This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. It may still contain transcription errors.
James: Hello, and welcome to Graduate Theory, please. Welcome to the show, Joe Wehbe.
Joe: Thanks very much, James. Good to be here. Yeah,
James: It’s fantastic to have you on mate. You’re certainly someone that I look up to and someone that’s really inspired the creation of this podcast. So it’s very cool to have you on and hear your insights because he is certainly very knowledgeable.
Seth Godin’s Endorsement#
James: We’ve done a lot of things. So looking forward to this. One thing I want to start off with is the book that’s just come out 18 and Lost fantastic achievement. I want to ask about the name or the blurb on the back. Seth Godin is on there. So I want to ask just, we can talk about the book and all that stuff, but I want to start with there is that perfect.
I want to start with sure. I want to start with, like, how did he get this guy on a back? What was your kind of process What’s the whole story behind it is because it is quite cool to have him on the back there. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. It is. It is very cool. Yeah very lucky. I’m very lucky, but it wasn’t accidental obviously to and I don’t have a personal rule.
Within the final one is not familiar with him. Seth Godin is very prominent as a thought leader in marketing, in education, in like post-industrial kind of world and careers and work and written like 20 bestselling books start a bunch of kind of cool companies has a very kind of clear and meaningful message.
So that’s who he is. If anyone hasn’t heard of him and. Yeah, and I guess we got it. I did a course at the organization that he co-founded they co-founded think all the MBA and then this other organization Akimbo evolved around it, I believe. And it’s like very alternative education, a company.
And I did a course there and I did the course thinking you know, I’d meet great people and I knew that people like him were behind it. So I figured there’s lots of relationships actually, before. With this organization beyond just like learning some good stuff in the one week course it was called the emerging leaders program.
Is that if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have. Yeah. Like I met, Liam is a mutual friend of ours and collaborator, and that’s how I met you. So there you go. And yeah, in the same way, I knew we were working on the book cause I cared about education at the time going into it. And I was curious to see how they did things.
So it was a learning opportunity for me in that sense, like the model they did and then. I knew that yeah, they have so many people in their community that are like useful. I knew that going in. So I was like, I always planned to do the course and then see what it was like, and then add value to their.
Organization where I could. And that was like I did I hosted catch up calls after gave a lot of feedback. Letter generous feedback, obviously stayed in touch with people there. And in the end just had good context, at the organization. And I explained to them, they knew about the book and I explained to them the mission and why I thought, because it was an education that someone like Seth’s endorsement would go a long way, help us like catalyze the book.
Like endorsement like that doesn’t really sell books necessarily. It’s like people hear about that and then they come find the book. Not really, but it helps like the credibility helps a lot. And it was also like really nice because we did it with a group of people. Yeah. Yeah, but that was basically like the process.
And I don’t know if everyone’s now going to go start doing a bunch of Akimbo courses now that I’ve said that maybe they will. But they, yeah. Also just got very lucky because there was no incentive sorry, not no incentive, but no guaranteed. And that’s why I was very strategic about that, obviously, but you like being genuine along the ways like integral, like I just genuinely enjoyed, I got so much out of it.
Like how I met you and everything again, that was one of the beautiful things that came out of that.
James: Yeah. No, that’s super interesting story. How you and I guess it’s like those things where you do one thing, it’s like that stuff you talk about with the doors, right? It’s like this kind of doing this course opens up opportunities that maybe you didn’t expect when, or maybe you didn’t expect when he first signed
Joe: Up.
I suspect maybe I suspect. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That’s cool. No, I definitely. And that’s what I think if I was just trying to do the whole thing. Oh yo, hold on. I know that guy’s in that company or they know people and I’m only going to do it for. Then there’s a bit of risk in that, because if it doesn’t come off, then whatever you put into whatever effort you put in.
Yeah. Maybe unless you learnt something, it’s but if you, yeah, you get a lot out of the experiences you do, and they help you kind of meet people who can move what you care about doing further that’s, that’s what I concentrate on. Cause it’s very holistic.
You get a lot out of it. Not just. Gutting for that one thing.
James: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, I agree there and I think that’s cool. A good point about the genuineness of asking something like that and being involved, you, you joined the course because you wanted to get value and then.
This, these kinds of things come out. It’s almost, not as the real reason why you joined, but it’s an extra effect afterwards.
Joe: Yeah. I think the whole idea really is like, you want to be in rooms with like great people. That’s what I’ve learned. Like I just I really, I rarely used to take up things like that when I was a bit younger. Like things like that experience.
And it’s not always the right time. And like the theme of this podcast, right? The name is pretty indicative. So for people who are like, early career in the, maybe in the gap between finishing and getting into the workforce, if that’s the average listener, there’s a. There’s this it’s very different to position.
Maybe I’m in now where I have specific things that are my focus, like education. I work on things that are like relate to education and careers. And so I like it’s deliberate, but then it always makes sense to be in good rooms with people who. Or also care about that and being able to like, find more people who who like agree and align with what you care about is always like useful.
