209. Intersection of Passion, Skill, and Need with Terry Kim

Ryan Hanley: There's a quote that goes, "Discipline equals freedom." I actually have that on my vision board because discipline is the thing you have to work on in order to do all these organizing focus blocks. If you don't have discipline, you won't be able to do any of that.

[Opening music fades]

Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. A conversation with the founder and CEO of NextGenT Training Academy, Terry Kim. He is also the author of a new book, *Zero to Engineer: A Story of the American Dream*.

Terry has a wonderful story. He is an entrepreneur through and through, an incredible mindset, is all about peak performance, and is the perfect kind of guest we love here on Finding Peak. He's operating at a level of high achievement that most would love to get to. Not only that, he is sharing openly and honestly about what it takes to find your success, find the best version of yourself, and he is really working at it. You can tell through this conversation—the casual, honest, authentic nature of it—the type of person Terry is. This is wonderful. You're going to take a lot from it. I'm happy to share the show with you.

Guys, if you love listening to the Finding Peak podcast, my only ask is that every bit of this content is free and will be forever. As far as the podcast goes, just share the show with friends. Text it to a friend. Email it to a friend. Send it to a group of people. Share it with your team. Share it on social media. However you prefer. Sharing the show helps the audience grow, helps more people find what we're doing, and helps us connect with more incredible guests like Terry Kim. Obviously, I enjoy talking to these people, but I enjoy sharing the conversations with you. This is how we all get better and how we all become the best versions of ourselves, which is why we're here in the first place. With all that, I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Terry Kim.

[Interview begins]

Ryan Hanley: All right, dude, I am excited to have you on the show. Mutual friend James referred you to me, said, "Hey, this guy's awesome. Got to have him on the show." Everybody he sends over is awesome, so you have a very high bar to jump over. No, I'm kidding. But I was checking out yourself and loved it. I think the best place to start would be with your origin story. Go back as far as you think is relevant. One thing about the show—and I know you're not super familiar with it, and this is the first time we're chatting—is there are no rules here. This is a conversation. Whatever stories you want to tell, wherever you want to go, we're going to go. So however far back you think is relevant to your story, we can start there.

Terry Kim: Yeah, so I'm going to take you back to 1999. This is when I didn't even know how to turn on a computer. My vision of a career at 21 was really to be in the entertainment music industry. I actually was a DJ for a few years in Korea, and I actually had a K-pop album—two albums, really, back in the day. Huge identity shift.

At 21 at that time, my ex-wife got pregnant. My family was like, "Man, babies come in. You might want to look at a different career path, something more stable." And this movie called *The Matrix* came out in 1999. I watched that movie and it literally lit up a spark inside me. I was like, "This is the future." It was pre-com bubble, so all the tech companies were getting super hot, IPOing, Silicon Valley had a huge boom. I learned how to build my first PC.

I always thought I was working at a hotel at Dragon Hill Lodge on base in Seoul, Korea. I had to do that to get my visa and be able to stay in Korea. I'm actually a first-generation Korean American, got naturalized at three. I really wanted to get into technology. I thought it was the future, but I didn't know how to start. So I built my first PC from the ground up. I was like, "Wow, I'm really a hands-on learner." I thought college was a waste of time because I took one computer class, a history class, and I was like, "This is a complete waste of time." A lot of the things I was being taught were old stuff. I wanted to work on the latest and greatest technologies.

The long story short is I actually waited six months for a specialty job called the 3Charlie2 Network Controller. You needed a top secret clearance, and it was to build infrastructure for the Air Force. I thought that job was so cool. I waited six months, met my recruiter, got enrolled. I enrolled from Okinawa, and they sent me to the U.S. for technical or basic training in Texas, Lackland Air Force Base. Then I had four months of technical training. That's how I started my career—through the Air Force. I served for five years and got out. That's the origin story right there.

Ryan Hanley: Building your first computer—there are a lot of people, the vast majority of people, the idea of just building a computer. I mean, I use computers every day. I would never even contemplate building one. What do you think it was that said to you, "I'm going to build one of these things"? I had a computer in 1999. The idea of making a computer never even came across my mind. What do you think it is about your personality, or whatever, that enticed you to research, purchase the materials, put it together, figure out how to do it, and make it work?

Terry Kim: Traditional education is textbook heavy—listening to lectures and diving into books. I've always learned that I accelerate my learning process by getting my hands dirty. Hands-on is how I learn, or looking over someone's shoulder. I can absorb information like a sponge, but it has to be practical. I think what led me to wanting to build my PC was actually because I used to love Legos growing up. When I saw the technology for IT in general, I knew that computers had to talk to one another. When computers talk to one another, that forms a network. I knew the internet was booming. I wanted to work on what I call the plumbing of the internet. The infrastructure of the internet was going to be so vast. I felt like I had a premonition—this is the future.

Just to give you some context, in 1999, one million devices were connected to the internet. Now we're at about 25 billion.

Ryan Hanley: It's insane how much progress we've made in the last 20 years.

Terry Kim: I said, if this is the end PC, I would love to know how all the components work. The CPU is the brain, there's memory, there's a hard drive. My brain was like, "Let me just get all these pieces and put it together like a Lego." That's what came up. I guess I was confident in being able to build it because of my Lego skills. Let's buy all these separate components—power supply, motherboard, RAM, CPU. It didn't seem like rocket science to me. I was like, "I'm just going to buy all these pieces and put them together." When I built that first PC, it was a huge confidence booster. "Wow, I just built my custom PC. Let me load some software on it." That also sparked my interest for gaming. In my early years, I used to play a lot of StarCraft and Counter-Strike. That allowed me to build my first custom gaming rig.

Ryan Hanley: The first time you hit the switch, did it turn on? Did it work the first time?

Terry Kim: It did turn on. Yes, it did. What's cool is in Seoul, there's a place called the Yongsan Electronic Market. I went to this electronic market—it's like all gadgets, every store you can think of. It was like shopping in a big candy store for different components. It was a very fun process. I recommend that for anyone who wants to explore a career in IT. Just build your first PC. It builds up a lot of confidence, and then you actually know what the different components are. If you take any complex idea, Tim Ferriss has this in some of his books, like *The 4-Hour Chef*—you break down a complex subject or idea into chunks, into digestible chunks. That's exactly what I did with the PC.

Ryan Hanley: Do you think that type of process works for anything? Do you think it's particularly relevant to PCs and engineering? I've heard other people describe that thought process or mental model set where you take a large complex problem that seems overwhelming and unachievable, but when you look at the component parts, you think, "Well, I could do this part. I could do that part." Is this a concept that has transcended your life, or is it something you particularly look at just in the engineering and IT world?

Terry Kim: I look at it with all processes, tasks, or goals. I really like using these frameworks. I'll give you an example. If you're an entrepreneur and you want to get a business up and running, I have this framework called Dream, Believe, Create, Execute, and Focus. It's taking this huge idea of launching a company and saying, "How do I even start?" The big framework is to dream. You have to first dream of it—whether you're dreaming at night or during the day about this vision, product, or problem you're so passionate about solving. Then you believe in that dream. A lot of first-time entrepreneurs make the mistake of not doing anything about it because they don't believe in it. If they believed in it and believed in themselves or the idea, they would create a plan. That's step three. You create a plan. Once you create a plan, you execute that plan. The last step is to just focus—stay on course until successful. That is the five-step framework to go after any idea and manifest it. That's one process I've used year over year. There are other mental frameworks I've used to take complex ideas, goals, or tasks and break them down into digestible chunks. It's less overwhelming.

