of consciousness writing, it’s externalizing the thoughts that are in your head, because the truth is, you’ve probably solved the same problem 90 million times without realizing it. And you’ve spent a massive amount of attention and energy and mental capacity and cognitive resources, just resolving those problems. And the reason that we do that is because our working memory is very limited. There’s not that much we can hold in our conscious mind right in front of us at a time and so what happens is we kind of juggle. And so you’ve got all these different balls, metaphorically speaking different thoughts or trains of thoughts or ideas. And you can only hold maybe one or two, there’s that seven plus or minus two ideas. But that’s a little bit different than what I’m talking about. But you have these different problems that you have in your head, and you get them and you’re like, okay, I’ve solved that one, and they throw it, you kind of throw it back in your brain, and you get another one. And while you have the new ones in front of you, you kind of forget you’ve solved the old one. And so eventually, it comes back in a cycle and you just keep juggling like that forever. Something that’s really interesting, that’ll happen if you start to do this stream of consciousness writing. What I mean by that is literally write down every thought that’s in your head, just start writing, and don’t stop, you’re not trying to solve any problems, you’re literally just writing any thoughts that come into your mind. So if you think, I don’t really know what to write about, I feel I could eat a hot dog right now that sounds kind of good, like write all of that down, write that thing, write down all the thoughts, and what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to see those problems that you solved, they’re going to start to externalize themselves and your brain is going to realize, oh, I don’t need to think about that anymore. Because now it’s been put down on paper, it’s complete, you’ve closed a loop. As long as you keep that loop open, though it hasn’t been externalized, your brain is going to keep thinking about it, even on a subconscious level that might be working in your dreams. But once you’ve externalized, it frees up a ton of cognitive resources that you never knew you were spending in the first place. And so not only is it good for attention, and for problem solving, and actually making progress, rather than running in circles over and over again. But it’s also really helpful for igniting that curiosity and realizing, oh, here’s a question that, usually it would kind of run through my head, then I throw it away, and I can’t hold it. But now that I’ve written it down, I can really ponder that question. I can think about it and ignite that curiosity and a whole process we just talked about. So yeah, I would say, pencil and paper, that’s number one.

 

Richard Matthews  1:07:49  

I find that’s really useful for me at night, before I go to bed, if I don’t do it before I go to bed, all the things, that stream of consciousness is going in my head, and I can’t turn it off, and I can’t sleep. But if I take 10 minutes and write all those things down, then I could sleep, my brain will be like, oh, I don’t have to hold all that stuff while you sleep.  So then it’s like, I can’t sleep, it gets my sleep, it’ll all go away. And what I find is interesting. It’s like I have this my own little mental block, I have to solve all the world’s problems in my stream of consciousness notes. And I realized I have to treat them more like, and this is just my own way of how I think about it. If I’m doing a stream of consciousness note taking, I have to think about it, like, I’m a drunk person and I’ll come back to these later. And the stuff that makes sense when I’m sober is the good stuff that I’ll take out. And that’s just like, how I frame it in my head, because I’m like, I can’t treat this like it’s going to be something that I’m going to publish somewhere. I like to think about the stream of consciousness, anytime I’m writing because I’m a professional writer. I like to think of writing as completed work. And so I have my own mental block in place of like, I can’t write that way. I can’t just write oh, it would be nice to have a hot dog, I wonder how it would taste with hot dogs, cuz that’s not good writing. I have to put it in its own bucket of this drunk person writing. And I’ll come back and look at these later to see as a sober person, which of those ideas are good.

