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Ep. 100 Carrots, Going Hard and Blowing Through 10,000 Hours

by Torie Mathis | Smart AF Show, Success + Mindset

Carrots, Going Hard and Blowing Through 10,000 Hours

It’s easy to come up with big ideas and make elaborate plans, but following through and passing that two-week mark when the excitement wears off is anything but easy – for any of us.

We look back on what we learned from 100 episodes, the steps we took to finally commit to the journey, and what inspired us to keep on going when the going got tough. And boy did it get tough. Join us as we celebrate our 100th episode – Hurray! We made it!

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 100

Torie: [00:00:00] But we couldn’t have figured that out in our head, we couldn’t have like, tried to write it out or think about it, or even like, talk about it. We couldn’t have done that without actually going through the steps of working that out in real life experience.

Hey guys, what’s up, it’s Torie Mathis and I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis, founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

Sean: [00:00:32] How do you do?

Torie: [00:00:33] We are super excited to say, this is our hundredth episode.

So, you know, we have learned a lot in the last hundred episodes and I think we still have a lot to learn. Like we’re still, we’re still kind of getting there and figuring things out. You know, I’ve said it before, but I really knew that I wanted to make videos or have a podcast for my business. And I had been talking about it forever.

And if you seen my other episodes, I said that I made a couple of videos and they were crappy. And so I stopped making videos and some time passed and I knew I needed to make videos. And so I made a couple of videos and they were crappy. And so I stopped making videos and this happened over and over and I’m sure.

Yeah, everybody can relate. Like we all have things that we want to do, but they’re difficult. It’s something that really pushes us out of our comfort zone and we feel that resistance. And we run away from it. And I did this for a really long time. And so we finally said like, okay, we’re going to do it.

We’re going to do an episode a day and kind of promised ourselves, I don’t even remember what the timeframe was like a month.

Sean: [00:01:42] It was right at the end of 2020. So we were going to try to do one a day until the end of.

Torie: [00:01:47] I think we started in like October ish timeframe. And so it was like, we’re going to do an episode a day, which doesn’t mean that like every morning we woke up and did one, we actually batched them.

But like we said, no matter what, we’re going to put out a bunch of shitty episodes and you know what we did, we put out a whole bunch of shitty episodes,

Sean: [00:02:06] Really, really good. So go back and watch it or listen.

Torie: [00:02:11] So when I say shit, like they really, they weren’t that bad, like looking back and going through them. Like, I really can see that we’ve improved a lot. A lot of it though has improved its, it’s more of our process. That’s improved things have gotten a lot easier. I’ve got a better workflow. We’ve kind of figured out some of the ins and outs. But I remember when I wanted to start a podcast before and I had done some research, somebody was talking about, and I don’t remember who it was saying that it took him like 50, 60 episodes to find his voice, like, to even know what he wanted to talk about.

And I will say that that is like a thousand percent true. Like, I really feel like in the last 20, 30 episodes, like, I feel like we finally have like, okay, this is starting to be like, what we should talk about. But we couldn’t have figured that out in our head, we couldn’t have like, tried to write it out or think about it, or even like, talk about it.

Like we couldn’t have done that without actually going through the steps of working that out in real life experience.

Sean: [00:03:14] Yeah. I mean, this for me does not come naturally. So, it definitely takes some practice to actually. Have something to say, like I talked to Torie, and then that’s kind of how the whole thing is.

We would just talk about different things and he’d start going off about something that would be like, man, that was so good. Like why wasn’t that recorded? But to actually like sit here and be like, okay, now let’s rethink about this thing and try to get it out and discuss it. I mean, it’s not a natural process.

It, it actually takes a little bit of effort. And it, it is, it’s a thing that just slowly, hopefully, it gets better and better.

Torie: [00:03:58] And like I said, still learning, still going through the process and I’ll tell you, it was definitely not a straight line. Like I know you’ve seen those memes that are like, here’s what successful people, you know, what people think success looks like, and it’s like this diagonal line that just goes straight.

Woo. Right. But really, it looks like this and it’s all messed up and backwards. And then it kind of goes up like three times. Totally screwed up the audio. I didn’t plug in my Mike, you know what, but we pressed on. We always kept going. There were lots of curse words. I think I may have shed a tear, but we kept going.

We went on vacation. We still taped our episodes. I had a couple of late nights like we stuck to our schedule. We did do that. Every one episode a day, so on weekdays. And we did that through just about the end of the year. I don’t remember how many episodes we got to for Christmas. We did take like a week off.

And then we went to two episodes a week and one reason is that they actually did start. Pretty good. Like it’s good content wanting to start trying to get it out there just a little bit. And because we were doing one every single week, like, it didn’t give me enough time to market anything because it was just always another one, always another one.