Ryan Hanley: Do you know Tim Grover? He wrote *Winning* and *Relentless*. He has a video series out right now called *Breakthrough*. One of the key components of the series is this idea of being "all in." He talks about how the vast majority of people love to talk about the things they want to do, talk about their dreams, but they never actually believe them or commit to them. The all-in phase is probably the most important because we can dream anything. I have good ideas and bad ideas every 10 seconds. But if you don't actually believe in it and aren't willing to go all in on that idea, then creating a plan, executing, and focusing never happens. Or if they do, they're always a shade of gray of what they could be. Sometimes you hear people say, "I really want to be a writer. I really want to write a book." But how often do you write? "Well, I try to find some time on the weekends to write." Then you're not a writer. That's a hobby. That's different. What do you think it is in your experience that keeps people from this believe phase or this all-in phase—the jump from idea to commitment? What is the hang-up there?

Terry Kim: It's easy. Comfort. People love comfort, and most people do not like change. It's a scary jump. For example, my dream job was to work at Cisco one day at 21. I focused and stayed on that dream. At 31, I was there. In a decade, I was at the top of my career. In 2010 to 2012, I was making $175,000 plus. Really good money, but I also felt like a cog in the wheels. I thought, "Hmm, I've reached the peak of my career. Where do I want to take things next?" I had the startup idea. I had that big dream, seeing other engineers start tech companies and businesses. I went all in on this thing. I literally saved up six months of savings and quit my job when everyone thought I was crazy because I wanted to go all in.

I think people get caught up because they don't want to be in an uncomfortable situation. That transition, that commitment, becomes hard. If you really truly believe in that dream and you're passionate about it—it's not just chasing money, there's actual meaning and purpose—that's when the commitment becomes easier and you can go all in. When you go all in, you shouldn't half-ass it. You should burn the boats. You'll figure it out along the way because it's a new venture. It's a hero's journey. If you're okay with learning a new set of skills every time you have an identity shift, that's okay. That's part of the journey. That's where the beauty lies.

Ryan Hanley: I've said this before on the show, and I'll probably say it ten million more times. Every decision I've made where money was more than a negligible factor has been a decision that either ended poorly or ended up being a nothing burger. It was either a net neutral—nothing really happened—or it was actually a negative outcome when money was anything more. That doesn't mean you can't want to make money and be wealthy. That's perfectly fine. I'm a capitalist. I have no problem with that. But when you're chasing the money, those decisions never end up aligning with your ability to do what's necessary over the long term. A certain amount of money—survival money—is probably motivational enough to persevere. But once you hit survival money, it's just not going to push you through those moments where everything feels like it's falling apart. You'll bail. You won't make the right decisions. I love the way you phrased that—chasing money. That's exactly right.

Terry Kim: There's a Harvard study, I believe, that showed if you make over a minimum of $72,000 or something like that, the happiness lever doesn't go up beyond that. In the United States, if you have food, shelter, water—all that covered—it's like, what is your ikigai? There's a Japanese concept called ikigai where it's your passion. What do you love? What does the world need in terms of product or service? What are your skills? What are you really good at, or what are some skills you want to learn because you're passionate about this? And then you get paid for it. That is a very powerful concept we can reflect on as we think about these dreams and goals. Not everyone needs to start a business, but if you have this ikigai and an entrepreneurial mindset, you could also do really well in a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 company. It will pay a lot of dividends because that is where the magic happens. You're able to go into flow.

Ryan Hanley: Flow for me is something I believe in. I think everyone does. We call it a bunch of different things. When you're an athlete, it might be "in the zone." How everyone gets there tends to be slightly different, but there are some core activities. My question is more: Do you cultivate flow states, or do you just accept them as they happen?