Like you just don’t know in the field three years later, five years later, you don’t know, like, when something will happen, like a relationship is such a good investment, and I knew that I was going to get a lot of relationships out of it. That’s what attracted me to it. And that was probably one of them was like, That’s like a moonshot that is Seth Godin and very lucky he helped.
Cause I didn’t speak to him. It was all through the and stuff, but in general just, I got so many great relationships out of it. So I knew I was going to get that for myself, but also the concept of adding value. If I’m in there adding value, being genuine, they’re going to get something out of me.
And so it’s mutual and it’s not like mutually exclusive, like you can just reciprocal, like you can both, it should always be two ways, like actually really obvious idea. Yeah. Yeah. I get something out of it for yourself, but also make sure they get something out of it too. Leave everyone better off for having talked to you and you will get a lot back to
that’s really my approach to everything. And it so far, it really, it moves things faster. Like things like. Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting to
think
James: About that’s cool because yeah, I feel like particularly with networking and stuff like that, I was thinking about this today.
That sometimes when people are like, oh, you’re going to go out there and network of people, it’s you’re trying to almost trick them to become friends with you. So you can ask if. And then just leave them yeah. You’re trying to get up this ladder of who, you know, and just so you can be like yeah.
The winner at the end sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. Whereas, it’s when it comes from that kind of place, I think it’s easy to, it’s easy to spot almost when someone’s trying to. Use you just like to get a favor and they’re not offering anything. And it’s much easier to be like friends with someone when they’re helping you and you’re helping each other.
And it’s just like much more natural that way.
Joe: It really is. It’s not always easy to like networking. I heard a podcast as a podcast listen to the other week and those, the guy had someone on and he’s oh, you’re the gun at networking? Don’t call me that because everyone hates that word. I don’t think of it that way.
And like networking has connotations, like different people will think different things than they hear the word networking, but like stripping it back. The fundamentals of like people are the ultimate kind of resource is like at the core of it, for me, people are the ultimate resource is what I strip it back to.
And honestly I’ll just be honest. I’ve told you the story about that example and like my approach, always trying to be very, add value in LA. But I definitely think I look at, if I’m on Twitter or something like that, or I hear a name or I definitely think, oh, damn. If I knew that person, I could be able to do this.
Like I could get the message out better. I could get the book out better. Like it’s hard. Switch that off. It’s actually pretty human. I’ll be very honest that those thoughts, I definitely have those thoughts, but it’s funny that then you start moving towards all right. Let’s start to be strategic about how could I, get in touch with it.
And then it’s ah, I’d have to create value for them. Yeah. And so you always reminded, and I think as long as your actions, you are your actions, not your thoughts. So as long as you like come back to the healthy way of doing it and again, like you said the filter is and the feedback loop is like, You almost don’t have a choice.
Cause it’s actually really hard to get things by being transactional. You want to call it that like transactions, like just exchange for goods. Like you don’t need to love the baker, the local baker. They’re just happy. If you give them money, they’re happy to give you bread. Like it’s transactional.
It doesn’t have to be a good relationship, but it can be. So like when it’s transactional, like people know and it’s like a Tinder, like a transactional thing? Is it a hookup? There’s an exchange of goods or is it like, genuine and like you can’t ask for too much, too soon inundating interaction, you gotta break it down into steps.
They’re not ready to marry you or anything like when someone meets you straight away. So if you just cold suggest to people that you have this kind of deep relationship. Or whatever, and they get bombarded with requests like that, then, it’s just, you just get ignored. Whereas if you break it down into steps and meet people where they’re at one sec, all right what would interest someone like this right now?
Or what’s something simple that they can say yes to, and that’s that’s opening the door then it’s very much similar to that. It’s so easy to leverage people and leverage can be a dirty word to like networking. Yeah, great advantage and resources out of people who you have a relationship with.
And it doesn’t have to be an exchange because your friends. Yeah. And cause like you mentioned my real estate experience and even in real estate, because like any business, you get people happy to refer clients gold because you don’t have to pay people necessarily to refer you clients like it’s gold word of mouth and referral partnerships.
And just what I found doing that is like the people who really ended up giving me business were great friends. I became great friends with them, the ones who like we were doing, weren’t really that tight with. And we just didn’t align. Then it was like never as effective because like you like someone, you also have trust with them.
And trust is like really important when you’re handing over someone. Know I don’t need, I don’t need to be paid for, I just look after them, if you make an introduction to someone all right. Just be respectful to that person. Things like that. And yeah, so I just think things like that are really it’s like just what I learned through experience.
The ultimately like the most productive relationships you have, you actually just end up getting along really well with them. That’s what actually makes it sticky. Yeah. In the same way, you can ask a friend for something that you can’t ask a stranger for because you have a relationship, but then online, the online world kind of dilutes that a little bit.
And sometimes we forget, but it all comes down to like genuine relationships and genuine relationship building.