So I think there is a point of doing too much, however, yeah. People say, like if you’re going to put episodes or if you’re going to do videos on YouTube, that you should try to do one video a week at the minimum. And whereas I think that that’s really great. Then if it’s going to take you 50 episodes or 50 videos to get good.

It’s going to take you a year, but if you did one a day, you know, if you’re able to have that much time, like, you’re, shortcutting it by cramming a little bit more because you have to put in the hours, it’s like this 10,000 hours, you could stretch 10,000 hours over your whole life. Or you could like buckle down and try to get those 10,000, 10,000 hours in much quicker.

I think there’s a balance in that.

Sean: [00:05:52] Yeah. I mean, no matter what, you still have. Put in the time, it’s just, you know, how, how quickly do you do it? You know? So when we’re able to, to batch a whole bunch of these and got them out day after day, you know, it did expedite things a little bit versus, you know, at episode 100, if we did one a week, I mean, we’d be, we would have been doing this for a while now. And, you know, w do that or expedite things and speed it up a little bit and be where we are now in a much shorter time.

Torie: [00:06:25] Right. So if we started in October, it’s June, so eight, nine months that we got a hundred episodes. Whereas if we only did one a week, which is probably what a lot of people do you want to take us two years?

And maybe who’ve got tired of it by then, because we weren’t like, you have to make progress in order to keep yourself going. Like, that’s your own little carrot to keep going. So I think by pushing ourselves a little bit harder at least just for a little while, and just like fully committing, like no matter what we are going to do this, and we kept that promise to her.

Sean: [00:07:00] Yeah. So this is our last episode we’re done.

Torie: [00:07:03] We were hanging up the towel, you know, and I think about it with the kids, like the kids get really excited about something and then they do it for two weeks and then they don’t really want to do it anymore. Two week Dan. So my brother has really good ideas and he gets really excited about stuff and he would go and he would buy all the equipment and do all the things.

And then he would do something for about two weeks. And so my dad referred to him as two week Dan. And so I always tell them or tell them, you always tell Riley, like you don’t want to be two week Dan like you gotta put in the time and commit to it. And so there’s gotta be carrots that you get yourself or your kids to commit.

I actually, wanted Riley to take an extra day at his karate dojo. And so I made a deal with him, like if he would commit to six weeks of doing this class. So that way I forced that commitment from him, then I in turn would kind of pay. I paid for some video game thing for him. But, you know, I, I knew that was important for him and I know he wanted, it was like some game pass that would last for the whole year.

And I know that he wanted to work off that money and he wanted to pay for it. And so I told him that if he committed to the six weeks, I would pay for half of it and then he could work off the other half for me. And so that was the carrot though, to make him commit. You know, in order for him to do it. So if you’re trying something new like this, and you know, there’s going to be resistance with Riley and you know, the new dojo class or with us trying to, you know, sit here, uncomfortably talking to a camera, like, what is that carrot that you can give yourself in order to make yourself commit?

Sean: [00:08:42] See, and I think like, I think a lot of people know this, but what they wind up doing is going too big. That they try, their plan idea is too big and elaborate and it makes it very difficult.

Torie: [00:08:58] Are you saying that I’m really great at over-complicating everything?

Sean: [00:09:01] Yes, absolutely.

Torie: [00:09:04] So I agree. I agree.

Sean: [00:09:06] Yeah. So, I mean, what’ll happen is they’ll say like, say from the beginning like we’ve done nothing even close to this for this amount of time. But say the the initial goal was a hundred episodes and we want to do it in six months knowing we’ve never done anything like that. It’s going to be such a difficult and overwhelming thing to accomplish.

And then, you know, maybe one of the weeks. Something happens and we can’t do it. And then it’s just easy while we didn’t, we didn’t make it.

Torie: [00:09:36] And it’s over like 75 7,500. Okay. Any, you can do anything for 75 days. So rather than setting up this hundred, right.

Sean: [00:09:47] That’s I mean, you did the 75 hard right before committing to this. And now it was, I mean, it was some of that. Some of it was easy. Some of it was even stupid, but it was something that like, we literally stuck to it. Or you did mine. I did with the one aspect, but not changing my diet. My diet is perfect.

Torie: [00:10:05] Oh, you mean for 75 or 75 hard

Sean: [00:10:07] but in accomplishing that 75 days of, of sticking to a routine.

Torie: [00:10:13] Okay. And it was okay. So if you don’t know about 75 hard, there’s very specific things that you have to do and it purposefully it’s not just working out. It’s not just eating well like there’s some things in there that purposefully make it, that you have to plan and it’s inconvenient.

Sean: [00:10:27] And that’s the thing, it’s the convenience aspect of it. Where, when I said it’s stupid like it is, but do it anyways.

