Shadowing Practice: View - Learn English Speaking with Video

I want to show you how I became number one in different fields,

industries, and even broke a world record

and how you can apply the same process to winning or getting whatever it is that you want.

My name is Al Shamozzi.

I'm a portfolio of companies at acquisition.com that generates $250 million per year in aggregate revenue.

I did a book launch that did $106 million in a weekend

and broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time.

And so there's my kind of proof behind that.

So in this video, I'm going to explain a core shift in my understanding of getting what I wanted

and specifically in business.

So this will be a belief breaker for you guys.

So I talk to business owners for a living every single day,

like literally every week, and I have for a decade plus.

And one of the things that drives me absolutely nuts is the idea of industry standards.

So you've probably heard this,

people are like, oh, this is industry standard, that's industry standard.

And I'll tell you a real conversation that might shift this for you.

So there was a company that I recently met with,

that was about a $500 million company.

So half a billion dollar company, right?

And they were efficient, but it was an old school model.

So I met with the chiefs of that business,

and I met with the leaders, right?

And the entrepreneur who runs the business wanted me to look

at certain components of how they do things in terms of acquisition and things like that.

And when I walked them through their acquisition process,

I was like, hey, these are some things that need to change.

And there was a lady who was there who was in charge,

or probably maybe half of it.

And at least, you know,

it fell under her purview.

And as I would, you know,

point out things that were bad or like needed improvement,

she kept repeating the same thing,

which is like, well, you know, we're industry standard.

and I was, and she'd be like,

we're meeting industry standards and she would get really kind of flustered and she kind of,

I would say maybe to a degree got offended because I was saying,

well, you know, this sucks and this sucks and these numbers aren't good.

And they kept repeating, we're meeting industry standards.

And so I paused and I was like,

do you wake up in the morning and just say,

I want to be an average company, right?

We are average.

Half the people are better than us and half are worse.

We are average.

Who gives a shit, right?

I don't know about you,

but like I didn't get in the game,

whatever game you're playing to be average.

Like the average business is average.

The average American is overweight.

They're in debt.

They're divorced.

They're depressed.

And so the average business makes almost no money.

Why would I use industry standards,

industry averages, anything like that at all?

And I say this because I have people who will push back on some of the things

that I talk about with regards to margin,

when I things I talk about in terms of timeline,

when I talk in terms of pricing, right?

And they'll say something like,

well, you know, in HVAC, it's different.

Or, you know, in SEO,

it's a little bit different.

Or, you know, we've got XYZ issue in trucking, and it's different.

It's logistics, it's different.

No, it's not.

You get what you tolerate.

You get what you accept and deem good enough.

You are the standard setter.

It is the highest and most important job in the company,

and it is why some companies prevail and some companies fail.

It's the reason that Jobs was so important for Apple,

Elon was so important for Tesla and XAI and all the other things that he does.

And at a certain point,

you cannot actually do anything in the company except for hold the fucking line.

And the person who should run every department or every division should be the person with the highest standards, right?

And this applies to everything, right?

Sales rates, closing percentages, profit margins,

cashflow, the people you date,

the body fat percentage you hold,

how fast you expect something to get done, literally everything.

Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus

that less than 1% of companies finish.

I've now done multiple times.

And so I can say with a lot of confidence

that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through.

And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business,

what the constraint feels like,

like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it,

and then what steps we actually took to graduate.

And we've done this across software,

physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar,

all of this, and it works.

And it's my gift to you.

It's absolutely free.

And so the link's in the description,

100

but you just go acquisition.com forward slash roadmap,

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just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you all free.

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So let me tell you a story about a billionaire mentor of mine.

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Again, I had a conversation many years ago,

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and he said this thing to me that I'll I'll never forget.

105

He said, profit is unnatural.

106

And I was like, what does he really mean by that?

107

He said, it's common and normal for people when money is in a bank account to spend it.

108

And that's why most people don't have money.

