Copy & Paste Strategy: How to Accelerate Change by Borrowing What Works

Thanks to Shopify for supporting the productivity show. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like ourselves the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/tps. Thanks also to select quote for supporting the productivity show. Get the right life insurance for you, for less, and save more than 50% at select quote.com/tps. (upbeat music) Welcome to the productivity show, a podcast where we believe that people like you can get the important things done without sacrificing your health, family, and things that matter to you. If it's your first time listening, welcome to the show. I'm TAN, founder of Asian Efficiency, coming to you from Austin, Texas, and here at AE, we help people become more productive at work in a life, and I have my co-host in another country in Canada, Vancouver, to be specific, and that is Brooks Duncan. How are you today, Brooks? I have a problem. I've got the bug, the Claude bug. I started going down the rabbit hole of Claude cowork. I feel like this is all your fault, but started generating videos with remotion, started to read, yeah, started read, like just basic stuff, just to play around. Started organizing my files in my scan and download inbox, like it's the dream of what we all wanted to do in Hazel. Claude can do it without you having to set up rules. It just figures it out, pulling stuff off web pages. Yeah, it's just, it's definitely going down a rabbit hole. So I don't know how I'm gonna have time for my wife and kids these days. This is like, this is when you know you've had the bug, when you're sacrificing sleep, and your social time just goes away. And I've been through that phase, I've made it to the end, and now I'm kind of getting back into it because at least at this time of recording, if you're following X, there's this whole thing that just came out recently called Claudebot. Yeah, and they recently renamed to OpenClaude, and it's kind of like an AI system. So if you see people buy Macmeene, it's like crazy right now, it's because of that, because people are basically running this like AI system on a dedicated computer, and I hate to admit it, but I also bought it at Macmeene. (laughing) That's right. That's right, permanently. So yeah, well, we're gonna have to save this for another episode 'cause I could talk forever about what this tech is doing 'cause it's game changing, honestly. I think it's, I haven't been this excited since Chat you T came out, and this is like saying a lot. So we'll have to do a whole episode about this. Today, we're gonna be talking about something else works. We're gonna be talking about what? Copy and paste strategies? What was this topic all about? Well, a perfect example of this will be, I will let you figure out everything to do with OpenClaude, and then I will copy and paste it and use it for myself. (laughing) Yeah, we'll get into the top three because in a moment, but I just wanted to set up this episode. It's called the Copy and Paste Strategy, like you said. This is actually the second in a two-part series. Recently, we did an episode called Fresh Starts, and that episode came because I read and enjoyed the book, How to Change by Katie Milkman, and she talks about a lot of different concepts of theirs, very relevant to our audience. So if you haven't read the book yet, I recommend checking it out. She talked about making Fresh Starts to make positive change in life. This is a second strategy, and it's kind of a different take on things we've talked about over the years on the podcast, and the idea is copying and pasting. So instead of trying to figure out how to do something and try to figure out if you can do something, try to find an example of someone else who's already doing what you wanna do, and just apply it to your own scenario. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah, I mean, I love this topic because this is something that I do quite often. So we're gonna share a lot of different examples of how you can do this in your life. But before we start diving in, let's talk about our top three favorite resources. So what are they? Well, the first one obviously has to be the book that inspired this episode. So it's called How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katie Milkman. Short book, but very, like I said, very relevant to the productivity show. That's number one. Number two is a web service called 11 Labs. So 11 Labs is famous for voice generation. So you can put in some text or you can give it the information and it has a million different voices that you can use. I wanted to call it out specifically because I've been using it a lot lately for doing translations. The feature of 11 Labs is called dubbing. And for a variety of reasons, I've needed to translate some videos into French being in Canada, like you said. And it's honestly astonishing how good it is. Now, I personally am not a French speaker, so I can't judge that part. But I have people who I have been collaborating with that are French speakers. And not only does it translate it into French, that's fine. But it translates it into whatever language you select, but it keeps the same voice. So I use a video of me talking and it uses my voice speaking French and that the person I was collaborating with said it's actually sounds like I'm chemical. It's that good. So 11 Labs for a whole bunch of reasons, but specifically the dubbing translation features that's number two. And number three is a gamified focus app called Forest. We've mentioned it on the