There’s a podcaster I admire. He has a massively successful podcast with his wife, called Notes in Spanish, helping people to learn Spanish. I first discovered them years ago, when I started learning Spanish at an adult education centre. I was set to take a GSCE in Spanish and needed all the help I could get.
They made learning Spanish so fun, listening to Spanish Marina quietly correcting English Ben. Their focus is very much on going for it, making mistakes, enjoying the process. You got an insight into their life, their views and beliefs, and life in Madrid.
It turns out Ben’s written a book on how to start up an online business. He talks through how they grew a chance experiment – trying out creating a 10 minute podcast for the fun of it – into an online business where they could both quit their ‘real’ jobs and pay off their mortgage super quick.
Dream big
What I loved about reading the book was the way it inspired me. Ben’s quite a straightforward, slightly cynical guy, very down to earth. And in this book he talks about all the business self-help books he read to help him in growing the business, guided by ‘Gurus’ as he puts it. He talks about the importance of dreaming big, writing down your goals.
How a random goal you had a few years ago, his was (and I paraphrase massively) ‘I want to work fewer hours, spend more time with my family, do my own thing’, can come true.
I love it because I didn’t really expect him to quote Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins, massive superstars in the entrepreneurial start-up/self-help/let’s maximise productivity world. Yet here he is, with his own particular self-help theory of saying ‘why not?’ whenever faced with doing something you don’t know how to do, but that interests you.
His enthusiasm and passion for finding something you are interested in and enjoy, and putting loads of time and hard work into it, learning loads along the way, is massively inspiring.
It made me think hard about what I want. And reminded me to just get on and do things. Stop procrastinating and thinking of reasons why not and just make stuff happen. As I always say, one tiny step at a time, which is exactly what he and Marina did.
I can’t emphasise enough how important I think it is to find people that inspire you. Read about them, or listen to them speak, or speak to them if that’s possible. There’s a reason they inspire you, there’s a spark there that you relate to. And there’s nothing like that burst of energy you get from someone making you think that maybe you too can dive into something exciting.
If you’d like to book a career change coaching session with me, contact me via LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash