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Staying at home has created an opportunity for many to learn new skills; whether it is a new language, how to code, or make bread. Before you start your next learning opportunity, wouldn't it make sense to learn HOW to learn so that the process is more effective, efficient, and fun?
On this weeks podcast, Eric Janssen is joined by Andre Neagoie, a software developer, turned entrepreneur, and currently lead instructor at his own company, Zero to Mastery (ZTM): the highest-rated programming course on the web that has graduated over 200,000 students.
Andrei shares his wild entrepreneurial journey that has taken him from launching his own adventure races, teaching surfing in Nicaragua, and finally to Silicon Valley and Toronto, where he worked as a Senior Software Developer before founding ZTM.
Before you spend the next few months burning countless hours learning a new language, or skill, spend some time learning how to learn the right way.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
Eric Janssen
Hello Ivey entrepreneur listeners. Before we get to our regularly scheduled programming, I wanted to give a little bit of an intro to the interview you're about to listen to. We've been excited to release this interview for a long time, we thought given the new realities of COVID-19. Setting in now would be the ideal time to introduce a topic on learning how to learn. So before you make an investment in learning a new language, learning to code, learning really any new skill, wouldn't it make sense to spend a little bit of time figuring out how you should go about learning effectively. and efficiently in the first place? So my interview today is with Andrei Neagoie, who is a software developer turned entrepreneur and currently lead instructor at his own company zero to mastery, which is the highest rated programming course on the web that's graduated over 200,000 students over the past two years, Andrei has had a wild entrepreneurial journey that's taken him from launching his own venture races, teaching surfing in Nicaragua, and finally to Silicon Valley in Toronto, where he worked as a senior software developer before launching his own learning company zero to mastery. His new course is a course actually on learning how to learn it's going to help you improve memory, productivity, and uncovers a lot of the skills of the world's top performers and learning strategies that they've used, which is backed by research. Andrei actually generously provided a coupon code for listeners of the podcast for 50% off on his new course. So you can go to zerotomastery.io. Click on "learning how to learn course". And on the checkout, you can use the coupon code "hustle", h u s t l e for 50% off his monthly membership, he assures me that this is the absolute best offer that he's ever given out, you're not going to find another better offer in the near term future anywhere on the web. So that's zerotomastery.io and the course is learning to learn. So before you spend the next few weeks or months, burning countless hours learning a new language learning, new skill, learning whatever, spend a few hours learning how to learn the proper way. Without further ado, here's my interview with Andrei Neagoie from Zero to Mastery. Andrei, thanks for coming in. And being a guest and being on the podcast.
Andrei Neagoie
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Eric Janssen
It's nice to hang out with you.
Andrei Neagoie
Yeah, it's been a while
Eric Janssen
it's been a long time. So I want to get into the topic of learning how to learn this is the purpose of today's podcasts. But I want to rewind way back to early days for you. So I know you were a student at the University of Western Ontario, and that had sort of a winding career, you've done a bunch of different things before becoming the founder of Zero to Mastery. So would you mind help me fill in the blanks between graduated from Western and founder of this hugely popular online learning to code company?
Andrei Neagoie
All right, well, it's definitely a windy road. So let's try and fill those gaps. We're gonna start in a location, nowhere near coding, and hopefully, we'll end up there. So after university, graduated from Western, awesome experience, I was super excited, but had no idea what I want to do with my life. So, I decided to go to Japan and teach English for a year. So I was in a village of 3000 people and I taught English there and lived, and taught every single person's child there. So I knew the entire community. And it was an amazing experience, came back taught at a tennis club. Actually, I was a tennis club manager. So I was there for another year thinking up of business ideas that I want to do, came up with the concept of adventurists. That is, hey, wouldn't it be great if every month we did a unique adventure in and around Toronto, kind of recreate that Western feeling. So I did that for a bit with a friend from university. That was great, that pivoted to doing weekly Toronto day tours, for travelers coming into Toronto. That was great, nothing significant. And the same time I had an idea for oh, let's do an obstacle course race because of the time Tough Mudder, and Spartan Race were becoming really popular. So I did that as well and through an event, which was great, but none of those businesses really took off. They're just small, almost breakeven businesses. Lots of fun though. And then after that, I joined S-Trip which was a spring break company of all things, I had no sales experience actually thought hey, you know, it'd be tough selling the most expensive trip possible to university students that are broke. So that was a that was super fun, got some experience, selling to university students, and actually getting practicing selling because at school I, we didn't have any courses on sales. After that, that was about a year was enough of me doing that job, that enough for me to move on. I then moved on to another travel company and I ended up traveling and teaching about 150 tour guides all over the world, essentially how to give proper tours, how to work with customers, I did their payroll, I did their review, I had 150 people to babysit, it was a lot of work. During that time, this is about five years after university, I decided that, hey, you know what, I'll do yoga teacher training, that would be fun, something different. So I did that as well, decided that you know what, I should do yoga and surf retreat. So I also learned how to surf, I got my yoga certificate. And I started doing yoga and surf retreats in Nicaragua, that was really fun and successful. And through all of this the entire time I'm going through the journey. I know I'm talking a lot. But we're filling in the gaps. I'm almost done. I realized that there wasn't a tangible skill that I had, I've done a lot of things, I've learned a lot of things. But, there wasn't something tangible where I can go to any company and say, hey, hire me, this is my exact skill. So, I was thinking about it, I thought, you know what, every time I started a business, there was always a developer, or a website that I had to create. And I threw money to somebody asked for a website. And always what came back from this black box was something that I didn't ask for. So I threw more money in it, and something else came back. And it was the most frustrating process. So I actually quit my job at the time, and decided, hey, five months, then I teach myself how to code. So I did that for five months, got quite a few offers. Actually, after five months, as a full time developer, did that for a few years. I thought, hey, I'm not too bad at this, maybe I'll teach somebody else to do what I did. So started zerotomastery. This was about two years ago. And now we have about 120,000 students. We are constantly expanding our courses and instructors. And yeah, we have quite a lot of students from about 194 countries. So it's quite the journey.