podcast before and I wanted to call it out because Apple recently released their top free and paid apps of the App Store for 2025. And I was actually quite surprised that Forest was in the top 10 of the paid apps. So I knew it was popular. I didn't realize it was that popular. So if you're looking for a focus app, a Pomodoro style app, and the other ones you've tried hasn't really grabbed you, this one is a little more gamified. There's like growing trees and stuff like that. And give that a try. Maybe if that's the answer, because it's extremely popular right now. - Yeah, we'll have links on them in the show notes. So go to the proctivityshow.com or just swipe in the app. And funny is that 11 laps, because I've been using that for a while. I actually cloned my voice a while back ago. And beginning was more of a curiosity thing. And going back to Claudebot. So I used telegram to talk to it and I'll use voice notes and then we'll send voice notes back. And so I kind of use like different TTS or text to speech. And I use openAI, 11 laps, like 11 laps sounds the most human and it feels most human as well. Now the thing that kind of got me down this rabbit hole and I would love to showcase this. You brought it to me at some point is, I basically created a personalized podcast. So what I did was I have all these InstaPaper articles right in the backlog. So I have Claudebot every day. Go through my InstaPaper. And InstaPaper has my list of articles that I want to read, but I just don't have time for. And so it will pick one article that is the latest one. Turn it into an audio file. Upload it to Google Drive and then we'll upload a RSS feed on GitHub pages. And so these are all free, right? And so every day I get a new podcast episode based on my InstaPaper. And it's basically summarizing the article in like a voice that I picked from the 11 laps. So I think her name is Laura. And I use like the three of the model. And so I get like a personalized podcast based on the InstaPaper article. But then to take it a step further, because I load up the workflow with kind of like it's the technical term is called a context profile. It's basically like think of it as like a text file that basically outlines everything about tan like me, where I live, what my interests are, what my goals are and stuff. And so it talks on the podcast about the article, the summary, but through the lens as if it was like educating me, right? And so we'll talk about my goals and how this is relevant for me. And then at the end, there's a personalized section. It says action items for tan. And it will suggest action items based on the topic for me. So every day I get like a hyper personalized podcast on my interests that is just one for one, right? And this took like five minutes to set up. That's the crazy part. Like I said, I will be copying and pasting this eventually. (laughs) So yeah, let's talk about copying and pasting. And we'll do a separate episode about AI and Cloudbot and OpenClaw. And whatever we can do today, co-work. Okay, so Brooks, what inspired you to wanting to talk about copying pastes? Because I knew you read the book, we talk about fresh starts. But what inspired you to go, hey, Tan, we have to do this episode today. - Yeah, well, as I was reading the book, I was thinking about the, and reading the section about copying and pasting. And as I was reading it, I always thought about something that you've preached for a very long time. The general concept is it's not what you know, it's who you know, that any change you wanna make in your personal life, in your business, in your productivity, learning a skill. Like there's somebody that has already figured that skill out. And you could do things like you could read articles and stuff like that, that's great. You know, that's like level one for sure. But what inspired me for this episode is, and the way she describes copying and pastes, is it's like a few levels beyond that. It's actually finding somebody in a perfect world, someone you know, but there's other strategies to go if you don't know anybody. But find somebody who's already doing what you wanna do, find out the things that are working for them, and of course the things that aren't working for them. And then just see the parts that would be leverage points for you. And that's kind of what I was, like I said, I kept thinking it's not what you know, it's who you know. So I thought we got to. talk about this on the podcast because it's such a powerful strategy, but this is just a new spin on it. Yeah, I mean, I kind of got that idea from as I was growing Asian efficiency, I was talking to somebody I forgot who it was. I wish I could give them credit, but it was just this idea of like, hey, as you're growing your business as a founder or like usually you're the main bottleneck for everything. The way to scale and grow is that you don't have to know everything that you do. So if you're always thinking about how do I do this? What do I do? What's the step? What's the process? Then naturally you're you're going to be the bottleneck. And there's like so many things you have to figure out like what you're going to do when you're going to do it? How are you going to do it? Right. There's all these decisions. Whereas if you figure out the question of who can do this, then they can figure out the what's the how and the when and all the other things that need to happen. So as a leader, if you can figure out like who is the person that can actually solve this problem or grow this company or do x, y, and z, that's how you're going to be