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Joe Sanok 00:00:00  How long do you spend writing your progress notes? Every day. If it's over 30 minutes, you should check out describe. Describe is a HIPAA compliant. I note taking software that I and many of my students use daily. It saves me 1 or 2 hours a day on my documentation around consulting, and I know it's going to save you more in counseling. Also, it customizes exactly to my own writing style. I recommend that every therapist give it a trial. It's free. Go to describe how to get started for free. Again, that's describe Mediacom to get started for free.

Joe Sanok 00:00:46  This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sandbox session number 1201.

Joe Sanok 00:00:57  I'm Joe, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast, where we help you build a thriving private practice you absolutely love. And we are just loving helping people in our membership community. If you're looking for some support, just people that can join you, maybe even one of our small groups or one of our trainings. You can get full access to that over at practice of the practice.

Joe Sanok 00:01:21  Com forward slash membership. That's the place to go if you want to connect with other therapists that are building awesome private practices that they don't hate. You know, we want to have both sides of that. We want to have the thriving side. You're doing well. You're rocking it out. You're attracting your right client. You got your money in order and that you love it, that you show up. whether that's online or in person. And you say, I can't believe this is my world. I know that's what I follow in my counseling practice. And there's times when maybe it was thriving more and I kind of hated it. There was times I loved it more, and maybe it wasn't thriving, but finding that sweet spot is what we want to help you do. today we have Scott H. Young, who is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Ultra Learning. He's a podcast host, computer programmer, and avid reader. Since 2006, he's published weekly essays to help people learn and think better.

Joe Sanok 00:02:11  His work has been featured in The New York Times, pocket, and Business Insider, on the BBC, and at TEDx, among other outlets. He doesn't promise to have all the answers, just a place to start. And he lives in Vancouver, Canada. Scott, welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast.

Scott H. Young 00:02:27  Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Joe Sanok 00:02:29  Yeah. Well, how'd you get into learning?

Scott H. Young 00:02:32  Yeah, I mean, that's a funny question because we're always learning, right? So I feel like I've always been interested in things. I think how I got interested in this space of like writing about learning, which admittedly is a little bit niche, was just that when I started podcasting or blogging, I should have said, in 2006, I was a college student. And so it was like I was studying all the time. And so how do you study effectively? How do you handle your course load and and deal with those kinds of issues. We're really central to my life.

Scott H. Young 00:03:01  And quite frankly, it was probably the only thing that I could offer from a personal experience perspective. Something on there, and it really stuck, and it ended up becoming kind of this business that I've been running for for now, almost two decades. And, and it's also been a real passion project. It's given me a chance to do some fun, interesting things that, you know, normally wouldn't be part of someone's day job.

Joe Sanok 00:03:25  Yeah. I think that that idea of learning as an adult, sometimes we don't really think of it as like a craft in and of itself, but it seems like you've really studied the you've learned about the art of learning. how did how did that journey begin to kind of go meta on on learning to say, I want to understand how to learn faster or better, to do ultra learning or to get better at anything. Like, when did that switch for you?

Scott H. Young 00:03:52  Well, I think the first time I got interested in this was so this is again going back to this kind of like 2006 internet culture.

Scott H. Young 00:04:00  There was a lot of people I was sort of, you know, either friends with or kind of distantly connected to who were doing these sort of self-directed learning projects. So people like Josh Kaufman had a project called the Personal MBA, where he wanted to try to, like, give himself an MBA education without spending all the money you have to spend to go to a business school. And Bennie Lewis was someone who was also an inspiration for me. He was doing these projects where he was traveling around the world learning new languages, and kind of like posting videos of the, you know, progress as it was happening. Steve Paulino was another one. I mean, he was writing after the fact, but he talked about doing a double major in math and computer science over three semesters. And I think it just really appealed to my kind of where I was at the time. I just liked this idea that learning wasn't just something you had to get through, but it was also this kind of puzzle. Like there was like sort of a code that like, maybe there was a better way of doing things.