Eric Janssen
So how many of those get a bunch of businesses, I wouldn't call them projects, like you had a bunch of businesses along the way. How many of those were, did you have, while also doing a full time job, and how many of those were like, left your job in order to focus on those things.
Andrei Neagoie
All of them were done in conjunction with my jobs. So I never took time off from a full time job because they were never, I never took the plunge or I never thought they would be successful enough to sustain me. So it's almost like I never focused 100% on that until, I decided to teach myself to code and I saw the power of focusing on something and dedicating your full attention to that one task.
Eric Janssen
Interesting. So they were always the overused term now, side hustles they were always things that you did after normal work. They said there's like the nine to five and then the five to nine. So they were your five to nine gig.
Andrei Neagoie
Exactly, exactly. I may be sneaking in a bit of work within my actual work. But for my side hustles.
Eric Janssen
Got it. I remember it. So I've been following the journey of it. And I remember sort of seeing them and you have one of those of those instr-, where you active active on Instagram?
Andrei Neagoie
Yeah, I post there occasionally just to have some sort of an image, since I have students online to search for me.
Eric Janssen
So I remember like, following your story on Instagram and seeing like, oh, man, I know he's at S-Trip in sales. But like, he's traveling all over the world. He's in Nicaragua, he's running these surfing retreats, it just always it had this perception of like, he's got it figured out, he's got like the work, life, you know, intermingled perfectly did it did it feel that way when you were in it? Or did it feel like I'm lost, I'm like wrestling through still trying to figure this out?
Andrei Neagoie
Oh, it was complete chaos and mess. It was just whitewater rafting through the jungle and monkeys flying at you. And it was a complete mess. And the thing is still now like, yeah, things are successful. I feel pretty comfortable. But the entire time you're just always learning new things or you're doing new things. And yeah, Zero to Mastery is pretty successful right now. But there's new things new challenges. So yeah, maybe the waters have calmed down a bit. But it's never been like that. And honestly, I would never say that I was ever stressed or I was ever feeling like I was drowning the entire time. I was having fun. And yeah, maybe posting the good moments on Instagram. Maybe not posting the bad moments but at the same time, the lows were also made me appreciate the highs as well. But no, my life is still a complete mess. Don't let Instagram fool you.
Eric Janssen
Alright, good reminder for everybody don't just go by what's on Instagram. So this all started when you taught yourself to code? So what? How did you do that? How in the early days did you figure out what was going to be the best way to learn how to code?
Andrei Neagoie
So at the time, I knew absolutely nothing about coding. So I had that challenge, right, I needed to learn a topic that, obviously, a lot of companies were interested in, I was learning to code when it was really starting to take off. And there was just so much demand for developers out there. But the problem was, I didn't know any developers. And there wasn't that much resources at the time online. Maybe some of them were outdated, but I didn't know they were outdated, because I knew nothing about the industry. So, what I essentially did was, I dedicated a month of my time to create, essentially my self guided boot camp with anything that I could get my hands on, and figure out what exactly is the the 20% that I need to learn right now to get a job as soon as possible, because I knew the real learning was going to happen when I'm working on a real project with real teams. So my goal was not to be the best developer and get the best jobs from the best companies. It was to get hired as fast as possible, not at an entry level, but just at an intermediate level. Because I knew that was, that's where the learning starts. So I created a curriculum based on online research, I talked to friends who knew developers, and eventually formed a curriculum that I thought, by no means was perfect, but I thought would emphasize those skills that I'll get interviewed on. And low and behold, those skills that I acquired over those five months, by no means was an expert. But in an interview, you don't have to be an expert, you just have to answer the right questions that they ask.
Eric Janssen
Interesting. So the goal wasn't learn how to be a great developer. In the beginning, the goal was learn what I needed to learn in order to get hired to start.
Andrei Neagoie
Exactly. Because I knew that to be a great developer, you needed to have work experience. So again, during my month of study, I realized that you can't be a great developer without work experience. So to me, that was an evident, clear goal that while I need to get hired as soon as possible, because then I'm just getting paid to learn, I can ask all the questions that I want from all these developer friends that I don't have. But if I work, I'm surrounded by developers. So that was my goal. And that was my clear cut goal, where I only focus on things that will get me through that door.
