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Welcome to episode 33 of the Mindful & Driven podcast! It’s all about how to not lose sight of what really matters whilst chasing your dreams.
Episode 33’s guest is Ayodeji Awosika. He’s written multiple books including The Destiny Formula and You 2 and has been featured in Business Insider, The Huffington Post, Thrive Global. At the same time, Ayo had collected over 80,000 followers on Medium.
He’d done all this after being a college dropout who, at 24, was broke and had no idea what he was doing with his life. He took his issues head-on and decided to turn everything around and several years later he started to live the life that he loves on his own terms.
I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation! I’d love it if you could subscribe, leave me a review and follow me on social channels.
- You can find all my work and socials here: http://amardeep.co
- Download my free Anti-Burnout Toolkit here: http://antiburnout.mindfuldriven.com
- United for Global Mental Health: https://unitedgmh.org/mental-health-support
- Find more about Ayo: http://ayotheauthor.com/
- Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ayothewriter
- Follow him on Medium: https://chef-boyardeji.medium.com/
Keynotes:
- Introduction (0:00)
- Taking off your rose-coloured glasses (2:03)
- Turning his life around (4:36)
- Ripping that band-aid (8:08)
- Mindfulness and self-care (13:23)
- Managing your energy (17:48)
- Not working excessively hard (21:52)
- Talking about mentors (27:16)
- Putting your trust in someone (29:16)
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Intro Music:
“Himalayas” by Mona Wonderlick — bit.ly/youtube-monawonderlick
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free download: bit.ly/himalayas-download
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Ayo: Sometimes you have to take a little bit
of extra stress and put in a little bit extra works, short term, so that it
frees you up to have some of those things that you want in the long-term. And
one of them, one of the main things is, yeah, just flexibility, in time. I put
myself into overdrive for those, you know, three to five years where it was
pretty stressful to do everything on top of my business, but I traded those
three to five years for the rest of my life. That was the train. Like I had to go into overdrive for a couple
of years, but now I get to do whatever I want all the time, you know.
[00:00:35] Amardeep: Welcome to the Mindful and Driven
Podcast, where we help you to not lose sight of what’s really important whilst
chasing your dreams. Today’s guest is Ayodeji Awosika. He’s written multiple
books including The Destiny Formula and You 2.0. He’s been featured in Business
Insider, The Huffington Post, Thrive Global. He’s collected over 80,000
followers on Medium at the same time and this is all after being a college
dropout who at 24 was broke and had no idea with what he was doing with his
life to taking everything around and now he lives the life that he loves on his
own terms.
I hope you enjoy today’s episode.
Welcome to Mindful and Driven Ayosa. Pleasure to finally have a
chat with you. I think I’ve been reading your work for three years now. So
before I even decided to become a writer, I was reading you. And you were the
first, if I remember, reading on Medium because you’ve got a name that stands
out. And we were just talking about this just before we started recording, is
how sometimes people think, oh, there’s nobody like me, so then I can’t be
successful, whereas they’re both examples of somebody who’s got a name that
maybe isn’t say memorable or so easy to pronounce, but people have followed us
because of our ideas.
So glad to have you here.
[00:01:38] Ayo: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Pleasure to be here. I’ve kept an eye on your stuff the past couple of years,
so it’s nice to formerly meeting. Yeah, like you said, my philosophy tends to
be that good ideas, the cream will eventually rise to the top, regardless of
where you come from, what your name is, what you look like. So never worry about any of that stuff
and just put your best work out there and good things tend to happen in the
long run. For sure.
[00:01:57] Amardeep: I think so much of your content is
based around, kind of challenging people’s perceptions, right. And breaking
some of the negative mental models that people have. Is there any common advice
from other people that you really disagree with and when you think that it
leads people down the wrong path?
[00:02:11] Ayo: One of the number one, things that I, I
hear that I totally disagree with is like this idea that, you know, just don’t
worry. Things will eventually work out on their own. You know, just stick
around and things will be fine. Like that is a hundred percent not true at all.
Things do not often get better, eventually. Things can often if they’re an
untended, do things can actually get a lot worse. There are things that you should be cognizant of in your life if
things aren’t going well, that should be, that should be a point of worry.
