The Best Way To Master Anything Isn’t Watching Videos

You know that moment when you realize you’ve watched a whole playlist of tutorials, yet you still don’t feel any closer to actually being good at the thing you want to learn? It hits hard because deep down you know you’re craving real progress, not more passive watching.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:27Speaker 00

  Mastery comes from doing, experimenting, improving, and repeating that loop so that you can continue to iterate and get better. Listen, I know this sounds strange for somebody who's created over 500 videos and has a YouTube channel and publishes this podcast on video. Videos are great for tips, for strategy, for inspiration, to get unstuck. It's very good at that, but they're terrible at mastering something. Today, I want to show you the exact three-step method I use to master anything. And until I want to go deep to really change my life in a certain area, this is the strategy I use, these three steps. And I'm going to share real stories and real examples so that you can see how it actually fits into your life.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Let's go. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Let's start with, why are videos so bad when it comes to mastery?

• 2:52Speaker 00

  I know that sounds strange, but the uncomfortable truth is that watching videos to learn isn't really a learning. It's actually just getting information that is actually not easy for you to retain. Watching is actually quite passive. What I've found in my own life is that if I watch and don't do, so I'm just watching without doing, I will forget it. And it doesn't matter if you take notes. It doesn't matter if you have voice notes or whatever it might be. It still doesn't stick until you actually apply what you learn. The crazy thing is that when you watch videos, you feel productive. You feel like you're actually getting something done. But it's actually very temporary, it's very shallow learning. And I learned this as an educator.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  I was a teacher for over a decade in the classroom. I taught English as a second language. That was my first career. And one of the strategies we had to implement as teachers to make sure students actually learn something and can reproduce it so that they pass their exams is something called input-output. And this is actually how human beings learn. So what is input-output? Well, basically, is that you input information. So as a teacher, I would try to teach a concept, but I don't teach for too long. Like, if I was going to teach somebody how to write an opening paragraph of an essay, I would give them some instruction for about two, three minutes, maximum. Why? Because if I give them instruction beyond that, they're going to forget the first two, three minutes.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  So what we want to do is also have output. Require the student to give me output. So they learn for two to three minutes, they understand one concept, and then I ask them to do it themselves. You output what I just showed you. You go ahead and produce what I just taught. And this is what really works. So if you're watching a video and you're not doing something every two minutes or so, it's very hard for you to actually master it, for actually know how to do it, because you haven't applied it in the real world. Listen, I love watching videos. I'm a big consumer of YouTube. But one thing I notice is that watching creates this illusion of competence. You know, you feel like you're getting it in the moment, but that's just it.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  You get it in the moment, but after the moment passes, it's gone. The way we actually learn something and get good at something is that the information that we learn has to move from the screen or instruction through our hands, through something that we actually did. And the best example I can give you is learning how to drive. If you've ever learned how to drive, if you can remember back then, what you do is you learn from a book first, the rules of the road, right? You learn from driver's school, what you can and cannot do on the road, and what the signs mean, all that kind of stuff. And then you gotta get on the road, right? You don't actually know how to drive until you get in the driver's seat, put it in drive, and learn how to operate the car.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  And in the beginning, you're like super focused, because it's the first time you're doing it. Your hands are gripping the wheel, you're white-knuckling the whole way, you're trying to figure out, you know, how to use your mirrors, you're going slower than you actually need to, all that kind of stuff, right? But what happens? You drive, and you drive some more, and you ply, and you go on road trips, and three, four, five years later, one day, you're driving home from work, and you don't know where the last five minutes went. Like, you're like, how did I get to this point? You're on autopilot. You've mastered driving, okay? And you could do things while you drive. At the beginning, you're just solely focused on driving, but once you start doing it over and over with repetition, you start realizing, oh, I could do other things, like I can, you know, have a coffee, I can listen to music, I could do other things.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  And that's why a lot of people, when they get older, they can't deal with a lot of loud noises, or they lower the radio when they're driving, because that muscle, that skill, starts to fatigue. So you have to understand that that didn't happen by accident. That happened because you did it over and over again. You actually applied what you learned. You didn't just like drive for like a few hours and then watch a bunch of videos and got better as a driver. No, you had to get behind the wheel and do it over and over. So here's my three-step framework. Anytime I want to master something, if I want to really go deep and really get good at something, this is what I do. And I'm going to give you the three-step framework right now on a silver platter, and then I'm going to give you an example of how I use this three-step framework to change