Scott H. Young 00:04:55  and if you understood how it worked, you might be able to do it more effectively. And so that sort of got me started on some of my own projects. But I think now I just it's like it's such a deep part of my life. It's kind of hard for me to imagine the opposite of like not being interested in it. So it's a little bit hard to distance myself from it in some ways.

Joe Sanok 00:05:13  Yeah, well, I want to dig into kind of the three ingredients you discovered in Better at Anything. talk through kind of how you discovered those, but then also just teach us how can we be better at anything?

Scott H. Young 00:05:25  Well, I mean, this.

Joe Sanok 00:05:26  The.

Scott H. Young 00:05:26  First book I wrote, Ultra Learning, was very kind of personal. So it sort of touched on some of these projects that I mentioned and some of my own projects. And after I finished it, I was still interested in this topic, and I started kind of, you know, maybe, maybe somewhat ill advisedly, digging into the scientific literature and then like multiple years later, of reading just like hundreds and hundreds of papers and stuff.

Scott H. Young 00:05:48  I really had this task to myself of like, okay, well, what does it all mean? How can I kind of synthesize it? And I think it is difficult to give a kind of overly broad picture of this, because there's just so many different people with different research paradigms and perspectives. But the three sort of factors that seemed pretty universal, not only in practice in terms of, you know, successful pedagogy, successful learning methodologies tend to involve these three components. But also there was a lot of like interesting, theoretical work kind of explaining why these components are important. Were seeing doing in feedback. So seeing means learning from other people, meaning that we are a kind of cultural species and most of what we know comes from other people. And so the degree to which you can accelerate that process, that ease of learning from others, can often determine how far you get. doing obviously we need to practice to get good at things, but there's also all this interesting research showing that the kind of the right type of practice matters, that you can spend a lot of time doing something and not necessarily get much better at it.

Scott H. Young 00:06:50  And then finally, feedback, because it's not enough to just do something and you get it perfectly, at least most of the time. That's not the way it works. Instead, you need to get sort of corrective information not just from teachers, not just from peers or, you know, the people you work with, but but from the environment itself. You know, if you're running a business and you, you know, try some business strategy and then it doesn't work, you need that feedback signal from the environment. And so it depending on what thing you're learning, the three components may differ in their prominence and which one tends to be the obstacle depending on what you're trying to learn. But those three factors were pretty universal.

Joe Sanok 00:07:26  Yeah. Now for yourself, when you think about something that you've learned as an adult, if you apply that seeing, doing feedback. how has that looked.

Scott H. Young 00:07:36  Yeah. I mean there's so many different ways. So like learning languages for instance. I mean, the seeing part in this case is often listening or reading, but it is obviously you need to find out about the words.

Scott H. Young 00:07:47  You need to find out about the grammar. You need to learn that from somewhere and early on that you know, can be from more structured resources so you can get vocabulary lists, you can get flashcards, you can get a little book that teaches you Spanish conjugations. And then later it's often coming from, you know, watching television, from having conversations with people. You learn little phrases, little quirks of the language. That's that seeing part then doing. You have to practice a lot. And this is often what's lacking in a lot of language classrooms, is that you sit and listen to the teacher and you do a few written exercises, but you don't get the sustained quantity of practice that research says is pretty important for fluency. And so this is one of the reasons why a lot of people, you know, maybe spent high school learning Spanish in their classroom, and then they go on a trip to Spain or to Mexico. And there they can't get much past Ola because they haven't done enough practice to feel fluent in it, which is different from simply knowing the language.

Scott H. Young 00:08:40  And then finally, feedback. I mean, you know, if you try some expression or some phrasing and it, you know, you get a quizzical look, then you're getting some feedback right there. So it's not even just someone telling you, oh, you said this wrong, but even just seeing your communication hit little friction patches and stuff that allows you to adjust. Oh, maybe I'm saying this in a funny way. Or, you know, maybe this is not pronounced correctly or something like that. So that's just one example with languages. But really we could pick any subject and it would be the same.

Joe Sanok 00:09:09  Yeah. And I think that's why things like Duolingo or other kind of apps have been so successful is it's it's so broken down and so practical. and then gives you that immediate feedback, rather than, you know, just I remember when I wanted to learn Spanish in high school and, you know, I was taking a Spanish class, my grandpa gave me this, like, workbook, and there was no audio side to it or interactive side at the time.

