 Yeah, so welcome to the first How To Friday session and I, yeah, I hope everyone's well and firstly, thank you so much for your support and all the good things. It's such a pleasure to have you here and yeah, I thought we'd kind of make this sort of a pretty free flow open chat. There's some stuff I thought I could share with you that might be interesting, might be helpful and then kind of almost more importantly what I would love to just hear from yourselves as well and get some ideas because I think there's a million things that we want to do but we never know which things to prioritize on. So we try and do as much as we can but I think this session we're at the moment opening only to people who are subscribers. So out of the thousands of subscribers, thank you, you few for being brave enough to join the first session. I think this is always how these things happen. The first things are always tiny and then as you grow you get more. So I really appreciate you for being an early bird and an early adopter and yeah and again also I adore your hat Ron so bravo for that too. And the birds in the background for joining. I think they count as audience members. Yeah but I thought I'd start off with two really interesting things I learned. There's nothing really to do with 42 courses but I just found them so interesting. I thought you might enjoy it. I went to near where I live. There's this place called Burley House which is a massive old estate. If you've ever watched The Crown they film The Crown there and a bunch of other things and I was chatting to they have these amazing people around the house who tell you about all the art and all the furniture and stuff and I learned a few things which I never knew before and so apologies if you already know this but one thing I thought was brilliant was one of the ladies was saying that if you have a big painting with your face and your arms and your legs in it it costs a lot more than a painting of just your face and apparently that's where the origin of the name this cost an arm and a leg comes from. So the reason why it's called this cost an arm and a leg is because back in the day if you had a portrait of your painting of yourself with your arms and your legs it cost a lot of money and the second thing I thought was brilliant which was another sort of I think it's an etymology of the name was have you all heard of the phrase getting plastered meaning getting drunk. So apparently again back in the day they used to plasterers would change the colour of the plaster slightly by pouring wine into it and the plasterers would be able to drink whatever left over wine they didn't use for the plastering so that's where the word getting plastered comes from. Two totally random things but I just thought they were brilliant fun facts maybe something you can share with with your other better halves and friends over the weekend. Now I go oh you're so interesting how did you possibly know that but the reason why I wanted to do this now is with subscribers we've been growing really steadily over the last sort of well the last few years and particularly with the subscription model we only started that really about a year ago but it's been growing quite steadily and we always felt that the thing that we're probably not so great at is the community side of things so we wanted to try and do something to help bring people more together and also help you in whichever way you want to be helped in. Just to give you some backgrounds the things that we have tried and haven't really worked is we did try doing you know on websites you have a little chat session sometimes like a little chat bar that pops up at the bottom we actually designed a system so that you could chat to other peers and other colleagues who were also learning at the same time and you could also ask us anything anytime and my thinking was how amazing is this you know someone stuck on a lesson they can chat to us at any time and what ended up happening was we had about 500 people from India asking for discounts on courses that was about it and then the few people who did use it for learning they actually found it was more of a distraction and it's this fine balance I think like you in my head I was always thinking on the web on the learning page it would be great if you could chat to other users but actually the more we experiment the more that we find that putting that into the actual courses distracts you from learning and then stops you from doing whatever it is that you're doing because then you just start chatting to someone else and your train of thought is completely broken so then we were thinking maybe the two things which I think I want to do and this is an open question of what what you all think would work better is one was we were thinking of creating breakpoints at the end of chapters where you can have conversations or discussions in a thread or in some kind of a forum about the lessons that you've just learned or the second thing which is kind of what this is is I wonder whether if we do these kind of quite short quite easy half an hour things we do them maybe every other Thursday every other Friday to start with and if we need more we can increase the frequency where either ourselves or some of the people that we work with so Rory Sutherland or Mike Viking or any of the lovely people that we're lucky enough to work with come on and share some of the lessons that they've learned in a kind of open very relaxed chilled out manner I do it do we do either of those kind of sound sound or do either of those sound good to you and are or is there something else that you've seen before or that you think that we should try because we're very open to ideas so please anyone anyone chime in I'll stop talking go for it yeah I can see I find both of them actually potentially very interesting and and both quite helpful and I've used other e-learning platforms sorry where they have where they have forums and I always find that very interesting just to see other people's takes on on the courses just because somebody may have had an idea or viewed or interpreted a learning point differently to me and the other thing is I think if you're saying half hour chat sessions with people you know like yourselves like Rory like Tom or Richard Shockman then I think I think those will absolutely fly I mean who wouldn't I would move heaven and earth for half an hour just sitting you know and I'd have my dictaphone going and probably my old tape machine from the early noughties so yeah I mean I think I think both of those sound fantastic Chris okay no I mean that's that's easy enough to do and I think also the nice thing is asking for half an hour of someone's time actually isn't isn't a crazy crazy thing I think it's uh you can at least get a