 

Collin Jewett  1:09:26  

Yeah, I’ve worked with people who are totally in that boat where like, I can’t do stream of consciousness writing, I look at the page. And it was like, it has to be grammatically correct, I don’t want to commit spelling errors, it needs to look nice. So a couple of things you can do there is, first of all, use a tool that you don’t use for professional writing, or for serious writing it all. So for me, I’ve got the sticky notes app, it’s the crappy one that comes with your computer. That’s a great one to use. Because it’s like this is not important, it’s on a sticky note. Like who cares? And that’s a really great one because it already puts me in a frame of mind like this is just some random doodle, almost it doesn’t matter. Also, if you really struggle with something that’s worked for a few people that I’ve worked with, is, if you’re using a computer and you’re typing, actually move the screen in a way that you can’t see it. And so you’re typing and you can’t see your typing. You don’t know when you’re making mistakes. Maybe you have some intuition, you’ll hit backspace every once in a while, but like type without seeing it. And then don’t even look at it again. Just open it up and delete it, it doesn’t even matter. Ideally, you should get to the point where hopefully, you can actually do that. Then you can look back at it because there’s a lot you can use with that. But if that is really a roadblock for you from even starting, start with the no stakes. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:10:45  

Here’s my other question for you. And it’s just something that I’ve always struggled with the stream of consciousness notetaking, because I know it’s useful, I found it useful, is that my ability to output what’s happening in my head is like, my fastest typing speed is 80 to 100 words a minute. But my stream of consciousness, and this is the same for everyone, runs right around 2500 to 3000 words a minute. So it’s 30 times faster. And I’m curious, how do you decide what of all the thoughts that are happening that actually get onto the paper?

 

Collin Jewett  1:11:23  

Yeah, that’s a fun thing that drives people crazy. until they’ve done it for a while, and they start to relax about it. But if you read my stream of consciousness writing, which I’m probably not going to share, if I start sharing these, my brain will be like, wait, this is something you might share someday, I don’t know. I’ll put it down, that’s not good. But if you were to look at it, you’d notice, sometimes I completely stopped mid sentence and started a new train of thought. I get to a certain point, I’m kind of bored of this train of thought, and I’ll move on. And ignore it instead of completing it, which I know for perfectionists I’m like, oh, no, there’s half a sentence with half a word at the end. Like, I can’t leave that there. But the truth is, you could force yourself to do that. It might be painful, but once you’ve done it a few times, you realize, okay, it wasn’t the worst thing ever, it didn’t kill me. So I would recommend just doing it, the horrible consequences in your mind don’t actually exist, and they’re not going to happen, so it’s gonna be okay. But also if you feel like you’re thinking at 3000 words per minute all the time, that probably means it’s been a while, since you’ve externalized, you probably have just a whole bunch of stuff built up in there. That’s all like running around clashing at the same time. And if you really take this exercise seriously, if you do it for like, 30 minutes straight, you might feel like you can write easily the whole time. But those circles will start to break. So the cyclical thinking, once you have a complete circle kind of breaking out of your mind, you’ll stop thinking in that circle. Because your mind might temp debt and might step into it a little bit like, oh, no, I’ve already gone through that whole train of thought, I know exactly where the ends, I don’t need to think about that anymore. And eventually that flow, you’ll keep flowing. But it won’t be the same things over and over and over again, you’ll start getting new and novel ideas. And that’s, that’s exciting. I mean, that’s where you start to come up with really cool stuff. Even though 99% of it is really stupid. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:13:24  

I found an app that just while you were talking about this, I was like this will have a cool purpose in the future for me, I don’t know what it is yet. But it’s a notetaking app. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:13:35  

The one deletes if you stop typing for too long, 

 

Richard Matthews  1:13:38  

No, its only purpose is it connects things for you that you haven’t connected. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:13:45  

Oh, interesting. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:13:46  

So you, you just write. And whenever you want to write, you just write, and then it has an alternate view, where it takes all the stuff that is seeing, like using its own internal little AI of connections between thoughts and words and other things and makes a little book map for them like a web. One of those spider web map things

 

Collin Jewett  1:14:04  

Like a mind map. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:14:05  

Yeah, it makes a mind map out of the things that you’ve written down. And I was like, I don’t really know how to use that at this point. Because in my head, when I’m writing notes, I’m writing notes for a thing. Like this is a note about the thing. And I was like, this is not useful to me. But when you started talking about the stream of conscious note taking I was like, that’s where that would fit. I’m sitting on my iPad. I’ll put a link in the description of this podcast. I can’t remember the name.

