[Transcript starts at 1:23]
Hello, hello, hello my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. Right off the bat, happy birthday to my mom. She is @hikelady1963. Maybe you thought I was gonna say her age, though. I guess you could deduce that from her Instagram handle. But she is, @hikelady1963 on Instagram. Go say Happy Birthday. She listens to this podcast, so mom, happy birthday to you.
So this episode, we are talking about the information trap. I wanna bring your awareness to this. Put this on your radar and pose the question, are you falling into the information trap? If you've ever read the little blurb, which I've changed, but if you've ever read the little blurb about this podcast, you have to like scroll down underneath the review section, um, but it's helpful for people that are new to the podcast. But if you've ever read that, it says, the last sentence says, action is the answer. And I truly believe that in my soul, in my heart of hearts. And that is what today's episode is gonna be all about.
Firmly believe that for the most part with most things, when you wanna do something, when you want an outcome you likely don't need more information. You need more action. And you're gonna see in this episode, I'm not here to like bastardize information. Y'all know I stay wanting to learn things and, and do the most, but I tend to see people putting the cart before the horse unless looking to get all the information, using none of it, thinking that they're actually doing something by acquiring just all of this information and never actually going after the thing that they actually want.
Taking action is phenomenal because it creates questions, highlights questions, it gives you experiences so then you can then say, actually this is what I need to be working on. This is what I actually need more information about. Right? Doing it in the reverse, getting loads of information first, typically actually just stalls the process, prevents the process, and you never actually get where you want to go.
So with this episode, I'm, I'm largely talking or speaking to two kind of groups. One group are the, is the super beginners. They haven't even started yet, and they're just like, I need more information before I start. Yes, we understand, like for many things, there's like a fundamental level of proficiency.
Like go to school to become a PT, something like that. Go and get your certified personal training certificate, whatever it's called, first. Although plenty people start without that. Um, but yeah, we can say there's a base level of proficiency, but then people are like, okay, I wanna become a trainer. I wanna be a trainer.
And sometimes they don't even go, go and get any kind of certification. They're just like, I'm gonna do all the research and learn on the things first. And you're like, wait, what?
And then we have a second group, which is early beginners, where they have taken initial steps, but then they stop there and they're just like, I cannot do anything else until I get, hear a million more things about this thing. Both groups we know action is the answer.
Of note, little asterisk here. Hard to say that word. You can be a absolutely be a beginner at something while being advanced or proficient at something else. I do think that people that have mastery of something, they inherently understand that action is the answer and they know that they have to push through and just get started.
Um, so I don't see them having as many of these hangups with other things, but it's worth noting. Uh, I think that in general, and I didn't, I would put like beginners, I don't think we see it as much as like intermediate plus or advanced business owners or advanced people because of what I just said. They've escaped that information trap and they've learned that the best way to get the answers that they want and get the outcome that they want is to go and experience that thing firsthand, is to go and do that thing. Because action is the answer.
So a little definition here that I made up. The information trap is simply thinking that you need more information before you can either get started or move forward. A related problem, I see this a lot, especially cuz we are in the information age now and I see it a lot for online business owners is spending a ton of time consuming information as opposed to actually taking action. And this doesn't have to necessarily be before you take action. It can be that people kind of started and then you just spend so much time consuming, listening to the podcast, reading books. This is gonna be individually based here, but this is most relevant for people that are like, I tend to struggle with comparisonitis, or I tend to struggle with shiny object syndrome.
That's usually because they are consuming more than they are actually creating. Right? Action is the answer. And in this case, knowledge, excuse me, information acquisition is not the action that we're looking for. It's not the action item we're looking for. It's going out and actually doing the thing. Like I said a little bit before, some information is absolutely helpful, but for online business, it's not actually necessarily that you like learn all the things because in reality, like there's no real objective, objectively wrong way to do this.
Yes. Like you could be like illegal, but for the, in terms of like strategy and approach and things like that, there's no wrong way. It all works, right? Your best bet is to simply Google it. We're in the information age. To that end, I do believe that we are looking for people who we trust to tell us things that we could Google ourselves.
So whether you're Googling it or going to social media or whatever, find the person that you trust, that you respect, see what they say about how to start whatever thing it is that you wanna start, and then go do the thing, right? Pick one resource that you trust. This is, again, this is not about acquiring all the opinions.
Pick one person and then go and do the thing. Success comes from starting. You cannot optimize a habit that you haven't built. Which is what I see people trying to do. I want all this information so like, I can like do the best way. You can't do that. It doesn't work. You have to take action, and then you start to see the gaps.
You start to see the uh, inefficiencies. You start to see the areas that you lack proficiency, and then you can go and find information related to that specific thing or those specific things and move forward from there. I am, again, not demonizing information acquisition. I love it. You know I will go deep. When there's something I wanna learn about, like I'm gonna learn all this stuff, but I'm not just gonna go and consume information about it. Cause then I don't, I don't actually know what's relevant. I don't know what I actually need to know. I'm gonna go and do the thing, get the experience, and as I'm going, I'm gonna ask questions.
Oh, I can't do that. Why can't do that? How do I do this? And I'm thinking about video editing right now. And I'm gonna go and get information as I go.