• 7:13Speaker 00

  my life, actually how I applied it in my life and in my business to learn something and master it to a point where it actually benefits me. Step one, I actually read a book or two and go deep in that subject. Listen, videos are great, and it's a good way to kind of start exploring an idea, but if you want to go deep and understand something, books are the best. Why? Because if you think about how much time it takes to write a book, most really good books have a lot of work involved. Like, we're talking about six months, 12 months, sometimes two years, three years to write a book. A lot of research goes into it. So you're getting like the best information that has really a lot of effort put into it on a silver platter in that book, and you're going to get a broader understanding of that

• 7:58Speaker 00

  subject matter. And don't worry, I'm going to give you some examples in a moment. But what I recommend is you choose one, maximum two, books, and read those books in that topic or whatever area you want to learn. Now, I want to make it very clear what the goal of this step is. The goal of this step is not to know all the information about this area. This is not the goal. The goal is to understand how to best spend your time in the next months when you're going to apply this stuff, so that you can be able to get the most out of this skill, okay? Like, I want to start doing this, how do I do this in a way that's most efficient? Sometimes I don't actually read a full book. I'll read like maybe three-fourths of a book and have enough, because now I have enough

• 8:42Speaker 00

  information to start intelligently, to actually have a strategy in how I'm going to start doing this new skill. And before we move on to step two, I want to make this super clear. I can't think of any other resource that is most value for your dollar than a book. A book is like, what, $15, $20 max? It's even cheaper on Kindle. Audiobooks are even part of Spotify Premium. There's so much value in a book, way beyond what it costs. Like, in terms of like taking a course, or the amount of time you're going to take to watch all the videos so that you can be able to consume the same amount of information, books are actually quite efficient when it comes to your costs in terms of dollars, but also your time and your attention.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  What I love about books as well is that it is at your pace. Sometimes when I read a book or a chapter in a book, something really hits me, and I have to think about it. I can simply just put the book down and start thinking, and start daydreaming, and start thinking how this applies in my life, and maybe even just like jot down some notes in my notebook or my journal. It's very hard to do that on video. Yes, you could pause, yes, you could do that, but like, there's this anticipation that you want to see what's next, especially with retention-type videos these days, it's super intense. With books, it actually allows you to stop, think, reflect, and then continue.

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• 11:31Speaker 00

  Step two, start doing. Don't delay the step, okay? A lot of people, they get into the research stage, they read five, seven, eight books, and they're like, "I'm still researching." No. Force yourself, max two books, I say, just to stop it. Usually, one book is enough, but just start doing. Immediately implement what you learned, what you understand as the next step. You don't have to be perfect, because you're not going to be perfect. You're a beginner, right? Any version of implementation is fine. You can learn more the first week of doing than continuing to consume information. This is why I like to time-block this. Like, I have this week to read this book. That's it, one week. After that, I start applying in week two. Doing is where the real, permanent learning happens.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  This is where the mastery starts actually happening in your life. And what I love about doing is you start understanding how this fits in to what you want to accomplish. How do I actually start doing things so it fits in with my goals? And again, I'm going to give you a full example in a moment, but I want to go through the steps so that you have the context. Step three, you want to analyze and improve. Listen, it's not enough for you just to do. A lot of people, they just love to do and implement, and they ship products out, they put out art, they do things that they've just learned, and they post it on social media, and they're so happy about it. Great, but that is not where the mastery happens. Well, the mastery really happens is when you put something out there,

• 12:56Speaker 00

  and you analyze your work, you analyze how you are doing that work, and you improve. A lot of people say consistency is key. Yes, it's true, but really, iteration is key. You want to do something, and you want to iterate upon what you do. If you're doing the same thing over and over again, you're not really improving. You probably know this if you've ever worked out in a long period of time, or you're at the gym. You just can't do the same weight and the same sets every single week, month on month. You have to increase the weight, right? You have to increase maybe the reps. Maybe you have to change up the exercises. Your muscles start recognizing, "Oh, I'm used to this now." So you have to constantly iterate what you do, and the only way you can iterate and know what to do differently is if you analyze what you just did, right? What you put out there in the world, what you produced.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  You want to improve it every single time you put it out there. So anytime you share whatever you've learned, or everything that you've built, or anything that you've created, you want to kind of have a critical eye and say, "Hey, how can I improve this the next time I do this?" And this could be anything. This could be like writing a blog post. This could be presenting on video. This could be pitching your business to investors. What did I do this time that I can improve on next time? You could just choose one thing. Like, a good example of this is that every time I shoot a podcast, I am thinking about, "What is one thing I can improve?" This could be my intonation. This could be my breath. This could be the content itself. This could be the topic manner. It could be how we edit the video. It could be the title. It could be the thumbnail. It could be the length of the video. All these things are iterations, right?