Eric Janssen
Got it. And your conversation with those early for those early job interviews was, it was it was still very honest. Right? Like you said, look, I'm a junior developer, I have this baseline level of skill. And I'm looking to get some experience, like, what was your pitch in those interviews?
Andrei Neagoie
It was definitely not that pitch, because that sounds, I don't think anybody would hire me. But I was extremely honest with them. I said, hey, I've been learning for five months, this is all the things that I've done in those five months. I know that you're, I'm not going to be your best developer right now, by guarantee you in six months from now, I'm going to be one of your best hires. Now, that sounds amazing. And I'm sure the people might hear that. But there's also other factors when you interview to get asked to, well, here are some coding assignments. While they would ask you to do a few coding assignments, I would always go above and beyond, do extra. And yeah, because these coding assignments, are take home assignments, I'm able to research and spend time on it, but I produced more than what somebody would produce. And they saw that I think I think that's the that's the key thing was that they knew right away that I wasn't the best hire, or maybe the best option. But, they knew that I wanted it more than anybody else. And, by the end of the interview, I made sure that they knew I would want to work harder than any of their employees. And I think employers value that. So I actually when I interviewed, I interviewed at a bunch of companies, and I moved on to only the ones that I liked, and I actually got the offers, all the offers. So I never got rejected actually, except for one, that said no to me that actually came back three months later and took me out to dinner to try and give me an offer but I think it wasn't because I was the best developer, it was simply because they knew how much drive I had. And it sounds cheesy, but it works. you're communicating with humans and humans connect on that.
Eric Janssen
And but then you may you were making a bet. So you were saying, on yourself, basically. So you're saying you hire me. And within six months, I'll be one of your top. And at but at that point in your mind, you're knowing that you don't like you don't know, you don't know it all yet. So you're saying it within six months, I'm going to learn everything I need to learn in order to be one of your top.
Andrei Neagoie
That's the classic strategy in learning, and one of the philosophies and doing something well is having steaks, if you have steaks, if you if something's on the line, you're more motivated to learn. I knew that they weren't going to fire me after six months, because I wasn't the top developer. But me personally, I made that promise, that's steak. That's something that I knew that I have to deliver on, or at least get really, really close to. Otherwise, I'm a liar. And that's I just created for myself intrinsic motivation. To have that steak of, well, the six months, I'm going to hustle and learn as much as possible, ask as many questions as possible, and try and do all the right things, to hopefully in six months, for them to say, all right, now's a good hire.
Eric Janssen
Why is learning an important skill to learn?
Andrei Neagoie
I think in our current day and age, things are changing. So fast, as a matter of fact, in 2018, World Economic Forum did a study to look at careers and skills. And, they realize that the skills and careers that we used to have in the 20th, maybe the early 21st century, where you know, around 50 years, people got jobs out of university, and they kept those jobs, they got pension, and that was it. Now, the half life, that is the, how long does your career value or skills decay to 50% of the value that they initially had, it's around five years. So we live in an age where most people graduating University, all my friends graduating University, that have graduated, are doing something completely different than they did five years ago. And that's the the stat that the World Economic Forum came with, which is the idea that an average career now lasts five years. And you need to almost learn new skills, the problems, not unemployment, but redeployment, and your ability to not just learn something at university and then stick to a job. I mean, that won't get you very far like it did maybe in the 70s. Instead, now you have to be ready to adapt, because in five years, most likely, most definitely, you'll have to learn something either on top of those skills, or something completely different. It's scary, but also an opportunity for those who learn the right tools to really excel in this new field.
Eric Janssen
The idea of like, I'm done school, I've learned everything I need to know is dead. If you're not learning and relearning and exploring new things, you're going to be irrelevant five years,
Andrei Neagoie
the journey is just beginning, the one thing that I really took away from university is how to learn in a system, how to be efficient in a system. But the actual topics that I learned in university, I don't use them right now, 90% of the topics that you learn, you don't use. But I really learned a valuable lesson of how to learn, how to work within a system. And that's really what you need to do, which sounds scary, because now you're thinking there's no end in sight have to constantly work, work and just put in time and grind. And hopefully, by the age of 70, I can retire. But that's actually not the case learning is not a hard thing to do if you enjoy what you're doing. And the big thing after university is that you get to pick the topics that you want to learn what you're interested in. It's almost in a way, as long as you're learning something, you're fine, and you don't have to dedicate a full day for it. As long as you're learning something a little bit at a time. Each day, you're gonna surpass most people that graduate and think that they can just coast.
Eric Janssen
Cool. I want to get into some of your philosophies around learning because you run a, I've been teaching for many years, but you've just run a phenomenal volume of students through your program. So like 120,000 students have been trained in learning how to code through your program. So just like, crazy volume. Do you have any like philosophies, or pillars, or frameworks, or whatever in how you think about going about teaching people how to work new things.