There should be a level of concern. And I do think this idea. You know, kind of
the trend in our society where we kind of like treat everyone with kid gloves
and tell them these fantasy stories and tell them if like, if they just follow
this societal rule book, everything will be okay. Like it’s a hundred percent not true. And people, people tend to
experience that later on in life. So. You know, there are, there are
consequences to your decision, right? The central themes and what I talk about
is taking off your rose colored glasses, you have to learn how to be objective
about yourself, your role and responsibility in the outcomes you’re getting in
your life and what variables you need to change to change different outcomes,
because I guarantee you, if you’re
not getting the results you want and you just leave things to their own devices.
Nine times out of 10, you’re not going to like where that direction trends, so,
you know, don’t, don’t buy the advice that eventually everything will just work
it out somehow, magically it’s like, no, you can go and waste decades, years of
your life and look up thinking what the heck happened? If you’re, if you’re not cognizant in the present moment.
[00:03:41] Amardeep: It stresses the signal, right. If
you’re getting stressed out by something, That’s a signal to make a change.
Like you can’t just let it, keep things the way they are. If that’s led you
down a path where you’re unhappy or burnt out. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a signal,
right? Like you’ve got to use that
and add to it. If you don’t use that, body’s natural response. Your body is
telling you like, something is wrong here. Like you shouldn’t be in the
situation you’re in, you’ve got to work out some way of dealing with that. And
for example, I see a lot with people who are burning out with working like a
hundred hours a week, or whatever, more than that, eventually, it’s going to
get lesser, and eventually things
are going to be okay. And I think I’ve seen it that meme recently where they
said being an adult is every week saying, oh, next week is going to be quieter.
And that happens just until you die, because you can’t just wait for things to
sort themselves out. You’ve got to do something about it. Obviously, I know in your past you did
do something about it, right? Like you switched your careers. You had like, you
went through different traumas. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like what
happened to you, so it leads you down the path that you are going now?
[00:04:38] Ayo: you know, growing up, people always would
say things like there’s like, you’re a smart kid. They say, you’ll be going places. You have all this potential,
blah, blah, blah. So I kind of told myself that story that, you know you know,
I’m a smart kid. Things are gonna work out, out of that potential, blah, blah,
blah. Things will be okay. Right? And then in my younger years, you know, I
fell into a lot of the traps young people fall into your field, very deep you
know, doing, you know, lots, lots of drinking. Lots of partying. Doing lots of
drugs. I was selling drugs. You
know, I had gotten in trouble. I got in trouble with the law. I had been
arrested. I was on felony probation for five years. I dropped out of college. I
was working, you know, working in factory jobs for $10 an hour, six days a
week, 12 hours a day. No degree. Convicted felon. No money. Just looked up and, you know, I had
looked around and seen a lot of my other friends. They were doing well, you
know, they’d gotten out of school. They were getting their jobs. They were
happy. And like me, I was looked up, I was 24, 25 years old and I had nothing
to show for it. And there was, you know, there, there was no more to this idea. Like, you know, when you’re, when
you’re in your early, when you’re 18, everyone looks at you in this all, you
have so much potential young man, you’re going places. But the more, the older
you get, the less, the less you’re going places. And the more like you’re,
you’re in those places now you’re in, you’re in a certain place, right? So I
looked at that and I was just like, I looked at, look where I saw and I looked
at, I looked at myself, I realized, you know, even though my life, wasn’t the
point where I wanted to be, I was like, dude, you’re like, you’re way too smart
for this. You do have too much potential, but you can’t just, sit on your hands
and do nothing about it. So in the
beginning, I didn’t know what exactly what I was going to, what I was going to
do, but I was like, yeah, like this isn’t working. Like I can no longer do
this. Right? So then I went down the path that a lot of people go on, you know,
find myself on YouTube, just watching videos. How do I make my life better? I started reading books. Different
things like that. Started getting real personal in the personal development,
and for a while it was just me, you know, trying to, just trying to fix my
mindset, trying to improve the quality of my life. You know, I went from some,
in that process, I went from some like very menial jobs to eventually like
getting better employment, you know, getting myself in shape, getting myself
smarter, getting, getting myself kind of right. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, things like that. Fast
forward, like a year later, a friend of mine had been reading. I, I’ve been
putting like these little social media posts on my website and it was just
kinda like things I was learning and they were kind of these like long rambling
kind of detailed, like almost like essays, so to speak. Right. And so I had a buddy of mine who must have noticed that I
kind of had a talent for writing. And he said, Hey man, I’m starting this
website, you know, this blog, and I think you should write articles on it. I
think you’d be good at it. And I’m like, sure, like what, what kind of articles
can I write? He’s like, you can write whatever you want. So I wrote an article. The next day, he posted it on Facebook
and I think it thinks about like a couple dozen likes on the Facebook page, and
for me, I was like, oh, like, damn, it’s like, oh, okay. Like somebody,
somebody wants to read this. Like, oh, maybe I’ll just write another one. I
wrote another one, and I wrote another one. Started finding different websites
to write on and, yeah, pretty much
since that day, where he first asked me to write an article, I’ve been writing
pretty much daily for the past seven years, and I never, literally never
stopped since that point.