• 14:25Speaker 00

  There's some ways I can improve how we create this podcast. So let me give you a working example, how I applied this three-step framework. Back in 2014, I launched a software company called Webinar Ninja. I never built a software company before.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  I barely built a piece of software before. Like, this was like my third try. Other two were kind of hobby projects. And I created the beta version of Webinar Ninja. And when I decided I was actually going to sell this product and build a company and start hiring people, I started to realize, "I don't know how to do that, right? I don't know how to be a CEO of a tech company. I don't know how to lead. I don't know how to create software at scale. I don't know any of this stuff." So I applied this framework. Step one, I read two books. The first book I read is called "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It's an honest and brutal book about leading a software company, right? What is it like to lead a team of people building a piece of software?

• 15:28Speaker 00

  How to make decisions? How to prepare yourself for the challenges ahead? This is not theory. These are actual, practical stories he shares about what it's like to build a software company, and what you should expect to be some of the pitfalls. And what I loved about this book is that it was real and was honest. It talked about finances. It talked about team. It talked about hiring. It talked about when software fails on you, all kinds of stuff. And things I didn't know, things I didn't know that could happen if I go down the path of software. Now, it didn't deter me from starting the company, but it allowed me to be prepared and not to go into it so innocent. So that was the first book I read. The second book I read was called "Scrum" by Jeff Sutherland. Scrum is basically how to build software with a team.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  There are certain best practices when it comes to building software. How do you sprint in terms of a deadline, whether it's a one-week or two-week sprint? How do you iterate on software? How do you ship software out to the world so that it's tested, and there's bugs, minimal bugs in the software when you're presenting it to the customer? How do you take in feedback and implement that in your build? And how do you make sure that you prioritize which features are most important to your customers? This was a great book for me to learn how to really lead a team of engineers. I wasn't really an engineer. I was a former teacher. I was a self-taught kind of amateur PHP developer. And actually, I created the beta version, but as soon as we started selling it, I hired an engineer, because I needed somebody to actually write real, clean code.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  And I didn't know how to manage this person. I didn't know how to start building around this person. And this book really helped me a lot. Listen, I read these two books after we pre-sold Webinar Ninja. What we did is that we wanted to validate the idea of the software, so we had a landing page, and we pre-sold it to our audience, meaning that we said, "Hey, put down a deposit, and you'll get first access to the software in about four months." So I read these books after that happened. So in those four-month period where I had to get a software out there, that was ready for commercial use. And I was able to read those two books in about two weeks, one book a week. And a lot of people think that that's pretty fast, reading a book. Well, I actually just allocated about one hour in the morning when I was having breakfast, and one hour before bed. And if that's two hours a day, you're going to read at that kind of pace,

• 17:41Speaker 00

  around 10 hours, 12 hours, depending on the size of the book. Really, you can complete the book. And of course, there's some areas where I read faster, some areas I kind of reread because it was complicated. But two weeks is all I allocated to it. And after that, I moved on to step two, which is start doing, right? We started building our software company, Webinar Ninja. I applied the concept of Scrum with the team, with the sprints, with shipping out our features. I applied Horowitz's lessons when it came to the moments that were difficult, the tough decisions we had to make, whether it's hiring or even firing when we're building out our team. And here's the thing, I learned about 10 times more in the first month of building that company than what I learned in the books that I read.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Why? Because I'm different than Ben Horowitz, or Jeff, who wrote Scrum. And my experience is going to be ultimately different, because I'm building something completely different. I'm dealing with different people. It's a different age. My age and a different age in the world. And it just allowed me to understand how to apply those principles that I learned in the book in my context. Now, not everything went perfect, and that's good, right? When things don't go perfect, you learn, right? You learn what not to do. You learn what you need to do differently in your business to actually succeed. I think the biggest thing the books gave me when I started doing is the vocabulary, is understanding how to communicate with engineers, how to communicate and understand like what it means to deploy code, and what does it mean to have like a PR, right?