109

He said, so if you have a company and it makes money and it actually starts to succeed,

110

that success has this constant pressure of normalcy that fights against it.

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And so there has to be someone who holds the line and is like,

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no, we will not spend more,

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but we will keep making more.

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We will get more customers and we will not hire more people.

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We will find a way to service these customers better than we did our last customers without adding headcount.

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And we're going to do it even better, even faster with less.

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And so let me tell you another example of something that just happened in one of our portfolio companies.

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So they needed to add 15 sales reps to hit their Q1 goals, right?

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And so the leader was saying how his plan was to hire five reps a month, right?

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Every single month.

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And doing it this way,

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he said, would stretch the team,

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but it would still kind of like ensure quality,

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make sure the culture wasn't too stressed, et cetera.

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And honestly, it was a fair plan, right?

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But for this business, the extra sales guys were going to add about 4 million in profit that quarter.

127

That's how much extra he was going to add just that quarter.

128

So I pushed back and I said,

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why can't we do it in a month?

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I need a lot of different reasons of,

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and he kept hitting, you know,

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like it'll be cultural issue.

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I think we'll stretch the team.

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We might lose other sales in other places.

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And I kept pushing and pushing,

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but he had some reasons to come back.

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And thankfully he's a stud.

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And then after the meeting,

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he messaged me back and said,

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two of our guys have bandwidth who are more senior.

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They can assist the new manager and onboard three to five guys each.

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If we do that, we can actually do it in a month.

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And boom, $4 million more potential next year in Q1 because of one thing, a higher standard.

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Just saying like, why does it need to take that long?

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Why can't we?

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Like, if we were doing a billion in sales in this business,

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we probably wouldn't say we need to hire five guys a month.

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No way.

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Right.

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We'd be like, we need to start with 50 and maybe add 50 every other week.

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Right.

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The, the, it's just this minimum standard of,

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of something that you decide is enough or acceptable.

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And the crazy part about it is like,

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we're the ones who decide this.

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And then we're upset that we don't get,

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or that we're upset that we got the fruit of our very low standards.

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And so the way that you can kind of know kind of what your standards are,

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the, what the standard for somebody else on your team is,

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is how many attack vectors you use to approach or solve a problem, right?

161

So it's not about doing the same thing a hundred times.

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That's not smart, right?

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It's about trying to accomplish the same goal with a hundred different iterations and angles until one finally gets through,

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till you pass the goalie,

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till you chop down the tree, right?

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It's like, well, I'm hitting it this way and I'm getting rock.

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It's like, okay, well then let's try from another angle.

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Let's try underneath.

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Let's see if we can poison the tree,

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like whatever we need to do.

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Can we reach out to our network and give $100,000 bounty for another SDR?

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Is there a company with a large SDR team that doesn't make as much as us we can buy?

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Can we hire five recruiters to speed up the process?

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Can we fly all of the SDRs in person to get them trained up faster

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so we don't lose cultural issues and we can get them on ramp in three days rather than in 30 days, right?

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Can the top two, most experienced guys who have some blank space,

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have them sub in?

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Bingo, right?

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All of these have costs,

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obviously, but of the costs, they're still worth it.

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So you're not getting what you want because you're not attacking the problems you have enough times in enough ways.

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So you're trying one or two things and then saying like,

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I tried that and it didn't work.

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I tried Facebook ads.

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You know, I tried making content.

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I tried hiring a salesman and it didn't work.

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It's like, no, it's not that it didn't work.

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It's that you weren't skilled enough to make it work.

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Very big difference.

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And so you're gonna tell me that no one on earth has ever had the same problem that you have right now?

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And of those many people on earth who've had it,

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no one solved it.

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You have somehow come across the Gordian knot of problems.

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No one has hired more than five SDRs in this period of time for a company of this size.

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Of course they have.

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And that's why those people won.

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And they didn't just accept that it wasn't possible within this timeline.

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And so the rules that I would encourage you to live by is that unless the laws of physics prevent it,

199

consider it mental handicaps that your competition gets to live by and measure themselves by.

