What You Will Learn

The Hero With 1,000 Faces - by Joseph Campbell   The hero's journey is can be found in mythology, popular culture and religion. The nucleus involves taking on the call for adventure, slaying the dragon, and returning home with the pot of gold, and with the knowledge and power you have achieved along the way. "The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek" - Joseph Campbell But most...

Blue Ocean Strategy - by W Chan Kim and Renee Maurborgne 'How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant'   The Problem: Current markets are flooded with competition. More and more companies are competing for smaller and smaller profit margins. This cut-throat battle leaves the water bloody. This is the Red Ocean. The Solution: Swim away from the competition. Make...

We just read and reviewed our 100th book for this podcast. We thought we'd pull together what we found to be the Top 10 lessons from all of these great books: You're gonna die someday Be proactive (realise that you have the power to take action) Get in the arena, don't sit on the sidelines Delayed Gratification (long-term satisfaction far outweighs instant gratification) The Power of Questions and...

I Will Teach You To Be Rich - by Ramit Sethi 'No guilt. No excuses. No BS. Just a 6-week program that works'   In 2006, the average Goldman Sachs employee made $622,000. That was the AVERAGE! You might think that because of such compensation, they are superior money managers. The truth? You can very easily beet them after fees and taxes with very simple advice. I Will Teach You to be Rich, de...

The War of Art - by Steven Pressfield 'Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles'   If you're looking to achieve anything, especially something creative, you almost definitely have the skills and abilities to be able to do it. For example, if you want to be a writer, based on the fact that you're reading this, you have the ability to read and write. But being able to write...

Lean In - by Sheryl Sandberg 'Women, Work and the Will to Lead' This book is all about maximising your career. In parts, it's about how we all do things that sabotage our own opportunities, and in others it's directly targeted at women, such as how they approach juggling the demands of family and work at the same time. Things are different for women at work compared to men, especially in the more...

Outliers - by Malcolm Gladwell 'The Story of Success'   What seemingly arbitrary fact is common amongst the top Canadian Hockey players? Why are all of today's software billionaires born between 1954-1956? Why did Jews dominate to New York legal landscape in the 1980s, when they struggled to get jobs in the prior decade? Why are Asians so good at math?? Outliers looks beyond individual achiev...

Awaken the Giant Within - by Tony Robbins 'Take immediate control of your mental, emotional, physical and financial destiny'   Tony Robbins is a very big papa and one of the most influential people on the planet. Today we review his book Awaken the Giant Within, which is all about releasing the incredible force we have inside us to put a dent in the world. This book essentially has the same c...

Sapiens - by Yuval Noah Harari 'A brief history of humankind'   Human beings have come a long way since we were once apes. We evolved in many different directions - survival in the snowy plains of northern Europe required different traits than those needed to stay alive in Indonesia's steaming jungles. We quickly dispelled of our other human brothers, such as the Neanderthals, because we were...

This is a phenomenal book. This is a must-read if you have any relationships at any level with any other humans. A lot of the concepts are common sense, but that’s the beauty of it: we already KNOW all of these things, we just need to be reminded of the best way to bring them all together. Yes, these techniques have been adopted by con-artists and slimy salespeople, but we trust that you’ll use th...

Thanks for listening to Season 2 of What You Will Learn! In this episode, we'll recap our favourite lessons from our favourite books, our favourite snippets from our favourite interviews, as well as drawing the winner of the Season 2 competition.  We'll be back on the 1st of July 2018 with How To Win Friends and Influence People.  Grab our Top 50 books: www.whatyouwilllearn.com/top50 Gra...

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck - by Mark Manson 'A counterintuitive approach to living a good life'   This is a very popular book - it's been at the top of the charts for a couple of year - so we thought it was time we should check it out. IT's a very conversational, cheeky, matter-of-fact, not-holds-barred approach. Manson tells people what they need to hear - he doesn't sugar coat it i...