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Before the code goes out. And what does it mean to like, make sure that we have like, what's called unit testing inside of our software, so that we make sure that we ship bug-free software? So all this stuff is kind of technical information that I didn't know, and those books gave me the information, so I didn't look like an idiot in front of my team. And of course, I could not forget about step three. I analyzed and improved what I was doing. Every hard decision, every missed deadline, every misstep that we had along the way, I evaluated it. I didn't just bury those tough feelings. You know, when things don't go your way, when things don't actually succeed, sometimes you don't want to talk about or think about it. But you have to face them, because there are lessons in there

• 19:50Speaker 00

  that have helped me tremendously, not only in the business, but until today, like things that happen over and over again. The thing about business is that it's almost like Groundhog's Day. You're going to get the same situations over and over, regardless of the business. So your next business, you're going to be able to do better because of those lessons. So you have to kind of just face the music and be like, "Okay, that didn't go well. What could we do differently? What could I do differently the next time I do this? What really caused it to fail?" Evaluate it as much as possible, gather as much data as possible so that you can actually win because of the failure, right? Because of what you learned. We had a rule at Webinar Ninja. Mistakes are okay, but we don't want to make the same mistake twice. We make a mistake, we learn from it, so we don't do it again. New mistakes are fine, because we're going to learn new lessons.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  And eventually, you're going to run out of mistakes, and you're going to start doing things right. But we don't want to ignore mistakes, so that we don't do it again. And guess what? No video in the world could have taught me how to fire somebody face to face, how to handle a product crisis, a bad deploy that happened more than once, and we had to roll back the code and make sure customers are taken care of. No video teaches you that, because your situation is going to be different than any other situation. Because you're building a unique product with a unique team, with your unique sales set and experiences. Doing taught me everything, every single time. So you have to kind of like learn the basics through books, is what I recommend,

• 21:20Speaker 00

  and then start applying, because the applying is what's going to teach you everything. And the results speak for themselves. Our company grew for over a decade. We had over 30,000 paying users. It was one of the biggest companies I could ever imagine building. And we had an incredible team. We learned so much in the process. And ultimately, I accomplished our goal, which is to sell the company. In 2024, we sold to ProProfs, changed my life forever. It's funny, because the other day, Nicole and I were experiencing some growth in our own business here in the $100 MBA in our media company. And it reminded us of a challenge and a learning that we had back in Webinar Ninja. Like, wow, you know, this is a good sign, because it means you're growing. It means that you're outgrowing your current strategy, and you need to create a new one.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  And that's why they say business is like jumping out of a plane and building your parachute on the way down. You're going to have to learn how to build and create solutions on the fly. Listen, if this episode is landing for you, I encourage you to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you're listening to or watching, whether it's YouTube, or Spotify, or Apple, whatever it might be. We have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. It's called "How to Become the Best Version of You." I go deep in a book I recently read called "Start With Yourself" by Emma Greed. You might have heard of her. She's a huge, huge entrepreneur. She's the founder of Skims. We go into why that book is so pivotal, especially when you're doubting yourself constantly in your business. If that's something that you need help with,

• 22:46Speaker 00

  you don't want to miss that episode, hit subscribe. Now, as you know, I'm a balanced person, and I'm not here to tell you that all video is horrible. I'm not anti-video. I'm anti-just-watching, that's all you do. Videos are actually really good at refining your skills, at giving you tips, specifically techniques to try, strategies or frameworks that you can approach, like today's video, right? Like today's episode. Video is great for inspiration. It's great at getting unstuck. Like, I'm stuck in this process. I don't know how to get out of this situation, or how to fix this problem. And it could be something as simple as like, you know, how to do something on your computer. Notice a pattern here. Video serves the doing.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Today's episode only works if you apply what I teach you, if you apply the three steps. So this only works if you watch this video and you do something with it. Like, say, "Hey, oh, I want to learn how to vibe code. I want to learn how to create software with AI. Let me pick up a book today on Amazon and start reading it. Let me start applying it the week after and start building some software." This is what I'm talking about. You have to apply. Don't just watch and then go to the next video, and the next video, and the next video. Listen, that would be great if you watch all my videos. I love that. But if you actually want to get the most out of it, and this is going against my interests, but that's fine, because I'm here to help you out, is to make sure that you apply anytime you learn. I found that video actually is a great companion in what I'm doing.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  So, for example, I've built software before. I've built software with AI. Sometimes I get stuck, I get an error. I go to YouTube, I ask, you know, "YouTube, is there a way for me to get around this?" I learn a new technique. I learn a new way to avoid that from happening. So video is very helpful for getting unstuck. But the wrong way to do this is to watch 50 videos preparing to learn how to snowboard. I learned how to snowboard about a decade ago, and I watched a couple of videos, which were helpful, but I really didn't understand what I needed to do on the mountain until I got on the mountain, right? And I listened to the instructor, and I actually felt what I was supposed to be doing. So don't overload yourself with information hoping that this is preparing you. No, just learn enough, like how to put on the snowboard, right?