Joe Sanok 00:09:33  You know, maybe you'd get, you know, a tape that you listened to, but it wasn't where you're saying it. And then the technology says, no, you said that wrong. Do it again. And here, listen to it. like where it's more agile learning, for other areas that don't have an app, you know, like the Duolingo, you know, for other areas you want to learn. What does that look like for you or for people that you've heard from that have kind of studied your work? for how they're applying some of this methodology?

Speaker 4 00:09:59  Well, maybe to pull it a little closer to home for your listeners here.

Scott H. Young 00:10:02  But, I mean, if you're running a business, if you're running some kind of practice, there is a real learning curve there, right? Because, you know, especially if you have not spent all your time in school studying, running a business, you've spent it, you know, learning a professional skill, and then you have to go out in the world and like, source clients and build a practice and learn things like marketing, which is everyone's favorite thing to learn.

Scott H. Young 00:10:26  then you can often be in this situation where you have to teach yourself some skill. It's very important to your life, but it doesn't have, you know, there's no Duolingo for it, right? There's no flashcards that you can do. And so here, I think in a lot of cases, the seeing part is really predominant, that knowing what is kind of the best practice for your running a practice is very important and it can often be a little opaque, so it's often not clear. You know what you should be doing to get clients, for instance, what you should be, you know, investing your money in if you have like some budget to, you know, spend on certain things and not other things, which things should you prioritize? And so I think here the peer network that you form is really important. And so I know, you know, obviously in a very different line of work, but in my business life, the people who are the most successful at learning business skills, obviously intelligence plays a role, but it's often not the people who are just on paper the smartest or who have the best credentials.

Scott H. Young 00:11:27  It's the people who are very fluid connectors and they're very good at like talking to people because they get access to this information that often isn't written down everywhere. And that gives you this kind of, oh, okay, like work on this, or I need to improve this. And otherwise that can be very hard to sort of deduce from first principles or just from guessing if you don't have a lot of experience.

Joe Sanok 00:11:49  Now, when we think about just how people might apply this to their private practice. Yeah. I'm thinking about so we have this whole membership community, 2 to 300 members in it that are all wanting to build a thriving practice that they absolutely love. so people that are just getting going, they haven't maybe even, like, started their website all the way through mega group practices. how can people apply some of this? to just learn and move faster? So when I think about kind of that question, one of the biggest things that gets in the way is just time. I would say time and mindset.

Joe Sanok 00:12:22  So setting aside time for things and seeing the importance of it and almost viewing, if you've put work on marketing in your calendar like it's a client, you're not going to no show on yourself. Yeah. and then I think there's also kind of the mindset of moving out, of just being a clinician or moving just out of being a small group practice owner, but realizing you have to hand things off. if you think about maybe barriers to people's learning that should be addressed. What other barriers do you see that get in the way of people's learning?

Scott H. Young 00:12:52  Well, I think you hit on one too, is that often we have a certain comfort zone of skills or aspects of skills that we feel competent in. We have a lot of self-efficacy, to use a word that I'm sure most of the listeners here have heard of before, but we have this kind of confidence in approaching certain skills, and maybe we don't in other skills that are just as important to our practice. And I think sometimes there can be this I don't want to say rationalization, but there can be this kind of, oh, you know, that like a marketing thing that I don't feel comfortable with or that, you know, getting a website set up that I don't feel comfortable with.

Scott H. Young 00:13:29  We don't give it its proper emphasis because we don't feel confident about it, because we're not quite sure what to do. and so I think that's where the reframing can be really helpful, that if you don't see it as just like, oh, this is this kind of difficult task on my to do list that I just got to get done. But, you know, this is going to be a little learning project for me. You know, I'm going to learn like, okay, what goes into a good website, even if I'm not building the website myself, even if I'm outsourcing it, maybe I'm, you know, collecting some research, looking at some other people's website, seeing what I like, what I don't like, you know, learning a little bit about how the website building thing works. It could be a small project, but it could still be seen in that light that, you know, the goal is to learn about it, or if it's how to market your practice. And that makes you feel very uncomfortable because, you know, you just want to deliver the service to people.

