Shadowing Practice: Why Being FAST Makes You More Successful (Copy Me) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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The difference between people who try to be successful and the ones who actually are, it's just this one thing.

And it's not strategy, it's not money, it's not their ideas.

It's speed.

As a multi -million dollar business owner, I've worked with so many successful people.

And speed is the one thing that separates winners from losers.

So if you want to learn how to move faster than anyone else

and become truly successful and have the dream life that you've always wanted, keep watching.

Let's get started with number one.

You have to follow the cycle of momentum.

This is a cycle of momentum.

First, decide fast.

Second, execute immediately.

Third, review data quickly.

So let's dive into number one, decide fast.

Information is important, but oftentimes I find that people get stuck in information overload.

They want more and more and more and more information.

And with tools like ChatGPT, it can feel like you will never get to the bottom of all of the information

that you need in order to make a decision.

So get comfortable making a decision despite not knowing.

One of the things I recently did on my ChatGPT account is I told it to stop giving me additional context.

If I have a question, give me the exact answer because I was wasting all of this time going through

and saying yes to whatever their next idea was for me to go to the next level of this concept.

Well, instead of making better decisions and fast decisions, I started having paralysis by analysis.

So get the information in order to make a decision as quickly as possible, maybe not having all the data, but making a decision anyway

when it comes to making a decision you have to then move as quickly as possible into the second step

which is execute quickly if you just make a whole bunch of decisions

but you never tell anybody about the decisions

you never apply pressure in order to make sure those decisions are moving forward nothing's gonna happen

so you make the decision and then you execute as quickly as possible

and i'm not saying that you execute next month next week saying execute today?

How do you prioritize moving the most important decisions forward so that you can start to make progress?

And this is why the third step is so wonderful, because it's okay to make a bad decision if you are reviewing the data.

It would be completely irresponsible if I was sitting here saying, just make decisions, execute quickly, create a mess, and live with it.

But that's not what I'm saying.

I do want you to make a decision.

I do want you to execute quickly, but then look at data as quickly as possible after the decision is made so that you can know,

was this a good decision?

And should I do more of this?

Or was this a bad decision?

Do I need to redirect and then go in a different direction?

I honestly think this is one of my superpowers.

I could care less if I'm right.

I will instantly remove my feelings from a decision because

if the data tells me that one decision is the better decision

and I might've thought it was going to be a different one, I don't care any longer.

We're going all in on the one that worked.

You can only get this confidence if you were looking at data as soon as you implement and execute your decisions.

Think about TikTok creators who blow up on social media.

They don't wait to be perfect.

They start by posting daily and adjusting based off what works.

These are the same principles to follow in business.

Just remember that you should be iterating relentlessly and making micro adjustments while you're moving forward.

Next is number two.

Imperfection is the new perfect.

I see creators online all the time, posting unpolished content, and it still blows up and goes viral.

And here's why that works.

People don't want super polished.

They don't want super buttoned up in the final version any longer.

They want to see what's real.

People want to see you being messy, figuring things out in real time.

And all the while they are along for the ride.

And when you do this, two things happen.

One, you move faster than people who are still obsessing over every single detail and two,

your audience becomes invested in your process since they are watching you build

and they're able to give you feedback along the way.

I find that it's easier online to hit publish

when something is imperfect versus having that mentality in the workplace because if you know that you aren't prepared for something,

if you know that you don't have experience in doing something, it actually can reduce people's confidence if you're telling them,

oh, I don't know what I'm doing.

I remember my very first leadership job

when I had my team who was reporting to me

and they were all older than i was they had more experience than i was

and most of them were men they were not taking little 22 year old natalie very seriously

if i would have told them in that moment

that i didn't know what i was doing it would have reduced my credibility

and i will never forget when i walked into my first set of one -on -ones

and instead of having a structure holding them accountable doing all the things

i needed to do i just sat there

and kind of shot the with them asked them how their week was going

and got to know their family

and we didn't talk about anything related to their roles

or the business now since then i have done thousands of one -on -ones

and i've taken something that i was imperfect at and became better

and better and better to where now i'm very confident in the process

that i use for one -on -ones so

if you want my one -on -one process find me on instagram at natalie dawson

and send me a dm saying one -on -one the moral of

that story is if i didn't show up imperfectly back then

i wouldn't have a polished process today

so it's okay to have things not be perfect but

if you can learn from people who are two steps ahead it will take your lack of perfectionism

and give you an edge so that you gain experience

while not being a complete mess number three is next the market doesn't wait the market moves

so fast so if you take three months to decide

while the people you are competing with are deciding today you're already behind it's a little funny to me

that I'm doing a video about speed.

Because if you would have talked to me five years ago,

I would have thought I was fast at everything until I was around people who did things quickly

and was around people who were incredibly successful.

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And what I learned from being around people who are incredibly successful, they do not wait for anything.

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And as soon as they have an idea, they execute on it in that moment.

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One of my favorite times with my business partner, grant cardone we were thinking about launching this new initiative

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and we had this whole talk about it over a dinner it was probably an hour

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and a half long discussion

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and at the end of the discussion he said great send me a link by tomorrow morning

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so i can start to promote it i was like send you a link by tomorrow morning

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so you can promote it it's 8 30 at night how am i supposed to send

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you a link our team has to build the page

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we have to set everything up what are you talking about send

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you a link by tomorrow morning he's like okay that's fine and i didn't think anything of it that night.