[00:07:52] Amardeep: Getting back to that moment where
you decided to change, what was it? Was it like just that kind of accumulation
of this feeling of you are wasting your potential? Or was there a particular like epiphany moment? Because I think,
I think it’s a mistake which some people make is that they think that has been
an epiphany moment. I think it needs to be something really bad happens. That
you have to hit absolute rock bottom before you can change. Whereas if you’re
on that slider, you feel like you’re going downhill, at any time, you can try and get out of it. You
don’t need to keep waiting until one particular moment.
[00:08:22] Ayo: I think, I think for me it was just like,
it was like an accumulation of frustration started to build up. Even when I
wasn’t doing things right, I always had like a pretty high level, high level of
self-awareness. And this day, like
day after day, like, what I would do is, I let that frustration build up until
like, things just hit a breaking point. Right. And I remember I was literally
like, in my room, I like stood up and yelled out loud. Like literally I’m like,
I’m not fucking living like this anymore. Like I yelled it. Right. So it was just like, there was
like one day where I was like, wow, this is all, this is all too much, but
yeah, it’s just a, it’s just a matter of like honoring your frustration and
anxiety. Like those things, like you said, those things are there for a reason.
And I think what we get into now in this new culture that I have a problem with
is this idea that like, you’re automatically, you’re automatically supposed to
like dull, dull, the pain. Like if
you feel bad or anxious you should, you should try to doll it or ignore it, or
that, you know, your default state is that you’re supposed to be happy. Like, I
feel like one problem with a lot of people is they’re overly, they’re overly
preoccupied with their own happiness, to the point where they don’t change
anything. Right. It’s like, you
know, sometimes people walk around and they’d be like, Aw, man. You know, I
just don’t, I just don’t know what it is. I feel anxious all the time. I feel
down, I feel this, you know, of course there are general, genuine they’re
genuine medical conditions some people have, and you know, it’s above my pay
grade to talk about that, but in
some, in some instances it’s like, Look at your life. Like you, you hate your
job, you hate your job. You’re out of shape. You, you find no passion and
purpose in anything that you’re doing. All your relationships are struggling.
Like in that, in those conditions. Why would you be happy? Like for some people, it, for some
people, the answers to why you’re not happy are very obvious. Like you should
just look up and look around and see what’s what’s some, some of those knobs
are turned the wrong way, dude. For a lot of people you’re, you’re unhappy.
This is not some grand mystery. You know. You know what you’re doing wrong and
you know what you need to be doing. It’s
just, instead of like trying to push that down, which is what a lot of people
try to do, they try to distract themselves from it. Or, you know, they try to
dull it in, in whatever sense or fashion works for them. But it’s actually like
letting, like let the pain, like it’s better to feel a lot more pain upfront
and just rip the band-aid at a certain point than to continue to have like tolerable doses of pain. And
that’s what people do. They don’t want to, they don’t want to confront the,
like the pain of when you, when you’re really trying to pivot your life is a
lot to bear, but it’s, it’s you take it up front, you take your lumps up front,
you overcome your hurdles up front, and then it can be more smooth sailing to,
whereas most people, they don’t like the life they’re living, but it doesn’t hurt. It hurts just enough for them to wake
up. Like their job sucks, but it’s just okay enough for them to get up and go
the next day, right. The life isn’t great, but they have enough things going
where like they’ll tolerate it continuing to happen and then next thing, you
know, years, decades blink by. And then, and then it hits them. So for me, I was trying to like
cumulate that, that feeling of regret that I’ve had 50 years down the road and
I try to like, emotionally caused that to [unintelligible] when I was 25, so I
kind of piled all that up, and I thought about, the only thing that really
helped is I looked at some of the people who were years and decades ahead of
me, I’d use them, I did use them
as models for people I did not want to be like. You know, I’m going to be a
hundred percent honest. I looked at them and said, yeah, I don’t want to end up
like this. So I just extrapolated my current actions into the future, and I
really, really, really didn’t like what I saw. So that was, that was the catalyst
for me to change for sure.