 

Collin Jewett  1:14:30  

I’ve also tried that out. Somebody told me recently about another one that was like if you stop writing for too long, everything starts to fade away and just deletes everything which I thought that’d be kind of intimidating. So I wasn’t really so sure about that. But they said it helped them to like, alright, I just got to keep typing, I can’t stop, it doesn’t matter, I can type whatever I want. I can type random letters. It kept the rhythm moving so that was interesting. And then another client of mine, I thought this was so cool. I love this revelation that they had. And I never thought of this, they’re like, when you try to do math, even if it’s relatively basic, try to do division, some people can do all that stuff super rapidly in their head. Sure, so you’re special good for you. A lot of people have to write it down especially if they want to make sure it’s right, they will write it down, or they’ll put it in Excel or something. And yet, when we’re trying to solve the most important problems in our lives, a lot of times we don’t write anything down. It’s like, I’m just gonna think through this, and eventually I’ll figure it out. And you write nothing down. Isn’t that odd, though? It’s like, yeah, I’m trying to solve a relatively simple arithmetic problem, and I’m going to write it down. But when I’m trying to solve a conflict with a friend of mine, which is kind of a big, complicated issue involving these complicated personalities and stuff. I might just like, yeah, I’ll just think about it. I’m not going to write it down, why not? Why would you think that would be easier than solving a math problem,

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:01  

It’s a really good way to think about it. Because I’m constantly arguing with my son about writing down his stuff for his math, I’m like, just write it down and then you’ll actually know where you went wrong, you got something wrong, you don’t write it down, I can’t help you. And it’s the same kind of thing. So I know, I do the same thing with complicated problems. I’m like, I’ll just think about it. And I know when I take the time to actually sit down and write things down, I come up with better ideas. And it’s definitely a powerful tool to use and make use of. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:33  

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Richard Matthews  1:18:05  

So I do want to move on now. I’ve got only a couple more questions for you. The next one is about your own personal heroes. So every hero has their mentors. Just Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi or Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad or even Spider Man had his uncle Ben. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, peers? Who are a couple of years ahead of you, maybe speakers or authors? And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Collin Jewett  1:18:29  

Yeah, that’s a really, really good question. I’m going to throw out a very wide range of people here that are completely different. But I would say Charles Dickens is one of them. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:18:42  

Really? Never had that before. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:18:44  

Yeah, weird one. And honestly, I know almost nothing about Charles Dickens’s personal life or what he was like, I’ve only experienced him through his characters and reading his books. I’ve read a lot of Charles Dickens books and really enjoyed them. And I think one of the reasons I’d put him on that list, or at least his books on that list, is just because I think I realized more truly than I ever have that reading changes the way that you think. And as you read, it will totally transform the way that you think so when I’m reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I think in a completely different way than I normally do. Because Douglas Adams and the way he writes is very different than I normally think it’s absurd and making all these like crazy connections. And it’s super creative and weird. And I start to think that way as I’m reading it, even when I’m not actively reading the book, it kind of has like this temporary effect that lasts for a while, and then you stop reading the book and you put it down and you haven’t read in two months, and you go back to your old patterns of thinking, but the more you keep switching and reading new things and new authors, it changes the way that you think and so I think Charles Dickens is where I had the most profound experience of that was reading his books, I started to think on a totally different and think a totally different way, with a completely different language, like the language he uses in his books, is much more descriptive. It’s much more articulate. It’s much more clever than I usually think. But I found when I was reading his books, I started to think that way. I was like, Man, I feel kind of smart right now. I’m thinking on a different level. And it didn’t last forever. Like, I stopped reading his books. And after a while, I kind of go back to my normal thought patterns. But I think that was super powerful for me, because more than anything, reading his books definitely made me realize that phenomenon and start to take advantage of it. So I’ll put him up there. Another one totally different side of the spectrum. His name is Brandon Fong and put him on this list. Shout out to Brandon, if you listen to this. He’s the host of the Seven Figure Millennials Podcast now, which he’s been running, so shout out for him. But he was one of the people that really inspired me to do things that I had no right to be doing. Which is, when I was in college, I got connected with his crazy string of events. And I got to talk to him. I remember I told him at that point because he’s my age, I think he’s maybe a couple of months older or something like that. And yeah, he was doing all these crazy things, he was running the marketing at Superhuman Academy back at that time, which was a seven figure e-learning company. And he was 20 or something when he was doing that. I was like, well, that’s crazy. Anyway, I told him, I had this goal of authoring a book by the age of 30. And I always thought that was really cool. I was like, oh, author a book by the age of 30, that’s pretty special, it’s hard to do. And he just laughed at me. I was expecting to be impressed. He just laughed at me. And he was like, why wait till you’re 30? Write it now, finish it in six months, just pull the number out of the air. And through that means I finished in six months. I was like, oh, wow, that’s a different way to think about things. And I did, I finished that book in six months because he told me to do that. And I wanted to take on that challenge. And that totally changed my life, just taking on some absurd challenge like that. And just taking something I always thought was like, oh, this is a really big, ambitious, hard goal. He’s like, why not do it in six months, see what happens. You can kind of do that with anything. What would happen if I tried to do this in this really short timeline that seems totally unrealistic? What would I have to do to make that happen? And so he got me to think in that different way of challenging your initial beliefs. And that’s super powerful. That’s been really powerful in my life. And I’ve continued to be friends with him. And he’s mentored me a lot. So I’ll give a shout out to him. I think I’ll stop my list there for now. Brandon Fong guy who is my age and business and Charles Dickens, totally weird.