• 24:58Speaker 00

  How to put on your boots? How to, you know, put your boots into the snowboard? How to stand up? What does it mean when they say "edge"? Just some vocabulary, some words. What does it mean to write "switch"? What, all that stuff? So you could understand when the instructor says something, you get it. So here's the rule. Here's the mindset you need to have anytime you watch a video. You need to tell yourself, "I'm only consuming to serve the doing." You're not doing yourself a favor by just watching, watching, watching with no intention of doing, and actually learning. Then it's just entertainment, and that's fine. Call a spade a spade. If you just want to have fun and watch, you know, some funny videos, great. But if you're watching videos to learn, and you want to learn it for real, then have the intention of like,

• 25:40Speaker 00

  "Only watching this so I can apply it and do it very soon, like now." Listen, to wrap up today's episode and to just kind of put this all into context, you can listen to my advice here, right? You can do the three steps and apply it, and that'd be great. Or you can not. But I do have to say that I know this works. Why? Because I have a master's in education. This is what I did for a living, right? I taught five days a week, five times a day in the classroom, and I had to make sure my students learned what they needed to learn, or my job is in jeopardy, okay? That's why I was getting paid. And if my test scores were very low, then I'm not going to keep my job for very long. So I had to learn very quickly, how do people actually learn?

• 26:24Speaker 00

  How do people actually be able to repeat the things I want them to do? And they could do it on their own. And one of the examples I want to share with you that I learned from the classroom is try to remember when you were a kid and you were learning long division. You need to know all the steps of long division, right? So for example, like, how do I know how to carry the one? How do I do all the steps? If you remember, you actually write down the steps. You would actually have to do the steps. The teacher would show you the first step, and then you would do it on your paper. And then they move on to the next step, and then you do it on your paper. Remember, input, output? The reason why this works is because what happens? You, as a kid, go home and got to do some homework. The teacher's not there anymore. So how are you going to be able to do it by yourself if you don't know and remember the steps?

• 27:09Speaker 00

  The only way you're going to remember is if you actually do it over and over again. So this is why it actually works. I want to kind of peel back the onion and show you like, what's the psychology behind this? And what's the methodology behind this? But this is education 101. And you're lucky enough to have somebody that has done it for a living and knows a bit about business to help you on your journey. Again, no more than two books to get started. Start applying as soon as possible, and start iterating and learning and analyzing why that succeeded, why that failed. Get as much data as much as you can, so that you can be able to improve and iterate the next time around. If this episode changed how you think about learning, awesome, that was the whole point, okay? But you can continue your learning

• 27:51Speaker 00

  if you want to watch and apply what you learn with this next video. "How to Build a Software Business with AI This Weekend." I actually give you step by step what to do in 48 hours to be able to build a software business with AI. And what's great about this video is that you can go back to it and follow the steps as you're applying the steps on the weekend, so that you can be able to build that software that you want. Now, I also have to say that that video is a little bit longer. It's about 40 minutes. And it's because I try to go as deep as possible. So don't feel compelled to watch the whole thing in one time. You can watch the first 10 minutes, apply, another 10 minutes, apply. You have to remember, whatever you consume, a book, a video, you're in a class, you're in a workshop, you're at a conference, you get to choose how you consume that information.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Do what works for you. If you want to jump around chapters in a book, no one's stopping you. Go ahead and do that. You know how you learn best, and you should apply the best strategy that helps you improve. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you got to do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.