James: Yeah, no, that’s so cool. I think that’s a great point because yeah, you can’t be, it’s like what you were saying about the relationships. Like you’re not going to ask someone like to get married on the first day, whereas once you get along and you both like each other, then it’s, now we can start to ask more things and we can do more stuff together.
There’s a, there’s many like business. Networking, whatever parallels I think between dating and yeah. I’d realized. Yeah. So yeah, I think that was a great example.
Adam Grant: 3 Kinds of People#
James: One thing we S we spoke about before the podcast was that. Adam Grant’s book, and you were talking about this idea where there’s three types of people in networking or it friendships or whatever there’s kind of givers and takers and things like that.
Could you elaborate on that a bit further?
Joe: Yeah, I’d love to. Yeah. The book, give and take by Adam Grant that you mentioned. I thought it was really good lined with a lot of things I’ve thought and written about too, which is why I loved it. And he talked about givers matches and takers, as you said. So takers are always what’s in it for me.
So that’s like there always has to be something in it for me, that’s really obvious. For me to be willing to help. So for example, if you said to me, present example, like a joy come on the podcast. If I was a taker and I couldn’t see anything clear in it for me oh, am I going to get more clients?
Am I gonna get more leads? Am I going to get more exposure? Are I, am I going to get some of those things? All right. Yeah. I’ll come on like a taker and they’re trying to take the. Value they can out of you without little regard for it goes in the other direction. So it’s I don’t really care about like this James Guy.
I’m just like, whatever, if I can go on there, get some more credibility with business client, whatever matches or like traders, like has to be an even exchange of value in both directions. And obviously like pretty like at the same time. So we’re doing some promotion for the book at the moment and a guy the other day going.
Like I, someone introduced me to him. He has a podcast, I thought, all right, can we have a conversation? This is what I care about. So what I’m trying to do. And he said all right you can come on my podcast, but I see you have a podcast too. And then maybe I can come on your podcast. So that’s like a matcher, like, all right, I’ll let you come to mind if I can come on yours.
And I was like, actually, my podcast is solo. Like I don’t do guests. Unfortunately, won’t be able to do that. And you guys, my podcast is slowing down at the moment so I can do it, but I’ll send you the audio to edit or something. I was like, yeah, nah, not interested. That’s an example of matcha, right?
It has to go even an exchange and it has to happen at that point in time. Mainly, and then third is give us and give us a like, all right here, I’ll come on the podcast or I’ll introduce you to this person without a really obvious or tangible thing to come back.
If I know someone who could be an incredible guest here that might not respond to you directly, I can just introduce them to you and be like, but what’s in that for Joe, how does James podcast relate to me and all that? That’s the thing. I think we’re all everyone’s benefit is linked to everyone else in the big picture.
The people don’t really think about it. So even the giver thing, I, it’s probably not too different to the others as we think. But yeah, it’s generally like a generosity that seems unattached to anything coming back. No expectation of it being repaid, giving and, but also not selfless, not completely like being a doormat and letting people walk over you there’s like the selfless giver.
And then there’s Kind of pragmatic give out, which is yeah, I can give this. Or I can’t do a wake of podcasts with you, James. I’ve got a busy week, like at the end of the day, I’ve got to protect some stuff that I got to. Yeah. So that’s the traditional concept of givers in that book.
But the fascinating thing I think about is really, if you expand your thinking and you think long-term, and you think very broadly normally like other people’s advantages become your advantages to. All right. So part of the context is right. You’re a member of our community, right? The constitute and the better you go, like the more people can understand oh wow.
There’s, there are communities out there that you can tap into that will help you just bounce things off and help you get set up with a project or anything like that. And then that is good. And then that’s the kind of world I want. When people do that.
And also I, it’s very enjoyable and meaningful. So I contribute to someone who has like direction and stuff like that, and ambition and, dreams or anything like that, just across the board. Very meaningful to so I do get something out of it. Anyway, if you help, if I help someone like that.
And I know that people have felt the same way about me. So even though the giver thing is almost a bit tricky because it’s actually it’s almost like just the, probably what changes is like the delay or how clearly you can relate the benefit received by the giver to like the gift given by the giver.
I don’t know if that makes sense, but I gave it my best shot and see that philosophy makes all my behaviors make sense because actually we’re all rising tide lifts, all boats. Like we’re all have aligned interests.
James: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I’ve heard that like similar thing, like with the giving, even just as a kind of business idea, like gay, these had that book called a jab jab, right. hook or something. It’s something like that. And there’s a lot of businesses do that. Whether it’s on social media or whatever, where they like, just give you like free videos on YouTube or like three. Content about this topic or whatever, to develop the relationship. And then that has there’s no expectation of a return with those.
Like they’re not expecting you to come and darn it the money like afterwards, but they are secretly hoping, I guess that when they actually do release something that you like care about them and you’re invested in what they’re doing enough, so that you’ll go and buy their course or sign up to whatever it might
Joe: Be.