 

Richard Matthews  1:22:51  

That’s awesome, probably some of the best answers I’ve gotten from that question. But I have two thoughts. The first one is about writing a book. I was 26, the first time I said, I was gonna write a book, I think, maybe 25. And I sat down with a friend of mine, I was like, we need to write a book about this subject. It was about marketing. That’s what we’re trying to do and we finished the whole book in 48 hours. And then we sent it off, to get published to the self published thing and got a few copies back. And then within a year, I use that book to land a six figure per year contract for my business. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:23:27  

Exactly yeah. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:23:27  

And it’s a terrible book. I mean, it’s not a terrible book. It’s a decent book, but it was written in 2009. And we’re in 2021. So 11 years ago. So I was 24 when I wrote that book. And it’s just a crazy thing. We have these limitations on ourselves. Like, we had this idea of how long it takes to write a book or how long Casey thinks you have someone else who comes in and they can give you a paradigm shift of how to think about the world and I can’t remember who it was, at the time. I think it might have been Tim Ferriss. I was reading one of his books, he was talking about doing things quickly, or learning quickly, or something like that. And I remember I was like, we should write a book, here’s what it should be about, let’s get it done. And then we sat down, and we co-authored this book in basically two afternoons over pizza. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:23:30  

That’s amazing.

 

Richard Matthews  1:23:32  

And it’s only 100 pages long, but it did exactly what we needed to do. It’s crazy when you have the right people who can help you think that way. And then the second thought I had one that idea with Charles Dickens. And I remember for me, it wasn’t Charles Dickens, it was Vince Poscente in his book, The Anthony Elephant that did that for me. With that realization, his book is the self-improvement book, but for whatever reason, he went through this whole process of discussing how your conscious mind and your subconscious mind work together. That’s what the whole book is about is it answers your conscious mind and the elephant is from the subconscious mind and learning how to drive the elephant with the ant. I remember thinking, he didn’t talk about this in that book at all. But it’s the takeaway I got from it. And the takeaway I got from it was it gave me permission to read fiction. And the reason is that your brain is incapable of distinguishing between reality and visualized fiction. Especially when you take the time to visualize something, which is what good authors do, is they give you the sight and the smell and the touch and the feel of the experience of being in a place your brain can’t distinguish between that and real world experiences, it’s incapable of it. And I believe one of the things in the book he was talking about is your brain when it visualizes something. So if you hear something like you and I talk in a conversation, it’s like 4000 synapses that fire when you visualize something and engage all the senses, it’s like 4 billion. It’s an absurd amount of things that happen when you visualize things. And I remember very vividly thinking, this gives me permission, in my own head I can take the time to enjoy fiction, because fiction allows you to have experiences that you couldn’t have otherwise. So anyway, that’s the same thought of, well, why is Charles Dickens important? Because there are experiences that you can get there that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