[00:11:59] Amardeep: One of your points at the end, I
think it was a point of conflict for me. With the idea of mindfulness and
making sure that it’s not, someone could [unintelligible] and pretend that you
don’t feel the same way you do, because this is one of the things that happen
at the moment when people say, oh, use this technique, like breathing technique
or used yoga or something like that, to make yourself feel better. And like, that’s good in managing it.
And you should do that in different ways but there’s no point if you shoot, if
like, you working on a job, you hate then doing yoga and breathing exercises.
Well, like you said, it’s like smoothing over the cracks a little bit. It’s
going to help you. But the real solution is to change the job or to change your
scenario. You can’t just stay in a
scenario you don’t like and try to use management techniques. Sometimes, like I
said, you’ve got to do the bigger action and take a different path. And it’s
one of the things that I kind of have this conflict to myself, and the advice I
give to make sure that I don’t give that kind of impression that the idea is
you can follow. These are just
going to solve your problems. Whereas like, actually you do need to think about
like, am I doing the thing that I love? And if you’re not, then try and find it
like experiment. I always say that to people experiment, like you don’t
necessarily need to know what’s going to be the right thing, but try different
things up because that’s the only way you’re gonna find out.
[00:13:15] Ayo: A hundred percent and like, like you,
like, oh, one thing that was, was key for me in the beginning, it was like, I
did pick up a meditation practice around that time when I was trying to change
my life. And it did help, but meditation, mindfulness, like those are means to
an end, right. Where I think what a lot of people do with whether it’s
mindfulness and productivity and techniques, they, they try to make those an
end in themselves. Like they try
to form a personality around mindfulness. It’s like, no, you just use that to
be more mindful of what you’re doing. Like that’s the point. Mindfulness isn’t
so you can go, lock yourself away in a room and meditate your whole life. It’s,
it’s a tool to help you be more productive and actually be more successful in
the worldly realm. Right. And
that’s another, that’s another thing that I push back on people on quite a bit.
You know, I’ve noticed a lot of people they’re like these mindfulness
practitioners and self care practitioners and like their whole philosophy is
that. You know, you can just meditate things away, like, you know, goals or
goals and desires are rooted in your ego and you should abandon them and like
starts stoicism teaches you how to like blunt your emotions to zero. And I don’t, I don’t believe those. I
don’t believe that in that philosophy, I believe that. There is a, I believe
that there is a spiritual element to conquering things in the worldly realm. I
think there is a part of your, of your mind and soul and spirit that you cannot
access that you cannot access unless you push yourself through challenges in
the worldly realm. So it might
not, it’s not necessarily, it’s not, it’s not necessarily about making the
money, but it’s about the type of person you had to become to build that
business. It’s not necessarily about getting anything you want, all the fancy
toys and things like that, but it is having those things in your mind and
scratching that itch to see first.
[00:14:57] Amardeep: It’s exactly what the name of the
podcast is right, Mindful and Driven. It’s
this idea that you can have the ambitions, like they’re not mutually exclusive,
right? You can take the time to rest and recover and then go hard again. And
it’s that balance, isn’t it? Where sometimes people think you have to be
either, or. If you choose to meditate, if you choose to take care of yourself,
if you choose to read, you have to then shun trying to reach your goals and
trying to meet your targets. And
that’s not the case. It’s a tool to help you. Like, like what we do now, right,
people don’t, some of them see a side of it. It’s like you do have the failures
and it can be hard. And that’s where these different techniques come into play
to help us bounce back. And then we go again and we try something new. And it’s that resilience, which I think
really helps me from the mindless I do, is to build their resilience and that
also knowing my own limits, where am I pushing myself too hard, where it’s not
sustainable because that’s what I really want at the end of the day. Right?