Yeah. The other thing with that, you can come back to dating and it’s oh, would you like to go on six dates with me? Or if you say that to someone they’re like, do I want to go on six dates with this guy? I’m not sure if I want to do that, but you want to go on one date, no expectations of a second, third or fourth.
You like, hi, I can commit to that. And so what that strategy does, Inbound marketing and all that sort of stuff. Is it just it’s that way is what relationship building is. It’s breaking things down to a small enough step that someone can commit to. If it’s a, if it’s a significant person like in the business world or something that you’re trying to get in touch with almost like giving them a LinkedIn message or an email that they can just reply to, that they would reply.
It was almost like a great first step. It’s almost better than having nothing and sending him like a big pitch and a dump. That’s interesting to think about. And even with those, even the ones you’re talking about, even the people like, yeah, I’m sure they do hope that they pay the, even the ones that don’t end up paying, like probably still spread awareness of that person’s brand like, Hey Seth Godin or Gary V has this free video.
It should be done. I just send you the YouTube. And you’ve never heard of Gary V before, he, you’re now aware of him and you’ve got a relationship with him. It’s familiarity. How often do you land on a website and spend a thousand dollars with someone you’ve never heard of a product you’ve never heard of, not that often, but if you’ve heard of them before and stuff like that, you’ve got that familiarity then.
Oh, you’re more likely to buy at Gary V. Like I see that guy everywhere. He must be. I’ll buy his course or whatever. I’ll pay him to be my media marketing manager, whatever. And again, you come back to relationships, it’s the same thing. Like you see someone around a lot, you have a couple of touch points with them, build the builds trust.
James: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s super cool. And I think even myself, I’ve, you can relate it. Personal brand like, is how not only are you perceived on in, in person or whatever, like online on your, maybe you have your own personal Instagram for like business related stuff or whatever.
Maybe you have your own website, but your personal brand is also how you interact with people? What do you like when you go and watch the footie at someone’s house? Or stuff like that. So this kind of giving thing. Yeah. Not just for like, when you’re trying to network with someone or like online advice or like even in your, in a business, like offering value by releasing content or whatever.
Yeah. It’s definitely about Yeah, this person said they were interested in coming along to this event that I’ve previously been to let’s connect them with the organizer or things like that, that you can really like positively impact people.
Joe: Yeah. Majorly, like I believe the one, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, and I noticed that in so many ways, like even when I look at people, I play soccer with. And like I realized the similarities between maybe how they play soccer. Cause a lot of them are school friends or my brothers. And I noticed similarities between the way they play soccer and the way they like their work ethic and everything like that.
And it’s hard to switch things on and off. And it’s very hard to do it for a long. So it’s funny, even though networking can be a dirty word. It’s one I’m happy to use. Cause every conclusion I think of every time I think about it, the way to do it most effectively is just at the end of the day, become a better person.
James: Yeah. Holistically. Yeah,
Joe: Definitely. One of the cleverest books of all time is obviously how to win friends and influence people. For that reason, the title is Ooh, how do you get all these dirty tricks and get your away?
It would be your way. And then not to spoil the book. The whole premise of the book is unfortunately you gotta be genuinely interested in them and not even expect something when you just show interest in them with that. That’s it. And start with this and start there. And then things can snowball because it’s oh, that person’s just interest.
So that’s it’s it’s funny, but it’s also it’s relieving cause so much you feel like, oh, I’ve got to get in touch and I’ve got to advance my career and this and that. And then you realize, oh, the whole way along, I can just be myself who actually be the most effective, which is not not easy, especially today.
Because the environment we’re in there’s always a shiny objects dangling, so it’s not always like easy, but it’s, I like, as often as you can be reminded of that, I think is powerful. But yeah, I think the general call to action is like the G word, like genuine just makes things flow and it’s effortless.
Cause you just.
James: Yeah. Yeah, totally.
How you do anything is how you do everything#
James: And I liked what you said there about like how you do anything is how you do everything. I’ve had that before and I think that it’s just is really key. Cause I’ve heard like this one podcast, I first heard that many years ago now the guy was saying like when you go to the.
Like how do you like to leave the bathroom when he finished in there? Do you make sure it’s all like cleaner than when you left it? How do you like go wash the dishes? Do you do a good job or do you just do them good or not? So the next person will have to deal with your problem.
All these kinds of things are like, it’s not just going to be a once-off thing. Someone that cleans the dishes really well, it was probably also going to do or other things in their life, like really well. And so I think that’s super important because it’s something now that I like watch out for.
Doing like even menial tasks, like, how am I doing this? Because this is reflective of like how I’m going to do things like at work or like, how am I going to complete a project? Because there might be little things that you just audit need to do that. Cause oh, that’s fine.
I’ll just skip that bit. But it’s putting things away in the right place. Are we going to when you finish a project, you’re going to check what it is like a few times before you send it off that there’s no spelling errors and make sure like everything’s in the exact right place, things like that.
Just doing like that at one, 2% extra, in every little thing adds like a lot to everything that you do. I think so. Yeah. I like, I’m a big fan of.