200

Not a suggestion, a recommendation,

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and certainly not a fucking law, right?

202

Industry standards are a handicap that you let your competitors use and think they're doing well.

203

That is the gift that we get as soon as you get out of this belief.

204

Because if you want to be average, use industry averages.

205

And most industry average businesses suck, right?

206

Why would we look at them to judge ourselves by like,

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oh, this guy's completely broke and distracted,

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has no idea what he's doing.

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I should look at what his numbers are and say,

210

oh, we're about the same.

211

Is that an accomplishment?

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Should we be looking forward to something like that happen?

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Like if you wanna be the best,

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use physics and math and then work backwards.

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And so I think something that'd be really good to finish on is this great piece by Jeff Bezos.

216

I want to read it to you because I think it just really drives this point home.

217

Differentiation is survival and the universe wants you to be typical.

218

This is my last annual shareholder letter as CEO of Amazon.

219

And I have one last thing of utmost importance I feel compelled to teach.

220

I hope all Amazonians take it to heart.

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So here's a passage from Richard Dawkins' extraordinary book, The Blind Watchmaker.

222

It's about the basic fact of biology.

223

Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at.

224

left to itself, and that is what it is when it dies,

225

the body tends to revert to the state of equilibrium within its environment.

226

If you measure some quantity,

227

such as temperature, the acidity,

228

the water content, or the electrical potential in a living body,

229

you'll typically find that it's markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings.

230

Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than the surroundings.

231

And in cold climates, they have to work hard to maintain that differential.

232

When we die, the work stops.

233

the temperature differential starts to dissipate,

234

and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings.

235

Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature,

236

but all animals do some comparable work.

237

For instance, in a dry country,

238

animals and plants work to maintain the fluid content of their cells,

239

work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them into the dry outside world.

240

If they fail, they die.

241

More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it,

242

they would eventually merge into their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings.

243

This is what happens when they die.

244

While the passage is not intended as a metaphor,

245

it's nevertheless a fantastic one and very relevant to Amazon.

246

I would argue it's relevant to all companies and all institutions and to each of our individual lives too.

247

In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal?

248

How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness,

249

to keep alive the thing or things that make you special.

250

I know a happily married couple who have a running joke in their relationship.

251

Not infrequently, the husband looks at his wife with faux distress and says to her,

252

can't you just be normal?

253

They both smile and laugh.

254

And of course, the deep truth is that her distinctiveness is something that he loves about her.

255

But at the same time,

256

it's also true that things would be often easier,

257

take less energy if they were a little more normal, right?

258

This phenomenon happens at scale at all levels.

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Democracies are not normal.

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Tyranny is this historical norm.

261

If we stopped doing all the continuous work that is needed to maintain our distinctiveness in that regard,

262

we would quickly come into equilibrium with tyranny.

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We all know that distinctiveness, originality, is valuable.

264

We're all taught to be yourself.

265

What I'm really asking you to do is to embrace

266

and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness.

267

The world wants you to be typical.

268

In a thousand ways, it pulls at you.

269

Don't let it happen.

270

You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it's worth it.

271

The fairytale version of be yourself is that all your pain stops as soon as you allow distinctiveness to shine.

272

That version is misleading.

273

Being yourself is worth it,

274

but don't expect to be easy or free.

275

You'll have to put energy into it continuously.

276

The world will always try to make Amazon more typical,

277

to bring us into equilibrium with our environment.

278

It will take continuous effort,

279

but we can and we must be better than that.

280

You have to hold the fucking line.

281

Like, this is the last letter that Jeff Bezos wrote.

282

And can you think about,

283

like, all the things that he wanted to say?

284

The thing that he chose to leave on was the line,

285

was this is the standard.

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This is what makes us different.

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And of course it's going to take work.

288

Of course it's going to take more ways to solve the problem.

289

It might cost millions more in order to do the better solution than the easy solution.

290

But, like, if I could just transfer this one thing,

291

like, you can tell how good someone will be as an entrepreneur by the standards they keep for themselves.

