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The 60-Minute Conversation That Changed My Life

Jonathan Coon changed my life during our 60-minute lunch. As the founder of 1-800-CONTACTS and Wikibuy.com, Jonathan knows more about building successful businesses than almost anyone.

Hear me share his exact secret to success, why he always tips $100, removing friction from all aspects of life, and tons more.

“The Difficult, We Do Now. The Impossible Takes a Little Longer.” ~ Jonathan Coon

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Lessons learned in this episode:

  • Proven methods to remove friction in all parts of your life.
  • The tipping strategy that changes people’s lives.
  • The Michael Jackson theory of feedback.
  • How to give perfect feedback — without being afraid or offending anyone.
  • Jonathan’s keys to success in all areas of life.
  • What most people get wrong about starting a business.
  • Tactics for staying up-to-date in the 24/7 news cycle (without feeling overwhelmed).

The Challenge: Use the principles from this episode to send me feedback about this podcast. I’m excited/nervous to hear — go ahead and tweet @noahkagan

Leave a comment and tell me how you did on this week’s challenge!

Links discussed in this episode:

Wikibuy

Napoleon Dynamite

1-800-CONTACTS

iPic Theaters

Creativity Inc.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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15 responses to “The 60-Minute Conversation That Changed My Life”

Kris Reid
March 1, 2018 at 7:51 pm

Really love the part about critical feedback. We all need to be open to hearing feedback for growth.

I don’t agree with the part about large tips. Isn’t that creating a bubble?
The place where you regularly go, you’re training them to give you great service, and not others? Doesn’t everyone deserve great service? Shouldn’t you frequent a restaurant that has great service for all and not just the rich elite that leave big tips?

That’s my critical feedback 🙂

Great show Noah

Dan
April 15, 2017 at 9:05 am

Great episode. I’ve listened to it on more than one occasion which is a rarity with SOME podcasts so you’re doing a great job “Rabbi can’t lose”. I’m a bit confused how you would begin the process of getting ‘critical’ , the type that Michael Jackson was missing ? It’s not something you can just pick up at Walmart unfortunately.

Any ideas ? 😕

Jacqueline Garlick
April 13, 2017 at 10:40 am

Hey Dude! I’m listening!!!

Dan
April 9, 2017 at 5:10 pm

Just found the podcast. Enjoying it and learning a lot. I like a few longer podcasts, but really love what you do here in a short amount of time. Straight to it. Very little friction. 🙂

FWIW, Jonathon actually attributes the quote to the US Army Core of Engineers. (https://capitalfactory.com/mentor/jonathan-coon/)

Keep it up!

scott bergquist
April 3, 2017 at 2:42 pm

great episode no fluff

Goncalo Hall
March 17, 2017 at 2:25 pm

I am totally loving your podcast! Its one of the few 3 that I have on automatic download.

More of this please 🙂

Monika
March 16, 2017 at 12:29 pm

Great tips, thanks Noah and Jonathan! Although I like condensed knowledge, it would have been great to listen to the whole conversation – next time maybe? 🙂

Henrique
March 14, 2017 at 5:07 pm

Removing friction as a business:
Offer to client to remove friction of her life for free.
The only condition: pay a whole year of whatever they’d like friction to be removed in advance – ex.: a whole year of haircuts.
Get a good deal with the biz for the whole year buy.
Keep the difference as profit.
Spend a year remembering both the biz and your client.

Could be an app.

billy
March 10, 2017 at 7:01 pm

thanks noah. love your tones, speed, and effects. i hope to see inclusion and balanced mix to enhance the richness of sensory experience of your listeners by adding bits of personalities that are talked of and about in your podcast or related to your topic and context. i would visualize making an opportunity for your guests to share their quotable thoughts and simply record using my phone. i think your audio is great and have confidence that you can figure out a way of making it work. at the same time i’m sharing this feedback, i realize that this is only the first and only episode i’ve listened to.

the “friction” is exactly what i thought of when self-driving vehicles were being developed. the stage in our evolution has many things that creates these frictions but are accepted and enforced by its consumers and regulations. we must consider ways of better addressing these problems as we learn to see beyond ourselves as available resources with interesting challenges to solve.

there’s also great potential in ideating, suggesting and popularization of frictions that would help human being to experience transitions toward good change in terms of creating more cohesive society. seeing failure as opportunity for success, or driving as a daunting task, is an example.

we could wait for facebook feed to show us relevant articles, only when we learn to trust and share our thoughts and questions with input mining search engines like google with the default settings of our browsers today. this “friction” suggests, through my observation and thinking, that there is great room for improvement in bettering human understanding and communications, on mass scale.

we the world does not have a place other than google to share and ask questions that really shows the state of human evolution. google maybe effective but it is not direct nor personal. seeing how the world is becoming much more data enabled and capable, i think there’s room for a brand that specializes in delivering personal responses to our private situations. a brand of bot perhaps?

goldmine of opportunity if we can have a brand that helps to lift those barriers and market to the people who are ready to speak for better tailored responses. i’m thinking human progress. real change.

it’s the more complex equations that could use emphasis in helping humans to see and respond to long term existential consequences. accelerating the needed transition is a great and imperative work of our times.

on another note, how do you feel about indicating a time length, making it seem more apparent to be mindful of efficiency of your listeners and their scheduling in of your episode into their lives as they come across your new episode? kind of like what medium does but what works in your podcast world? perhaps a time stamp beside your list of episodes..

looking forward to your next episode!

Jonathan
March 8, 2017 at 4:51 pm

Good episode. Would have been nice to hear the actual conversation (even edited). Also, Coon’s advice on feedback, though largely on point, contrasts a little with Ed Catmull’s in the Creativity Inc. In their long meetings on films-in-progress, he says that one great thing they do when giving “notes” (filmspeak for feedback) is specifically to avoid proscribing solutions. They try to give objective reactions to the film, and let the filmmakers involved in any one project come up with solutions. Good feedback is tough; personally I try to avoid using the word “should” when giving it.

Mario
March 8, 2017 at 10:34 am

Where was “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” when I needed it. BTW/Oscar the Grouch

Mario
March 7, 2017 at 12:54 pm

I have not heard the show long enough to have an opinion for improvement, for me it’s more about the content, as long as it’s legible that is enough for me. I can hear it, check, the info is great, check. I’m sure you’ll improve organically.

Seth
March 7, 2017 at 12:31 pm

I like the idea of removing friction, but in the realm of relationships I think it’s difficult to apply. I mean , wasn’t it kind of a dick move to have you change tables? How would that work with a significant other?

Will Chou
March 7, 2017 at 11:55 am

Fascinating conversation once again, Master Taco.

Uri
March 7, 2017 at 8:28 am

Awesome. Love the shorter form, bite size podcasts. Inspiring + tactical.

Thanks Noah

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