Joe: Yeah, that’s a great thought. You’ve prompted me to rethink that for myself and get better at it. So thank you so late. Be paying attention to everything.
James: Obviously you got think of it all the time, but I think there’s absolutely but it’s
Joe: A, it’s a very. Frame. It’s a very good a frame. And even if someone listened to this and did that for the next day, that’s a very positive, because I did feel like all these positive attitudes, if you want or approaches, like you, I’m going to do more of that and you don’t always follow through, but I think over time they all kind of sink in and they all add up.
Yeah, that’s better that long-term long-term trend is trending towards being been better yeah. In that way. So that’s honestly a really great attitude, I think.
James: No, I definitely agree.
Highlights from 18 and Lost#
James: So let’s go back to your book. Now let’s talk about you feel this is quite a unique concept. I’d haven’t heard of a book written like this before, where you’ve got.
Sometimes there’s like the one author. And then there’s a couple of guys that like, do like the forward. So there’s three authors on the front of whatever, but this is not that this is there’s. I think you have eight different people that are each written, a section of the book. Tell us about how that can.
Joe: Yeah. And we, I guess Scott is my high school friend who ended up doing, we did like nonprofit work together, and then he did his own startup espresso, which is a great up and coming Ozzy company. And we like have always been interested in education from starting to do our own self directed, very self-directed projects, like things we’re choosing for ourselves to do.
And we just found where we learned so much. There are great places to live. You got a lot. We both went to uni. He loved uni. I’d have the best time, but you undoubtedly still learn things. But I think the most effective ways to learn, especially in this day and age, where you can create things easily more easily than ever before is projects and picking your own challenges to do.
I guess our mission together is to try and help catalyze that approach to education and making it more accessible because there’s a lot of pieces to pull together, but it’s logistically easier. So it’s not packaged up for people is the problem. Like your podcast, you have to decide to do it. Then you have to find the guests.
You have to figure out how to do it. And you just at the start you’re right. So how do you package it up and make it easier? That was the inspiration for the. So we cared about education. We’ll theme the book around like something useful for young people when they’re leaving high school.
Cause that’s like a pretty big social problem. Yeah. We want to make it a learning experience for us in the co-authors. And I wanted to learn myself. It’s the first book I’ve published and will be self published. And I went to learn like, all right, how do I do this self publishing thing? What’s involved.
I really didn’t know. I knew been writing stuff for ages. It was like, As good for me too. Yeah. And we just found basically friends, literally just people we knew who we thought. Yeah. They’d be interested in doing this. People were just intentional all young people or young Australians, like if I’d known you a year ago, I might’ve asked you for example maybe in the future.
So is literally like that just like showing you back. Yeah. Really anyone can do it and then 18 and Lost. So it’s about obviously that awkward journey after leaving high school, most people have a lot of it, lot of challenges or things to think about and process, even if you get through it unscathed.
But it seems like everyone goes through a bit of something at that time and kind of big problem to be. We are not very good at ferrying people across from the high school environment. The rest of the world, they’re in where we really we let them swim across a very choppy waters and just see who survives.
It’s just not the kind of the world I want to live in. Yeah. So that’s probably the broader ambition is alright, what’s good for that. Sharing people’s stories like eight very different people. And there’s a surprise ninth as well, all those different stories.
And getting them shared gives you like, oh wow. That’s what it was like for those people, cause you can’t summarize everyone’s experience. There’s no one experience or one way of doing things, but by giving eight or nine different examples, we thought that can help, maybe it’ll resonate with someone.
Like one of those stories will resonate. Like I felt that way too, for example, and it’s not just. ‘cause we don’t talk about things like that in depth. Very often. So I wrote about leaving high school, my struggles at university, not really pursuing the things I was actually interested in, but trying to take a safe road and how that felt.
And I called it like six out of 10 life. Like not so bad that you make a change, but not so good that you’re enjoying things. You just really riding the middle. Yeah. And to be honest, like a lot of my family and friends wouldn’t know that stuff until they read it. Yeah. Cause like it doesn’t really come up for sure.
And that’s the thing. That’s why we wanted to take a storytelling approach. But yeah. Ultimately like the concept was pretty cool. We’re pretty proud of it. Cause it was like we gave everyone like five weeks to write their chapter and that created the accountability and get through writing a book.
Reduce the workload, because you just got to deliver one chapter. It was their stories, which for most people is pretty intimidating I think the group really helps with the follow-through cause like when you got to do things and other people are relying on, you creates way more incentive.
If it’s just me on my own, if I don’t do this, no one’s gonna, no, one’s gonna mind. As books often are and. Yeah, the writing, I believe the writing very proud of everyone’s chapters. So I really it’s. One of the things I care about a lot is helping more people learn what they’re capable of through, through writing books.
A good one, because it’s very tangible, I did this and I became an author, so it’s a really great journey to go on and I’m sure. And encourage as many kind of, especially young people to take up that challenge or, and we’re trying to facilitate it in our work too. Like more people doing this sort of stuff,
James: For sure.