Terry Kim: That's an interesting question. I would say both. One is your why. You have to know your why, your mission. For me, starting NGT Academy, I was just sick to my stomach seeing people drowning in student loan debt—$100,000 to $200,000 in student loan debt—chasing degrees from places like the American Institute of Tech or, back in the day, ITT Tech. They were huge, doing $800 million a year, selling $85,000 network admin degrees. I knew that was a scam. You didn't need to go to college for four years. I was an instructor with a top secret clearance who had to take 18-year-old high school graduates and get them ready for the battlefield to set up mission-critical networks because they could get deployed to Afghanistan any time. It's about skills training. It's about whether you can perform on the job. I knew you could train people in an apprenticeship model—teaching them real-world skills and validating those skills—versus having them memorize a bunch of books and questions to pass a quiz or a test and then calling that their aptitude. You can do that all day long, but these college graduates with diplomas and $100,000 in student loans still can't get a job in IT, and they're wondering why. It's because they haven't learned the actual skills. You could read about playing a guitar all day long, but until you pick up that guitar and start messing around with it, you're not going to learn the skills of actually becoming an artist. Same rules apply to engineering.

Ryan Hanley: I struggle with this. I have two kids, nine and seven, soon to be ten and eight. Even though we're a ways off, we're not that far off from college starting to come up. I struggle with this so much. I went to college. The reason I chose my college is because they gave me the most money. I was a poor kid—super poor. Going to college wasn't even a thought. When I came home and told my parent, "Guys, I think I want to go to college," she was like, "Great." There was no expectation, no nothing. She was happy, obviously, but the idea of not going wouldn't have even come up. I went wherever I went mostly because they would pay me to play baseball. I have a degree. I don't use the degree at all, ever. I don't know that I remember one singular thing I learned the entire time I was there. What is the use case for college today? Everyone says, "Well, if you're a doctor, yeah." But you could just go to doctor school for that. Why do you need to go to a four-year school and then go to doctor school? If you're going to be an engineer, you could just go to engineering school. The foundational industry of my career is the insurance industry. I founded a national commercial insurance agency. From day one, a high school diploma was all you had to have. You never needed a college degree to work at our agency. I never even thought anything of it. Growing up where I grew up, I knew a lot of smart people without college degrees who run successful plumbing businesses, contracting businesses, bakeries, all different things. They don't have college degrees. You would never know today. About a year ago, there was a conversation at a conference. I said in a forum, "We don't require a college degree." The look in the audience was like, "What?" Then some people started clapping, but you could tell there was an uncomfortableness around even saying that out loud. Why do you think that stigma still exists considering everything we know about college today and the expense? Do you see this as a continued movement as we go to organizations like yours where I can get the exact education I want, knowing I'm going to be highly trained without all the fluff, at a cost that actually allows me to be successful and doesn't bury me? What do you think this hesitation is, and do you see this trend continuing?

Terry Kim: I think the hesitation is that we've been brainwashed as a society that college equals more dollars and more stable careers. That's rooted into our public education system. As we get older, think about when you went to high school. What is everyone doing? Preparing for college, SATs. It's all indoctrinated. To change 70 years of programming is hard to do overnight. We have students who still think they have to go to college. When it didn't work out for them—here's an interesting stat that will blow you away—53% of college graduates do not get jobs in their field. So what are we doing now? Mom and Dad, let me flip a coin. Am I going to get my job? You're spending four years to flip a coin to see if you can land the job you want. In IT, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, you need a lot of reading and textbook work. Those are great career fields for college. Or if you want to be a scientist. But when it comes to information technology, I'm basically giving the entire playbook in my newly released book, *Zero to Engineer: A Story of the American Dream*. You don't need to go to college for four years when you can train for four months, get two IT certifications under your belt, and I guarantee you will be able to get a job interview. If you do great on that job interview, that gets your foot in the door. IT usually pays anywhere from $40,000 to $80,000 starting out. Within a short couple of years, you can break six figures. That's the beauty of this job market. Moving forward with Google, Uber, Tesla—everyone is saying a college degree is not a requirement anymore. They're doing skills assessment, aptitude testing for potential. Employers are wanting more skills-based talent coming into the workforce. The tide is changing. NGT Academy is at the forefront of reprogramming people's minds that there is truly an alternative—what we call technical or vocational training. It's the faster way. By the time that guy who enrolled in an IT degree finishes four years, our students would be three to three and a half years already into their job. They're probably going to be promoted to a mid-role by the time that college student graduates trying to get their first job.