able to grow and scale. And so it always like just kept coming back to me over and over again. I'm like, who has figured this out? Who already has the copying paste strategy already in their life? How can a model success? This is something Tony Robbins talks about a lot is how do you model success? Because as he likes to say, success leaves breadcrumbs. So if you can figure out what other people have done, it's not that you know, it's going to be a recipe for success necessarily. But there's going to be clues there to allow you to kind of shortcut the whole journey. And what kind of stuck with me, this is like many, many years ago, when I first started doing this was, and I think website is still around called clarity.fm. You remember those days? Absolutely. So for those who don't know, clarity.fm is or was I haven't used it in a while, is a platform where you can book experts by the minute. So you pay like, you know, let's say someone charges like a dollar a minute or something, you could book like a 60 minute call with them and you send you pay 60 bucks. Or if they call only less like 54 minutes, you pay 54 bucks, right? And so there's all these like people on there who are HR experts, who are business owners, who are lawyers and attorneys, SCL experts, marketing experts. So I remember one time when we're doing a lot of webinars, I was like, Hey, who has already figured out how to do really good webinars? And so I hopped on clarity, FM typed in webinar or webinar expert found somebody had pretty decent reviews. And I said, Okay, but let me just book a call with them. That one hour call saves me so much time. Like instead of me spending hours and hours like experimenting, reading blog posts, trying to figure out like how to do this. This guy was like, Hey, here's the blueprints. Here's what's been working. Here's what's working for other people go do this. Now go, oh my gosh, just save so much time. So I started doing that for like HR policies for like legal stuff for like accounting ideas. Like it was such a good ROI. And like, a friend of mine recently she got promoted to be chief of staff for a pretty big company. And she without calling a copy and pasting, she basically did the same thing. She found like some some other platform where you could basically do the same thing, higher experts by a minute. But she basically got on the call with she was the chief of staff for door that like a pretty big tech company. And she basically asked her like, Hey, what books are you reading? Like, how did you become a chief of staff? Like what should I know? What did you know? You know, what did you wish you knew earlier? Like she asked all these really good questions. And that one hour cost her like, oh not 200 bucks or something. It was like the best 200 bucks she ever spent because it just saves her so much time trying to figure out how she could be the best in her role. And so I'm a huge fan of just just copying pasting strategy. Yeah, like another book I mentioned on the podcast recently is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. And as you were talking to us now, I was thinking about it because she was saying that when she was trying to build her speaking business, she did the same thing. She was kind of like spinning her wheels a little bit and then she was talking to somebody and it basically said like, Hey, look, it's great that you're trying all this stuff, but every successful speaker does the same three things. And until you do these three things, you know, you're not really in the game. You're not really going to get momentum. And the problem is you don't know, first of all, you don't know that these three things even exist, let alone what they are. And I mean, that's changing a little bit in this new, as we were talking about this new, like AI world with, you know, you could ask chat GPT or clotter whatever. So it's a little different than it used to be. But still the point stands that anything you're trying to do whether you're trying all of a sudden becoming a chief of staff and leveling up your career that way, or you're trying to learn to do something else, or you're trying to like decompress and maybe work less hours in a week, like whatever it is, there's certain things that are just super successful. If you do them, but it's as a matter of figuring out what they are. And that's, I think, where this strategy is really key. Another thing is another reason I really like the way that this was described in the, in the book is sure there is the angle of skill building, right? There's like, I want to learn how to do X. Who do I have to talk to to shortcut that learning and be more effective? So that's part of it. But the other part of it is also knowing what is possible. Learning that something is even possible. And the example that she gives in the book is she'd always heard about the benefits of going vegetarian. And she's like, yeah, you know, that sounds great. But I don't know. I don't really want to be like eating not loaf for the rest of my life or something like that, right? And so, so you know, she kind of like had in her mind that it would be maybe a good thing to try, but she just didn't have that possibility of visualize until she was at a conference or something with some of her colleagues, a number of whom were vegetarian. And she saw what they were eating. She saw that, you know, they were getting protein. The stuff they were eating did look great. They weren't eating like seeds or whatever. And so that showed her the possibility and how easy it is to go to a restaurant or to that way. More than she thought it might be annoying or something like that. And then that unlocked her next step of figuring out how so there's the skill building, but there's also the possibility building as well. So as you were saying, this came up for me was, yeah, somebody who might be listening to this episode, they might go, okay, is everything in life already figured out then? Is there's just a matter of finding a person who was already figured it out and you asked them? And as it was coming up for me, I thought, I think kind of like maybe we haven't figured out how to go to Mars or certain rocket science things. But for most things, everything has already been figured out. And so for example, when I, you know, I remember the first time I had to fire somebody, I was like so anxious. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so stressful. You know, what do I do? What do I say? And yeah, you can kind of go to Google and it will say, like, you know, if you want to fire somebody, do it on the Friday, and like have these like best practices, but it was still like not quite good enough. And it wasn't until I talked to somebody who was like a seasoned entrepreneur and he was like, yeah, I've done it a lot of times and it sucks, but here's some personalized tips for you. I said that conversation was like, okay, I'm so glad I talked to him because he's done it so many times, whether it's that what it is good or bad, you had the reps in. And I was like, okay, this is helpful. Like, this gives me a lot of confidence to now know what to do. And the older I've gone, the more I've just realized, like everything in life has honestly for the most of it been figured out. And if you just get in this mindset of like thinking, like, who should I talk to or what book should I read or what core should I go to? Like then it's just a matter of like cost and speed to how fast you want to get the answer. And I think AI is changing in a sense that the speed and the costs are in our advantage now. Because now one, we can research stuff way faster and get the information we're looking for. Cost is very low as well. And so now if you want to get like really niche answers, then yeah, maybe you know, platforms like clarity.fm are still helpful, right? Or joining coaching programs or being part of certain communities and stuff like that. You know, that feeling right before you start something new, especially a business. You start asking yourself questions like, is this the right move or what if no one's interested? Well, I can only speak for myself. All right, final. I'll speak for Tan too. But even with those doubts, it was the best decision we ever made. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of a partner like Shopify to make it easy, but you do. Shopify is the e-commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Codapaxi. Accelerate your efficiency whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones. 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Like the first instinct is to go, how do I do this? What do I do? I think the key is, well, first of all, it's like just learning that mindset of who not how. So that's number one. That's kind of how I would quote somebody. Also, I think what I would also try to do is ask a lot of questions because one of the dangers I would say of the potential roadblocks of a copy and paste strategy is copying and pasting something that actually wouldn't work in your scenario. You know, you were talking about wanting to learn how to to fire somebody or lay them off or whatever and reading all this advice online. And probably a lot of them didn't really maybe it works for some people, but it didn't align with the way that you like to do things or it's not something you could see yourself doing. And I think if you're, if you are somebody who is helping somebody along in this journey is just asking questions, finding out like what is what how what sorts of things would work for you if you're if you're somebody who wants to like we're talking about clawed by right. I've seen all of those things on social media as well of people going crazy for it, but I've also seen a lot of people saying, Hey, if you are not really technical know what you're doing, understand everything in this article I'm that is in front of you. If you don't understand every single thing that is in that don't try it yet. It's not quite there yet. And I think that is where people get into danger with copying and pasting is they try to do something that maybe is a little too far beyond them. And then they are spinning their wheels. Like I always think about people who are maybe starting a business or something like that. And they're trying to do all of these like super technical e-commerce stuff when they haven't even figured out their marketing message yet. And so I think it's it's learning how to copy and paste at the level that you are. I think that's the key thing. Oh, I think that's huge. Like a common thing I've always told people is, you know, when you see like a billionaire giving business advice, it sounds good on the surface level. Like be passionate, do this, do that. But like when you're starting off and you want to make your first $10,000 a month, that advice is typically not that great. Like they're so far and disconnected from like, I wouldn't say reality, but they're just so far away from the boots in the ground that that advice is just not as good compared to somebody who's like literally maybe two, three steps ahead of you. So I think that's why like learning from peers that are very close to you, we're like a little bit further along than you are, but not too far, is really valuable. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're making like let's say $10,000 a month, right? So that's like $120,000 a year. Like learning from somebody who's making $50,000, $100,000 a month makes you go, oh, like I can see how I can kind of get there. There's like a certain path typically. But if you're talking to somebody who's doing like a million dollars a day, they're like they're playing a different game. There's like different infrastructure, different resources, different leverage, right? And when they give you advice, like it's typically pretty good and maybe it will help you shortcut in some way. But it's so your that gap is so massive that oftentimes what you need for the next like three months or six months is oftentimes not super relevant. Unless that person was in your shoes, like not too long ago, right? If they were there like a year or two ago, great. I think they have super relevant advice. But if it was like 20 years ago, probably not so much. Right? So I think that's the thing that we always have to filter for is like when we're copying somebody's strategy, like you have to put context around it as well. And then the other thing that comes to my mind is like survivorship bias. So it's this idea of like, oh, if they did this, then it's going to work for me as well. And it's going to be a guarantee, right? So like Brad Pitt moved to Hollywood and he became an a list. So if I moved to Hollywood, guess what? I'm going to be an a list. And that's just not the reality. Right? So there's like little nuances that we have to be aware of as well. And you know, survivorship bias is a real like bias that most people don't even know about or you know, or just not even aware of that concept. And so if you're not even aware of it, like it's hard to combat that if you don't even know that that sort of thing exists. So that's where like ongoing education, keep learning, listen to podcasts, like it's really helpful because you start to learn like those little concepts. And then every now and then it will just like click at some point and go, oh, this is survivorship bias. I see it now. Like this is not going to work. Yeah, I think that's the real value of learning from a person. Either somebody you know, like you said, or maybe like an in-per- If you're going to do a course like an in-person course or a live cohort or something versus just like reading, you know, reading something you saw on social media or something like that, is you can then tailor the experience and ask questions and stuff like that and kind of like have that context that you need. Like I think about, I think about, you know, this is going to say more about me than it is about the topic. But a while ago my wife was at a town and I just hadn't even know how it got served to me but I saw this YouTube video where, you know, it was like a minute long or something like that. This guy was making this thing kind of like a Spanish tortilla for those who know what that is. And just the way the video worked, it was like so easy that person just like, And the person just said, "Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Looks so awesome." So I'm like, "I'm gonna do that." So, I swear I did all the exact same steps. However, let's just say mine did not look like the one in the YouTube video. And it's because I followed, quote unquote, "followed this." I copied and pasted from the video, but I didn't have the context. There was like other things I needed to know, maybe certain things were, well, probably everything was beyond my skill level. And so I didn't get the results that I was expecting. Even though the steps were there, so having that like live, it's kind of like the, this meme I, I remember I saw once and I'll try to find it and include in the show notes and it's basically like, how to draw an owl. And it's like step one, draw two circles together. Step two, this beautifully drawn owl, draw the f-ing owl. (laughs) And so that's where you have to be careful with with copy and paste. It's funny you say that because as you're sharing that example, like I was recently speaking at a conference, I was talking about AI for hair salon owners and beauty experts. And that industry is like so new to AI, right? Where like they wanna learn how prompting works and how you can use image models and stuff like that. So I showed up the very basic things. So as an educator, as you're showing demos, and I was doing a lot of live demos, like you're kind of praying that everything works okay 'cause you know, doing live demos is always very tricky, especially with AI, you just never kind of know (laughs) 'cause it's non-deterministic. You're not quite sure what's gonna happen, but hopefully it will stay within its own guard rules. And so as an educator, when you're showcasing examples, you wanna showcase examples that are easy, that make people feel like they can do, right? Like you wanna make them feel like they're empowered. And so as an educator, you always try to simplify everything as much as possible. So you give people the confidence to know that they can do it. And I think that always makes for like a great session when people feel like, yeah, I can do this too, right? And being on the other side now too, every now and then we're like, I go to seminar or to a workshop or whatever, and I see those examples and they go, oh yeah, buying a business is really easy. You just do step one, go through the directory, step two, set up a call, talk to