MBA2398 Must Read: Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, helping you become a better entrepreneur with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is a fun and interesting one, Excellent Advice for Living, by Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly is a very, very popular creator and entrepreneur, and he's best known for his 1 ,000 True Fans blog post, where he makes the argument that all you need is 1 ,000 true fans to have a successful business on your hands.

0:51If 1 ,000 people absolutely love what you have and what you offer, you pretty much have a successful business for life. This book is a little bit business, a little bit life, a little bit of thinking and learning, and you'll absolutely love it. Excellent advice for a living is 68 small pieces of advice. Kevin Kelly wrote this book on his 68th birthday. He decided that he wanted to give his young adult children some advice. And he's not a frequent advice giver, but he wanted to write down the 68 most important pieces of advice he can pass on to anybody who's interested in improving their life. And so much of what he shares can be applied not only to our businesses, but also in our life and our trajectory to get better at whatever we do.

1:37How to be more creative, how to be more fiscally responsible, how to have more passion and purpose, how to know yourself. This is a fun and easy book that is packed with value. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly is an amazing book. It's actually a really easy read too. It's fantastic on Audible or an audiobook on Spotify. And you can finish the book in about an hour and 45 minutes. Now, I'm not going to cover all 68 pieces of advice in the book on today's episode, but I want to pick out a few that might be helpful as you're growing your business, as you're building your business, as you're becoming a better entrepreneur, as you're becoming a better person.

2:17And he's a big believer that if you're learning, if you're growing, you're on the path of success. He says the fact that you can't do something can be embarrassing. But if you're learning to do something, that is admirable. There are only tiny baby steps between can't and learning. So if you're worried about not knowing something and feeling like maybe you're not qualified, don't worry about it. Just start learning. Start with the first step. And as you learn more and more in life and in business, and I found this incredibly true as well. And he says, half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.

2:52There's so much information out there. There's so many ways to do something. There's so many ways to grow your business. There's so many ways to market and sell and create a product and to brand yourself. And there's all this advice out there. There's just too much out there. Thank you, internet. Right. And thank you, AI. And thank you, all the tools and video and content that's out there. The skill really is knowing what to ignore. Knowing that, hey, this is what's important. This is what actually works. And that just takes time because what works for you may not work for others. One of the things that we get trapped in in business is comparison.

3:25We worry about how we compare to other businesses, to other entrepreneurs, to other people who fall on social media. Comparison is the thief of joy, as they say. We worry about what people think of us. And Kevin Kelly shares this piece of advice that is an absolute gem. He says, ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren't thinking of you. I cannot tell you how true this is. The more I live, the more I do business, the more I interact with people, the more I realize that people are wrapped up in their own problems, in their own issues, in their own situation. They don't have much time to think about you, okay?

4:04They're really just thinking about themselves or thinking about how they can get better, how they can get out of their jam, how they can solve a certain problem or situation. They're not really thinking about you. And we often dwell about, oh, people don't think I did great. Maybe you spoke on stage. Oh, people probably think I'm horrible. Maybe you met somebody that you admire for the first time. And then later on, you're like, oh, I can't believe I said that. They must think I'm a fool. No, they're probably not thinking of you at all. And that's just the truth. We are the main characters in our own movie.

4:33Everybody else is a supporting character. And therefore, the same goes for other people. They see you as a supporting character. They don't really think of you that much. And that's a relief. You should not worry about that. He has a big chunk in this book about being creative, about being generous, about being a giver. Here's one of my favorite pieces of advice from the book. Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can't write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don't select. While you sketch, don't inspect.

5:10while you write the first draft. Don't reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment. So when you're writing a blog post, when you're creating a video, when you are creating a new product or service or a new course or whatever it might be, allow the creator in you to just create, to just be creative, to produce. Let it be free. There'll be a time for you to reign it in. There'll be a time for you to edit. There'll be time for you to refine. But don't refine and edit and hold yourself back when you're creating. This is kind of hard because especially if you're a small business owner, if you're a solopreneur, you've got to do both jobs.

5:48But you just got to put on the creative hat for a while. Let yourself be creative. Exhaust yourself from being creative. And then put on the editor. Put on the refiner later. The polisher. And this could be later in the day. This could be tomorrow. The next day. It could be a week later. The point is, don't mix the two. Another beautiful gem in this book is it is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving. Now, you might say, that sounds great. That sounds cute, Omar. How is that even possible? If I'm just giving, giving, giving, I'm going to be left with nothing.

6:26No, that's just not how it works. You see, when you are a giver, when you give value to others, you become a person of value, meaning you are valuable. That's how the marketplace works. A lot of people understand, why are these people getting paid all this money, these leaders, these CEOs? Why are these big-time coaches in professional sports getting paid millions and millions of dollars? Why are these players getting paid this much money? We just see that, hey, this person's just playing football. Why are they getting paid millions of dollars? This person's coaching a team. This is a game for crying out loud.

6:56We don't really understand that the reason why they're getting paid is because they are valuable to the organization. They bring in value. They bring in fans. They bring in money. They bring in televisation. They bring, you know, advertising. They're valuable. So that's why they get paid. So the more you give in the marketplace, in your world, in your business, to your audience, the more valuable you become to the marketplace. You become somebody of value. And therefore, you can demand higher prices, more money. I'll give you a very simple example. You might have heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, a very popular online influencer and business owner, entrepreneur.