Ryan Hanley: This idea of apprenticeship, in my opinion, is a way better way to go. Do you see a lot of mid-career individuals coming over? Someone who went to college, thought they wanted to be an accountant, got ten years in and said, "Man, I don't love this. I've always loved computers. I've always loved IT." Now they're looking at NGT Academy as an opportunity to make a transition. Are you seeing a lot of those type of people?

Terry Kim: Absolutely. 80% of our students that enroll are people switching careers. Eight out of ten times, they already have a bachelor's degree in a non-related field or even an IT-related field, and they just haven't been able to break through yet. We've been able to take people switching careers. We had a student, Carl Scott. He's on our IG—there's a reel on him. It's an amazing story. He was a bike rider in New York City doing errands and bike delivery for businesses, making $400 a week. He was 60 years old. He came to our program. In nine months, we placed him at a consulting firm, a big one, part of the Big Four called Accenture. His starting salary was $102,000 as a cybersecurity consultant analyst. That shows you. At 60, he didn't want to go back to college for four years. We've taken a forklift driver—literally, now he works at Google and manages their entire wide area infrastructure team. It's game-changing stuff. Why is that possible? Because we're the real deal. Me and my co-founder, we were instructors in the Air Force. We both had six-figure careers in IT as architects. If you want to fast-track learning any skill set, I always recommend finding someone who's done it. We're a school who's done it and placed thousands and thousands of students into amazing careers. Find someone who's done what you want to do and figure out a shorter path to it. Don't always believe there is this one single path and college is the only answer. That's where people really mess up.

Ryan Hanley: What kind of impact do you think your military career and being a trainer in the military had on your ability to take these concepts and package them in a way that allows people to reach a level of expertise as quickly as you're getting them to? Did it play a major role? Is there something special about the way the military trains people?

Terry Kim: The military is about job readiness. The way they train is skills-based. That's a big difference. It carried a big, big role into my thought process around training itself. It played a vital role because we knew it could be done. We knew we could train people to become engineers within four months of training. In fact, we had the highest reenlistment bonus because of the skills you would learn to be a tech controller. Now it's called 3Delta Cyber Ops Command. They merged a couple of network and system admin careers together. If I think about the military days, it's like tech school. Think about air traffic controllers—another super complex job to learn and master. That training was six months, not four years. The military doesn't have time to mess around. These people are signing up for four-year enrollment, so the training has to be compressed. It has to be real. It has to be practical. That's fundamentally different from a college institute's objective. Their objective is to do two years of extended general studies. Why do you even do that?

Terry Kim: Like, that's like taking high school kind of subjects and extending it for two more years. That's why colleges have also started to adopt one-year certificate programs, because they're seeing vocational schools like us doing it faster, cheaper, and better than what they're used to.

Terry Kim: If you take any complex idea, going back to Tim Ferriss' DiSS method—I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Terry Kim: This DiSS method is pretty amazing. It stands for D for Deconstruction—taking that complex thing and breaking it out into units or modules. S for Selection—taking the 20% Pareto that's going to give 80% of the results, selecting out once you've deconstructed it. And then Sequencing it in a particular order, and then having some Stakes in the ground so you have that commitment to get through this project or complex idea or goal you have.

Ryan Hanley: I love that. Was that from *The Four-Hour Work Week* or was that from *The Four-Hour Chef*?

Terry Kim: *Chef*.

Ryan Hanley: From *The Chef*. I know, I know, learn anything. Actually, I take that back, it is from *The Four-Hour Work Week*. Learn anything you want. But he expands upon it in *The Chef*. I feel like in *The Four-Hour Chef* is where he really takes that and runs it out a little more.