It’s like sustainable success where I’ve got the time of my day to do the
things I want to do. And you took
that productivity as well, there. I didn’t want to be more productive just so I
can make more and more. At the end of the day, what’s the point of that? It’s
me. Isn’t, I’m being more productive so I can get the stuff I want done in
time. So I’ve got more time for spontaneity.
[00:16:09] Ayo: Yeah. Like one of my favorite videos was
from a guy named Ty Lopez and he was, one of the things he said,
he was like, optimizing your life for entrepreneurship is
stupid. Like you don’t want to spend a hundred percent of your time working.
Right. It’s it’s just. It’s one of many different components and it’s like,
people need to figure out where they are on the spectrum. Right? So for some
people, if you’re working way too hard and you’re working on the wrong thing
yeah. Maybe pump the brakes and
work on something different. But what a lot of people do is like a lot of
people right now, they fall into the camp of like, they’re not working hard
enough. They’re either not working hard enough or they’re working on the wrong
thing. Right. So they’re, they’re working really hard, you know, it’s kind of
that analogy like, they’re building
a really tall ladder, but it’s leaning around again, leaning against the wrong
wall. Right. So a lot of people do that or a lot of people, they just, they
just, they just need to spend a little bit more time. But for me, I kind of
look at my, my idea of self-care is taking care of yourself. Right? So for me, self care for me,
looks like going to, going to the gym when I don’t really feel like going, but
then after I go, I feel, I feel great afterwards. A self-care for me might mean
when I was at my job that I didn’t like, spending some time outside of my job
that you know, was working before I went to work during my lunch breaks after
work. Did that, did that create an
additional level of stress? Yes, but it was, it was towards a good end. So that
was self care. I was taken care of. I was taking care of my future self, right.
[00:17:28] Amardeep: Hi everyone. I hope you’re enjoying
the episode so far. I want to take a quick break to ask you to check in with
yourself. There’s many people struggling with balance and it’s nothing to be
ashamed about. It’s tips that my guests might share can hopefully help you
along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed or burnt out, it’s probably
best that you ask somebody for help too. For some, this might be a friend or
family member, while others might feel like they have nobody they can talk to.
If you’re one of these people, check out the link in the show notes, it’s for
United for Global Mental Health. They’ve got health plans all across the world,
with people willing to listen on the other side. It’s important to let somebody
know how you’re feeling. Now, back to the show.
One of the interesting
things I think I’ve learned over time as well is that, if you’re doing
something which doesn’t motivate you, which you don’t enjoy, then it
accelerates burnout. You might be
working the same, let’s say you’re working eight hours a day, right. You’re
working eight hours at something which you hate, you don’t believe in the
mission. You know, you’re looking at yourself, like I’m not adding any value.
Like I don’t get any satisfaction from what I’m doing. You might burn out
quicker than somebody working 12 hour days who absolutely love what they’re
doing. Here’s the whole thing
about managing your energy rather than your time? Is that a lot of people think
that what I was having today, whereas you going to the gym, right? You said
it’s harder at the beginning, but then you feel amazing afterwards and that
probably makes you way more productive in the afternoon. Whereas somebody who
is just looking at that time, but like, oh, what, that’s an hour that could be
spending working instead, but that’s not the same effect because it changes how
you’re time is measured in a way, right? Because that hour, it makes you feel
so good about yourself. Gives you all that energy and then you kill the rest of
the stuff that you’re in the day instead.
[00:19:00] Ayo: 100%. There are so many things I think
about in terms of managing my energy and getting the best of both worlds like
exercise. And not just, like you
said, not just rote routine exercise, like, so sometimes I’ll go to the gym and
I’ll do the lifting weights which, me personally, I actually liked that stuff,
so that’s not hard either, but you know, sometimes it might mean like, instead
of just lifting weights, maybe I maybe I’ll go for a walk or like go on a walk
with a friend and like, we’ll talk and catch up. Or maybe I’ll go hang out with my buddies and we’ll go shoot
some hoops or something, or like, we’ll go get a, go get a soccer game going
right. From, I’m cognizant of the things that I put in my body. Like I realized
that there, I don’t think a lot of people realize the connection between their,
their nutrition and their mental health. Not
only, not only what you eat but when you eat it. Time intervals, like I keep, I
keep all, I keep all that stuff into account, and yeah it’s just about integrating
everything together and like not being, not doing too much of one thing and
incorporating, incorporating all those areas of your life. So yeah, you
definitely, you don’t want to be con like people like that, that’s the thing
that happens to people that, like you said, that drains away their passion. It’s not just that they’re not going
to, it’s not just that they’re going to that job, that they kind of don’t like
that. They stopped going to play intramural soccer with their buddies. They stopped, they stopped
playing their guitar. They stopped painting and you know, they stopped doing
the little volunteer stuff they used to do.