Scott H. Young 00:14:17  You don't want to be out there hustling and, you know, doing things that you think are very self-promotional. Maybe the way to think about it is not, oh, I have to do this marketing task or I have to do this networking task, but maybe I should learn about this skill. Maybe I should learn more about how it works. What are the things that actually are effective? You know, just treat it as this kind of exercise and curiosity and that can build some of that self-efficacy so that it makes it easier to work on it. Because I do agree with you. Time is often limited, and that's always the case. We're always having to prioritize what matters most, especially when you're running a business. And there is, you know, in theory, infinite amount of things that you can do. But I think sometimes we let our own feelings of competence, color what we choose to work on. And so we choose to work on this thing because, you know, like answering emails or, you know, going to this forum and, you know, writing posts or being on Twitter like that feels kind of safe.

Scott H. Young 00:15:12  And so I'll do that with this little bit of time I have where is something that maybe is outside of our comfort zone that we don't feel as confident in? maybe sometimes we avoid it, even though it is more important and we should be prioritizing it.

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Joe Sanok 00:16:17  It's going to make it so much easier for your team, so you can spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit. Hello, alma. That's. Hello, alma. To get started. Now, when we start to work through some of these barriers, I guess maybe walk us through someone's learning process. So someone has never done marketing. They're saying, you know, I want to work on learning marketing in my practice so that eventually I can hand that off to someone else. I think it's it's smart to never, you know, keep that hat on. But I think, you know, some, some owners want to kind of learn things before they, they hand it off. if you were to say, say someone was like working with you and they said, okay, in the next three months, I want to really learn marketing. what kind of plan would you suggest they do? Like? Phase like phase one. Phase two? Or like, what would that look like?

Scott H. Young 00:17:15  Yeah.

Scott H. Young 00:17:16  So I mean, my starting point for any learning project in marketing, but it could be any skill is what I call meta learning, which is this sort of idea of kind of drawing a map of what you need to learn so that you have some sense of, I don't know these things, but this is what's out there, and this is sort of what I would have to do to learn it. So, you know, with a language is very easy because you can be like, okay, well, here's the words, here's the grammar, here's the pronunciation. I'm not good at these things, but this is what I would have to be good at, what I would have to practice to get good at. For skill like marketing though, I think this map drawing process is even more important because if you don't know much about the skill, it's very difficult to know what even you should be practicing. So for again, to use this example of marketing, my first step would be to ask myself, okay, well, I should like get a basic education in four businesses of my kind.

Scott H. Young 00:18:04  What are the marketing options? What are the things people do? So people do paid ads. People do word of mouth. Maybe you have some kinds of, I don't know, promotional strategies. There's all sorts of different subdivisions within those. And it would be good to start off by like learning what the options are, hearing what works for other people. So depending on the industry, you know, I know industries where people almost exclusively grow their business through doing some kind of paid advertisements and other businesses. They almost exclusively grow through word of mouth and client referrals and stuff. And so I think this is another area where again, touching base with that community. Seeing what other people are doing. Getting this lay of the land. So the phase one would be sort of okay, well, what is this marketing skill? What does it actually break down to? What are the different components? What are the different subtopics that I could learn. And then it would be, you know, making a sort of a reason choice based on your goals, based on your resources and what you've learned in that first process of, okay, maybe I need to focus in on one of these.

Scott H. Young 00:19:05  So if you decide you want to, like, specialize in doing Facebook ads, for instance, then okay, let's find a course on Facebook ads and go through that and maybe practice it. And I mean, and any of these points you can off ramp onto hiring someone who will take over that goal for you. But I think generally speaking, it's easier to hire the more map drawing you've done. If you know nothing about marketing and then you just hire a marketer. I can say with personal experience, from running a business myself, that hiring someone who's just generally good at marketing is going to cost you a fortune, unless you have a very specific idea of exactly what kind of marketing they should be doing, and you can kind of guide them in ways that are productive. And so that's often true with a lot of these sorts of skills that you don't need to be an expert to, you know, hire someone to run Facebook ads for you, but you need to know a little bit about it.