Does it, so with the book, were there any key themes between people leaving, high school in uni, whatever it is because obviously, yeah, like you said, it’s a very choppy time leaving high school. You got to pick one thing to do, which is. Yeah, almost everyone is like, I’ve got no idea,
What are some key themes from the book and even common problems that people had and how do they go about dealing with those?
Joe: Yeah. Great question. I in the, towards the conclusion, I unpack. The five big ones I noticed. But I also encourage, I’d love to hear, like when people read it, what things they picked up that I didn’t pick up, but it’s one of the things one of the key things was that the people who are not super true to like their, maybe their internal.
Which is this is what I feel like I should be doing. Like what their real interests are at that time. And things like that. The authors that didn’t follow those kinds of key interests. Looked like they struggled a bit like really like an emotional cycle, somewhat psychological level. For example, me wanting to be a filmmaker ended up studying psychology.
Didn’t do much film. Cause I was like just lacked confidence and lacked, I don’t know. It didn’t know how to go be proactive about getting experience and always yeah, lots of reasons. And I didn’t feel great at that. Because there’s a gap between what I felt like I should be doing and what I was actually doing with my time.
So when that happens, you kinda like smelly, normally you don’t feel great. Whereas say someone like Scott, who’s his story in there? Yeah. The best thing for him he realized was probably to start with engineering and he really made that choice himself. Whereas I was looking for a safer path so that there’s kind of some of the stories falling into.
More a bit more like Scots, where they chose their way. And some were a bit like mine, where this is what I think I should be doing. Yeah. Not what do I really want to do? And this is not even the top thing I’d pick to do, or I picked it for the wrong reason. Like I picked it for an extrinsically motivated reason, which is the motivation comes from outside.
It’ll impress everyone. If I’m a ex, if I’m an engineer, I’m a psychologist. I’ll make a lot of money. That’s extrinsic, like a reward that comes from outside. Whereas intrinsic is aren’t so into like psychology or I’m selling to engineering or, I love the people I’m meeting doing this.
That’s much more kind of intrinsically derived that’s it? So that, that was probably like the biggest. Take away. And then I think what other things the other one, the best one is no one predicted what they’d be doing by the time they were sitting down writing the book. And that includes Jordan was our oldest author.
He’s a 27 and he’s got a, he’s got a chart. He drew a nice graphic in the book about all the different things he’s done. The most diverse career of any person I’ve ever seen ever. So he definitely didn’t predict what he’d be doing and even Gabby, who’s our youngest author. I think she intended to go on a gap year, last year, but COVID so start studying law and then didn’t anticipate becoming author of a book at 18.
So the unpredictability of it is nuts. Like no one, like I didn’t -predict I’d end up trying to do entrepreneurial projects. I left school wanting to be a filmmaker. So no one actually had the clear idea. It’s kinda like the big lie. Like you’re picking something, thinking this is my path. And it’s unlikely to be your path because most people take some sort of pivot.
And that’s probably the healthy thing. If you take a pivot because it means you’re discovering things, that’s good. Like you’re not growing. If you’re not discovering things you didn’t anticipate. If you can see everything ahead and that’s when we learn, that’s the age I’m going to get. Promotion and that’s that like completely linear and no surprises.
Like it feels safe, but it’s not really what you want. It’s what you think you want. And so actually, like not knowing is a bit healthier, but feeling comfortable, not knowing is the challenge. Whereas the people who are like dead set, like lays it in yeah, I’m just going to do that. And that’s.
I’m going to be a doctor or I’m going to be, or whatever, like they might end up doing it. But I just think you should always have your eyes open to other stuff, because you will learn and you can always keep doing whatever, being a doctor or being a lawyer or being a builder or whatever it is, but discovering new things with them.
Is really what makes it a journey makes it exciting. And so everyone, the other pattern is probably everyone comes out. Like you said, thinking, what do I want to do? And having some anxiety over that, because I guess we put them in an environment where we make them feel like they should know that’s what our culture is.
Now. Everyone is made to think that they should. That’s actually the problem knowing is not actually the problem, in my opinion, it’s feeling like you think you should know, which is a bit of a mouthful is like actually most concerning. And to bring this full circle. I don’t, I couldn’t tell you one year from.
What ventures I’ll be involved in where I’ll be at how much money I have in the bank or any of that. I can’t predict it. All the things I’m doing have such open loops. There’s so much that could happen. Some I don’t know, maybe the prime minister will read the book. And so I want you to do this program or, I don’t know.
I know, but I don’t like, or it could be negative things. It could be like, I don’t know every, all the business stuff I know crashes and I don’t know, but I’m not really worried about it because I guess I’ve had enough experiences that have taught me that the worst things that can happen, you can’t learn so much from, and life is actually pretty simple at the end of the day.
So everything. All the achievements we go for it just like scoring an extra goal, but you’re already ahead. It’s my philosophy. So like it’s actually that not much to be that worried about because I guess I quite, I feel very, normally feel very like satisfied with who I am and how I treat people and try to remember that’s actually the most important thing, not like where I’m at by 26 or 27 or any of those things, all that kind of nonsense.
