MBA2557 Must Read: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel

Ever feel like the world is spinning way too fast and you’re just trying to keep up? Tech evolves, trends shift, but human behavior? It’s constant! Morgan Housel’s “Same as Ever” is a must-read book, and Omar is here to tell you why. Housel’s book is a breath of fresh air, reminding us of the […] The post MBA2557 Must Read: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel appeared first on The $100 MBA.

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• 1:17Speaker 01

  Hey, welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. Today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that I have read, that has influenced me, that has impacted me in a big way, and I share with you my favorite takeaways and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is Same as Ever by Morgan Housel. Same as Ever is one of my favorite books of the year, and I'll explain why. But Morgan is a fantastic author. He wrote the book, The Psychology of Money, which we did a must-read episode on. Great, great, great, great book. So I had high expectations for this one. If you know anything about Morgan Housel and his style of writing, you know that he has a unique way of challenging your assumptions about something. He's helping us see things from a new angle, from a new perspective.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  And this book is no exception. I'm excited to share with you my three favorite takeaways. There's so many takeaways I love about this book, but I'm going to share my top three. So that you can get enticed to buy this book and read it. If I'm talking about a book on a must read episode, it is a must read. I read a lot of books, read over 50 books a year and not all of them make it to the must read. So if I'm talking about it, it's worth reading. You should check it out. If you want links to the book, just go to our website, 100mba.net. You'll see a link on top that says book reviews and you should see this book or you could search for it, nice and easy. So what is this book all about? Well, in a world that's obsessed with change, Morgan Housel reminds us that some things

• 2:44Speaker 01

  stay the same, some things never change. They're constant and that's really where the real insights are, the things that don't change, right? In this book, Same As Ever, he explores timeless principles, timeless ideas that shape our human behavior, shape business, shape the economy, shape the way we live, right? And we're going to dive into what those things are, or some of the things I really found really profound in this book. But we're also going to take a look at how we can use this knowledge to navigate an ever-changing world, an ever-changing business landscape. So I don't need to mention this again, but these are just my top three, my three favorite

