Shadowing Practice: Do I Really Have To Work 12 Hours A Day? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I encourage people to do something called the 12 by 30.
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All right, so it's very simple, and it's actually not as unsustainable as people would think.
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You work 12 hours a day for 30 days straight, no weekends.
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By the last day, you realize, one, you aren't made of glass.
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Two, how much more you could be working.
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Three, how much faster you could be achieving your goals.
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Four, how much you could be getting better every single day.
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Five, you don't need to work like this forever, but if you need to do it for a season or for a reason sometime in the future, you've got that gear in you.
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And six, there are people who are working more than you who are beating you.
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And you get all of those lessons for the low price
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of getting more done in a month than you probably did last quarter.
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And so everyone, and like, of course, you've got one, you know, one side of people who are like, I work more than this now.
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And of course they don't, they obviously don't.
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And the thing is, is that people are like, well, I work like that, but I take a couple of days off, right?
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That's the point is that you have to push through it.
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Now, can you work 16 by 30?
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Sure.
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If you want to, you're welcome to work more than that.
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Because I've found that working six to six is kind of like what I do every day anyways.
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I'm on 12 by 100, you know, in terms of how I think about working.
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There's plenty of days that I work 15, 16 hour days because I get here at five or six.
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And then sometimes we have an event, there's always a dinner, things like that afterwards and it's at nine.
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And that's where you have to be on, not just at the office, not just in front of your computer, but people actually demanding things of you on a regular basis all the time, being on camera.
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And I'll tell you that there are levels to this, like working alone for a full day is not as exhausting as being on stage for a full day, being on camera for a full day,
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because every second that you are not peak, you are losing.
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You can take a break while you're working alone.
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You can't take a break when you're on stage, when you're meeting customers, when you're making content.
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Every minute that is not recorded is basically a minute wasted.
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There's a whole team here behind this camera that is making this stuff for you, and I'm costing them every second I'm not showing up.
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I remember there was a period, a season of my life where I think I had nine straight months of this.
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And it was not 12, it was 15, 16, because I had to wake up at four to get to the gym where I was at the gym, but I wake up at four and then I would get the class ready.
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I'd open the gym doors at 4 .30, we'd start the classes at five.
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And the last class at night would end, it would be a seven o 'clock class, it would end at eight.
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And then at eight, I would then do billing.
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I'd reach out to old customers.
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I would confirm lead appointments for the next day, all that sometimes until 10, 11 at night.
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And then I'd wake up again at four.
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And so I don't know what the hours are there, but it's more than 12.
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And I did that for nine months straight.
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And I used to describe it as the kind of tired a good night's sleep couldn't fix.
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It was like, it was tired.
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It was deeper than like one sleep.
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I needed like weeks to like basically come back to normal.
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And the thing is, is that I think it is valuable because you have to learn that you have that gear.
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I think that that gives you supreme confidence when you're entering any new endeavor, because you know that you have acquired the truth of being relentless, that you do not relent,
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you do not let up, you do not stop until you get what you want.
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And you know that you can push through being tired
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or being underslept or being overwhelmed because you realize that you didn't die and that you've done this before.
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And so the difference between the newbie and the veteran is
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that the veteran looks on something and looks back on what they have done to get to that point and says, I've seen this before.
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This is another one of those.
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And that's why they don't have the anxiety.
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That's why they don't have the stress.
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That's when they get on stage, they crush it.
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That's when they, the high pressure situation, they still breathe normally their heartbeat doesn't go up because they've done it before.
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And the only way
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that you can get to the point where you can say you've done it before is to do it now.
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Real quick, if you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift.
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So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had
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and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it.
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And so we broke into these 10 stages
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and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of the functions of the business across product,
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marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance.
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And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it.
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And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free.
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You can go to acquisition .com forward slash roadmap, plug in your business information.
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And if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out.
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On the Thank You Bay Juniors, book a call with my team, and we will look at the business, see if we can help.
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And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person, live.

What You'll Learn from This Video

This clip is a goldmine for english speaking practice, especially if you want to master conversational fluency. You’ll pick up how to express complex ideas about work ethic and personal growth in a natural, engaging way—skills that matter in professional and personal discussions. Plus, you’ll learn to use phrases like “supreme confidence” and “relentless” to convey strong emotions, which will make your speech more impactful. It’s also a great chance to practice explaining personal experiences, a common task in interviews or casual chats.

Listen For These Sounds

Pay attention to connected speech and reductions that make the speaker’s delivery smooth. For example, “I don’t know” becomes “I dunno” (reducing “do not” to “dunno”), and “you are” often links to “you’re” in phrases like “you’re not made of glass.” Notice how “12 by 30” is spoken quickly, with the “by” almost blending into the numbers. These small details are key to sounding more like a native and improving your english pronunciation.

Say It Like a Native: Rhythm and Stress

The speaker uses a rhythmic, confident tone that emphasizes key points. Stress words like “VALuable,” “RELenTLESS,” and “SUPreme confidence” to highlight their importance—this is how native speakers draw attention to what matters. Try mirroring the pauses after big ideas, like after “you aren’t made of glass,” to let your words sink in. This is where the shadowing technique (or shadowspeak) works wonders: repeat the clip aloud, matching the speed, stress, and pauses. You’ll train your mouth to move like a native and build muscle memory for natural speech patterns. Whether you call it shadow speak or shadowing, this practice will help you sound more fluent and confident in no time.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.