292

They continue to push back and say like,

293

why can't it be faster?

294

Why can't it be easier?

295

And there's famous stories of Steve Jobs putting the phone book on the desk and saying it has to fit in there.

296

And people have been saying,

297

it's never been done before.

298

And you've got Elon Musk going on the manufacturing line saying,

299

this could have two bolts.

300

And they're like, there's no way no one's done it before.

301

And he's like, break it down to physics.

302

Why can't we do this?

303

And so when someone pushes back on you and says,

304

we can't hire that fast.

305

It's like, why?

306

What physical law is preventing us from hiring that fast?

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If another company who's 20 times their size can hire 100 people a day,

308

why is it taking us a year to do it, right?

309

What choice are we choosing or what cost are we not choosing to bear

310

that we could bear to make the investment to pull a future forward?

311

And I think it's like that push,

312

that relentless energy, the drive to choose to be different, right?

313

To choose to hold a value,

314

the perfect value that you have as the ideal,

315

and then to strive continuously and though imperfectly to try and live that out.

316

And I think of that as like the reason you win or you don't win.

317

And again, I'm not talking table stakes.

318

If you want to be average,

319

then just look at industry averages, right?

320

Look at industry norms, industry standards.

321

But most businesses, if you looked at the average business in the US, they break even.

322

The median business almost makes no money, right?

323

And so it's like, why would we measure ourselves by that?

324

We have to, by very definition,

325

reject the vast majority of what other people do in order to achieve what other people can't.

326

And I think that that is like,

327

I would encourage you to be less reasonable.

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And I would say that it has been a skill that has served me well.

329

I mean, you can imagine having,

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saying, hey, we, I want to break the world record

331

that every other person who has had a book has had massive media empires.

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They've had big deals.

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They had national media behind them for presidents and monarchs who released books.

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And I'm saying, I'm just some guy in America saying like,

335

let's see if we can do more than all of them.

336

And we did, we fucking did, right?

337

We outsold Prince Harry, Obama combined within 24 hours.

338

And to be fair, please don't kill me for,

339

you know, having some point of disrespect for whatever secret nations exist, right?

340

But I'm only saying this to make the point,

341

which is like, when I set that goal originally,

342

can you imagine the amount of people who are like,

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I don't know if that's realistic, man.

344

Like, hey, that's a really big number.

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Like, I've really thought, I mean,

346

like, but what if it doesn't happen?

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I had someone ask me that.

348

They said, well, what if we don't hit the goal?

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And I said, we dare greatly, motherfucker.

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That's the point.

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Like, so what if we don't hit the goal?

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It doesn't mean we don't,

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we give ourselves an excuse to not try,

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but like try in earnest,

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not say like, oh, we're going to do this and we hope this happens.

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It's like, no, we want to have five different versions of this thing going wrong and it's still hitting the goal.

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And so I say this because like the goals that I have

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and probably the goals that you have never apologize for them.

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They're, they're, it's normal for them to be unreasonable,

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but you don't need to be reasonable.

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The world wants you to be reasonable.

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It's like you need to be unreasonable.

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You need to stick your feet in the mud.

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And there's a certain amount of stubbornness that's required.

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And I think part of the reason that Peter Thiel

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and some of these great investors talk about phenomenal entrepreneurs is that they have – sometimes they don't have super high agreeableness.

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It's that they don't need consensus.

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They don't need everyone else to like them because they believe what they believe, right?

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And the thing is that in order to have an outsized return at anything,

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you have to bet against conventional wisdom, right?

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And conventional wisdom can be right.

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And so that means that fundamentally either you're an idiot or you're right and you're early and that's where you get rewarded.

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And so you have to think,

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like, at least the process I come down to is always like,

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what physical law of reality prevents us from selling this many books?

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And that's why it came down to like,

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all right, we'll have multiple generators.

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Like, if we don't have power, we can't sell books.

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We have to make sure that we have backups for internet.