 

Collin Jewett  1:26:17  

I’m so glad you brought that up. Because I say that kind of thing to people all the time. Like, no, I just want to learn the skills so I can read this, it’s a nonfiction book about marketing super fast, and get everything out of it. Because I teach people to speed reading and skills like that. And, like, no, fiction is important and it’s so valuable, and it can totally transform the way you think. And exactly, everything you said about.

 

Richard Matthews  1:26:42  

And it’s enjoyable. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:26:44  

Yeah, I mean, that’s a reason to do things. That’s so good. I’m going to send that snippet that you just said to some people. They see I’m not the only one saying this.

 

Richard Matthews  1:26:54  

I’m not crazy, I told you.

 

Collin Jewett  1:26:57  

I’m not a crazy person. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:26:59  

Yeah, totally pick up that book. The Vince Poscente book, The Anthony Elephant. It’s like a toilet read. You can finish it while you’re on the toilet, it’s really short. I know, there’s a bunch of other good stuff in that book. And he never covered that specific thing, but for whatever reason, that’s the revelation I got out of it.

 

Collin Jewett  1:27:17  

Yeah, and also, are we recording video for this too? 

 

Richard Matthews  1:27:22  

We are. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:27:23  

Okay, sweet. So if people are watching this, there’s a book right over my left shoulder, it looks maybe my right shoulder to you, but the superhuman playbook. So that was the second book that I published. And after I had written my first book, and I think it was something like six months, I came up with this challenge with my other coaches. So shout out to all of them for being awesome, all over the world. But I pose a challenge to them. I was like, hey, who in this group wants to be a published author in two months? And I think 18 of them said, sure, that sounds fun. And yeah, that’s what we did. Last summer, we co-authored this book together from all across the planet. We had a Google doc that started out with nothing on it was just a blank page. And two months later, this book was out on Amazon, and I’m pretty proud of it. I think it turned out really well. And it was people, many of whom did not speak English as their first language. So there’s a ton of editing to do so there’s a massive amount of work. And I mean, two months, and it’s a good book, it’s pretty cool. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:22  

That’s awesome.

 

Collin Jewett  1:28:24  

It’s amazing what you can do when you get rid of those initial assumptions of how hard things have to be or how long things have to take.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:31  

So we’re getting to the end of the interview, I have one more question for you. And it’s essentially your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever puts them in Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you use regularly in your life, maybe something that you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

 

Collin Jewett  1:28:54  

Yep. And I’ve got those written down too I promise, I didn’t even know you’re gonna ask me on this interview. And I still have got this stuff, because this is the stuff you need to go through to thoroughly understand yourself better and make serious progress. So I’ll give you three, you asked for one or two, I’m gonna give you three I’ll go quickly through them though. The first one is to keep it playful. So that’s one of the top values that I live by keeping it playful. And kind of the explanation of what that means. It’s valuing means not just ends, valuing journeys, not just destinations. It means being undefendable and coachable and recognizing that I hardly know anything. And that’s a great thing. And that’s a wonderful thing. And then also, one of my favorite quotes of all time, from GK Chesterton, the inconvenience equals adventure. So the original quote, I’m probably gonna butcher this but he said something like an inconvenience is just an adventure wrongly considered and an adventure is just an inconvenience rightly considered something like that. I might have gotten that wrong. But that’s kind of the gist of it. So just try to see inconveniences as adventures, because it totally just changes the way that you live your life. And it makes it a lot more fun and a lot better for learning. So that’d be number one. Number two, I’m going to put honor and respect. And the first part of that is this idea that respect is something that you give it is not something that people earn.

 

Richard Matthews  1:30:29  

Which saved my trust.