I wanna point out with this whole episode that the thing that you're searching for with all of that information acquisition, it is waiting for you on the other side of action.
I think that when people are going for all this information, they're looking for certainty. They're looking for a guarantee, which is such a hard word to spell by the way, folks, I, that is like the number one word that I struggle with when it relate, as it relates to spelling. I know this is look of a tangent, but like it's the truth.
Uh, I think people that go and look for more information, they're looking for a particular outcome. They want like a guarantee of this specific outcome. They wanna make sure that they don't waste their time. You can't do any of this folks. All these answers. I should say, you can't do any of this by just going and reading. All of these answers that you want, all these things that you may be looking for, they are on the other side of action. They're waiting for you. They're literally just like, yo, come and get me. Come and get me.
So, like I said a little bit before, as it relates to online business, one of the reasons that I'm so adamant about like take action, take action is because pretty much all the things work, I wanna say all the things work.
All right. I think some things may be easier than others, but whether or not it's easier than others or not is I, I think, largely individual. And it's based on how you do things, your experience, how your brain works, your, how you look, where you live. There's a lot of factors that go, that go into this. The goal should be to find what works best for you, right?
I'm always here just to share what has worked best for me. I share my life so you can see how I'm living, my values, things like that. And if you wanna join me on this journey, you wanna learn from. Cool. If you're like, nah, this ain't the way for me. Amazing. That's totally fine.
I'm thinking right now I have, actually, I'm doing a presentation with three other people.
One of them is this man named Jared, and uh, we're doing a social media presentation for APTA's CSM.. I know it's a lot of letters. If you're a PT you know what I'm talking about. It's a big conference that they host and um, it's four, so we have four of us going, and Jared, actually I was listening to his part and how he would teach social media, it's not what he does for a living at all. Um, but the way that he uses it, and he's had success with it from a business perspective, um, is he actually recommends creating a product first, which you all know I like strongly, staunchly, I'm gonna use that word staunchly, advise against. Do not create the product first. But it has worked for him. I don't know the full nuances surrounding his, you know, um, success with that.
But he definitely, when he is teaching, he talks about create the product, pull things out, you can use this, um, for marketing, things like that.
The reason I bring this up is that it works for him and he has a very different personality than me, very different approach to working, um, and how he does things, uh, than I do.
He really likes systems and things like that. Um, and the reality is from that example, everything works. You need to take action to figure out what works for you.
So if I compare this to volleyball, cause everything that I do right, I compare it to, to sports and as I was sitting down outlining this episode and thinking about it, I always think about does my argument hold up for all things?
And the first thing I can compare it to is sports. Um, but this would be like me watching all of the volleyball videos, all the YouTube videos, listening to all the podcasts. There are podcasts, um, Sand Cast, something like that. This is one of my, one of my most favorite, as it relates to, to beach volleyball.
But I kind of watch that. But anyway, I dig, I digress. That I'd be like me going to all the matches, but never playing, but me saying, I wanna start playing volleyball. I wanna start playing volleyball. I wanna get good at volleyball. Me having this desired outcome, this desired goal, but never actually doing anything right.
I know that we can kind of have that mental masturbation and think that me learning about this is me doing something. But in reality, the experience leads to the expertise. You have to go and do the thing. I take lessons for guidance and experience. And then that experience leads to more questions. And I'm like, I see holes, I see things I can't do, and then I can identify what problems actually need to be solved.
And then I take more lessons for that and I get more information from that. If I was to just go watch everything, I'm like, this is actually not helpful. Learning this, this footwork, learning how to put my hands for this. Trying to understand offense, different kind of offensive strategies, different kind of calls.
It'd be too much. It'd just be complete overwhelm and it wouldn't apply to me where I'm actually at, and I wouldn't actually get started. And I see this happen. I see this information overwhelm and overload happen to people. I promise you the outcome that you're looking for is on the other side of action.
So we're gonna wrap this up. This is a super short episode, just punchy, like, I want you to listen less to this and, and go do more stuff. It's not lost on me how much information I put out. It's my hope that you can take things and run with them. I, I continue putting content out because people continue to come into the ecosystem and I know that people need reminders.
I just wanna make sure that my content is not replacing your action. Action is the answer.
So to wrap this episode up, this episode, this podcast episode, YouTube podcast, I don't know, we're calling this thing, is intended to open your eyes to the information trap. Be aware of the, uh, the tendency to think that you need more information before you start, you need more information before you can take one more step forward, or this is probably a bigger one, maybe I should have spent more time on the, the tendency to spend so much of your time just consuming content, consuming information, and never actually implementing any of the stuff that you're learning and mistaking that consumption for action.
The outcome that you are looking for, whether it's a guarantee, a specific outcome, whatever it is on the other side of action. I'm gonna encourage you to seek the information that is gained from doing the thing, not the information that you think you need in order to start doing the thing. Action is the answer.
That was a fun one. That was a fun one. I'm gonna wrap it up there. That's all I got for you. Cause I want you folks to go and take action. I'm not gonna ask for any reviews or anything like that. Go and do whatever that thing is that's been in your mind, you're thinking about starting, you're thinking about whatever.
Go and do it.
One more time, happy birthday to my mom. All right, that's all I got for you folks. Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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