Andrei Neagoie
Yeah, there's definitely a framework that I have, the one thing that I want to comment, what makes a good instructor because you, you kind of asked that point. And what has helped me reach such a large audience from so many different countries, obviously, with different backgrounds and experiences, I think is this idea of being able to go back to the beginner mindset, being able to remember how it was like for you learning, because as we get more and more experience gets smarter and smarter, we almost lose touch with that beginner mindset. And one of the things that has obviously helped me was the fact that I did spend so much time planning out how I would teach myself what are the key things to learn, I think for a an educator for somebody that's a teacher, the ability to relate and really understand the student and what the simple terms are that you need to use to explain something, not only shows that you're a good instructor that can relate to students, but also shows your understanding, because if you can explain it simply, well then, you definitely know your stuff. And it's actually it's it's called the Feynman technique after Richard Feynman, a Nobel Peace Prize, or not Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize winning physicist, because of his ability to explain concept complex topics to his students.
Eric Janssen
So let me ask on that, then, do you think the modern definition of what makes a good teacher is changing? Because if I go like, maybe, historically, or if I overgeneralize, it's like, someone who has been out there doing it for 50 years, right? You've seen every angle, you've seen dozens of people be successful, many more fail, you've learned every lesson there is to learn. And then, you know, what's next in my retirement? Maybe now I'll go and teach it. Do you think that like, I'm over, you know, over generalizing, but like, do you need to be the best in the world in order to be a good teacher?
Andrei Neagoie
No, absolutely not. I do want to point out that I don't want to be the typical Millennium that comes in and says, oh, the old system of teaching is wrong and like, abolish all University structures, because they don't know what they're talking about. No, that's not true. I think it really comes to the individual person. There are some excellent, excellent teachers that have been doing it for 50 years. And there's also excellent, excellent teachers that have been doing it for one year, whatever the subject matter is, I think the key here is, as you progress through your career, and this is happening to me as well, well, you become good, or you start to get positive reinforcement, saying that, hey, students are enjoying my courses, they're understanding things, and you almost become complacent, you almost become comfortable, because you know, there's nothing to work on, you're not receiving any negative feedback, I think the concept of a good teacher is changing, in the sense that because we're in such a connected world right now, you can get immediate feedback on your teaching style. In my case, everything is online. I know right away when a student doesn't like a course, because I know when they stop watching the videos, I know when they leave a review. And a good teacher, in my opinion, is somebody that takes those notes, and constantly tries to improve and constantly tries to understand what they did wrong or what they can improve on. And I think the old style of teaching, which is in a classroom, and in a physical classroom, face to face, that works really, really well. Because most of the times students can leave, they can just walk out on you, right. And sometimes maybe you'll have a cohort that leaves and you only see them for a semester. I think the definition of a good teacher is changing now, where because there's this online presence, because it's more than the classroom. Now, you have to really, A) be good and engaged enough. So students don't just leave, don't just end your video. So you're able to really connect with the student, even though you might have not have that physical presence. But also, B) your ability to now leverage that and get feedback from your students and get more data not to sound not to say that data is everything because I think that word is kind of overblown, but getting that feedback and using that feedback to constantly improve yourself because you're never going to be a perfect teacher. I think that's that's really important.
Eric Janssen
So the constant improvement and learning how to leverage both worlds because I agree like, I teach primarily almost exclusively in person. And there is a certain, there's always going to be people that love the band and are going to buy the T-shirt right and teaching in person is kind of like It's like you're going to the concert, you get to see it in person, there's an interaction in the class, it's a different environment than in some of my experiences learning online. Same of like, I'm not saying better or worse, I just think it's different. I think there's probably a hybrid world where they all work together, there's but there's actually probably some things that are better served being exclusively online, some that are better served being mostly in person. So I don't know what the future is going to look like. But I see it blending more and more.
Andrei Neagoie
Yeah, I mean, it's, that's the thing, there's pros and cons, in person teaching and being a good teacher, there's some pros and cons to it, you have that face to face connection that you just can't beat online, you know, face to face is really, really important. But at the same time, you might not have the number of students that you can impact, the students that you have face to face, usually tend to be less, which gives you less feedback on what you can improve on. So yeah, I mean, it's, I think, to be a good instructor in this modern age, you just need to not necessarily just online, but you just have to be more in tune with a never connected world, with students that have more distractions than ever are more likely to focus on different things during your classes. So you just need to almost be more engaging than perhaps in the past to keep that attention.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. Honestly, I come from the music business. And I think of it as being a performer like you, there actually, it helps to have an entertainment element. You're competing for attention, in a generation that's trained to check their phone, you know, hundreds of times in a few hours. So it's almost changing to being a it's my version of being a closest I'll ever come to being an artist to being a performer.
Andrei Neagoie
So one of the things I know we're kind of going on a tangent here, but I just find this topic so fascinating, because it is an important topic. One of the things that I did before I released my first course, because I actually want to run in thought back to my past, who were my favorite teachers, why were they my favorite teachers. And I looked all the way back from kindergarten, to when I got my yoga certificate, to YouTube channels. And I was like, what made me stick? What made me stick around for this instructor? Why do I still remember that instructor and I actually diagrammed it out and wrote bullet points for each one of these instructors, and looked at commonalities as well as exceptions. And that was, that was a really interesting exercise for anybody that wants to teach. Honestly, even for learners, it's interesting to do that exercise, to see exactly what type of learner you are that when what kind of teacher you need, but also for teachers that perhaps want to learn from other teachers.