them, step three, do your due diligence, step four, do integration, and then step five, buy your next business. You're like, okay, yeah, I mean, that sounds easy in theory. I'll buy a wanderer, Matt, sure. Like you'll go, yeah, okay, that sounds good in theory. And then if you ever tried integrations in a book, you've been part of integrations on the other end, you know, that is not easy at all. Merging two companies, not easy. Trying to merge like your life with a life partner. That's not easy. Trying to merge people with like an organization of 20, 30, 100 people, that's extremely difficult and extremely painful. So, you know, I feel both sides, like I just an educator, you wanna make the look easier, look easy and make people feel like they can do it. Being on the other side, the consumer, like I wanna feel that it's easy, so I have the trust and belief that I can do it. But the reality is always a little bit more messier than what people make it look like. And I think if you kinda have that filter on, you'll save yourself from a lot of headache and disappointment. And I think it's okay too. I think that's actually okay. The fact that the pacing is gonna be messier than the copying. I think that's okay, as long as you go into that with your eyes open, as long as you kind of have like a plan or a structure for how to actually do it. First is just assuming that everything is gonna be gonna work out perfectly. I think it's totally okay, even to go a little bit beyond your comfort zone, as long as you know the deal essentially. So how do you know them Brooks, who to copy and paste from? Like how's your filter for that set up? Yeah, this is kinda like getting into the pitfalls, right? Is like things to watch out for. Is I think you have to, it doesn't have to be somebody exactly the same as you, but it needs to be somebody who is a transferable situation. Like one of the things, and this is especially true in the productivity world, we know all too well, is if you have somebody who says, hey, here's, here's my morning routine. Here's everything that you need to do to be productive. And that person is like young and no kids and all this stuff. It doesn't mean that their advice isn't valuable. It just means that you need to do some translating if you are at home with five kids, right? So I think in a perfect world, you're copying as much as possible from somebody with a similar life situation than you. Or if not, like we said, have your eyes open and just maybe you're only gonna be able to copy like 60% of things, or you're gonna need some serious tweaking and that's okay as well. Oh yeah, I think that's one of the first things that we have to look for is somebody with a similar lifestyle and ideally values as well, which is harder to figure out on the surface. But when you follow somebody long enough, you kind of get a sense of their values. And I think the more aligned you are, the better things tend to be over time in terms of how you work together and how you can learn from them. And that's one of the reasons why I first started Asian efficiency that I brought on different people on the team to be on the podcast because like, when you're listening to me as a guy who's like, you know, young, entrepreneurial, like no kids, that's a very different lifestyle and also that productivity advice that I can give people versus people who have kids, they have like three of them. And you know, they have a corporate job. Like it's a very different type of thing. Even a mindset wise, we can actually be aligned in many ways. And also some of our values can be aligned. But the lifestyle piece can be very different. And so, you know, I'm always grateful that you're all in the show with me because you're, you know, you're the one with the big boy kids in the house and going to college. And, you know, you're married and you've been, have, you know, decades of experience in corporate and stuff, like stuff that I didn't have and still don't have. So there's like, nice dynamic of like two different people, but very similar mindsets and beliefs and values that can then share about a particular topic. And I think that sort of chemistry and ideation is like really powerful. So I'm hoping as people are still listening to the show, you know, and like learning from this, that you can kind of learn from different perspectives. And I think that's really valuable. But when you're trying to copy and paste somebody, like the closer they are to who you are in terms of the lifestyle values, the easier typically the copying pacing becomes. And I think that's why you'll see the rise of like micro influencers kind of coming up and it's kind of been kind of coming up because people want to learn from somebody that feels and looks like them. Like a Latino girl is going to follow somebody who's a Latino girl who kind of looks like her and does very similar things. And an Asian guy is going to follow more likely another Asian guy who's doing exactly what they want to do. That's just kind of like the reality of things. And I think that's why like with social media and the way media is changing, like it's become so much easier to copy and paste somebody to find somebody closer to you because the whole like landscape is kind of democratized so that small creators can now actually reach people and help people as well, especially if they're a little bit further ahead versus like 10, 15 years ago. - Yeah. And the one thing I will add, which probably is going to sound like it goes against what I just said, but I don't mean it this way, is that even if somebody