• 3:26Speaker 01

  takeaways, but I can probably list five or six more, but I'm going to let you dive into the book and enjoy it. I have to say that Morgan Housel has no weaknesses when it comes to his chapters. Every time I read one of his books, every chapter is just as good as the last. And that's really hard. If you ever read a lot of books, if you read books, especially nonfiction books, it's very hard to just have hit after hit when it comes to the chapters in your book. So I gotta applaud him. He's done a really good job with his book and it really made me think and ponder and put the book down and write down some notes in my journal. That's the type of book that's really going to move the needle when it comes to changing our perspective and start giving you new ideas.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  So let me start with the first takeaway I want to share with you, and that's timeless human behavior and decision-making. In the book, Morgan argues that while technology and everything that's going around us, AI and everything. Social media and all the trends, these things change, right? Over time, they improve, they change the way we interact with them, all that kind of stuff. But human behavior largely remains the same. How we act day to day hasn't changed a lot over the centuries, right? Understanding these timeless elements of our human behavior, our biases, our fears, our motivations. This gives us a massive advantage in our business life and in our personal life as well. We understand what to expect from people and from ourselves. Let me give you an example.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Let's take the concept of business or the topic of business. This is what I do. I teach business every single day. Business hasn't really changed, really, like the tools and the technology. Yes, there's a lot of advancements, but essentially business is about trust, is about connection. It's about problem solving, right? These principles are as important today as they were 100 years ago, a thousand years ago. Hasn't really changed. So let me give you an action step, how to implement this takeaway that I got from the book, right? Instead of chasing every new trend, every new shiny object, I want you to ask yourself a question. What in your market, in your business will not change, will always remain the same, right? And focus on working at becoming better at that, right?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Ask yourself this question, write it down on a piece of paper, write it in your notebook, right? What in your market, in your business, in your world, right? Will not change, will always be true, right? And I'm not the first person to do this. Actually, there's an example in the book about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos asked himself this question when he started Amazon. He said, when it comes to my company, Amazon, what will never change? Well, he chose two things. One thing that will never change is that people will want things quickly. They're not going to want it slowly. They want to get it delivered to the house as fast as possible, right? The second thing he noticed is that people want a good deal. People want it as inexpensive as possible, as cheap as possible, right? People don't want to pay more for something, especially if it's a commodity. So these two things will never change. So he built Amazon around it.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Now the technology and all the offerings and all the things that Amazon does are based on these principles, right? How he gets there might change. But these principles don't, and that's really becomes your focus. All right, let's jump into the second takeaway I want to share with you from this book, same as ever. The power of patience in an impatient world. The world is incredibly impatient right now with everything that's happening in social media, with all our devices, with all the distractions, all notifications, all the advertising that's in front of us all the time, right? This is just a fact. We are becoming less and less patient, right? So anybody who has patience will win, right? They have an advantage, right?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  We are being spoiled with Uber's coming in five minutes and Amazon Prime coming same day and all that kind of stuff. So you need to start having more of a long-term perspective. And often people that had a long-term perspective that don't build something for next week or next month or next year, but for 10 years, for 20 years, for 50 years, these are the people that come out on top, right? For example, in business, we're often tempted to get a quick win. And I'm all for quick wins, but lasting success often comes from playing the long game. Building systems and nurturing the relationships that you have, your connections, your customers, and focusing on sustainable growth. It's focusing on the fact that I have three customers today. Tomorrow I'll get four, by the end of the week I'll have five.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  By the end of the year, I'll have, you know, X hundred amount of customers. In 10 years, I'll have, you know, tens of thousands of customers. I have a multimillion dollar business now. You understand that you win with time, that if you're patient enough and you're willing to stick it out and be consistent, that you will win. And it's even more important now because people are less patient. They're more impatient. So people that have patience are going to have a decisive advantage. So if you want an advantage in this world, be patient, okay? So as an action step from this takeaway, take a step back. Evaluate your business goals. Are you focusing only on quick wins? Are you focusing only on how many leads you're getting today? How many sales you're getting next week?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Are you thinking about the long-term goals? Are you thinking about how many sales you are looking to get by the end of the year? You're right, where you're at in five years, in 10 years. It's okay to have short-term goals because you have to work backwards. I get it, but it's not okay for you not to have a long-term vision. Because if you don't have a long-term vision, if you don't have a long-term goal, then you're not making decisions based on the future, on what you want to build for the future. You're just making the decisions just for survival right now. And I understand how that can feel in the beginning, but it's dangerous because you might make decisions that will affect your success in the long term. So as an action step, just think big. Make yourself a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, sit somewhere in nature, maybe, or just in your living room,

• 9:13Speaker 01

  and say, "Hey, I know I've got some certain goals I want to get done this week and this quarter," or whatever it might be, "but what does my business look like in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years, in 50 years?" Right? What does it look like? Right? What is it doing? How many customers do I have? How much revenue am I making? Right? Who are my customers? What kind of influence am I making? What kind of impact am I making in the world? Think big for a moment. Think long-term. Be honest. As a business owner, how much of your day is actual work? And how much is it just getting ready to do the work? Answering emails, tweaking presentations, hunting for numbers? That stuff adds up fast, which is why upgrading to the premium tier