Eric Janssen
That's actually it goes perfectly into what we want to talk about. Because, first step for you is, if I want to be a good teacher, so learning how to be a teacher, you're not the first person to ever want to be a teacher, like you've got your own lived experiences about what a good teacher is, there's a learning how to teach courses, I'm sure online, there's books. So it's smart to as a first step to say, and that's my instinct, I've done a bunch of these strengths assessments. My instinct is to always go to talk to other people or ask other people who've been there before. So before I do my own research, let me actually start with who do I know who's been there before? Who do I know who's really good? Either, the greatest that I know, or potentially world class at this, and what can I learn from them? So that's a good starting point.
Andrei Neagoie
Right? And that's the thing, right? Because we're in this never connected world, we have the benefit that we didn't have. I mean, you and I grew up when internet, even before the internet, when we had to write our own book reports actually have to read the book, we can't just go online and get the summary notes. You know, I had to go to the library. I think in an ever connected world, it's so important for us, we almost get a cheat code where you want to learn something, well, good, that barrier, you don't have to go to the library. There's so much content online that you can jumpstart, whatever that learning process is by learning from people that have done it before because you don't have to reinvent the wheel, learn from them, learn from their mistakes, and start from maybe not exactly where they're at, but at least close to where they're at. Because you're wasting your energy reinventing the wheel if somebody or has already learned that lesson.
Eric Janssen
So I'll ask a question on this because do you think that there's a risk of missing out on your own version of the learning if you're only reading the notes, you know, so like, instead of saying, okay, I want to be the best teacher in the world. Option A would be, do my own research and buy the top three books that the experts to recommend on how to be a great teacher, option B would be, like probably just Google, like the online shortened version of those notes, or I'm sure there's like a YouTube video of someone summarizing in three minutes or like a blog post where it's like three key learnings. So how do you know when to invest the two weeks in reading the 400 page book versus just get the three bullets out of this summary?
Andrei Neagoie
Right? I mean, there's that that's the biggest issue right now. It's almost a blessing and a curse the fact that we have the internet, and we have so much knowledge, and there's so much video content being uploaded to YouTube, so much blog posts being written on the internet, you have Paradox of Choice, what do I pick? And, honestly, that that is one of the toughest challenges. And if you want to be a successful learner, so that is you want to be a teacher, you want to be a salesman, you want to do anything that involves learning, one of the important skills that you need to have is this idea of selection of being able to pick and choose why you learn because I guarantee you, whatever topic you want to choose nowadays, it's impossible to go through everything in your lifetime, really making a bold statement, but there is just so much information out there. So how do you pick that? How do you select that right, material? I mean, it's a tough one to answer because it really depends. But there are a few rules that you can follow one, for example, you know, it's how hard was it to create that content? Right? blog posts are great, it's a really great way to get thoughts out there. But the time invested in writing a blog post is usually a day maybe if it's a really good blog, blog post from a really good writer, maybe a little bit more. A book, on the other hand, that takes years of planning, and going through the process of doing the research. So I like to look at how much time does this person spend on this topic, maybe researching? Are they an expert on this topic? What other things have they done? And you start to notice, the people who, and I'm kind of generalizing here with blog posts, I even write blog posts, but I also know how easy they are to write. So I look at how much of an expert is this person? What have they done that deserves my attention? And from there, decide what you want to invest your time on. And as you start to read, or you start to discover, you will find different things. And you mentioned this as well, obviously talking to others, do you know somebody that is where you want to be that has the skill that you want to acquire, maybe ask them, maybe go to a meetup or conference that has the people that you want to become and find out how they got there. Because even though it might take a bit of time to plan out what you should focus on, it's going to save you a lot more time in the long run than just watching 1000 Youtube videos on coding because, well, you just want to learn how to code but you don't really have a reason why you're watching those ones.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, there's I think it's Ray Dalio and his book Principles, talks about a believability level, it's like, is this person believable in that they actually have some demonstrated level of experience, or proficiency, or success in a certain thing? So before you read someone's blog post on learning how to learn, like how long they've written books, are they actually experts in this before you just take their blog post for the summary? Okay, your own pillar. So you mentioned a few things that I thought were super interesting in how to make learning, sort of a lifelong pursuit. So you had two pillars. First one was, everything is a game. What do you mean by that?
