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Hey guys, I’m here with Brian Kwong. How’re you doing Brian?

I’m doing great, thank you for having me.

Thanks for being a feel good English podcast.

So lets just start a little bit with you telling us about yourself.

Right. I am the founder of the Add One Challenge, where language learners around the world learn to hold a fifteen minute conversation in ninety days. I’ve been running this challenge for three years now, and helping people around the world to speak the language they want to speak.

So Add One Challenge, first off, why Add One challenge. What does that mean?

I got the idea from a polyglot conference I went to. Basically, a conference where people can speak five, six, eight, twenty languages. One of the polyglots talked about “Okay if you want to be fluent in ten languages, you need two steps. You need to be able to learn nine languages fluently, and then plus one language.” That’s ten, okay. How do you learn to be fluent in nine languages, you need to be fluent in eight languages, then you add one. So which step is easier? So he goes all the way back to how do you get fluent in two languages, what’s the easier step. Two languages, or just adding one language.

So I thought it’s a great idea to just focus on adding one language at a time, taking that one step at a time everyday, it wouldn’t be such a hard task. So that’s where I get the name Add One Challenge.

Very interesting, you could apply this to many areas of life, I think, when we have a daunting task ahead of us in business or life or even language, we look at the end result and it’s so far away, and it seems like there’s so much to be done to get there. But just focusing on the next step, the one thing that you have to add, makes . Brings a little clarity to your goals.

We say let’s take it one yay at a time, not one day, one yay at a time.

[LAUGHS] That’s great, I like that. One yay at a time, right?

One yay at a time! That’s our mantra, one yay at a time.

so how did you get into language learning? You’re going to a language learning polyglot conference, and now you help other language learners around the world. How did you get introduced into this world of foreign language learning?

the first foreign language I ever learned was actually English. I was born in Hong Kong and I emigrated to America when I was twelve years old. So it’s kinda a little bit late, actually because know people who moved there around that time, and they still have an accent. And so that’s my first foreign language. In 2010 I was married to an Austrian woman, and we moved to Austria. When I met my ex father in law, we’re not together anymore, but my previous father in law can’t speak a word of English. So, I resisted learning German, I didn’t want to learn German, what happened was because we were in Austria, I don’t know if you’ve been to Austria before.

Yeah, I’ve been through there, beautiful place. I haven’t spent much time there and I definitely don’t speak German. So just to clarify, so the time you spoke English, obviously your wife speaks English, and your father in law didn’t speak any English, so you basically had zero communication with this fellow.

Zero. So with this guy, basically it was always translated so I never really had a conversation with him, you know. What changed was, we basically planned a hiking trip because there’s a lot of these beautiful mountains. So me, my previous partner, and him, my father in law, did a nine day hiking trip across the Austrian Alps.

Wow, and this time you guys didn’t speak each other’s languages.

Yes. This time we didn’t speak each other’s language. But . The thing is though, he was just so gracious with me. He embraced me in the family, and he never pushed me. In the nine days he was frustrated with me, he was embracing me, even though we were talking through my partner, he’s just so great. So by the end of the nine days I was just so grateful for him to accept me and never push me, cause I hate being pushed, when people push me I resist really hard.

So by the end of that hiking trip I told myself I want to connect with him, I want to communicate with him. I will learn to speak German for him.

Sure.

So that’s when I started Googling and searching, okay how can I learn German fast. Then I basically stumbled upon a blueprint of learning a language in ninety days. And then, so I did that.

So let me stop you there really quick. So, this is interesting because you came from Hong Kong and you went to they US as a child, you were twelve. Obviously you were integrating the US, and American culture. I would imagine learning English at that point was very different than trying to learn a language in ninety days, yes? So you had to kind of develop a whole different approach to this, right?

