Corporate America just doesn’t get it.

If you look at the various job openings around the country they are looking for high levels of education or absurd years of experience.

Looking around my peers however, I see just the opposite. Whether it’s through self-education or non-formal education we have all achieved tremendous levels of expertise without needing to go into massive debt, take ourselves out of the game for years, or study topics that are irrelevant to our needs.

How are you looking to better yourselves and team this year?

Links

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

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Transcript

Adam Liette
This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations on this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business because at the end of the day, operators lead the way. What's up smoothie operators, so if you haven't been paying attention the last couple of weeks, I often don't talk about other influencers in this space. But there's a couple that are always kind of top of mind for me, that I do pay attention to what they're doing. I buy all their books, I'm on their, you know, listen to their podcasts and all that. And one of those is Alex her mosey? So I haven't like personally met Alex, I've I've met several members of his team. And I have worked with his coach, the guy who ended up coaching Alex for Mozi has coached me as well. So we have that connection. But you know, we don't like we're not buddies or anything like that. So I don't want to, like appropriate myself to that level. But I do like regularly pay attention to what Alex is doing. And just recently, he made he and Sam ovens made a huge investment in school. So that the app SK O L, not the regular school that we're thinking of, and you know what I'm talking about. So why am I feeding it to you on a spin?

The fact is, like right now, like we are facing this gigantic, huge inflection point where everything is changing, the old ways are like dying, and they are kicking and screaming on their way out. But I think it's important to like recognize the moment that we are in time and how this relates to what we're doing, not only within our day to day roles, but if you're like listening to this, and you're like, man, what Adam does sounds cool, like, how the hell do I get into it? The answer is there's like no school, not yet at least. But that's a teaser for another day. There's, there's no like school that teaches this stuff. Okay, the internet industry and like the way we're managing companies, the way we're operating is not MBA 101 type stuff where you are breaking the rules and making new ones up as we go. And that means education is evolving very, very rapidly. And I think we're getting like closer to, like, closer to the start line, if that makes sense. So the like traditional education has like a bunch of stuff you have to go through and it's like, eventually, you'll be able to start, like with the way we tend to teach things, it's like you're gonna learn while you're doing. Right, it's like almost like trade school in a way, in that, like you're learning on the job. And you're learning through experience, rather than just theoretical stuff. And then we're gonna, like, it's important to learn theory and all that stuff later.

But like, often it gets like flipping around. And so it's just a really interesting timeframe that we're in. And I especially, I'm really intrigued by it as a father of four, like all my kids are reaching that age, where we have a high schooler right now. And we're gonna have two high schoolers starting next year. And then we're gonna have a graduate and then another graduate, and then another graduate and like, what are these kids going to do out in the world? Because everything that was, is kind of broken. And you can see it in all the tick talkers are whining about their student loans. If that's you, like Quit whining and just get to work, okay, just shut up. That's Adam soapbox for the day.

That that method of go somewhere and learn something for four to five years to do, what you could have been doing from the beginning is over. And I just want to recognize that right now. Like you don't need, I don't care what a piece of paper tells me about you. Can I be perfectly frank, if I'm hiring, I don't care what degrees you bring to the table. I care far more about what experiences you bring to the table. And so as leaders in this movement, like, I'm really curious, like, how can we provide more of those experiences? How can we provide that type of introduction to the arts that our future colleagues need? Because running businesses the way we're doing, you're very bootstrapped entrepreneur, by the seat of our pants, like figuring things out as we go. You know, this is not taught in business school. I have an MBA, by the way, so I'm speaking like, you might think, oh, hypocrite with an MBA, I got the piece of paper. And I use almost none of it. Because that's not the way of the world right now. The very, especially MBAs and marketing my gosh, like learn how to market like Pepsi Cola.

Does anyone who's listening to this podcast actually want to work for a big box brand like Pepsi Cola? I don't think so. Because I don't want the bureaucracy, if I have a good idea, I want to action that yesterday, because that's the way I'm wired where I want to be like idea action go idea action go, I didn't even fit in by the end of it in Army Special Operations, because that was even too slow for me, I need to be quick action, I want to be on my feet. So like, everything is evolving. Okay, so what are we going to do about it? Like, how are we going to position ourselves? How are we going to position our people for that future. So there's really like two or three main, like conduits that are out there right now. That is want to explore and just kind of point out some of the benefits some of the fallback, some of the potential things you could do. So the first of these is really just like online communities, or like masterminds. And less should be treated as two entirely different things. So online communities of people just like getting together and talking, I mean, they have their place. And I see it as more of like a drive by conversation. Occasionally, I'll have a deep conversation with someone on there, but it's kind of few and far between. But it's more of like me, like quickly, like sussing out an idea to see if it's valid to see if there's tools that I need to see if I'm missing the boat on anything. But it's more of like that quick shot. But I can't do it for like really high level stuff, because people don't understand the context behind it. And that's really where masterminds come into play.