It makes it just okay. It makes whatever happens to be pretty okay. Like in the long run and so that’s the difference between someone who’s maybe 18 right now and thinking shit, what am I going to do with my life? Or finishing uni going shit. What am I going to do with my life? And I’m sitting here, then you’d go, oh, I wonder what I’m going to do with
James: My life.
Yeah. That’s a great way to put it.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t have any more certainly than they do. This is the point.
James: Yeah. That’s really cool. And I think I liked what you’re saying there, because I think, there’s like distinction almost between having like your eyes open and like kind of the light, like the light in your head or whatever switched on.
And like you’re like seeking things and you’re discovering stuff. Even if that is just in your job or wherever you are in uni seeing what’s out there and going and exploring rather than just this is what I’m doing, that’s it like? And just close off to all possibility, because I think the world is open and ready for, to be discovered almost.
Yeah. I think it’s much more fun and, it makes it much more interesting when you can go out there and. And trust often, and you have some passions and interests. Yeah.
Joe: Definitely it’s probably a bit different as well, like the generations. So say our parents’ age, it’s just much more different, but we got a cultural hangover.
So it’s not necessarily worse. In a lot of instances, they had less choices, maybe definitely less choices on average. And so it’s just pick a pathway. If I can go to uni, that’s pretty good. Cause that’s what normally is going to get you a good job. And so that makes sense. Now it’s so different.
The uni stuff is still there, but then you’ve got 500 million other things that like can be done. And the internet changes like what your capabilities are, but there’s like a fraction of the awareness. There should be about that. And. And also, because of like the way the future is changing, everything like that and technology and AI and all those scary buzzwords that are in older, how all your jobs are going away, that which, change like things will change and adapt, but I don’t think it be, I think we’ll be at people will be able to adapt.
So I just think th there’s a real opportunity now to approach it as a discovery period. Not like. Feel successful and safe as quickly as possible period. Cause that is constraining, which I don’t find that healthy. And there’s definitely like a broader set of possibilities, but obviously that can be intimidating.
That can be overwhelming. And so it’s not like it’s hard to come up with a linear, set sets, endorsement, you know that he wrote this blurb on the back of the book or read it. The big lies that people have figured out their future in this powerful illness book, you’ll discover that it’s a journey, not a plan, and that you can lean into the possibilities that lie ahead.
I just think that’s just so well put, that’s a great quote on its own irrespective of the book. It’s a journey, not a plan, like at the end of the day, I always say like, when I look back, I measure like my quality of life in store. Yeah. Obviously not money because in the end there’ll be an end.
I don’t know when, and I won’t be counting like how many dollars I’ve got in the bank or, things like that. But what really is like the best currency is just having all these stories and all this cool shit. But you look like you went back and did, and obviously having enough money to eat and do stuff and reinvest into other things.
It’s like pretty, pretty good too, along the way. It’s just, it’s part of that picture. And so I’m writing a book, which is my life, but just forwards. Yeah, that makes sense. Like a story’s to be interesting.
James: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s so cool.
You are going to die#
James: And I like what you touched on it briefly there about you’re gonna die someday.
So you want to have these stories that you have to tell and I think, yeah, that’s something that I think about often too. And I think when you think about. I was listening to this in a book actually the other day it was called the comfort crisis.
So it’s about this sky. It’s a great title of a book. Yeah. So what he does this guy he’s does this massive challenge where he pretty much goes into the forest with two of his hunting friends. Like some snacks and like heaps of like luggage and tents and whatever. And I would their mission is just to go out there and like hunt, like an animal.
I think it’s, they call it a caribou. I don’t really know what that is. I’m guessing it’s like similar to a deer.
Joe: But everything similar to what do you
James: Know, I get this thing and bring it back and eight, eight, that is like the pretty much the sole source of food. And then I come back after a month.
Very interesting. One of the things he was saying was these cultures, I think that’s actually a country in, I think they have quite a low like wealth, the GDP kind of index, but they’re one of the happiest countries in the world and one of the theories around the reason why is because they get taught about this idea of death, promise that they just get reminded that you can die. So like some people be this particular country who was saying they really focus on it. So they have a plan for where they want to die. What’s it going to look like? And they’ve really considered it in great depth.
Whereas some people will, maybe in the Western world get right to the end and then they’re like, oh that’s what happened that ended up here. And so I think it’s so key to call it instead of, cause I think, whether it’s what career you’re going to choose who are you going to seek out?
What kind of things you can, what are you going to spend your time doing? If you reflect on that your plan at your life and you’re going to die someday that, there is actually some kind of urgency to doing these things and they’re just going to happen themselves. I think that it brings a lot of clarity and especially what you’re saying about like the.
Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. I like, I think some of the extrinsic ones might start to fade away a little bit when you realize strips them back.
Joe: Yeah. Def strips them back completely. My, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but my favorite question is what would you do if you had five years to live?