Scott H. Young 00:19:53  And so I think that's what we often want to accomplish with these sorts of short term map drawing learning project efforts is to know enough so that you could outsource it. And then, of course, you know, if you just really get interested in it, maybe you're going to learn how to do it yourself, and maybe you're going to do it yourself for the first year or two until you really figure out what works for your business, and then you start outsourcing it. So that's another option as well that that some people pursue.

Joe Sanok 00:20:16  Awesome. Now, we'd love to talk just a little bit about ultra learning and kind of what from that best applies to kind of counseling. I'm thinking about, you know, you got your typical therapist kind of sitting in the room. There's there's always with these kind of interviews, the, the individual therapists knowing themselves and growing, but then also them learning things that they then transmit to their clients. Let's start with, that individual therapist as a person. But then also, I'd love to move into how can they apply this to their clinical work with with their counseling clients?

Scott H. Young 00:20:51  Well, the basic idea of ultra learning was that, taking on a self-directed learning project where you sort of you pick out a skill that you want to get better at, or a body of knowledge that you want to master, and then you sort of design it.

Scott H. Young 00:21:05  You design kind of the curriculum. Obviously you can borrow other people's curriculum, but you bought you design the curriculum and then you work on it in your own time and you choose it is an effective option for a lot of people. And I think especially people, you know, who might be listening to this right now that are like, well, yes, I mean, I could go back and do some kind of business education or do this kind of thing, but maybe I don't have time for that, or maybe it's going to be a lot of skills that are not really necessary to where I'm at. Whereas if you design your own kind of approach to learning, you could really tailor it to exactly what you want to get good at. So this is sort of the general framework in the book. And so there's lots of different places that that could apply. You could apply it towards any of your own self-improvement kind of goals. You could apply it toward, if you want to learn more of the research in certain fields of therapy, like maybe you're a specialist in a particular kind, but you you want to branch out, you want to study other kinds of types of therapies.

Scott H. Young 00:22:01  Maybe you want to get a get better grasp on maybe some of the scientific research behind it. You could be looking at, you know, again, we just talked about these sort of auxiliary skills for actually running the business and doing that kind of thing. I mean, even just things like, okay, I want to be a better, communicator in some way. And then you sort of narrow that down to, like, I want to be a more empathetic listener. And so you, you focus your project on that. I mean, really the choice is yours. You can kind of design almost anything you want. And the book was really just sort of to try to, drawing on some of my examples of other people's examples, like what are the kind of the basic steps that you should think through in designing such a kind of project?

Joe Sanok 00:22:43  Now tell me about your own work. When you're, deciding to do a podcast or like, like take me through that process of thinking through, coming up with podcast topics.

Joe Sanok 00:22:54  I mean, writing a white paper every single week like that. That's just like a lot of content to create and come up with. Yeah. What's your process look like?

Scott H. Young 00:23:02  I mean, I've got different processes for different kinds of work. So for books or for longer length things. We also teach, courses as well. like a lot of that is, you know, doing a ton of research, a lot of broad reading. And then when you feel like, you know, you've got enough, something's ripe. They're putting in there. So for me, I feel like just kind of continually learning, even if the learning is not aimed at anything in particular, is very important. It's kind of it's digging the well, so to speak. You know, you need to dig deep before you can start drinking the water out of it. And I think that's true of a lot of intellectual work, that you have to spend a lot of time laying the foundation. So that's what I'm doing. Often when I'm doing the kind of longer form content, with the essays.

Scott H. Young 00:23:47  some of that is, is a similar effort. You know, you read a book and then you're like, this is a really good book. I'm going to, you know, review it or talk about it on my, on my blog or my newsletter. But sometimes it's also driven by this kind of back and forth dialogue with, with readers. And so, you know, I get a lot of interesting questions. And then in my sort of thinking through how I'm going to reply to this person's question, I'm like, you know what? I should I should put a few more. You know, periods and, semicolons here and turn this into an essay that that will be good for other people. So I don't know. For me. Yeah. It's, it's almost a hard question to answer because I've been doing this sort of, like. Yeah, for the last 20 years. It's, it's kind of a reflex at this point to just be like, oh, yeah, that would make a good essay.