Chip Conley is the best selling author, founder of Joie de Vivre hotels and the Head of Global Hospitality & Strategy at Air BnB. After reviewing the Peak, we were really interested in how to make the climb from the base to the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We also dive into the value of an education, the peak experience of Burning Man Festival and how he throws a huge party ever 5...

Jay Papasan tells us "when you're suppose to be working, work. When you're suppose to be playing, play. It's a weird tightrope you're walking, but it's only when you get your priorities mixed up that things fall apart" The antidote to having things fall apart, is by focusing on the One Thing. In this interview we jump in a little deeper from the context of an employee, how to protect your 'one thi...

The ONE Thing - by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan 'The surprisingly simply truth behind extraordinary results'   We believe a lot of lies when it comes to work and productivity: multitasking is a lie, work-life balance is a lie, 'everything matters equally' is a lie. The ONE Thing helps us break down our big long term goal into a series of dominoes, then forces us to focus on just ONE thing, w...

12 Rules For Life - by Jordan Peterson 'An Antidote For Chaos'   This book launched in January 2018 and has been pretty much #1 on the charts. Most of the rules are pretty straight forward, some are a little cryptic, but all are necessary to apply to your own life.   Stand up straight with your shoulders back Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping Make friends with p...

Annie Duke is a former poker pro who has shifted her focus to decision making. She won the 2004 World Series of Poker and the 2010 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, amassing career winnings of $4m. Now, she is looking at why people make decisions that aren't in their long-term best interest, how we can gather more information information that would allow us to make better decisions, and how we...

Thinking In Bets - by Annie Duke 'Making smarter decisions when you don't have all the facts'   We make little decisions every single day. We also make bigger decisions regularly - moving house, changing jobs, investing in the stock market, starting/ending a relationship, and so on. In pretty much every case, we don't have all of the information we need, and there is always an element of luck...

We visited Peter Singer (AC), the world's most famous and most influential living philosopher. Singer's career started over four decades ago with the publication of his book 'Animal Liberation' in 1975. He essentially kicked off the animal rights movement and his since applied his utilitarian philosophy to things like charitable giving, poverty, and bioethics. He is currently the Professor of Bioe...

The Life You Can Save - by Peter Singer 'How to play your part in ending world poverty'   If you're reading this book or listening to this podcast, your life is pretty good. Compared to billions of people in the world, we life a comfortable life and we don't have to worry about where our next meal is coming from or if a little mosquito bite could kill you. Singer shows us that we have a respo...

We spoke to Chris Kresser, a podcaster, blogger and an all round health detective. Looking at the trends in the healthcare budget for the world, we are in a bit of strife: - chronic disease accounts for 7/10 deaths in the USA and for 86% of healthcare expenditure. - number of deaths from Alzheimers has increased 89% since 2000 - more killed by chronic disease than cancer The world healthcare model...

Unconventional Medicine - by Chris Kresser 'Join the revolution to reinvent healthcare, reverse chronic disease, and create a practice you love'   There is so much information out there in the world of health, diet and lifestyle, but obesity rates in the western world are higher than ever (and rising!). With that brings a lot of chronic diseases that are reducing our quality of life, but are compl...

We spoke to Tom Peters, the father of the modern business book. Before 'In Search of Excellence' in 1982, most business information was contained textbooks or academic journals. But thankfully, engaging and insightful information is now available and digestible for everyone.  Tom Peters just released a brand new book: 'The Excellence Dividend'. The message is the same as many of his previous...

In Search of Excellence - by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr 'Lessons from America's best run companies'   This is widely regarded as one of the very FIRST popular business and management books, the book that created the entire category and brought these ideas from the exclusive academic journals to the masses.  Tom Peters and Bob Waterman worked in management consulting at McKinsey...

Perennial Seller - by Ryan Holiday 'The art of making and marketing work that lasts'   This book is all about putting in the time and effort and energy into making something that is really really good, and then getting it out into the world. It's about making something 'perennial', something that will last for decades and still be selling in the future, not putting together some low-quality g...