Andrei Neagoie
So the two pillars, I think, in order for us to learn or be excited about learning and this lifelong journey that is learning, and, you know, your ability to learn throughout your life, I really believe indicates the level of your success. I kind of, I guess, in my head created these two pillars to emphasize the point but also make it fun and almost tangible to the person that to them learning seems like such a meta skill that they don't actually need to focus on. They just want to maybe read about it and forget about it. So the first one is everything is a game, and I like to think about school, when I went to university, Western, you know, I had an absolutely amazing time, absolutely loved the school. But the way that I got really engaged with studying and succeeding for exams and learning, was to pretend like, this is a whole system and a game, I was super excited by the idea of how can I look at this system objectively, this whole idea of going to class, of taking exams of reading books, and then doing A, B, C or D, multiple choice, how can I optimize this? How can I play this game where I can be good at it, but also enjoy the process? So the idea is, well, what's something that I can do all my friends are sleeping or not sleeping and studying the night before the exam maybe two nights before the exam, pulling all nighters. It's like, what can I do where I don't do that. But I can almost use cheat codes to do just as well as them in the exams, sleep at night, but also study just as much as them. So I started looking at this idea that if I go into work, if I go into a job, everything is a system. And this comes from my coding background, but everything is just blocks that are communicating with each other. And if you look at these blocks of systems, then you start to notice some faults, or you start to notice some things that you can, you can almost use cheat codes on and improve that system. So this idea when I did my first exam at Western, I remember I got 10%, it was it was terrible was so disheartening, not a good start to university career. But I was so proud of the fact that on my last exam at university, I had studied just as much as I did for that math class that I got 10% in. I study just as much as I did there. And I forgot the exact number. But you know, it was over 90, and it was the amount of time that I spent was the same. And to me, that was me, learning the game, learning the system, and how to improve it. And you find in your learning journey, like this game that you can play of how can you level up your skill, I suck at something, but how can I improve it, and you almost find comically fun, then the idea of you sucking in the the goal being so far away, doesn't seem as daunting, it just sounds like another challenge another rock that you have to hop to get to the end.
Eric Janssen
So everything in a game was one. And the second was efficiency, trump's grit, grit being resilience and hard work and everything else. So your, are you saying hard work and grit aren't important?
Andrei Neagoie
I knew you're gonna ask that. So definitely not grit, super, super important. It's the idea of pushing through being resilient. And you know, really driving towards your goal. Super, super important. But the key here is efficiency trump's grit, I think a lot of people including myself get overwhelmed. Because when they learn a new skill, when they go to class, let's say an Ivey business class, they know that they're competing with other smart individuals that are going to put in the time, that are going to grind throughout the night and day to be the top performer. And for some students, maybe that excites them. But also, it's intimidating. Because if you're the type of person that isn't willing to put in 80 hours a week to work on something, you immediately give up right away. Because you're never going to be able to compete with that person that's always working has cut out everything from their life except for this one task. And you're not willing to compromise on that. That's very disheartening. But there's actually a bit of light at the end of the tunnel here, where just grinding and just working hard doesn't necessarily mean it's the best strategy. Efficiency is actually key. And this goes back to my story of everything is a game, right? There's always efficient ways of doing things. There's always ways to learn a topic in an efficient way, what is the important part that you should learn first to like I did with coding to get a job and get work experience. So there's the smart way of learning things. And then there's the shotgun approach of let's just cram as much as possible into my brain. And the good news for people that may not be the super type A personalities that want to work 80 hours a week, is that all you need to do is figure out what this efficiency is. And you'll be just as successful as somebody that uses the shotgun approach, if not more.
Eric Janssen
Like what an example of that would be, maybe encoding is you teach it like what would an example of I guess the grit example would be, stay up work 80 hours or 100 hours a week and learning how to code but what's an example of efficiency and learning how to code?
Andrei Neagoie
Yeah, so that's actually a great example. Let's generalize it here for non tech people in the in the tech world. Especially now. Everything is changing constantly. If you stop learning for even a year, you're already behind. Technology right now is moving at a such a fast space. So no matter how many years in the industry, you almost have to keep up with the new libraries, practices, and tools that are coming out. So you're constantly swimming. Now, this can get really, really hard and difficult and really leads to burnout. And this is not just coding, there's always things that probably in your profession career, you can constantly learn. Now, with, the technology side of things with coding, there's so much out there that it's impossible to keep up with everything, you have to be selective to not being in the tech industry forces you to be selective, at least if you want to be successful. So one of the examples that I like to give is, I have a lot of students who, what they do is they read the first blog post that they read that talks about something and they assume that this is what they need to learn. And they try to learn this. And then they read the next blog post that says, you need to learn this. So they add this to the list. And eventually, they're just trying to learn everything. And in a month, they just absolutely quit. I have actually friends who started to learn how to code, they even went to boot camps where they paid $10,000. And they still don't have a job because they just try to do everything and eventually burnt out and decided that coding is not for them. Maybe it was for them, but they just took a strategy where the shotgun approach where they tried to do everything too much. And this is a lifetime journey. And if you're doing a strategy that only lasts for six months, because you're going to burn out, well, I, whoever's doing a more efficient selective approach is going to win out in the long run.
Eric Janssen
So that's one of your I don't know if it's principles or techniques, but the Pareto principle, essentially, right? Like, don't try to do it all, let's try to first figure out what are the 20% of the things that are going to give you 80% of results, and just filter everything, and just start at least filter everything else out. And let's just focus on those 20% things, don't let the list get too big.