7:35You might agree with him, disagree with him. It doesn't really matter. The point here is that he is giving value constantly online. He's giving advice. He's helping people. He's showing them how to be self-aware. All this stuff, right? He becomes somebody of value. When he gets asked to speak to keynote an event or speak for a company, he charges a premium. It's like$200 ,000,$250 ,000. He can demand that amount because he's a valuable person. I love his advice in this book when it comes to comparison and self-awareness. He says, don't measure your life with someone else's ruler. You have to use your own metric for measuring yourself.

8:12And the best metric is comparing yourself to yesterday, to last year. If you're the same person you were last year, probably didn't improve much. That really should be your ruler. Another gem in this book is a great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others. If you see somebody do something, you're like, oh, I hate it when they do that. Or I can't stand when people do this or that or the other. This is us recognizing something in somebody else that we probably deep down see in ourselves. Why? Because we often have compassion and empathy for things we don't see in ourselves.

8:50So you might see somebody and you'd be like, oh, I feel so bad for them. They're struggling with this. It's probably because you don't struggle with this. And therefore, you have empathy. Kind of sounds counterintuitive, right? But the truth is, is that things that irritate us, they irritate us because they hurt us internally. Because probably somewhere in our life, in our history, in our upbringing, we experience that as well. So anytime you get irritated by something, ask yourself, is there something here? Is there something I need to improve? let's talk a little bit about money in the book he says be frugal in all things except your passions you might be passionate about a few things in life that could be maybe your health maybe travel and maybe like a hobby like chess these are your passions his advice is be frugal with everything else but when it comes to your health maybe you're very passionate about your health spend on the best food spend on the best trainers go to the best gyms this is where you're going to get the most enjoyment out of your money.

9:48You love to travel and have great experiences? Spend on that. Don't just spend two weeks traveling a year. Spend six weeks. Spend eight weeks. Go to interesting places. Do interesting things. Love chess? Invest in that chess board you always wanted. Go to that chess tournament that you always wanted to go to. Why? Because when you spend your money on the things you absolutely are crazy about, it's going to enhance the life you have. It's going to enhance the experiences you have. Everything else, be frugal. Maybe you don't care about clothes. Maybe you don't care about cars. Maybe you don't care about even having a big house.

10:19You're happy having a small apartment and having a modest wardrobe and driving a 10-year-old car. He talks about creativity in this book and when it comes to creating art. Now, art could be anything. It could be something you write. It could be something that you produce. It could be a video. It could be a podcast. It could be your business product. He says making art is not selfish. It's for the rest of us. If you don't do your thing, you're cheating us. Art is a form of charity. When people create art, it gives people a way to express their feelings internally. Think about it. When you go to an art gallery and you see a nice piece of art, when you see a Picasso and you see a Rembrandt and you just look at that painting and you're like, wow, this is incredible.

10:59I love the lighting. I love the expression on that person's face. What was the artist thinking? It's creating all these emotions. It's creating all these thoughts. It's creating all this feelings, creating all this impact on you, right? And therefore, that art is a form of charity. So when you are creating something, don't be cinchy. Be creative. You know it's for a good cause. There is so much amazing advice in this book. Again, I can't cover all 68 pieces of advice, but I'm going to leave you with one more when it comes to habits and your work lifestyle. He says, the purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation.

11:35You no longer expand energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. I love this. I always say it's easier to work out every single day than to decide which days I'm going to work out. What time is I'm going to work out? What am I going to work out? There's all this decision fatigue happening. Oh, I didn't work out enough this week. I need to squeeze in another day. Oh, I think maybe I worked out on Monday, but not Tuesday. If I don't work out today on Wednesday, there'll be too much of a gap. All this kind of stuff, right? It's just easier just to work out every day. And it's just like breakfast.

12:05You eat breakfast every day, work out every day. I actually learned this from Arnold Schwarzenegger because he believes that it's the best way to keep the habit. The consistency actually makes it easier. So by having the habit, it removes the negotiation you're having with yourself. Should I do it? Should I not do it? I'm feeling kind of tired today. When it's just you do it every day, you do it every day. There you have it, guys. I highly recommend you pick up this book, Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly. It's a short and sweet book, but it's filled with value. That wraps up today's lesson.

12:36I hope you loved it. If you did, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're at it, hit follow so you get our next episodes automatically and you get access to our archive of episodes. Over 2300 episodes in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Kevin Kelly is a very experienced creator, artist, entrepreneur, and he decided to offer some great life advice to us all. He says, advice like these are not laws. They're like hats. If one doesn't fit, try another. I love that because I'm a big believer that you can read a book and you might not agree with most of it, but you might find one gem that's worth the book.

13:14You might find one piece of advice. You might find one thing that's thought provoking or gets you thinking in a different way or the opposite. You might agree with all of what's in the book. The point here is, is that just because you disagree with one or two things in a book or a few things or a lot of things, it doesn't mean it's not valuable. We're different people. Humans are different. People's experiences of life are different. Be grateful of the fact that somebody compiled all this great information in a book and that you can benefit from it. Whatever that is in the book. Thanks so much for listening.

13:42And I'll check you in Wednesday's episode, Q &A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

14:01Thank you.