Where a mastermind group of people that I meet with regularly, people that I can bounce ideas off of people that know me know, my business, know the ins and outs of Adam the person, you know, and they can make recommendations based on what they know about me. So like, certain suggestions, like, if you've been in a mastermind, you know, this, like, you're going to make certain suggestion for certain people, because, you know, like, that's going to be aligned with their values be aligned with how they like to work. And that's really one of the benefits of a mastermind and something I genuinely appreciate. And there are two different ways to do masterminds. There's like either like the formal method where you're paying for the proctor who runs the mastermind, that's one method. And I have belonged to one of those, I didn't really enjoy it in some ways, I didn't get as much out of it as the personal led mastermind, where it's just like me and a group of guys that I formed a relationship with, decided we're just going to meet every now and then, and put it on the schedule, put on the calendar and like just keep that conversation going over a long term, that's been far more beneficial. The second is just the plethora of online courses out there, online courses do have their place, don't get me wrong, and I have worked, I've created many online courses, including my own, you know, generated millions of dollars in revenue with online courses, they do have their place. And it is very tactical focus.

Typically, an online course like really has to get someone into a place where they're able to learn quickly, where they're able to, you know, just pick up certain skills. And so it often has to be things that like, you don't really need the one to one relationship for. But you can learn it in a very kind of static receiving mode. So I came primarily from like the music education course community was where I cut my teeth on, like teaching certain music education skills does not require a one to one like teaching music

theory, teaching singing skills, some very basic stuff, like you don't need the one to one relationship, because you can demonstrate and then they can copy you and be on their way. There's a certain level where you do need a one to one, but that's a whole nother subject entirely. And we'll get to that. And I take in all sorts of online courses, like you wouldn't imagine I've been in, I'm always in some kind of a course. So courses do have their place. And there are just so many courses out there that are being created so quickly, that it's almost insane how fast some of these craters go about it.

As I mentioned, Alex from Mozi purchasing school, you know, within a week someone had a course out on how to create a community and school and how to really rock that. So I mean, that's just like so valuable. You hear about something like Oh, hell yeah, that sounds cool. And boom, here's a course for it. So from my my position it, like, do I want to invest some money for someone to show me exactly how to do something? Or do I want to go through the pains of like, trying to figure it out myself? Like, I'm, I'm gonna invest in the money most of the time, just because I gotta figure it out. And I don't have time to deal with like, wondering where to connect this and that, what are the best practices to do this? I'd rather have someone show me who took the time to learn that themselves, and now they're monetizing some of their value, and that's fine. I didn't want to go through what they went through to learn that anyway. So those have their own value.

The last one is really it kind of the highest level for me Personally, and it's obviously it's something I do is like the coaching relationship. So coaching is by far and above, probably the most valuable investment you can ever make in your business life. And there are like a wide variety of different types of coaches, from business coaches, to marketing coaches to I do operations coaching and leadership coaching. Like, it's huge, to have that kind of relationship with a coach to build over time. It's far different from what you'll get in a course. And some of the best coaching relationships I've been in had kind of a hybrid of both, where the more the more skill oriented stuff that you had to learn, was encapsulated into a course. But then you had the coaching part of it in order to learn the rest of it, or in order to learn how to apply it. And so that's actually what I do within my own coaching community is a lot of the tactical stuff, I'll teach you within the pre canned exercises that I've done or lessons that I've filmed because I really don't want to talk about it 700 times.

Instead, I'd rather just capture it once and then just point in the direction of our lesson that I've done. And then what often happens is people like, oh, well, great, but how do I apply it? That's really coaching is where the rubber meets the road. It's where we can start looking at things from a different perspective and starting to like see things in our own light. And then like get real results really, really quickly. So big thing, big takeaways is like, like we said, everything's changing. Everything is changing. Right now we're in the middle of it. My question to you is like, how are you going to react to that? What is going to be your response? As we experience this complete disruption, do everything that we ever knew about learning things about education? What are you going to do next? How are you going to respond?

And you being a leader in your organization, brother, you got to lead you have to not only level up your own skills, but you have to level up the people around you. Do that through education, do that through coaching do that through that continued process improvement, and overall at the end of the day, lead the way. Hey, operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting, this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within