 

Collin Jewett  1:30:31  

Yeah, exactly. If it was earned, that would mean that there’s something that you have to do, and then it would be deserved. And it would be like wages that you’d be forced to give out. And that’s just not how it works. You can do everything possible under the sun, and somebody can still choose not to trust you or respect you. And you can do nothing and somebody can choose to trust and respect you. So that’s something I’ve decided in my life. I give people respect, I don’t force them to earn it. I don’t care what you’ve done, I’m going to respect you as a person. And another part of that is taking people seriously, taking their emotions seriously, taking their issues seriously, even if it’s something that seems trivial to me, it seems trivial because I’m not that person. I’m not in that situation and I haven’t lived there.

 

Richard Matthews  1:31:16  

It’ll be really helpful when you have toddlers.

 

Collin Jewett  1:31:19  

Yes, and that’s one of the reasons I came up with this was a lot of my learning related to education and how to educate children. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And then the last part of that would be committing in spirit, not just in words and action. So when I commit to doing something, I want to commit to it fully. I don’t want to commit to trying to look for loopholes or anything like that. And I don’t want to commit to it just when people are looking. So that’s kind of integrity. And then the last of the three I call it wrestle with God. And what that means is never stop asking questions.

 

Richard Matthews  1:31:57  

Like Israel.  

 

Collin Jewett  1:31:57  

Yeah, that’s actually where the idea came from.

 

Richard Matthews  1:32:04  

I went to Bible college. I know things. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:32:06  

Yes. I love that. I love just a quick religious tinge, I love that story. Because it’s so interesting that God names his people, his nation after the person who wrestled with him. What does that tell us? There’s so much to learn from that, I love that. So ask relentlessly to fight for understanding. And struggle is better than stagnation. So I have written that struggle is greater than stagnation. So it’s better to be struggling than to be stagnant. So those would be my top three, my code.

 

Richard Matthews  1:32:39  

So I love that you have it written out so well. I want to comment on the first one because I have some similar things that I say that have the same kind of principles. The first thing I say is I tell people all the time, and we talk about it all the time in the show. Give yourself permission to play. So permission to play is the principle. And the idea is the same kind of thing. But it’s particularly for entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time thinking that play is something that you earn, for doing good work. And we don’t think of it as a requirement to do good work. And so I tell people all the time you need to prioritize rest and recreation. So that you can come to whatever it is that you’re doing the value that you’re bringing to the world. And go at it full tilt. Because as entrepreneurs, we’re never done. We never get to a point where we’re like, I have accomplished the thing I need to accomplish, and therefore now I can rest and recreate. And when you have that mentality, that’s how you get people that burn out, people that quit too early, people that stopped right before they get to the gold. People are taking the value that they have and spreading it as far as they can because they’re not taking the time. They’re not giving themselves permission to play.

 

Collin Jewett  1:33:54  

And quick plug, book recommendation. I don’t get anything for recommending this. But the book Free to Learn by Peter Gray, he’s a revolutionary neurobiologist. And he writes about how children learn and the importance of play. And even if you do not care about education, or raising children, or anything like that, I think this is just such a good book for that if you’re someone who struggles with burnout, or feeling like you can’t give yourself permission to play. Oh my goodness, read that book. It is so good.

 

Richard Matthews  1:34:26  

Yeah, I’ll have to pick that up. I’ll put it in the show notes below. So my editor will pick that up and get it in there. On the other side of that, you mentioned the inconvenience in adventure wrongly considered. And I have to tell you, that speaks straight to my soul as someone who travels full time. And I mentioned earlier, if people ask me all the time, so we’ve been traveling for five years or like, what’s the one thing you would tell someone who’s considering traveling full time and the thing I always tell them I was like, everything will break. Literally, all of it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be the front door, your coach, the tires, things that you never thought could break. All of it will break And you’ll have to learn how to do that. And one of the things that I have learned over the years is that whether it’s being stuck on the side of the road in the middle of the desert with no cell service, have no way to get anything fixed and 100 miles from anywhere, like literally crying into the night in the desert, or being up on the top of the mountains, in Yosemite, with your kids and sliding off 40 foot waterfalls into like, the most gorgeous pools in the world. It’s the adventure and the inconveniences that go along with them are what I call the texture and contrast of life. A lot of times, many people try to keep their life as close to the medium as possible. And that just ends up being a boring life, whether that’s your business or your relationships or whatever, the good and the bad, the swings, all of that. That’s the texture and contrast that make life interesting. So the bad things that happen, whether it’s in relationships, or in adventures, or failures in your business, all of those things lead to having that interest, to have that interest and that contrasts and it gives you stories. And stories are how we relate to one another. That’s how you build relationships and how you rear your children and how you would do pretty much everything through stories and the bad stuff, the inconvenience is really what life’s all about.

