Jordan explores the relationship between theory and experience through the lens of a quote he shared on LinkedIn recently.

He makes a case for why both elements are essential – theory provides the framework for learning from experience, while testing theories through action leads to true wisdom. Drawing from his reading of “Demand-Side Sales 101” and the Jobs to be Done framework, Jordan encourages listeners to approach theories with curiosity and be willing to test new ideas, regardless of their source.

Transcript

Jordan Haines:

Hello friends. And welcome to another episode of L mentality. I’m Jordan Haynes, financial models expert here at elements, your host for today’s show. And I want to wish you all happy new year. And I’m glad that you decided to tune in today. I have a lot of thoughts to share this. One’s going to be a little bit different because I’m reacting to something that I shared online on LinkedIn, as many of you know, that’s where I spend my time. And not on Twitter.

Sorry for you, Twitter guys, or ex whatever they call it now. But I want to share the reaction to it. I want to show what I posted. Um, and the backstory, I have some thoughts that I think is really important, kind of sets a good foundation for things that we have talked about here recently, and things that we’re going to continue to talk about in the future here on this podcast.

It’s all starts here.

I’m reading a book right now. It was referred to me by, um, my mentor and good friend, Wade Anderson, shout out to Wade. Um, The title of the book is demand side sales, 1 0 1 it’s by an author named Bob molesta. The premise of the book is it’s born out of this jobs to be done theory. Now, those of you who are very long time listeners of this show, if you go to the very beginning, right?

Let’s say the first. 10 episodes or so you’ll hear us talk about jobs to be done a lot. A lot of the things that we have built within elements are born out of that theory, that framework of jobs to be done, essentially jobs to be done. Let me just at a high level, explain what it is. If you don’t know what it is, there’s a short book on it.

It’s by Anthony Olwick. Um, it was. Created by him and Clayton Christiansen. And the premise of it is. People don’t buy things. They buy jobs, they buy a solution to a job, right? There’s a problem that they need solving and they need that thing to solve. There’s a great quote in that book. That’s bounced around a lot.

And in this book that I’m reading where people don’t buy. A four inch drill. They buy a four-inch hole, right? So they want the hole. The drill is the medium by which they accomplish that hole. That’s the whole premise of jobs to be done. And there’s a lot more to it obviously. I highly encourage you all to read it.

That’s where a lot of my thinking comes from. So this book, um, by Bob Moesta is kind of a, a sales application of the jobs to be done framework. And it’s really timely because in the next episode that I’ll share with you all. Um, here, I’m going to talk a lot about sales, specifically in a financial advising capacity.

That’s where I’m spending a lot of my time right now. But a really good book talking about how we apply jobs to be done theory to sales. Set the stage for that. I’m only about a quarter way through, I will share with y’all so far, I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ll share with you all how I’m feeling about it, but. Needless to say. Around chapter two or three.

Um, there’s a quote at the beginning. One of the chapters by William Edward stemming. Now don’t ask me who that is. I frankly, I don’t know who that is. Um, but he’s important. And he said, Um, interesting things that I want to explore here on this episode. And I shared this quote on my LinkedIn feed and just asked what people thought about it. The quote goes like this. Experience by itself teaches nothing. Without theory. Experience has no learning. Without theory. One has no questions to ask.

Hence without theory. There is no learning. What was interesting is when I post this and ask, uh, people’s thoughts, um, the reaction was. Pretty unanimous. I got a reaction and comments, DMS. I got emails from this and it was really interesting. I didn’t think I was going to get that much reaction. And. Every single person. Almost every single person, maybe except one or two. Basically said. Theory is not valuable. What’s valuable is experience.

Experience is the thing that I want to listen to. It’s the thing that I want to engage in. Those are the people that I want to listen to are those that have experience. In this space. And I think that’s interesting. It was almost like, Hey, let’s rule out. Um, theory altogether. And what was interesting about this is many of the comments actually, um, they shared. Like Schwab. Uh, outlook reports and theories that people had posted and PhDs and all this stuff.

Um, That have all been debunked or things that have been proven not to work or not to be true. And I hear this time at a time. And again, when I’m listening to podcasts, when I’m listening to webinars or things like that, of people who, um, have a lot to say in our industry, A lot of them say. Um, don’t listen to people who don’t have experience. And I actually think what they’re saying is we want wisdom, right?

Wisdom, in my opinion, my humble opinion. Is just the result of taking action, but being curious about that action and having learned something along the way, which is why thinking in this quote, I think it’s really valuable that he says at the end, without theory, there is no learning. Right. In my experience, that’s going to be wisdom. Right. We need to seek wisdom from the right people. Now that doesn’t mean that theory by itself is bad.

In fact, I think without theory, The experience. I mean, exactly. Like you said, the experience has no meaning. We’re not going to learn anything from that. If we don’t have a theory going into that. And so. The reason I share this is because in the future and in the past, frankly, here, we’ve shared a lot of theory, a lot of ideas, a lot of things to test. And I want to be clear right now.

I don’t think that all of these are right. I don’t think that that they’re the only right way. Frankly, a lot of, you know, me, I’m young in this industry, right? I don’t have, I’m not a 20, 30 year veteran. I don’t have 40 years of experience working with clients. I have a lot of ideas that I want to test, and that is all I want from them. I don’t think that they’re right.

Frankly, I want them to be tested and I’m going to test a lot of these myself, and I’m hoping that many of you are willing to test them as well. But I hope that we go into these thinking with a curiosity. And trying to understand if that actually is the right thing. And I think if we approach theory in that mindset, Rather than being something that we can discount every time and, and look at the person who’s offering that theory and say, well, you have no real life experience.

How dare you offer this theory? I think we can live and look at that and say, I wonder, what about this is going to work? And I’m wondering if I can test this and how I can test this theory to see if it works. Theories are not meant to be factual. They’re not meant to be frameworks and laws. They’re meant to give us a starting point for us to test things. So when we offer theory up in this, um, show, and we say, these are ideas that we’re exploring, or we have someone on that we’re exploring ideas by no means are they meant to say, this is how things ought to be.

This is how things are, we’ve tested this. We’ve tried it. In most cases, we are in the process of testing. We are in the process of trying, and we want to prove if that theory is correct or not. But without that underlying theory, I don’t really know what I’m taking. Action. Then I’m just blindly taking action for action sake.

And that I think is the danger of discounting theory altogether. So, what would I want you all to take away from this? Be willing to test things, be willing to test theories. Even if it’s from someone that doesn’t have the quote unquote experience of that you’re looking for, whether it’s selling or marketing or working directly with clients. Because it’s theory that often creates really, really interesting outcomes. So my friends be 📍 willing to test. Be willing to try things. We need to try.

We need to test. We need to prove if theories are correct, and then we can rule out the theory altogether, but that does not mean theory in and of itself. Is it bad thing? Without my friends. I’ll see you next week.