Right. So it was like, as adults get older, they. they kind of like,
they get way too serious. That’s one thing that I’ve noticed about people too,
that it’s, it’s, it’s kinda counter intuitive, right? Because people like us,
we kind of go out on a limb and projects that might not make us money right
away, but that’s almost like we get the benefit of maybe making money down the
road because we’re taking it less
serious where someone who’s just working, working, working, like got to get
that dollar, got to get that dollar. Their lives are all oriented around money
a hundred percent. And then as a consequence, they might end up even making
less money than they would have had they tried something that was a little bit
more creative. Right. So yeah, it
all comes together managing your energy. And yet you got up, what are we here
for? Like, we’re not, we’re not here to work and be drones. Like you get, you
get one spin on planet earth as if your life is defined by going to work every
day, that is something that I think you do probably would be do well
re-evaluating for sure.
[00:21:13] Amardeep: What kind of scares me is that some
of the people that I know is that they sacrifice the things that they love for
a job they don’t love, and it’s like, wait, how does that make sense? I’ve done
in the past myself when I was younger, is that like, I stopped doing martial
arts. I stopped doing these things because I had to fit it around my job. When you think about it, like in
hindsight, Wait, so stop playing these things that I really enjoyed to kind of
climb the corporate ladder, but wait, what’s the, is that why I’m alive? Is
that what I’m here for? I think since I’ve started doing like, I’m back to
dance and doing time with my friends and things like that, it affects who I am
as a person. It makes me more like
enthusiastic within conversations. And then that leads to more opportunities
because I’ve got things to talk about.
It’s not just work. And I think sometimes people go down the alley of being so
focused on being successful, that they lose the bits about them that make them
unique, which is what will really make them achieve what they want to achieve
later on in life. And like,
looking at your own schedule. Now, you said that you’re able to do what you
want when you want, what is the lifestyle you built for yourself? What’s your
like daily routine or weekly routine?
[00:22:17] Ayo: Usually I wake up, well, you know, no
alarm, like whenever, whenever I wake up, I wake up. You know, get ready to
like, drink my coffee. Do a little
meditation. Then I go out the door and then I hit the coffee shop, and then I
usually work in a coffee shops cause you know, It’s like nice vibes, you know.
Sometimes you get to talk to people, meet people and stuff. So that’s cool. I
usually just work there usually probably like four to four to five hours, four
to six hours. The first four hours, I’m
like in a pretty like heavy creative block. So that might be writing or like
working on something product related and then like the next hour or two, like
that just kind of managerial stuff. And then after that I eat a lunch. So I do
like, intermittent fasting so I usually eat a late lunch, like probably like
around one or two, whatever happens after that, I usually hit a workout after
that. And then after that, yeah,
it’s usually just like hanging, just hanging out and hanging out with people I
care about. And that’s just pretty much it. I know. I don’t, I don’t work
excessively hard.
[00:23:10] Amardeep: That sounds great. That sounds like
some, I should be doing myself. What I found is that I’ve shiny object
syndrome, so it tend to start new things and I really enjoy doing them. And how do you manage that? Because
obviously like you’re like me in many ways, you’ve got the writing but you
always enjoy doing video and podcasting. How do you keep those all from trying
to get too ambitious and trying to do too much for each of them?
[00:23:32] Ayo: Like my rule of thumb is like, for the
most part, you really only want to, you want to have like, you want to have like a primary thing
that you work on and a secondary thing you work on. Usually like if you take on
more than that, it’s going to be a challenge for you. So for a while it goes
writing, I was doing YouTube videos. I got away with, I got away with doing the
podcast as a third thing because I
had four other co-hosts so I wasn’t doing everything. Like I w I wasn’t doing
all the audio mixing and stuff like that. So it wasn’t, I didn’t need to
dedicate a hundred percent of my effort to it, but yeah, you just have a
primary thing you work on in a secondary thing you work on. And that’s pretty
much the, it’s pretty much the most you can handle. And then a good way to like focus on keeping, keeping your
long-term products together and like figuring out what you want to work on.