Torie: [00:10:35] Anyway one of the workouts, like each workout has to be 45 minutes and then one workout inside or one where one of the workouts has to be outside. So no matter what, you have to go outside and work out. Like if it’s raining, you need to go outside.

If it’s going to rain later, or if it’s going to be like a tornado later like you better do it early in the morning. If it’s going to be. Oh, you better get out there. So you ha it’s teaching you to not only do things that are inconvenient but maybe plan a little bit, maybe figure shit out because no matter what these things are, like, you just got to figure it out.

Like it might not be easy every single time. It might be uncomfortable. It might be inconvenient. You might be doing stuff really late at night or really in the morning, but you’re not going to die. Like it’s okay.

Sean: [00:11:18] Like, and that’s the thing is that the 75 in the whole scheme of things, 75. Was really easy, is easy to accomplish. If you are just right.

Torie: [00:11:28] There’s an app and you just check off each thing. And then the next day it’s the exact same things. It’s not like it’s a new thing every day. It’s 75 days, the exact same things, not difficult.

Sean: [00:11:37] The only hard part about it was just actually doing it. So if it was.

Torie: [00:11:43] People fail on, not the extra workout, not going outside. You have to take a picture of yourself every single day. And that is what people like, cause I’m a part of the Facebook group. And that is the thing that gets people because it’s the easiest and it’s the simple things, the easy things that mean it’s easy to not do I have to start over? Yep. Yep. Yep. And people all the time are asking like, yeah, like that’s, it’s B it’s because it’s, it’s a step that’s easy.

That’s easy to not do. That’s like everybody knows how to lose weight. Like, move more for the most part for everybody, you know, move more, eat less like it’s easy. And so it’s easy to do and it’s easy not to do.

Sean: [00:12:21] We’ll see. And we still have that with this, trying to get this, these episodes out Tuesday and Thursday.

It, you know, for us, it is actually extremely difficult to fit this into our schedules, to get them out on those dates. And I mean, it could, it would be really easy for us to be like, oh, not this week. We can’t get it out on Tuesday and maybe we’ll get it out on Wednesday. And I mean, it’s such a slippery slope to go down that road.

And yet it’s, it’s also super easy. And the only thing that’s keeping us from doing it is just sticking to our schedule. Like, Nope, no matter what we, we said Tuesday and Thursday, and that’s why they’re going to go out Tuesday and Thursday,

Torie: [00:13:01] For example, we went to Florida last week, a couple of weeks ago. And so we had to record right before we left. And then, so I had those recordings and I was just going to edit them once we got there. So we didn’t get there until really late Monday, which means like I’ve got editing to do I pull open the files. It’s Sunday, it’s Monday night. I’m ready to go. And the audio is screwed up. So what should have taken me, you know, however, like 30 minutes or whatever to edit and get everything.

Took me like three hours. Like, and, and I think you’re like, well, you get it done in the morning. And it still is out on Tuesday. I’m like, oh, I will get it out tonight. Like, I was so determined because it’s like, I ha it’s like the 75 days. Like I clicked it off 75 days. I’m not going to screw it up now.

Like, I’ve done it this long that I’m going to do it no matter what.

Sean: [00:13:50] And that was a, we went an hour back in time when we went to Destin. And I think we all went to bed at the equivalent of one point. Yeah. Like we never stay up that late dinner at like 11 or midnight, something like that.

Torie: [00:14:04] Yeah. Our whole schedule was all crazy, but you know what, we, we still got done what we needed to get done and I got them out. I had to learn some new skills on how to fix audio that I didn’t know. And now I do know. And now that I have those skills. And it’s so easy now that I have that process set up, that I’m actually going back to a couple of the ones that were screwed up and I’m like remastering them and having Sean re upload the audio files so that the podcast files are a little bit cleaner.

Sean: [00:14:29] So because we went through something that was more difficult at a given time that we could have easily quit or pushed back or something actually, where it was able to turn that into something that is now made it better.

Torie: [00:14:45] So now that I have that process set up now, every single one is going to be better. And then now I can go back and easily. Like, it’s one of those things that like, it’s not hard to do, but it’s hard if you don’t know how so now that I went through that process and had to learn it all. Now I have this template set up in my program that I can just drag it onto my audio. And there’s some small adjustments I have to make, but oh my gosh. It’s like crazy how much better.

Sean: [00:15:07] And that’s the thing for, for any of these things, anything that you want to do for any amount of time? It may the the level of how much it sucks or how difficult it is made very at the beginning, but the consistency of doing it is going to continue to make it easier and easier and easier, no matter what it is across the board because you can’t get better at something when you do it all the time.