little bit of Q&A stuff done and I think are you know for for the types of people that learn with us it's probably makes sense as well um yeah I mean did anyone else have any any ideas or thoughts? Yeah I would certainly agree with that second run one I mean I think your problem would be with some people like Rory you probably wouldn't be able to shut them up after 25 minutes and that would be so excellent um as far as the first one is concerned what I was impressed with in the style of course work that you've given us is those points where you make us look at other people's answers and that is that's instructive because we're not seeing that until we've made an answer ourselves which is great and I class that as the sort of current sort of interaction that we can have with each other to spark ideas whilst I agree with you you could take one or two ideas and discuss them absolutely further and I think what you're doing is is is is really good there and the nearest sort of university style from about 10 20 years ago which is good because anything that gives you the variety is going to help your brain to to work it very well and I think you've got it I think you've got it right in the course and I'm not sure whether you want to take that bit any further but certainly in formal sessions as you say whether they're monthly fortnightly weekly where you can get people to be relaxed and have a fireside chat yeah certainly be interested yeah I like that sort of the idea of a fireside chat and and it's very interesting what you said about the internally we call them opinion-based answers which is the ones where you have to select three other people's thoughts or opinions they seem to be really popular we get actually get quite a few emails from people saying it was so interesting seeing what someone else thought about a problem and so I'm so glad that you like it and we've got a new a newer faster version of 40t courses it's everything's kind of the same but we've just tidied up the design and we should launch that I think it's next next month beginning of next month we're just doing the final reviews of it but one of the things that we've added and I think it will be there at launch is on those opinion-based ones at the moment you can like them but you can't have a conversation with the person so we've created a chat reply button which will allow you to have a threaded conversation under ideas that you find in the opinion-based answers so I think that could be I think that definitely could be good because it's going to be one idea in 100 that one of us is going to go hey we need to talk a bit more about that that's that's something I've not thought about before that that appeals yeah and then my thinking was that it'll just send you when you next log in it will send you a little notification that will pop up and saying it'll say hi Ron JT's left a comment on your on your opinion and you click it and then it shows what the comment was and you can reply and have a chat it's uh I mean yeah anyway it's we're uh we're we're always we're always trying to find ways of making it more interesting but yeah that it's that fine balance of allowing space for discussion but not distracting people from the learning too much so um I think that's perfect so thank you so much um yeah Anna did you did you have any ideas or JT any ideas well I must say I'm a rather lazy student so I haven't I haven't actually been catching up enough with the courses so I'll have to I'll have to think a little more about this or I can give you um responsible answers who like I love I'm just curious yeah thank you I love your bookshelf what have you got in what's the most interesting book you've been reading recently um I I don't know actually oh I've got one here which is uh what's wrong with economics okay any idea this is uh um a primal for the perplexed oh I've only just started nice the book was just just come out actually it's by Robert Skadelsky hey brilliant rather controversial nice well um if you've got any uh advice when you read it please do drop me a mail and share if it's any good I'd love to love to have a read it sounds pretty provocative because it it tries to I think uh debunk some of the myths of mainstream economists uh have created nice that's brilliant have you read any of the stuff from um he's in a couple of our courses and he's such a nice chap a guy called Professor Jules Goddard um so he's the I think his normal job is um he's the professor of marketing at the UCL on is it UCL yeah one of those things and he's got a he's got some incredible books on and he does he does write a little bit about debunking common economic theory but then also he's got some really lovely books on basically sort of debunking and giving new ideas for management as well which is quite all right so let's look about the thing the reason why I suggested is um I mean I love his book but Rory I was chatting to him the other day and he said that Rory said he reads one of Jules's books he reads every year um and it's called common sense common nonsense uh all right quite a fun title or uncommon sense common nonsense something like that got it somewhere uh but yeah I can't remember anyway sorry I've just moved house so I've got like a small bookshelf here and then all my other books in boxes in my garage but uh yeah it's uh it's brilliant have you has anyone else been reading anything brilliant at the moment I've just I've just started into um show luck homes which I've never read before so I've got a whole audiobook series of Stephen Fry and it's quite a revelation just getting getting it for the first time and getting it from the voice of Stephen Fry um it's a wonderful companion for a bit of exercise a walk or a lie down one day did he read his yeah did he read his recent book is it called making history Stephen Fry's book it's a fiction book no I read I read the one uh about the um Greek mythology his name escapes me heroes that was my thoughts I think it was that fascinating absolutely packed with information it it's basically shows the the plot lines to all the marvel movies um yes I think he has um written one more recently uh called Troy I've only just sort of seen the name yeah quite much about it it's it's really good I've read them all recently and uh I must say I just uh I was reading them on on drives and on walks and or listening to them on audiobook it's just particularly when it's Stephen Fry but it's him on an audiobook is brilliant him and Rory actually I think anything that they write if they've got it in an audiobook I'll always get the audiobook one actually there was one other one that was totally um I don't know whether whether anyone's read it have you does anyone hear like um Malcolm Gladwell um oh yes so there's a tipping point and all that