Andrei Neagoie
Exactly. And you know, Pareto principle is one of those things that has been discussed a lot and online. And quite a lot of people know about it. But for those that don't, it's essentially this idea of the 20 and 80%. So the 20% usually accounts for 80% of the results. So you can say 20% of my customers account for 80% of my revenue. So let's focus on the 20%. And that can go into learning, right? What is the 20%? That is going to give me 80% of the result. One example that I like to use is language learning. Yeah, if you wanted to learn, let's say Spanish, and you know, no Spanish, that's to learn Spanish and be fluent in Spanish, from zero to that mastery. That's a big job. That's a far away goal that you can't see. But you know what you can do? You can Google the 100 most used words in Spanish, and learn those first. And that is the principle right there focusing on what's the key thing, if you learn the most commonly used 100 words, I bet you you're gonna do pretty well. And you're gonna feel pretty good about yourself just a couple of days in. So focusing on those key things is important. And the big thing with the Praeto principle is not necessarily the addition of what should I add, that is the 20%. It's almost more of the elimination, you look at the whole field, let's say coding, let's say language learning, let's say juggling. And you say, let's remove the 80%. That doesn't perhaps matter as much, what are the 20% that I should keep around? Because it's so important that I need this. And that is this idea of elimination, I think is something that we really need to do in our day and age. Because, again, it's it's so easy to keep adding things, keep learning things, keep adding blog posts, keep adding bookmarks. I think elimination is one of those things that we often forget about.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. If you were to let's go coding, specifically, someone new wants to learn how to code. What are the biggest call it the most common waste of time, like what do people what's the biggest mistake or biggest waste of time that people make when they're learning how to code.
Andrei Neagoie
This is a just popped in my head right away, because I see it so much. And it's one of those things where I tell people about it, but so many people don't listen to it. And even myself, I was at fault at it when I started and that is, as soon as you hear somebody that is better than you say something or an opinion. You assume that that's gospel that that is right. And now you believe what they believe. And you start telling people those beliefs. So let's say code and be like you think, oh, React or JavaScript is the best language or somebody that like maybe a senior developer at your company said that you're going to go around to your friends be like JavaScript's the best language. And there's a lot of that tribalism that happens, where the more advanced senior developers can really influence the beginner more junior impressionable developers. And this is not just coding, it's very easy to do that. I think it's really, really important, especially as a beginner, whether it's coding word, or anything in learning to understand that most likely, most things are never black and white. There's always pros and cons. So learning the pros and cons, instead of the black and white, this is right, this is wrong, is one of the biggest things that you can you can change. Again, it's one of those things that I mentioned all the time, and it's still with my community. It's one of those things where sometimes I have to be like, hey, guys, stop fighting, it's all pros and cons.
Eric Janssen
Right versus gospel, black or white? What are your favorite books or resources in learning how to learn? Or specifically, more broadly learning not specifically learning how to code but what are your favorite resources or books for someone looking to teach themselves how to learn anything better.
Andrei Neagoie
So I definitely have a few books that have changed my perspective, my career and just have had a really positive impact on my life. I like to divide them, I actually have the book list in front of me, I like to divide them into the the micro, which is the specific learning techniques that can be applied pretty much today. And then the macro, which is more career oriented, how should you start structure, your career, and learning throughout the rest of your life. So I'll start with the micro first, micro, the two books that I think are really good to start off with, just to get you excited about the idea of learning is Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer, and Emergency by Neil Strauss. Excellent books, both almost talking about the author and how they mastered a topic that they knew nothing about at the beginning of the book, very entertaining reads to really get you excited. And then the other three that I think are really good, more esoteric, philosophical books of learning, which when I say that doesn't sound exciting, but they are quite good, is The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin, Deep Work by Cal Newport, and The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss are excellent books that have had great impact on my life. But the ones that I've had the most impact are the macro, the more career big picture vision, where I'd say three books, one is, So Good, They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport, one of my all time favorite books. If you had one book to read right now, definitely read that. Smartcuts by Shane Snow. And then finally, Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Those three books have really shaped my thinking and have helped me to navigate the jungles that is the workplace, the careers and all the overwhelming decisions that you have to make in your life.
Eric Janssen
Those first two that you recommended the Moonwalking with Einstein, and what's the other one, Emergency. So those are more I've read Moonwalking with Einstein thought was amazing. And maybe I get what you're saying it's not like not only if you want to learn how to train to have a better memory, but more so just to get you excited that about how the authors went about their process of learning new things, right? Like, the lesson isn't learn how to memorize a deck of cards, the lesson of the book is like, here's a cool new different approach to how the authors learn something new.
Andrei Neagoie
And I think that's, that's the key thing. And that's why those books are so great, because learning isn't something really appealing. When somebody tells you, hey, I'm going to teach you how to learn. You think to yourself, I mean, like I do that at school all them time.
Eric Janssen
Like textbooks and like, lock myself in a library, tests.
