Will's Personal Development Show for Asian American Men: Success Advice Will Chou: Blogger and Podcaster

Have you ever read a book and then realized you don’t remember most of what you read and haven’t taken any action based on what you learned? This has happened to me, and I want to prevent that from happening this time around. I’ve read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie multiple times, and often failed to pay attention and use it. This podcast episode makes it clear what I learned this time reading it and then, I outline the action steps I’ll take to use what I learned.



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Following the theme of my latest articles, I want to touch more on procrastination since it was one of my reader’s requests to talk about this topic.

In this podcast episode, I discuss why we procrastinate and the science behind it. Understanding the evolutionary psychology of how it works will help us master it.

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In this podcast episode, I talk about what I have learned from the legend Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bodybuilding champion, highest paid actor at one point, a real estate millionaire, and governor. How did an immigrant live and achieve the American dream? Find out…



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Also, Arnold’s coming out with a new book. This book will be focused on practical tips to succeeding in life. Yay! I’m a little over all the memoirs and want something where I don’t have to pick out the lessons myself.

Pre-order his book here: Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

I asked my email newsletter what they wanted to hear about. One of my readers, Joe wrote in with this request.

I am curious to hear about how you find the time and discipline to keep pushing out emails and videos. (Maybe you’ve already written about this somewhere)



I have a small blog myself and find it hard to find the motivation to keep writing. Even when I do sit down to write, I write very slowly, taking weeks to get out a short article.



I guess it could be generalized to procrastinating on big projects in general (like cleaning the house, patching holes in the wall)



Physical or mental challenges (like learning chess, go, poker, memory competitions) would be interesting, although I would understand if that’s not the type of content you want your brand to be about. Doesn’t have to be video, written progress report type articles would be interesting.”



This podcast episode breaks down my thoughts and system towards how I’m able to put out consistent blog posts, youtube videos, and emails to my newsletter. Thousands of pieces of content have been released over the ~8 year life of this brand so far. Here’s how I did it.

I have a very unique perspective of seeing the ins and outs of working out at a CrossFit gym for five years, for 4 to 5 days a week. Most videos or books about the topic are people who tried CrossFit for 5 days or 30 days or a week, which gives a very superficial perspective. Having seen all the pros and cons of what it’s really like to be part of the CrossFit community, this podcast episode unveils it all.

I talk about a lot of things, including pros and cons of CrossFit you never realized, how people get a lot of false ideas about it from afar (that it’s a cult, that women will look too manly, that it’s too intimidating, etc.), I talk about where it really shines from other alternatives, and where it falls short. We address some common factors like how expensive it is, injury risk, biases, the bad perception of kipping pull-ups and how outsiders falsely judge that, and a lot of interesting things you didn’t know or consider (high turnover of coaches and students, how the community is like no other and can help with mental health and self care).

There’s so much tea to spill. You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out more.



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I paid 10 times as much as friends, coworkers, and other people my age for my gym membership. And I make roughly the same amount in income as them. Well, up to ten times. If they have a cheap membership from Planet Fitness or Gold’s Gym or something similar, then yes. If they have a premium membership to a luxury gym like lifetime fitness or earth treks, I paid more than two times.

 

At first, this situation may seem like madness for a personal-finance junkie like me. I’ve literally written personal-finance articles for top publications like founder. Why would someone so interested in saving money for the power of compound interest willing to spend so much on the gym?

 

The truth is I can’t rationalize all of it. I’d much rather pay $50 a month for what I’m getting now and that would be much more reasonable. You get much less Non-barbell related equipment Then at a commercial gym.

 

I pay for CrossFit because of the community. I see people there I recognize every day and there usually more friendly and open to talking to fellow classmates and strangers than a commercial gym. That community helps my mental health because I got very lonely at a commercial gym. I would reach out all the time and talk to people at a commercial gym ( planet fitness, though I’ve tried others like Gold’s Gym and LA fitness with similar results ) But there would be is some distance with people are trying to make friends with. They don’t want to talk to strangers as much, they keep away, you often don’t see them again for a while, and are often in the zone wanting to get a workout in with their headphones on.

 

An aside reason would be for the strength gains I’ve made at CrossFit. The programming had so much barbell work that it’s almost ingrained into the culture of the gym. There’s enough experience people there to guide me and point out small problems I have with my form. When you combine that together with consistency in patients over the last three years, I’ve PRed On various lives constantly, from the back squat to the benchpress to the deadlifts. I just never got that at a commercial gym, where free weights and machines often reigns supreme. There’s something about barbell exercises that just push your muscles to work harder, plus it’s easy to track my progress and compare results. In addition, there is a competitive aspect to the sport, which pushes me to work harder. 

 

That does come with its downsides, as I have to focus hard to not let my forms slip as I’m raising others, something I’m much more cognizant of and concer...

The world of dating advice is similar to walking through a regional market in Asia: everyone’s trying to sell you how high-quality their product is, happy to tell you it’s the genuine thing, when a lot of it is counterfeit or poor material. You never know if it’ll work or not, because it all looks good, when in reality, a good portion of it is garbage. You’re just searching for those moments when something’s actually decent.

Nowadays, there’s a lot of attractive, new dating coaches popping up on social media: Courtney Ryan, Dating By Blaine, Lloyd, ACE formula, Everlasting Confidence, and plenty more. What people fail to realize is just because they’re good-looking women or around attractive women doesn’t mean they give effective advice; it just means they have an edge to catch your attention and market to you and show a little social proof. Just because they get a lot of views doesn’t mean their advice is impactful or effective. It just means they’re good at catching and holding people’s attention even if the advice is garbage, which is a good signal to the social algorithms. And just because they have thousands of customers doesn’t mean they have good teachers that can transfer their strategies to you and get results; it just means they’re good at selling and parting people of their money.

I would go even further to say that just because they have a few testimonials saying how their advice was good or how they felt better afterwards doesn’t mean anything if the comments are generalized or broad. Those are vague, non-tangible results!

Now, to balance things out, I’m not just one of those hater keyboard warriors who spouts negativity and never buys a course. I’m fairly open-minded. I’ve invested in courses and in-person coaching in many areas of life, and I’ve tried things out despite my skepticism. That said, I do want to caution people because while there’s plenty of people who are overly skeptical, there are also people who are too naive. I mean you can tell many are eating up the advice of these gurus without a second guess. And so, hopefully, you can use my thoughts here to navigate the waters of the internet and avoid the sharks because there are charlatans in every topic, from dating to life coaching to starting an Amazon FBA or ForEx business.



One thing to focus on is longevity. If this person’s product and program disappears into the wind after a year or two of release. It probably didn’t do an effective job. It either wasn’t profitable or the lack of results lead to a destruction of reputation. There was one dating app program out there that came out guns blazing called Endless Options by someone well known in the dating realm. A lot of people were talking about it, and I saw a lot of ads for it. A year later, he disappeared. The program and website were gone too.

Even that’s not a full-proof method for sifting through what’s effective because the issue with selling coaching online is that they can bury evidence of bad experience. They ask for and collect good testimonials. The ones who didn’t like the course aren’t going to have their opinions or voices collected, heard, or shown to their following obviously. So, their complaints are usually kept to themselves.

Another issue with their advice online is that it’s so focused on random tips that have no substantial impact. They sometimes just need to keep up with creating random tips to create daily content to grow their following and appease social algorithms. I saw one guru make a short video about how “active listening” is the biggest turn on for women. Sure, I can see how that can be a nice-to-have in a relationship once they got to know you, but without that nuance, it can lead men astray because there are clearly much more important traits you nee...