EE511: Mentor Moment: Connor Martin - Knowledge Is Useless Without Action

Welcome to this week's Mentor Moment. Most people think they're stuck because they need more information, more books, more podcasts, more courses. Conor Martin, founder of The Essence Vault, thinks the exact opposite. In this Mentor Moment, Conor shares why the gap between learning and doing is where the most opportunities are lost, and how his obsession with rapid implementation helped turn a market stall idea into one of the fastest growing businesses in Europe. If you've ever caught yourself preparing instead of executing, this one is for you.

I don't know. Uh, there's no... In my opinion, there's no secret sauce. Do you know? It's, it's, it's, you know, I think a lot of people think they need to improve by f- first of all, look at themselves and go, "Right, well, we need to improve. What courses can I get? What books can I read?" And that's, of course, the, the right first step, but then after they finish that book, it's like, "Right, okay, what's the next book I can read?" Well, fucking implement something. You know, do something. Every time we take a course, we don't pass the first module before implementing what's in that module, or we don't implement anything because it hasn't, you know, doesn't sound as good as what it should be. But as soon as we get that golden nugget, it's, it has to, it has to go into play. There's no reason why you invest in a course or invest in a book and then not do anything with it. Do you know? And it's-

So your gap between knowledge to action is, is minimal?

Minimal, yeah. Very minimal. Um, to the point where we're almost so careful that we don't overanalyze knowledge. Do you know? We don't need to, we don't need, I don't know, um, absorb so much knowledge to the point where you then cause that decision paralysis, and then you don't know, like, "Fuck, well, this course says to do this, this course says to do that."

Yeah.

It, it's, it's weird. Yeah.

The more you know it, the more you don't know. Yeah.

100%, you know? And I think that's, that's a big... So is that, is the secret sauce is, is-

Mm-hmm

... knowledge is nothing without the implementation, and vice versa. Do you know?

100%. It's the whole thesis of this podcast. [laughs]

Yeah. [laughs]

That's what I try to talk to people about, is that it's just that experimentation phase. Like it's, it's so... It's, life is funny sometimes. Like literally three hours ago, we had a, a person sitting in that chair, and she started at the markets.

Yeah.

She started selling sushi at the markets.

Wow.

And it's, it's mad that you come in today and you're like, "Yeah." And just total coincidence, um, praising her story. She just did it.

Mm-hmm.

And it was kind of very similar. She goes, "I don't know how. I, I just got on with it. Just had to. There was no other alternative." But like, that is explosive growth in, in any business, like, you know, especially from coming from the market stall to you going from like, say [chuckles] a grand a week to like 800 grand in a mo- in November. So bring me back to like that November. As the dust settled, like what, what was your thought process? Like what were you going, "Right, next year we're gonna do X, Y, Z"?

Honestly, for five years, next year