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I went to bed and woke up the next morning

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and saw he had sent it to his team who had created a full -blown page, already had emails.

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And this was before ChatGPT existed.

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He had just bypassed my inability to move quickly because he had a team that could move faster than I could,

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even though it was supposed to be my initiative.

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And what this taught me is how do I create a team

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and create a process that will allow an idea to move fast? Because

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if you believe in idea it has to move fast

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that's how you gain momentum is the ability to say

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i want to do this thing how quickly can i move

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it into the physical universe it's no longer an idea

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when there's a landing page and when he promoted it the next morning we found

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that there were thousands of people who were interested in this idea

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so what did

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that do it added more momentum into this process we were more excited about this idea the speed changed everything

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and today it is one of our most profitable programs

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that we've ever launched all because we moved quickly

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so what's lesson here speed to market beats perfection launching a

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minimal viable product aka a link to a landing page creates momentum

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and user investment making

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it nearly impossible for slower perfect competitors to catch up to

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what you're doing one of my favorite quotes from sean parker the co -founder of napster is move fast

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and break things unless you're breaking stuff you're not moving fast enough.

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Remember that clarity comes from action.

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You will never just think of the perfect plan.

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You will discover it while you're already moving.

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Lastly, number four, the today rule.

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What I like to do to make sure I am always following this rule is to ask myself these two questions daily.

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What can I launch or test today instead of next week?

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And the second question is what is the smallest step I could take to get data now?

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Every day counts.

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When you think about where you want to go and what your targets are.

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You don't get multiple days to take off where you're just assuming somebody else is making progress on your goals.

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So when you think about what you're doing today, I like to use this hack.

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I have a list of all of my core priorities

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and I start every morning identifying what I can do that day to move the ball forward, even if the ball isn't in my hand.

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Now I'm not much of a sports analogy fan because I don't know much about sports.

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I think of it like a football game.

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Every down counts.

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You have to get closer and closer and closer, even if it's only three yards.

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You might think, oh, three yards doesn't really matter when there's a hundred yards that this ball has to go.

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The three yards matter.

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And every day when you wake up, if you are not clear on what you have to do in order to move that project,

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move that initiative forward, you're going to get lost.

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And instead of making fast decisions, you're going to be slowed down by the person

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that you think has the ball

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when really you need to take the freaking ball over and start making moves down the field.

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So for me, this looks like in every single meeting, I am clear on who is supposed to do what after the meeting.

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If the meeting doesn't end where there are clear decision points that have to be executed upon,

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there are clear notes where people have action items and everybody knows what the next steps are.

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It was a failed meeting.

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I just wasted my time.

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The fastest way to waste your time is to lose control of what you can do today.

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So going back to the today rule, what can you do today to make forward movement?

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Today is a day that you have to make forward movement because you don't have the luxury of waiting until tomorrow.

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If you are not making progress across the most important things of your life,

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schedule a time for yourself every single morning to review the handful of the core priorities and then ask yourself,

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what am I doing to move this forward today?

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Do you have to follow up with somebody?

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Do you yourself have to take action?

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Do you need to make an outbound phone call?

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What is it that you can do today?

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to make it move forward remember that perfectionism is just procrastination with better branding

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so today take one action towards something that you've been putting off just

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because it wasn't perfect and tell me in the comments exactly what you did remember

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that the faster you move the faster you win

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if you love this video don't forget to subscribe to my channel for videos like this every single week

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and check out my next video here.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Being FAST Makes You More Successful”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: decision, quickly, fast, execute, forward. This video has 178 sentences and 2194 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:37. The speaker talks fast, about 207 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
execute verb	/ˈɛksɪˌkjuːt/	To kill, especially as punishment for a capital crime.
momentum noun	/ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/	Of a body in motion: the tendency of a body to maintain its inertial motion; the product of its mass and velocity, or the vector sum of the products of its…
initiative noun	/ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/	A beginning; a first move.
priority noun	/pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/	An item's relative importance.
incredibly adverb	/ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/	In an incredible manner; not to be believed.
polish verb	/ˈpɑ.lɪʃ/	To shine; to make a surface very smooth or shiny by rubbing, cleaning, or grinding.
creator noun	/kɹiːˈeɪ̯təː/	Something or someone which creates or makes something.
lesson noun	/ˈlɛs.ən/	A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
founder noun	/ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/	One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.).
moral adjective	/ˈmoɹəl/	Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude.
compete verb	/kəmˈpiːt/	To be in battle or in a rivalry with another for the same thing, position, or reward; to contend.
discover verb	/dɪˈskʌvə/	To find or learn something for the first time.
luxury noun	/ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/	Very wealthy and comfortable surroundings; the state of being that they create.
principle noun	/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/	A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief.
feedback noun	/ˈfiːdˌbæk/	Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
move forward verb		To cause to make progress.
wake up verb	/ˌweɪk ˈʌp/	To stop sleeping; to awake.
blow up verb		To explode or be destroyed by explosion.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
move down verb		To demote
put off verb		To postpone, especially through procrastination.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Let's get started with number one.
Do you have to follow up with somebody?
Do you yourself have to take action?
Do you need to make an outbound phone call?
What is it that you can do today?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who try · people who are · people who did
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've worked · you've always wanted · have done
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is made · be slowed · be executed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 48 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, polish /ˈpɑ.lɪʃ/, luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: momentum /ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, inability /ˌɪnəˈbɪlɪti/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like execute, momentum, initiative.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why Being FAST Makes You More Successful (Copy Me) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?