Andrei Neagoie
So I think it's really, really important to get people excited. And this is why I mentioned these two books, because they are super fun weeds. And they're going to get you excited. Because as we get older, we tend to stick to the things that we're good at. You know, when you're a child, you're trying a bunch of things. And then slowly, slowly, you have external factors that tell you, wow, Johnny's really good at dancing, wow, Johnny's a really good chess player and you kind of tend to go towards these things that you get positive feedback from. And as we get older, we're almost too self conscious to try absolutely new things that we are absolutely terrible at, like starting from zero is such an intimidating thing when you're a 40 year old man or woman with a child with a career and you want to learn salsa dancing I mean, that is that is tough, a lot tougher than if you were a 14 year old. And you know, your parents forced you to do some salsa dancing. So I think those two books really get you excited and make you realize, again, everything is a game, where these skills and learning is actually, if you started zero, no problem you can get there and most skills can be learned. And you can do it in a fun way, in a game ish way. And those two books really do that.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, I think we often forget play, you know, like we forget, we get so, take ourselves so seriously, and we come out of school kind of burn and do something interesting, at least for me, I got lost and probably taking myself too seriously. For too long. I'm trying to unlearn a little bit of that and play a little bit more. So learning, learning things that aren't always associated with excelling in your career becoming a better negotiator being better at sales, like there are sometimes things that you can learn that are just for fun, that also help you be better in other areas, but you're not doing it for that reason.
Andrei Neagoie
Absolutely, absolutely. And I can look back on every single skill that I've learned, even juggling, even origami, were those were somehow useful throughout my life in like the most unexpected, weird ways. And you're right, I think we take ourselves too seriously. That's, that's one thing that I pride myself on is that I'm still a child on the inside. And as a matter of fact, for anybody that's listening and graduating soon or about to leave University thinking that they're going to go into the real world. Well, real world is full of children trapped in an adult's body, like everybody is a child just trying to look a lot more impressive than they are. Look like they have things figured out, but nobody has their things figured out. We're all just children. So having that mentality, almost loosen things up. I think the famous thing is, if you're a nervous public speaker, you know, pretend like everybody's in underwear. It's kind of like that, you know, everybody's just a child. Just have fun with it. Nothing's as serious as you think. And having that playful curiosity will lead to you trying new things, learning new things.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, cool. If you could rewind the tape, you've done a whole bunch of different things, taking a bunch of swings. Is there anything that you would do differently? Or any advice that you'd give to yourself if you were 22 again?
Andrei Neagoie
See that's a tough one. Because I thought about this before, I've journaled about it before. And the answer is always no, because every single mistake has led to some learning. But I feel like that's a cop out answer that everybody gives. So if I had to absolutely pick one, because you're forcing me to. I mean, it sounds like I'm purposefully staying on topic, but it's really this. It's the idea of, I wish I learned earlier how to learn. I wish I knew the importance I wish I knew that it was a learned skill. Not that, oh, I'm just bad at reading textbooks. Oh, I'm just bad at focusing in lectures. And it's just an innate skill that we have. No, it was a learned skill that you can actually practice just like basketball, just like swimming, just like whatever it is. It's a skill that you can practice. And I wish I had started practicing this learning skill a lot earlier. Because I would have been so much further along. It's one of those skills again, it's so meta, it's so you almost doesn't sound exciting. But the little time that you invest in it, is going to change the course of your life. So yeah, I would have learned how to learn a lot sooner. And who knows, maybe I would have, done a lot more with my life.
Eric Janssen
I feel like you come out of university or any schooling and you're just like, I've read so much, I've studied so much. I'm just ready to go do stuff. Now. I'm done with books for a while. And I was same as you I feel like for there was a dark period there. I just didn't read for a long time. And it's something I wish I would have kept reading for different reasons. But I wish I kept it up.
Andrei Neagoie
Well, here's the good news for anybody that's leaving University, the first time in your life where you have all this learning time open up where nobody's telling you what to learn. Nobody's saying hey, go to this class at this time, you have the freedom to not learn and just do whatever you want to do. But you also have the freedom to now pick whatever topic you're interested in. So that's almost nice in a way where yeah, you're exhausted from learning and taking exams. I know I was after Western I was just so sick and tired of writing essays and exams. I never wanted to write an essay in my life. Luckily, I don't write essays anymore, which I'm extremely happy about. But it opened up all this free time to finally do the things that I'm interested in. What were the things that I was interested in? I wanted to learn how to surf, I wanted to learn how to navigate with a mapping compass. Does that really make me a lot of money make me super rich, super successful? No, but I was curious in it. And somehow those skills translated to something in the future that actually made me productive in my career. So it almost is a free pass after graduation to learn whatever you want.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, man, I appreciate you sitting down and taking a little bit of time to chat. This has been a lot of fun and is there anything we can do to help you? Where do people find you online?
Andrei Neagoie
All right, yeah. If for anybody that's interested in what I do, especially if you want to learn how to code, then you can just tweet at me. My name is on Twitter, Andrei, so ANDR, ei, and then my super complicated last name, Neagoie. I run a coding school called Zero to Mastery. You can google me, and I'll teach you how to code and travel the world.
Eric Janssen
Perfect. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you taking the time.
Andrei Neagoie
Thanks for having me, bye.
Eric Janssen
You've been listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player or visit ivey.ca forward slash entrepreneurship. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,