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Zak Slayback and The Value of Substance over Status
He was one of LinkedIn’s most influential voices on education in 2015 and has been published in Newsweek, the New York Examiner, the Daily Caller, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Foundation for Economic Education’s Anything Peaceful, among others, and has also appeared on The Glenn Beck Program and HuffPost Live.
Time Stamps
[4:25] What Zak is passionate about – reforming education and writing.
[5:10] Does University attendance translate into business success.
[6:38] What is it that separates some who are successful from others who are not? (1) An ability to chase substance instead of status. (2) A definite purpose in terms of what someone wants to do in life. (3) A focus on leaving many doors open in regards to opportunity. (4) The ability to see value that is left by someone else.
[10:20] Find a high level thinker and see what they need to do but can’t do and then do it for them in order to make yourself valuable to them.
[12:20] Technologies cause us to all seem to want to do the same thing. Zak talks about mimetics and how everyone seems to be searching for the same thing.
[15:52] Zak’s definition of success. What schools are built to do today – in the underlying structures and systems of our schools is a bias toward creating a good factory worker and a good laborer rather than a person who can find happiness. Success is continual progress toward the achievement of your goals.
[19:16] The biggest key to Zak’s success. Opportunity cost: the value of the next most valuable thing you could be doing. Finding someone who has a high opportunity cost – a business owner or high achieving person with a lot on their plate – provide the value for someone who doesn’t have the time to do something they need to have done themselves. Find a way to “pick up hundred dollar bills” for someone who can’t afford to spend their time doing that.
[23:53] Robert Green’s book Mastery. Find a way to gain mastery over a part of your life.
[24:50] Zak’s biggest obstacle and failure. A form of self-doubt which kept him from moving forward in his time at Praxis.
[27:09] What Zak is doing now and his current passion. Writing and directing publishing for The Mission on Medium.
Resources and Places to Connect with Zak
Website: www.zakslayback.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zslayback
Twitter – @zslayback
Zak’s book – The End of School: Reclaiming Education from the Classroom
Resource tip – Robert Greene’s book, Mastery
Top learning moments
- Successful people are people who chase substance over status. And this works in any profession – the idea of a craftsman who cares about his craft rather than a huckster just wanting to make a name for himself.
- There’s great benefit in finding ways to leverage opportunity cost. In other words find someone who can’t afford to “pick up hundred dollar bills” and do it for them to create value for them and make yourself indispensable to them and at the same time learning a skill and gaining experience.
- Don’t let self-doubt paralyze you from progress in your journey. Remember, it’s important how you think about yourself so focus on intentionally and strategically directing those thoughts towards constructive outcomes in your life as opposed to destructive ones.
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