Usually like usually like 90 day windows are really good for assessing
different products. So you could say like, all right, so for the next 90 days,
like this is where I want to be. Number
one and number two. Really see that out. And then like 90 days from then, like
review everything that you would thought in terms of like the amount of time
you wanted to work on stuff. Like some of the goals you had and then like
measure it kind of like quarterly. Like, I feel like quarterly basis is a
really good way to track your life and like, and like sit back. And it’s like long enough where you can
have some progress done, but not so long that you have to like over commit to
stuff. So usually about every 90 days, I’ll, I’ll check on what my kind of one
a and one B is. If things are going well, that way that I stick with it, but if
I need to re-calibrate and pivot, then I’ll do that.
[00:24:59] Amardeep: In the future, is there anything
which you want to make your number one and number two? Like you want to test
out?
[00:25:04] Ayo: So one of the things that is going to,
might be a pivot for me is actually, working on creating products to the
back-end part of my business and for once making, writing, the number two thing
that I do. Right? So one thing
that I, one thing that I’ve never done that I’ve seen a lot of other writers do
is actually pump the brakes on writing so much so that they actually can work
on other stuff. And that’s something that I’ve never, I’ve never really put
like product creation above my writing and that, and that’s actually something
that I think I’m going to be leaning towards doing here in Q1.
[00:25:38] Amardeep: Have you got any ideas of what
that’s going to be?
[00:25:39] Ayo: So right now right now I’m working on,
it’s like the development of a mentorship program. So like I wanna work, I
wanna work with a group of students and try to help them figure out what they,
what they want to do and help them move forward and kind of like a 90 day
window to help themselves personally or professionally. So whether that’s trying to help them switch careers, like
trying to get a side business off the ground, or just like in general, I’m
trying to improve their lives. My next idea is like kind of this 90 day
mentorship program where I’m going to work with a group of students, walk them
through everything I know about personal development and really try to give
them some, some real head steam and break breakthrough. And some momentum towards some of our longer-term goals. So
that’s a new program that I’m working on right now. And then I’m also going to
begin writing my fourth book this week. So those two things are my primary
focuses right now. So yeah, my, my normal writing routine is actually going to
take a back seat for once. So we’ll see how that goes.
[00:26:29] Amardeep: I think it happened to me last year
is that I haven’t been writing for anywhere near as long as you have, but it
kind of took the back seat because there’s now two podcasts and it’s kind of, I
needed to create their systems, really put the time and effort into it, but now
going forward this year, I’ve got a lot of episodes recorded. It’s all going to be much more relaxed
and the system is there and I can then refocus back on other things again as
well. I really like the idea of the 90 day membership program you’ve got going.
Cause I think as well, many people think you can just buy something and you buy
it off the shelf and you will learn it yourself. But I think often, it’s having that person that’s bouncing ideas
off of. It’s just so valuable. And I think even myself, most of the stuff I’ve
learned, like I’ve read so many books, whatever we get from talking to people
like you and talking to people that I’ve met for the podcast, for example,
where there’s ideas really solidify. And
I can really understand how I can act on what I’m thinking. And then as many
people like me who read a million self-help books, but still fall into the same
bad habits, I think that’s where working with somebody who can really help. Did
you have that yourself? Did you have somebody who you worked with when you were
trying to come out of your, the place got yourself into your like mid twenties
or was it all kind of self taught.
[00:27:34] Ayo: I definitely had a series of people I
learned from and mentors both like formal and informal that have helped me
throughout my life and I think
that’s huge. So I did, I did involve myself in like a self-improvement course
slash a mentorship program and that was really helpful for me when I first
started writing, I started submitting articles to this website called Thought
Catalog. And one of the editors took like a personal liking to me and worked
with me directly and edited and
gave me feedback on all my articles for like 18 months. Like that was huge.