Ryan Hanley: The interesting thing about *The Four-Hour Work Week*—and he even said this a couple of weeks ago on his podcast—is that even though every tool he talks about is completely defunct or not the best-in-class tool that exists anymore, the process he works through is completely relevant and completely applicable to today. It goes back to your process and what you said about breaking down these things into smaller chunks so they're manageable and feel achievable.

Ryan Hanley: It also brings up a concept that, as a fellow entrepreneur and someone who's done a lot of really interesting things, I even struggle with. Tim talks about it because I know he struggles with it too: celebrating those small milestone wins so you feel that continued momentum. Even if you break it up into chunks, a lot of times high achievers or fast movers like you finish the thing and should give yourself a moment to go, "Yeah, I did that. I got phase one done." Instead, we just plow right through it, keep burning the candle, and get into phase two.

Ryan Hanley: For you, you've built NGT, you've now written a book, you have a sleep mask company that I see you founded and run. How do you keep yourself focused when you have multiple projects going on at once? How do you prioritize which thing needs your attention now when there's an onslaught of things coming? I think that's something a lot of people struggle with today.

Terry Kim: When I look at any projects or goals, it comes down to getting super organized. As easy as this may sound, a lot of people don't do it. For example, I have a team. We do daily standups. We talk about what we did yesterday, talk about what we're going to work on today, and talk about any blockers. That's a daily cadence. Standups are very important for accountability and making things move every day.

Terry Kim: For yourself, it's really organizing your top three goals. Apply the 80-20. If I knock this out, this is the 20% that's going to make 80% of my impact for the day. So what do I want to accomplish today? This podcast interview was one of my top three goals. Setting up an evening routine and a morning routine so you know exactly when you wake up what you're going to work on. That is step one: know what you're going to work on every day and prioritize by the top three.

Terry Kim: Then create focus blocks. On my calendar, I like to block things out in two-hour increments where I can work on something and get excited about it. I'll put notes in there, put whatever I'm going to focus on, and it's uninterrupted time. I recommend getting into flow state in the morning and one in the afternoon. Now you have two flow states where you can get a lot of focus work done. If there's work that feels easy, do it really quick in the morning. It allows you to stack the wins.

Terry Kim: There is scientific research now that shows if you wake up and make your bed every morning—this is why the military does this. They'll wake you up at four and you have to make your bed within 60 seconds, five minutes to shower and shave, and come out for roll call.

Ryan Hanley: That's freaking crazy.

Terry Kim: It's about getting stuff done in a rapid manner and applying discipline. There's a quote that goes, "Discipline equals freedom." I actually have that on my vision board. Discipline is the thing you have to work on in order to do all these organizing focus blocks. If you don't have discipline, you won't be able to do any of that.

Terry Kim: When I have multiple projects, I only work on projects I'm passionate about. If you're a first-time entrepreneur, go heads down on one idea. As you get more mature and can handle multiple projects, ask yourself: are all your projects things you're passionate about? That will weed out the noise because you have to say no. As a founder, as an entrepreneur, you have to say no to a lot of things. That gives you clarity on focused projects. I truly believe a high-level entrepreneur can juggle multiple projects. It's about whether those projects are meaningful and things you really want to work on.

Terry Kim: There's always this Pareto idea where a lot of people think you have to work 80 hours a week for one idea. There are so many case studies where you could work on a side project doing only 10 hours a week. The founder of 37 Signals that founded Basecamp—David Heinemeier Hansson, DHH they call him—started Basecamp while going to college, doing it part-time, very minimum, like 10 to 15 hours a week.

Terry Kim: When you block out your time instead of giving yourself 40 hours—here's a better example. Some people write a book and they'll take forever. Why? Because they give in. They say, "I'm going to work on this book. I heard writing a book takes years." Well, yeah, if you allot two years to write the book, it's going to get done in two years. But what if you said, "I'm going to knock this book out in one week"? That's what I did, which probably sounds crazy to a lot of people. I was like, who are the people writing books in one week? I bought this course on how to write a book over a weekend. I got super focused. I got a cabin out in the woods in North Arizona. I went there for four days and just cranked out this book without any interruption. That's all I needed because I gave myself only four days.