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• 10:35Speaker 01

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• 11:44Speaker 01

  All right. Third takeaway I love from this book, and that's embracing uncertainty with a resilient mindset. Morgan Housel on this book points out that uncertainty is a given in life and in business. You can bet on it. Book it, right? You're gonna have uncertainty. The real skill isn't avoiding uncertainty, it's building the resistance to handle it. Understanding that there's gonna be some dark days, there's gonna be some tough days, and that you are ready for it, right? This is a game changer for me. This was a game changer, not only when I read it, but when I experienced it in my own businesses, that there's going to be tough days around the corner. As good as it is now, it's gonna get tougher, right?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  And sometimes it gets harder than ever, like you've never experienced hardship like that before. It's gonna get stressful. But when you expect it, you have a different mindset. When you know that that's par for the course, and that's normal, and all successful businesses have to go through that. You have a different approach. For example, when I launched my software company, WebinarEngine, in 2014, we released our first version to our beta members. And I knew there was a lot of uncertainty. There was no guarantee that this is going to be a success. When we did release it, there were some bugs. There were some issues that we had to fix quickly. Right? I kind of knew that was going to happen. I didn't understand what were going to be the challenges because this is the first time I was creating a software company or a software product. But by understanding that, I knew it's not going to be perfect.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  I knew that something's going to happen. I was prepared. I was telling my engineers, "Hey, when we give this to the customers, we're going to have to fix a lot of bugs. There's going to be some issues. We haven't experienced it in our testing, but when you give it to hundreds of people, they're going to find some things that we didn't see." Right? They're going to put it in a real environment. So that experience really taught me that you just need to always expect challenges. It's just going to happen. Some of these challenges are not external, like customers complaining. It could be internal, like your motivation, like your drive, like your satisfaction in what you're doing and your passion for what you're doing. Sometimes you're going to hit a slump, and that's tough to deal with. It's a challenge, and you're going to need to get through that in order for you to be successful.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  You've got to be patient with that, but you also have to anticipate it so you know that, "Hey, this is normal. I'm going to get through it." So, one of the things I love to do in my businesses, in any project I do, in a product launch, in a webinar I'm about to run, in an episode I'm recording for the podcast, right? I ask myself the question, "How can this go wrong?" Right? What are some things that might happen that may not work out? I know this might sound a little bit doom and gloom, but it's good to go through an exercise, like what are the possible outcomes of this project, of this launch, of this whatever? Even if it's something as simple as publishing a podcast episode. You know, I could get sick and lose my voice, and I can't record this episode. That could happen. That's a possibility. Right?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  I can just feel off that day and not deliver from my heart and from where I want to deliver from with passion. Right? I could have a malfunction with my camera and things not get recorded. I'll have to rerecord that episode because it didn't work out. I could have a power outage, there could be drilling next door and I can't record today. There's so many things that could go wrong and it's good to know that because there's something about when it does happen, when something goes wrong, you're like, oh, I kind of expected this. And what's nice about doing this exercise, like what can go wrong? How could this fail? Asking that question to yourself, whatever project you're working on, is that it gives you the idea that, okay, there's a possibility this could not work out. What are some things I need to do to shore up those areas of weakness? How will

• 15:24Speaker 01

  I respond to those moments of unexpected change or unexpected challenges? So, this is a great exercise. May want to do it right now, just right now. How can X, whatever I'm working on, go wrong? Right? How could it fail? How could it not just go the way I want it to? What are some things that could happen? So, in conclusion, Morgan Housel, absolute champ when it comes to writing books. He's one of my favorite authors. His latest book, Same As Ever, a powerful, powerful reminder that the most important elements of life and in business are often the ones that don't change. The things that just don't change, the things that stay the same forever, right? By understanding that timeless human behavior,

• 16:05Speaker 01

  practicing patience, and building resilience, we can thrive in a world that's always changing, something that's happening all the time, right? That's always shifting below our feet because we know what's constant, what doesn't change, and we can hold on to that. So, if you're looking for a book that will ground you, that will make you feel a little bit more comfortable about what's happening in the world, especially when things are changing so quickly, you're gonna love this book, Same As Ever. Definitely must read. Check it out. You can go to our website, 100mba.net, go to book reviews, you'll check out the link, you could order it right there directly from our website. And it's just a fantastic book. Love Morgan Housel and his works. So, check it out. You'll absolutely love it. Just go to 100mba.net/reed if you want to check out this book recommendation, as well as

• 16:48Speaker 01

  all our book recommendations. You know, we've got the holidays rolling around. Makes a great gift for your loved ones. When they're done reading it, you can read it. Awesome stuff, right? Win-win. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. I'm Omar Zenem and I'll see you in the next episode.

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