Having like a seasoned industry veteran, like right there, like literally
tutoring and mentoring me. So that was one that I kind of lucked into, but that
was still the progress of like putting myself out there and just seeing what
happened in the, you know, somebody responded well to it. When it came to
learning some of the things like more advanced, when it came to writing, I’ve
taken several writing courses,
I’ve taken book publishing courses. I’ve taken courses on elements of growing
your writing business. I’ve had several business coaches. I have a business
coach right now, and every single time I’ve invested money in my own education.
I have gotten a massive ROI. Like a massive, massive, massive ROI. So I think some people are, some people
might be hesitant about, you know, investing, investing into like mentorship or
coaching or learning certain skills online. And for me, the way I looked at it
is that I know that I can go out there and get free information online, but I
knew that paying for it would just speed up the process because somebody who
already knew what they were doing and had it all laid out would tell you which
order to do things and how to do them in the right way instead of yeah to just guess with everything. So every
time I’ve, every time I’ve hired a coach or taken a program, it’s helped me
learn a skill faster than I would have been my own. And I’ve always profited
from them. So yeah, I’ve pretty much this whole time. I’ve always had some form
of either informal or, or formal mentorship and coaching. So I’m a hundred
percent a believer in that.
[00:29:23] Amardeep: What’s One mindset shift do you
think people listening today should make in their lives that could make a
positive difference?
[00:29:29] Ayo: One thing, honestly, I think it would be,
I think it would be the idea of, you know, putting, putting your trust in
someone else to help you. If you’re, if you’re looking for guidance. You know,
a lot of the times it’s like, Hey, even you can try and figure it out on your
own. And like, you’re not in like,
how well has that been working for you? Right. So whether that’s whether that
seeking, like, you know, in the beginning, I just, I saw mentorship like in the
form of books and just learning about different things like that. Right. And
there was just something about like the, even if that the tiniest bit of
financial investment into your education, like whether that includes books or
something else, I think is a real, huge mental shift, because it makes things a
little bit more serious for you. Like,
you feel some level of investment and, yeah, I look at it and I’m like, It’s
crazy. Like I’ve I paid like 500 bucks for like a writing course where the ROI
on it is like quite literally like a hundred X, a thousand X, whatever. Right.
And some people will look at those and they’ll be like, skeptical, but I’m
like, Hey, like you gotta, you gotta, you gotta reorient your mind. Like, no, you, you didn’t bat an eye
when you paid 50 grand to go to university, but you’re, but nobly now you’re
skeptical of this $500 course. It’s like, I actually would think, I, I’ve never
had an experience, I haven’t had an experience personally, where I’ve been
burned or scammed by anyone online. Period.
So I think a lot of people could maybe lower their skepticism and yeah.
Investing into your own education with your actual money, I think is something
that does help shift your mindset.
[00:30:47] Amardeep: And if anybody’s listening now and
wants to do something like that, obviously like Ayo can vouch for various
people so just feel free to message me and say, this is my problem. Who do you
recommend? And like, there’s plenty of people that I know. Like Ayo, who’ve got
this experience of helping people get through different issues that they’ve
had. And I guess on that note, where can people hear more from you? Who’re
listening and they’re, aren’t familiar with your work already.
[00:31:07] Ayo: So they can go to ayotheauthor.com.
That’s my main website and go on there. Check that stuff out. There’s like some
areas where you can sign up and like get some free stuff if you want to be on
the list. So go to Ayo A Y O is the way it’s spelled. The author.com and then
you can find stuff. All my books are there, all my contents there, get some
free goodies, all that jazz. So that’s where you can find me.
[00:31:30] Amardeep: Perfect. It’s been a pleasure
chatting to you today. So the final question I ask all my guests is, what’s one
small thing that’s brought you joy recently?
[00:31:38] Ayo: Getting back to like being creative. It’s
been, it’s been interesting. Like now I’ve had like a certain point in my life
where, you know, I’ve made a decent amount of money.
Like I got things going together and like, starting late new
projects and getting those ideas rumbling and kind of like feeling like a
beginner again, that that’s been pretty fun. So I’m enjoying that right now.
If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could
leave me a five star review, it really helps get the message out further.
Wherever you’re listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share
in your social media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice,
you can find all of the links in the show notes. Thank you again for listening
and I hope you have a lovely day.
Amar is a coach, podcast host and writer. He helps ambitious people to grow without burning out. His articles have been read millions of times and he’s interviewed founders of companies such as Netflix and Twitter.
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