Ryan Hanley: Literally.

Terry Kim: What if you have that pressure? I'm not saying everyone can work under this pressure, but I work really well under pressure. When things are compressed and there's an absolute deadline.

Ryan Hanley: Have you read the book *10x Is Easier Than 2x* by Benjamin Hardy?

Terry Kim: No.

Ryan Hanley: I would highly recommend it based on what you've said to me so far. I think you'll love it. It's my number one book for 2023. Absolutely phenomenal. Ben Hardy wrote this book with Dan Sullivan. The core concept is that most of us think in 2x goals. "I made $75,000 this year. I would like to make $150,000 in five years." That's my 2x goal. The problem with 2x goals is there are 10,000 ways to get there. For an able adult, there are 10,000 ways to go from $75,000 to $150,000 a year. But when you 10x a goal—if you say, "I made $75,000 this year, I want to make $750,000 next year"—there's only going to be one, maybe two ways to get there. That's it.

Ryan Hanley: It forces you to take all these options, all these distractions, all these different paths and say, "Nope." To your thing, to step number two of your process: if I actually believe that what I want is $750,000 in personal income, there's only one way I'm going to get there. It's going to be specific to me. I have to do this. I have to do better than anybody in the world. I have to do this thing over and over and over again. But there's only one thing. Saying it out loud to you, I'm like, "Duh." It makes sense. But it took reading that book and hearing the stories and the concepts and the way he frames it. Ben Benjamin Hardy is a great writer. I got to the end of the book and it literally changed 2023 for me because all of a sudden I went, "Oh my god, I have like 15 irons in the fire." I thought that was a badge of honor. "I got this, I'm working on this, I'm working over here." Yet I'm not putting all of myself into any of these things. So I collapsed that.

Ryan Hanley: I don't know if you've ever done this, but I'm doing Darren Hardy's—different guy, different family—*Living Your Best Year Ever*. It's an accountability program. You have to find someone who is equally ambitious and honest with you. You have to find the right accountability partner or this program does not work. I tried it once by myself, it did not work. With the right accountability partner, it's an incredible framework. It forces you to focus on only three things. Every single week you have to show up and report what you said you would do to get to those three banner goals, and then what you're going to do for the next meeting. Your partner does the opposite. You hold each other accountable.

Ryan Hanley: There's two months worth of work leading up to when you actually pick your goals. This goes back to something else you said: people don't slow down to actually do the planning work. In this program, there are literally six weeks to two months worth of work before you figure out what your goals are for the year. People don't take 10 minutes to think about what their goals are. This program forces you to take two months. It speaks to what Abraham Lincoln said: "If I were going to spend six hours chopping wood, I'd spend four hours sharpening my axe." We just don't take that time. We don't slow down. We don't focus. We end up scattered all over the map working on things we don't even actually want to do.

Terry Kim: Exactly. We live in a dopamine society. Everything is scrolling, reaction, chasing shiny objects. It's a lot of distraction. To be honest, when you don't have meaning or purpose in your life, you get distracted. You're always chasing stuff. In reality, I'm in my 40s now and I've realized that working on yourself is the most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur. If you work on yourself, you will be able to slow down. You will be able to create a master plan because you spent time in stillness to reflect: what are your values? What are you truly passionate about? What's your objective for building this business? Why do you want more money? Is it impact or money? You have to spend time reflecting on these things. I promise you, if you do these things, things will execute in a more beautiful way with consistency, without distraction, and with focus. If you can combine discipline and focus, you will be able to achieve anything you want in this life.