Scott H. Young 00:24:32  I should I should jot that down.

Joe Sanok 00:24:36  Yeah I think that there is something about just saying you're going to like do ongoing content. And so you know us doing this podcast 3 to 6 times a week depending on how many sponsors and guests we have. I think that it for me, it removes the overthinking sometimes where it's like, yeah, yeah, I could have read all of your books in prep for this, but if I did that for 5 to 10 interviews a week, I would not have a life.

Scott H. Young 00:25:01  I would not very well read.

Joe Sanok 00:25:03  Yeah, it would be very well read with no well read time. Yeah. No time to, like, put any of it into action. And, and I think that also for me just realizing that, that that kind of beginner's mind entering into interviewing people for me, I value that because if I know too much, then the audience is like, what are you talking about? I haven't read this book yet. And so, but even just like saying, okay, like, how does it work for me in regards to this flow? And then, you know, once you kind of get into it, then it's just conversations with people.

Joe Sanok 00:25:33  And so, I think when you dig in deeper. it does take away some of that. Just overthinking sometimes. Do you, do you find that you, when you're writing every single week and you're doing all these podcasts?

Scott H. Young 00:25:44  Well, just to add to your point about, you know, having six guests on a week and then therefore not being able to read every single piece of content each guest is written. I think sometimes there can be an advantage that because I've definitely found not, it's not always the case, but you can definitely get on a podcast where someone really did want to do their research, and then they kind of you kind of end up just like walking through the different sections of your book, which is fine. I don't have any problem having that conversation, but, sometimes it destroys a little bit of like the natural. What was the natural impetus for talking about these things in the first place? Like what was what is the kind of, you know, realistically, you should be able to have a naturalistic conversation about the things that you're interested in without like, oh, no, no, you need to study this first before we can talk about it.

Scott H. Young 00:26:28  So I mean, that can be very helpful. But I mean, I don't know, I think I find this similar kind of tension in my own work because I do like research driven stuff. I like things where, you know, quite frankly, people don't like to read as many dry books as I do. And so it's, you know, I think that is one of my areas of comparative advantage that I can, like, sit through dusty textbooks and then be like, okay, here's for the person who wants a ten minute version. Here's what I think matters. But but I think at the same time, there's, you know, there's a lot of just kind of almost sort of philosophical about it where you just you want to rely on your everyday observation and common sense when you're doing things. And not everything has to be a literature review and a meta analysis. But, having that kind of personal voice and hopefully people will see that when they, you know, you've thought clearly about something and you have that's why people come in, not just for the citations.

Joe Sanok 00:27:22  Yeah. Now, I know a lot of people will probably resonate with you being more analytical, more kind of on the educational way that you present. You know, a lot of this learning. I mean, because lastly, these folks have master's degrees, PhDs, they're really good at trauma, anxiety, whatever. and then it's really hard for them to pull out their phone and, like, do a TikTok. They're just like, it doesn't feel aligned with my with my counseling clients. It doesn't feel aligned with my expertise. And, but but writing a, you know, ten page white paper, definitely could be something that they feel is a little bit easier. What suggestions do you have for them in regards to, like, taking wherever they're at and just producing something that goes beyond their counseling practice?

Scott H. Young 00:28:04  Yeah, I mean, that's that's an interesting question about how you can get someone's expertise and bring it to, the everyday person, I think. I think one of the challenges that people who are genuine experts, as opposed to dilettante like me, when you are a genuine expert, you have such a deep and broad knowledge base in a particular field.

Scott H. Young 00:28:25  it's very difficult to step back from that and be like, okay, what does the typical person actually know about this? And I think a common mistake that many writers make, many people who are expert communicators make is they mistake an audience, an audience's lack of knowledge over their particular subject with just being unintelligent or ignorant in some ways. And so I think you can sometimes see this, especially with maybe some heavy handed public health messaging where they don't really trust the audience to have any kind of sophistication in, like being able to understand, okay, well, I'm telling you this, this is why I'm telling you this. That's going to be too complicated. I can't tell you that. I think, I think the way you have to treat the audience is with respect and respect for the fact that you know, what they they are often smart. They're may be smart in much smarter in a different field than you are, and you just have a lot more knowledge that they don't have. And so that kind of I think that starting point of respect and being like, you know, this person is busy, maybe they don't have a lot of time to sit through a lot, but maybe I've learned something that's important that can be communicated to them.