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If we don't have internet, we can't sell books.

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Okay.

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Do we have enough books to sell?

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We got to print them.

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Okay, great.

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We have to have logistics that we have hundreds and hundreds of people ready to actually ship those books out.

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Okay.

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If we have each of these things,

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then all that it really takes is enough people to see it and an offer enough that is compelling,

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that makes sense for a big enough audience to say yes.

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That's it.

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And so you have these problems in your business.

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You're not cash flowing enough.

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You're not hiring fast enough.

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You're not, your price isn't what you want it to be.

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If you believe and you can reason it to say like,

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what prevents us from doing this?

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I think that that's where you can get these special outsized returns.

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I think that's where you can have the unreasonable accomplishments,

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but it comes first from having unreasonable conviction that you will hold the line,

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that this will be the standard that you have.

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And the fact that no one else has ever done it before means absolutely nothing to you

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because there's no reason that they couldn't have done it.

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And good on you for ignoring the fact of their mediocrity.

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze video bevat 403 zinnen en 3806 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 17:20. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 220 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 88% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
equilibrium zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɛkwɪˈlɪbɹɪəm/	evenwicht
surroundings zelfstandig naamwoord	/səˈɹaʊndɪŋz/	omgeving
entrepreneur zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/	ondernemer, entrepreneur
compel werkwoord	/kəmˈpɛl/	bedwingen
tyranny zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈtɪəɹəni/	tyrannie
handicap zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈhændikæp/	handicap
accomplishment zelfstandig naamwoord	/əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/	voltooiing
logistics zelfstandig naamwoord	/ləˈd͡ʒɪstɪks/	logistiek
norm zelfstandig naamwoord	/nɔːm/	norm
continuously bijwoord	/kənˈtɪnjuəsli/	continu
acidity zelfstandig naamwoord	/əˈsɪd.ɪ.ti/	zuurgraad, aciditeit
constraint zelfstandig naamwoord	/kənˈstɹeɪnt/	beperking, inperking
dissipate werkwoord	/ˈdɪsɪpeɪt/	verdrijven
iteration zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/	herhaling
mediocrity zelfstandig naamwoord	/mi.dɪˈɑk.ɹɪ.ti/	middelmatigheid

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
come across werkwoord	overkomen
come back werkwoord	terugkomen
end up werkwoord	belanden, terechtkomen
fall under werkwoord	vallen onder
look forward to werkwoord	uitkijken naar, zich verheugen op
point out werkwoord	aanwijzen, aanduiden

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

I've now done multiple times.
I think we'll stretch the team.
Why can't we do this?
They said, well, what if we don't hit the goal?
Do we have enough books to sell?

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	you've probably heard · I've now done · we've done
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	people who will · person who should · someone who holds
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	weren't skilled · is not intended · is needed

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 107 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals don't, you're, can't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: bandwidth /ˈbændwɪdθ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
De klanken “sh” en “zh”: accomplishment /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/, differential [dɪfəˈɹənʃəɫ], differentiation /dɪf.əˌɹɛn.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/, iteration /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: distinctiveness /dɪsˈtɪŋ(k)tɪvnɪs/, equilibrium /ɛkwɪˈlɪbɹɪəm/, unreasonable /ʌnˈɹiːz.(ə)nə.bl̩/, entrepreneur /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/, accomplishment /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: surroundings /səˈɹaʊndɪŋz/, mislead /mɪsˈliːd/, correspond /ˌkoɹəˈspɑnd/, onboard /ɒnˈbɔːd/, offend /əˈfɛnd/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: handicap /ˈhændikæp/, originality /əˌɹɪd͡ʒɪˈnælɪti/, bandwidth /ˈbændwɪdθ/, distract /dɪˈstɹækt/, backward /ˈbækwɚd/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: goalie /ˈɡoʊli/, bingo /ˈbɪŋ.ɡoʊ/, aggregate /ˈæɡ.ɹɪ.ɡət/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als equilibrium, surroundings, entrepreneur.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

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