Ryan Hanley: I think that's beautiful. I completely agree. One of the things I've found—I'm also in my forties. At this point in my career, when I'm talking to other successful entrepreneurs or business professionals or people who are successful in whatever they do, early in your career—mid-thirties, early thirties, twenties, and before that—you're just a dummy. What you just said about stillness time and working on yourself, those are often seen as fluffy, extraneous, luxurious things that people don't have time for. Yet at this age, talking to the people I find most inspirational, admirable, and successful, they would say what you just said. They have built space in their career that allows them to go for a walk without headphones, or do a cold plunge and then read a book, or go for a run. Whatever their thing is that allows them that moment of headspace, they all take it. That is a clear maturation point in a successful individual's life, whether it's being a successful spouse, partner, parent, fundraiser, entrepreneur, or guitar player. At some point you mature into this phase where you go, "You know what? The only way to get to the next level is to actually build space and time into my life."

Ryan Hanley: If someone's listening to this—and I think this is such a powerful point, that's why I'm taking some time on it—if someone is listening and they're going, "I just can't slow down. I feel like if I slow down, I'm not going to..." What would be your pitch for the stillness? For taking that time? What's your pitch as someone who has done it and been very successful with it?

Terry Kim: I like to go on a retreat. This could be done in a mastermind setting, but I'd recommend going on a solo trip in nature. In nature, you'll be able to find stillness, calm your mind, and have time for self-reflection. Meditation is one of the most powerful tools we have as entrepreneurs. In my tool bag, I've got biohacking stuff, meditation, skills building, and learning—learning is a nonstop process. But when it comes to self-development, people lack the intention and understanding of the huge benefits that might not be monetary. It's having peace. It's having purpose. These are the things that allow you to stay more focused.

Terry Kim: Spending five days out in nature once a year for that time to reflect is the most powerful advice I could give you. Disconnect from whatever life you have and spend time alone. Create that space for yourself. If you have a partner, girlfriend, wife, and kids, you have to get out of that routine because it becomes rinse and repeat Monday through Friday, here's my weekend, blah, blah, blah.

Ryan Hanley: It's a pattern interrupt essentially.

Terry Kim: Yes, exactly. One of my favorite quotes is, "When old patterns are broken, new worlds emerge." I love this quote because if you want to change your life, you need to change a few things. You need to change your patterns, your habits, your rituals, and your beliefs. If I audit your habits, rituals, and belief system, I can promise you that's going to equate to how your current reality is manifesting for you.

Ryan Hanley: I completely agree. Terry, I want to be cognizant of your time and of the audience's. This has been an incredible conversation. If someone's listening and they're interested—obviously you have the book, I'll have it linked in the show notes. You can get it on Amazon, wherever books are sold. You can find the brand on IG. Where's the best place for people to connect with you, follow you, get into your world? You've shared the tip of the iceberg of what you know, but some really incredible things. I want people to be able to connect with you further.

Terry Kim: If you want to connect with me, I use IG primarily. You can follow me at Project Kim. I talk about everything from biohacking, breathwork, meditation, and spirituality to startups, fundraising, and business. You can also sign up for my newsletter at ProjectKim.com.

Ryan Hanley: That's tremendous, dude. I appreciate you. I love what you're doing. I love the fact that you're bringing education to people in a way they can afford. As a kid who didn't grow up with a lot—with basically nothing—I feel like I hit the jackpot that I had enough athletic ability to get a scholarship. I think back on the fact that if that didn't happen for me, I would have never gone to college. It would not have happened. My life would have been way different. The access to education that can amplify our lives, and the way you're doing it with NGT, is incredible to me. I'm so happy we had a chance to connect. Hopefully it will not be the last. I wish you nothing but the best.

Terry Kim: Thank you for having me on the show. For your viewers, if you go to ZeroToEngineer.com/Book, you can get this book for free. You just have to pay for shipping.

Ryan Hanley: That's tremendous. We'll have that linked up too. I'm glad you said that. We'll have all of it linked up, guys. Or just go directly there. Either way, highly recommend it. Appreciate you, bud.

Terry Kim: Appreciate you, Ryan. Thank you.

Ryan Hanley: Thank you. I'll see you next time.

[Outro begins]

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