What would you do differently? Like how would you live differently? It’s my favorite question. Not everyone always asks if you had a data live yeah. Okay. Obviously I, say hi to James. Tell my mom, I love her. Go to the beach, have a party. Like it’s so easy. But when it’s five years, you still got like finances to manage and ration out over that time.
And, but it’s so close. You can’t ignore it too. And you got time to do something like meaningful that. Impact things after you’re gone, because you’ll be very conscious of the fact that you’re going to be gone. And, it sounds a little morbid, but I think it’s actually the opposite.
I think it’s more so what we do in the west is put death out of the picture and deny it exists. We live, most people are living as if they’re never going to die. That’s like when I look around most people in the west living as if they’re never going to. Their behavior. Doesn’t make sense to me considering that there’ll be dead one day which is struggling for 10 years just to get a mortgage.
If that’s an, if that’s an eighth of your life or a 10th of your life. And that was the only thing you got towards that time at expensive. Everything else. That’s good about life. But that five-year question like everyone I’ve asked, like it just strips back all the extrinsic stuff.
Cause you’re not worried about, how people are gonna look at you everything about human nature is about constraining attention to something that’s like we have finite attention. And so why so many people struggle, even though this is logical, is that.
In the world, we’re in the environment, we’re in like all the shiny objects and everything. Just, it sucks our attention into that in the same way. Social media will always direct your attention to what’s in your feed, even though, I don’t want to just be scrolling my phone right now. So there’s we don’t have that discipline is like really hard.
If you want to apply it to everything you’re looking at all the time, it’s again, like it. And I remind myself, don’t think about that and think about that. And so obviously death is just like everything else. Constrains your focus. That’ll probably constrains your focus better because it’s the reality death is the reality that we’ll have to face at some point.
Yeah. You can’t lie about that. And anything contrary is actually the big kind of fluff ball, like that’s like the distraction. So yeah I think that I’ve heard that sort of story about the different cultures that do actually centralize it and normalize it and, make it like, yeah.
Okay. This is the constraints. These are the constraints, so what are you going to do? And, it just changes everything. That question for me, just changes everything. And this podcast, geared towards career and probably, and we talked about networking today.
It absolutely impacts how you think about those things. It absolutely impacts how you think about those things. Cause You think about, oh I’m not going to focus on doing everything in a transactional way. If I’ll, if I won’t be here in five years, I want to, you wanna, you want that journey.
You like be meaningful and you want it to like, be worthwhile good relationships that you work with and you don’t have also, you don’t have time for people who are not that. Yeah. To oh, I just want to hang out this person. Cause they can get me this or that. You don’t have time for that because you’re gone in five years.
So I, I try to remind myself of that question, like as often as possible, because it is a massive release. It’s just a massive release. Even thinking about it again now thank you for prompting me like unintentionally, but everything like launching a book at the moment, all these things. And I just right now, just for.
It’s calming it’s so fascinating. And yeah it’s definitely like missing from Western culture in a big way. We don’t, it’s not normally in the career guidance books and all that sort of stuff and high school. And, but I have a feeling I can next coming decades. It might because.
Things are going to change so much with technology and the world and the digital world and crypto and all these things. Just going to shift things around so much flying cars and it’s coming and it’s coming. And so that’s going to force us to rethink the way we do a lot of things. So it’d be fascinating to see.
How big those changes might be. Yeah. Yeah.
James: No, totally. Totally. Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s super cool.
Joe’s advice for those starting university#
James: All right. And the last question for you today, geo is if you were going to graduate university again or maybe even starting university, you can choose what’s your one piece of advice.
Joe: Yeah.
Wow. It’s like the question we asked a lot around the book is what advice you’d give your 18 year old self? And I think I can say the same thing to both the vision of me starting university and the version of me ending university. Make the most of it don’t settle for any less. Yeah, I like that.
Cause even leaving, like whatever’s coming next and that’s a big focus on what you have again, make the most of it, whatever you can access and start with, make the most of it, and if it was at university, I didn’t make the most of it. Like I wish I could go back in.
Not really because I learn a lot, which is applied, made me more focused in life after, make the most of it. I think that’s it. Good
James: Question. Perfect.
Outro#
James: Yeah, thanks so much, Joe, for coming on today. Fantastic conversation and much appreciated. So people are going to come and find you on social media purchase your book, all that stuff.
Where’s the best place.
Joe: Yeah, I’m someone with many internet links. So I’m always very careful with this. I’ll concentrate on the book. It’s 18 and Lost.com.edu. And it’s just a N D and that’s, yeah, that’s just the best place with everything to do with the book. And that’s a good kind of a door open that everything that I’m involved in working on.
And then I guess, Other than that, I have a website and I have a podcast. They both got the same name with Joey. And my last name is w E H B E for Weeby and yeah. Podcasts and that name and a website there for people on the land there. Which has links to any social things too. So yeah, I’d concentrate on those cause it’s easy to I’m not very good at consolidating it all.