Good morning everyone. I'm sitting here in my kitchen where I check in on our course every morning and reply to all your notes. Please keep them coming. I love to hear from you. And I've got my coffee, and I'm off to karate in a couple minutes. And I've been thinking this morning about basics, and I wanted to put this video together and I apologize, it's going to be rougher than the other videos in the course because I'm just in my kitchen. And I'm doing this myself, but when I teach writing on campus to my students, a lot of times they're a little uncomfortable with how basic it is. How simple it seems to be when you just have these steps that are chunked out for you, and I understand that feeling because I felt that way too. And I think sometimes we approach writing and we think of it as something innate that you're either born with or you're not born with. Or there's some sort of secret internal skill that people have to be writers or not to be writers. And when we simplify it, it loses some of it's mystique, maybe, and we wonder whether it can be effective. And, of course, my answer is, well, yeah [LAUGH]. And the thing that happens, I think, when things are simplified this way is that it's really easy to say that's so simple. I've got it. That's kind of beneath me. I'm going to move on to more advanced techniques, and I understand this, because I certainly earlier in my writing career have felt this way and done that. And here's the trick. I get thousands of emails every year and I read thousands of business documents and I'm sure you do too. So, yeah, these techniques are simple, but 95% of all the writers out there, do not execute the basics. So you cannot tell me these are too simple to deserve attention or to deserve practice. And in fact you cannot be great at anything in life if you don't master the fundamentals. And you guys, I'm a martial artist and I enjoy the lessons of martial arts very much, and you've met two people that I am fortunate enough to train with in the accepting feedback video. Mark Baier and Jadi Tention, who are world class martial artists. So the question is then, okay, how did they become world class martial artists? So let's take a little look at that. All right so here's the picture of Mark Baier, my primary instructor that I've been fortunate to train with for years. And that's me by the way on the right. Maybe prematurely celebrating because I'm claiming I just hit him, which is definitely something worth celebrating because it's hard to do. So Mark in his younger career was a karate fighting world champion. And he was also a professional kickboxer who was ranked third in the world before he retired. Well, how did Mark become so great? Was he born with his natural martial art ability that set him above the crowd? Does he know some kind of secret fancy technique that is beyond what everyone else knows? Well, no actually and this is [LAUGH] Mark punishing me for my premature celebration with a back fist. Well, I learned a back fist over 15 years ago in my very first class in karate. But a back fist is so fundamental to everything we do as fighters in karate that we work on it every day. And that's how Mark became a great, world-class fighter was by focusing on the basics. And then you guys have also seen this picture, which is me with World Champion Jadi Tention, who's one of the best Karate fighters in the history of the sport. And I'm fortunate to see him from time to time and train with him, because he knows Mark and he'll visit our school and give seminars which are incredible. And so what secrets does Jadi come in and reveal to us about his success and about how we can become great at martial arts? Well he focuses on the basics, and this is Jadi delivering a reverse punch, which is also a technique that I learned, probably my first day, in the martial arts. In which, in fact, any martial artist, no matter what system they're learning, learns the first day. And so then as you become a more advanced martial artist you might add footwork, or timing, or distancing but all of that is just a platform for delivering the white belt technique. White belt techniques get it done. Jadi and Mark set themselves apart, because they do the basics better than anyone else. And they also have been doing martial arts their whole lives. And yet they work on the basics almost every day. So they haven't said, I'm above this. I'm a world class martial artist, I don't have to work on my basics anymore. No, in fact what they do is work on their basics and that's what makes them a world class martial artist. And just so you know, I also work on my basics. And sorry this is blurry, it's a still from a video. I couldn't find a picture. But this is me in competition hitting my opponent with a back fist. The technique I learned over 15 years ago that I still work on every day. And Bruce Lee, the great martial artist, put it this way. He said, I fear not the martial artist who has practiced 1,000 kicks one time. I fear the man who has practiced one kick, one basic kick, 1,000 times. It is the basics that sets the stage for everything that we do. So the idea here is that you have the basics, I'm giving those for you, they're simple. You are right, you are absolutely right, but 95% of the writers out there don't apply the basics, they can't become great because they don't use the foundations to becoming great. So that's the challenge, that's what I leave you here with. I know you can do it, I know that you'll apply them and I know you're working really hard. So, I hope that you all have a great day and I'm off to karate to get feedback from some of my best friends and I'll talk to you guys soon. Keep writing in. I love hearing from you.