And that’s the 10,000 hours. That’s, that’s these things that people are. You look at them and you’re like, wow, you’re really good at what you do. It’s because they have done it a ton of time

Torie: [00:15:43] And they screwed up so many things and then had to work through fixing it. And they’re like, oh, now I know how to fix that. And then they screw up and now they know how to fix that. Like you can’t. Plan, like I’m a planner. I like to plan, but you can’t plan for that kind of screw up because you don’t know what it is. And even if you learn, okay. So whatever it is that I learned to fix that audio, if I would have made myself, like I wouldn’t have, right. But if I would have made myself learn that in the very beginning, I wouldn’t have even known how that fit into the scheme of things or when you know what I mean? Like you have to have experience in order to have the right set of like the right world view, to be able to even know where that’s going to fit into things. Describe that better for me.

Sean: [00:16:30] You can’t fix something. You don’t know how to fix it.

Torie: [00:16:33] Or you don’t even know the situation that it would need to be fit. Right. Yeah. So I think that that’s a huge part of it. And so we hit before and I said, I am fantastic at over-complicating things. I am, A student. I want things to be an A, I want to do things really great, or I don’t want to do things.

And it is very, very hard for me to put things out when I know I can do better. And so from the very beginning, like, wouldn’t it be great if we had people helping us and all these editors and woo, like, obviously like, yeah, that’d be nice, but like, shit doesn’t work. For anything. So you kind of have to start where you are.

And so from the beginning we said, we are not going to edit the crap out of these. We’re not going to go crazy. And when I say we, I mean me, like it has to remain simple because keeping it simple is good enough, and keeping it simple is going to allow it to keep getting done. Because if we get it overly complicated, which I would love to do because that’s me.

It, it wouldn’t have, it wouldn’t be possible. Like, so it has to be streamlined. It has to be easy and we have to keep it simple. And so I think anytime like we talked about like do it the 75 hard way, and then just, you know, you can do anything for 75 days. Also keeping it as simple as possible. Like it’d be great to do all these extra things and bring on these people and, and lights and fancy.

Keep it simple, simple, simple, simple, be as simple as how things get done. I know like a lot of people say, if you look at millionaires, billionaires, whatever, they are like, it’s really a boring journey. It’s the same thing over and over and over and over again, they didn’t over-complicate it, they didn’t make it more difficult.

They, they kept it simple and then did the same thing over and over again. And I think that we can, for whatever you’re doing. You can like apply that to making things work for a longer time and being able to keep up with them that

Sean: [00:18:37] Do it so often that it becomes like second nature and it’s boring. You’re so good at it. It’s boring. And that’s when you’re really going to start to see that, that the life-changing things start to happen because you’ve made yourself so proficient at whatever it is. You, you, you set out to go do. It, it, it becomes boring, you know? And so then you start to then really start to challenge yourself and tweak things and make it more interesting and more challenging.

And, you know, maybe that’s where then more editing goes into it. And, you know, like for us, if, if this was so easy and it became boring, we’re like, well, how can. Ramp it up a notch.

Torie: [00:19:21] You shouldn’t ramp it up, but maybe always that 1% better, 1% better. Like how can I fix the audio? And, or like, how can I do the microphone 1% better when they say, how can we do the lights? Like just a little bit about like, rather than trying to take everything on at once and, and ramping it up, like still keeping it simple, but 1%. And then every time you’re doing 1%, then over a hundred episodes, like it’s night and day. But it was still consistent for you. No. And I think that like, like you said, 75 hard is a really great way of that because it is, it’s the same thing over and over again.

And just getting yourself into that routine and getting yourself into this is what needs to happen. This is what needs to happen. And so I have even thought about like, well, it’s a hundred episodes. Maybe we only go to one day a week and I don’t think so. I think we’re going to stay Tuesdays and Thursdays because. I say that at the end of the episode. So, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays are what we have it set for. So I think moving on from now on it’s still gonna be Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, we have lots of requests for people who’d like to come onto the show and be interviewed. I have this huge list, like all these people in my email.

And so we’re kind of working. The kinks of that. And so I think that that’s something that in the next hundred episodes, you’re definitely gonna see a lot of because we’d like to share our knowledge and share some of the other, other knowledge that other entrepreneurs have other marketers have and bring some new perspectives onto the show.

So that’s going to be something that’s really going to be exciting. But again for sun and try to keep it simple, like, and stick with it that 1% better rather than going through crazy and overcomplicating it, even though I’d love to do. So we are so happy that you joined us on our hundredth show and we hope to see you for a hundred more.

And like I said, we’re here every single Tuesday and Thursday talking about ways that you can make your business run a little bit smarter, how you can finally figure out social media, how you can use your time. Wiser, get more things done without being overly busy.

Sean: [00:21:19] That’s right.

Torie: [00:21:20] So we will see you on the next one. Thanks. See ya.