does have a different life experience or whatever from you that doesn't, I don't want to imply that that means that you should just be like, oh, forget it. That guy, you know, what is he? No, I have three kids. He doesn't have any. What is he? No, because sometimes, sometimes when you're in the middle of something, it's, or maybe a better way to say it is sometimes being removed from a situation gives you a perspective that being in it, you don't really have like, you know, somebody who is maybe like really productive but has kids and stuff like that, you might ask them like, how do you do it? And they're just like, I don't know, man, I'm just trying to survive. Whereas if somebody's like, you know, the uncle watching or something like that, they can see, well, here's what they do. They meal plan. They, you know, have strict homework times. You know, all that type of thing. Sometimes when you're in it, you don't really know it. So sometimes learning from somebody a little bit removed from your situation can be helpful as well. You just need to do the translating. Yeah, I think another thing I would look for is, you know, obviously we can research people online and see if they have the track record. I think that's an easy thing to do. Many people I know typically skipped a process, but if someone's coming through a warm referral, like if you referred me to a specific person, like I blindly trust you, right? And that saves me a lot of time. Like you've already gone through the experience, especially if you shared your personal experience and said, hey, working with this person was really good. Helped me in my career, my business, like perfect. Like I don't need anymore. I'm gonna go straight to that person and said, hey, Brooks told me to come to you. Let's go ahead and do this, right? And that's how a lot of referral business basically works. And you can apply the same idea with, you know, copying, pacing, somebody that maybe is within your network. So I think referrals are always really good. I think another thing that people can look for in terms of who do you follow and decide to copy from is again, how far along are they? And are they just close enough to you that they can help you make the leap to the next phase versus like are they so far ahead that, you know, even though it sounds really appealing to say, like, hey, I'm about to hop on the call with a billionaire. He's gonna give me business advice. Like sounds cool in theory, but in reality, based on my experience, like that's not the greatest use of time and money. So that's something I would be aware of too. It's like, what is too far? And it's kind of like subjective anyway. Partially because it depends on your ambition, how fast you wanna grow, how fast you're growing right now. But then also, I think it's just so much more value to be somebody who can learn from someone just a few steps ahead of you. So that's another thing I would say. One big red flag for me when it comes to trying to pick and choose somebody is somebody who's always changing strategies. Like if someone is always changing how they do certain things or they're strategy of how they navigate stuff. Like to me, that doesn't seem like a winning formula. If they're always doing something differently. Versus somebody who has mastered one particular playbook or mastered a particular domain, those are the people I wanna learn from. Versus if somebody is a crypto influencer one year, then an AI influencer the next year. And then the next year, they're like, penny socks. And it's like, okay, what is your track record? Does that make sense at all? If there's just chasing trends and stuff, that's the last person I would wanna learn from. - Yeah, I think somebody with a record of consistent success is definitely a better strategy. I've seen this so many times that you read something, you read an article or watch our YouTube video or something like that from somebody and maybe it's from a little while ago. And it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Maybe I should do that. And then you watch something more recent or read something more recent and they're doing something completely different. And you're like, huh? How can you not do that anymore? And it's just because, like he said, they're jumping or they're grinding and stuff like that. So that's again, why there's so much more value to me of like learning from real people versus just stuff random stuff you read. - All right, Brooks, so we made it all the way to the end. As always, we like to keep things simple and actionable. So what would you say to somebody who is listening to this episode and goes, "Hey, I love the copy and paste strategy. What is my next step? What's my next move?" - Yeah, I think it's, look at things going on in your work or your life. Is there something in there that you maybe are not making as much progress on as you feel like you could be? And then even if you're somebody who doesn't super enjoy asking for help, that's okay, but try to think of like one person in your circle who maybe is able to provide some advice and just ask them a specific question. You're not asking people to solve your problem for you, but is there something specific you can ask them just to get a little bit unlocked? Take that as an action item and see what kind of progress you can make just from that one copy and paste. - Love it. Well, thank you so much for listening to the Procivity Show. We really appreciate you. Subscribe if you haven't yet. Leave us a review. It always helps us grow the show. And we'll see you again next week.