yeah so there's a lovely book from him that he launched um I think it was some time ago but it was it's called The Bomber Mafia um and it's uh it his his side um passion is World War II and uh and aeroplanes he loves and particularly bomber aircraft so um he uh he just ended up writing a book on these two very crazy characters uh he were head of the US Air Force bomber command during World War II um absolutely fascinating and amazing as an audiobook because it was written first as an audiobook then as a as a as an actual written book um and it's uh loads of amazing stories and I kind of want to tell you everything about it but then I'm I'm afraid that I'll ruin it for you so I'll leave it yeah great great book if you want to listen to that and then the other ones which um there was a guy who actually we're trying to make a course with at the moment a chap called Aaron Dignan um wrote a brilliant book called Brave New Work um so he's a I think he's an American consultant um he sort of talks a bit a lot about psychology um and how that and how that applies to to work um really interesting and very just he's a great storyteller and it's it's uh it's very easily digestible uh so incredible business book reviewer if you want anything like that at the moment um and then I gosh I mean I've got a million and one books I've been reading but yeah JT you haven't said anything you must have some amazing book that you've been reading as well um well at the moment I've just started reading a book about the history of the Philippines I come from Mongolia but uh I arrived in Mongolia like a week ago for work so so and I'm also a newbie to the course so at this moment everything just seems really exciting you know everything is oh no there we go sort of back I was like oh no another answer suddenly there's actually someone who reads my answers so it was pretty cool and then about this meeting I was really curious because you know I've done some online trainings but I've never had this live interaction with the with the people as well and you are all you seem all brilliant as well so um yeah so I'm just trying to get to know Manila and the Philippines better and self-isolating so it's pretty boring over here oh wow well hopefully we can provide some uh some some some fun for you uh to do in your spare time while you're sitting I'm having great fun with the course it was it's giving me a great company in the evening so thank you so much no no thank you and yeah we it's it we often get asked uh is it really is it really you who's doing the the marking um and it really is us like um there's there's only about uh there's five of us that do the marking so it's really not a not a huge huge number of people and we only let the people who do the marking uh have always been involved in making the courses as well so the the idea being that they can spot something that's maybe wrong or maybe that needs help um I think that a lot of it is a lot of because I mean you would have seen this from the way that we answer the lessons or the questions that we ask we're we're trying to find things that aren't necessarily always just you know are you right or are you wrong but we're trying to find things that will stimulate you to think a little bit and have a go at putting down something even if it's you know total nonsense um like what we're interested in is is to get get people thinking about giving it a go because I mean I think in life that's kind of how we grow the best is uh you know once once we do something we try it it's always very daunting at first like even this phone calls very daunting to me um but so thank you all for being so marvelous uh but um once you've done it once then it gets a little bit easier and you live and you learn and and I think with our courses we're trying to build people's confidence um and get them into that so uh yeah hopefully um that's it I cannot believe this is half an hour and it goes so fast um I'll uh I'll uh yeah it's really kind and look um I thank you so much all for joining um I really your support means the world to us and so thank you so so much um yeah there's there's in total our team is only 10 people so we're very we're not a not a big team uh we're oh Chris Chris let me let me say from from this side of things I only came along because of nudge stock and I was going to do one course and I spoke to Bren last week uh had a chat with him for the first time so I'm starting to to know you guys but really thank you for all the effort you've put in to get uh a 42 courses so far because I think you've got you're on to an absolute winner the way it's set up you've hooked me and I think you're going to hook thousands and tens of thousands of people in a similar sort of way once they've once they've tried it this sort of it's it's got an addictive quality to it so well done thank you thank you so there's a bit of impetus to be more diligent yeah definitely well well um whenever uh we we have the the big uh the big party uh you're all invited uh it's with with we've we've uh very brilliantly the thing the thing which is exciting for us uh that I think we'll solidify our sort of financial future because at the moment I I started this with my life savings and mortgage my house uh so we've we've not had any external investment and we've we've always kind of made money from day one but we've just not a huge amount of money so uh we've um we're looking forward to one day being able to breathe a little bit easier but um we've got some very amazing big corporates that have been asking to give training to to all of their people so I think you know my my feeling is one of those will probably go through at some stage soon and then that that'll kind of give us the freedom to be able to do a lot more things that we want to do I think I'm when we don't want to create a million courses um I think we want to try and keep it quite quite focused um and quite small um and I think that we could actually accomplish that with a small team and and as well um I think you know there are still a lot of very lazy people in the world um who will never do learning even if it is the best thing ever Alan you're here so you're obviously not lazy you've also got the world's biggest bookshelf behind you so um you're fine um but uh yeah I think um I'm I'm looking forward to being able to do sort of real world meetups and uh you know do do sort of very fun events and things like that so we've got a whole load of big big dreams and plans but yeah once again thank you and thanks Ron for the kind words and Stuart and Jason and Alan I really have the most wonderful weekend and thank you so so so so much but uh hope to see you again soon and if you need anything let me know thank you Chris thank you for everything see you all great to meet everyone