 

Collin Jewett  1:36:34  

Yep, I agree completely.

 

Richard Matthews  1:36:37  

Awesome. I think that’s a great place to wrap our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. And the challenge, I call it the hero’s challenge, and I do this basically to find access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own because not everyone is out there doing the podcast rounds like you and I do. So the question is simple. Do you have somebody in your life or in your network that you think is a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine and why do you think we should come to share their story here with us on the Hero Show? First person that comes to mind for you.

 

Collin Jewett  1:37:04  

For me? Oh, man. I have six different people come to mind all at the same time. I’m gonna throw out Meg Zirger, she is one of my fellow coaches who has a really cool story. She works with empowering other female entrepreneurs, to really be authentic and build businesses that are authentic to them and who they are. And yeah, she comes to mind, I think she would be a super awesome guest on the show.

 

Richard Matthews  1:37:48  

That’s awesome. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end, who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. Our analogous to that on this show, as we close is I want to know, where can people find you? If they need your help in the future? Where can they light up the bat signal so to speak, and say, hey, you know what, I would really love your help Collin. And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people to reach out and ask for your help?

 

Collin Jewett  1:38:13  

Yeah, I love that you added that second part, I think that’s a really important question. So first of all, where to find me, I think the best place to find me is probably CuriosityJump.com. I’m kind of floating all over the place on the internet. So if you type in my name, you’ll probably find me in lots of different corners of the universe. But that’s kind of a good central location. And you can find my books and you can find links to courses and other places there. In terms of who, who should reach out, I would say if you feel like A in your professional life, and you feel stuck, it is either you feel incompetent, like you can’t get to the next level, you feel like you’re plateauing, or you feel bored, and you you just don’t get the same pleasure out of it anymore. That would be one group of people who would be really good to reach out. Especially if you’re somebody who is thinking about making a jump, and you just don’t feel like you have the skills right now to do that. I can definitely help, that is the main body of people I’ve worked with is usually people who feel stuck, they want to make a change, they want to make a jump, and they just don’t know where to start. And they feel like they don’t have the learning skills to do that. So that’d be big. And then kind of on the flip side, if in your personal life, even if you’re not really doing your thing, even if you’re retired, and you’re not doing anything professionally, you don’t care about starting a business or anything like that. If you feel like you have never been good at learning or learning is no more interesting to you or every time you read, your eyes kind of glaze over and you forget what you’re reading halfway through, and it’s just kind of lost that spark for you. And you want to reignite learning and make it something that’s really fun and exciting again. Yeah, I’m your guy, reach out and maybe I can help you, maybe I can’t. But if I can’t help you, I probably know somebody who can, so I can also redirect you happy to do that.

 

Richard Matthews  1:40:12  

Awesome. So that’s CuriosityJump.com or you can look him up Collin Jewett. If you are in that spot where you feel like you’re stuck, definitely take the time to reach out. You’ve heard him through this interview. Obviously, he’s got a lot of really good thoughts, and helps people that way. And again, thank you so much for coming on to the interview today. I had a great time going through your story. Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Collin Jewett  1:40:34  

I’m just gonna throw out there that value number one, keep it playful.

 

Richard Matthews  1:40:38  

I love it. Thank you very much, Collin. 

 

Collin Jewett  1:40:40  

 

Thank you, Richard.