Scott H. Young 00:29:34  And I think if you can start from that kind of place of mutual respect, it's a lot easier to do that communication. And I know it can be frustrating at times when you, you know, see people, posting misinformation or like, you know, bad theories and then they get like a million retweets or shares or whatever. And you're like, you know, why aren't they listening to the experts? But I think it's just because it's very difficult to see what's, plausible or what's a, you know, good answer to certain questions unless you have that expertise. And so being able to to try to bridge that gap I think is very important. And, you know, even though I'm not the, you know, academic expert for a lot of these fields, I have a lot of respect for people that try to do that. And I really do in my own way. try to bridge some of that gap, a little bit of, you know, trying to respect the people that you're talking to and, and give them something that might be useful given the fact that they, you know, maybe don't know nearly as much as you do.

Joe Sanok 00:30:29  So awesome. Well, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

Scott H. Young 00:30:37  Well, I would want them to know that they can learn the skills that seem frustrating and difficult for being successful, not just as a, you know, communicator or therapist, but for their business and for what they're working on. And I think there's lots of ways you can do that, but it has to start with that self-belief of, you know what? If I wanted to if I dedicated the time, I could become an excellent public speaker, or I could be excellent at, you know, public communication or marketing or accounting or building a website or all of those things. And I think if you start from that base of curiosity and confidence, there's, there's really nothing you can't do.

Joe Sanok 00:31:14  So if people want to get your books, if they want to connect with you, where should we send them?

Scott H. Young 00:31:18  Yeah. So they can check out my website.

Scott H. Young 00:31:20  That's Scott young.com. And I have thousands of free articles, free ebooks, things like that there. And there's also links there to my two books, Ultra Learning and Get Better at Anything, which you can also find on audible, Amazon, wherever you get your books.

Joe Sanok 00:31:39  so awesome. Thank you so much for being on the practice of the Practice podcast.

Scott H. Young 00:31:43  Thank you for having me.

Joe Sanok 00:31:50  Well, I am excited for you to go learn or try something new, you know? it was a number of years ago that I decided to switch from acrylic paint to watercolor paint because I swear, like, watercolors, I just they were always just, like, a big mess. And so I spent some time watching a bunch of videos and some techniques, bought some good paints instead of those, like crappy ones I had as a child. And now watercolor is what I really enjoy. Over on my, personal Instagram, I post, all sorts of art on there that I just play with. It's, it's really interesting how when you don't feel like you have to create something for someone else, you just try new stuff and it turns out often cooler than I would have planned.

Joe Sanok 00:32:29  or, you know, I've talked lots of times about doing improv. So tonight, you know, at the time of this recording, it's a Tuesday. Every Tuesday I go to improv, sometimes I teach. so throughout most of the fall, I was teaching and I was, participating. So like 4.5 hours of improv every Tuesday. But that lights me up. Go find those things that light you up. that can just make you enjoy life differently. and when you do that, come tell us how it went. I'd love to hear some of those stories. we have a lot coming up. And, over in our memberships over at practice of the practice.com/membership. make sure you check that out. If you are not in the memberships, you are missing out on the community that's going to help you get to the next level. Thank you so much to alma for being our sponsor today. You know, I wish alma had been around when I had my private practice. I had no idea what I was doing.

Joe Sanok 00:33:18  That's why I didn't take insurance. But if alma had been there, I would have. And there's no reason that as a clinician, you should be spending hours on paperwork to bill for insurance, or not knowing for sure that you'll get reimbursed for sessions with your clients. If you're interested in seeing clients through insurance but don't want to navigate the process and paperwork on your own, alma can help. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates and a guaranteed payment within two weeks. Visit alma. That's. Hello all. To get started. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information.

Joe Sanok 00:34:19  If you want a professional, you should find one.