Well, actually the main approach is just, it’s really not that big of a difference. I think the biggest difference is the circumstance, the motivation . the different motivation that I had. One is that I had to speak English. There’s no other way, people are not going to learn Chinese. But in Germany, most people spoke English. Besides my father in law. So I don’t see him, I don’t live with him, right, I don’t see him every day so I don’t have to speak German. So these are the circumstances. So because of that circumstance I didn’t really have to learn German until I chose to want to learn German. What I was trying to do was to have my first ever conversation with my father in law in ninety days.

Kevin : So before I get into what happened at the end of that ninety days, I’m sure the listeners are curious. Just to break it down, so let’s say it’s month number two and you have a very specific goal. In ninety days you want to have a fifteen minute conversation. So month number two, week one, tell me how that week would look as far as your German learning plan. So you have a week . You have a calendar, each day you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that. How would a week look when you’re one month in to get to your ninety month goal.

Right. The first thing I like to say is that everyone learns differently.

So how I learn could be different than how you learn. Some people love grammar, right, they just like to analyze it and they really know exactly how it works . How the language works. For me, I’m not interested in grammar, I just want to speak. So, and what happens is usually . So basically, to answer your question, in the first month I just learned some basic vocabulary, especially in the areas that I want to speak about. Like, we can’t aim to be fluent in all topics that we want to talk about, but we can choose topic to topic, and we just focus on one topic, and the we can get fluent in one topic in a short time.

Right, perfect. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

So basically if you just build on topic by topic, that’s the least intimidating, also the fastest way to get to fluency. So basically, I was just focusing on speaking and working on the vocabulary, the things I wanted to talk about. The things I want to have a conversation with my father in law about.

How are you practicing German, are you practicing with him? Are you practicing with your father in law yet or are you finding other ways to practice?

No, I’m definitely finding other ways to practice. I basically find language partners . I had a lot of language partners on rotation. So because everyone, Germans or Austrians, they sound different from different places. So I made sure that I had different kinds of accents. So I have a few language partners where I can practice with and how I practice is basically, I would say, just to break it down to most simple terms is that, I will say “how do you say this in a sentence. And they would say this is how you say it. For example, where would you like to go on vacation. So how do you say that. And basically he would say it . He would type it into my chat, basically it was one of those Skype calls. And then after that I would have all these phrases, and I’ll take these phrases and put it into a software, basically a space repetition software. Do you know what a space repetition software is?

Sure, like Anki or Memorize, where they .

Exactly, exactly, great. Like Anki and Memorize, and I just take these sentences and put them in the software and then I’ll review it and work on them. And so I can build a vocabulary and phrases based on what I like to speak about.

So perfect, so it sounds like you were very proactive in your learning, as you had the content. You learned the phrases that you brought to the classes, practiced with that and learned how to say them, and just kept going that way. Repetition, repetition, and building your vocab in German that way, correct?

Exactly, you know I was motivated.

And that’s a huge thing, and I know you focus a lot on this accountability. Accountability is having someone hold you responsible to something. it’s amazing how powerful it can be that if we have a goal we tell someone else about this goal, or objective, and if they say well I’m watching you, you’d better do what you’re gonna say, it’s amazing how much motivation that can give us in a quest.

And accountability can go from both ways, you can . there’s one, okay people watching I’m telling . I told Papa on purpose before I started so he knows. If I don’t tell him, if I don’t tell anybody, if I don’t complete it nobody will know. And besides me there’s not much of an impact. But if he knows, then he will be ready for it. He will be looking for it, he will ask me about it. So I kinda have to fulfill it, and on the other side, when I start telling people about it, good things happen.

What happened was, one of my friends that I met in Austria, she is an English teacher, teaching in a high school. So when I told her about the project, basically I’m sharing with as many people as possible, not just my father in law, so that people will ask me, and people can hold me accountable. But what . The things that I didn’t expect that happened were, once I told her about my project she was so enthusiastic and so happy that basically she went into her high school. Basically her students and said hey I have a friend who’s learning German, would you guys like to do an exchange with him every week. So she basically set up meetings every week for me with her students for me to practice German and them to practice English.

Wow cool, very cool. So just expressing your objective started bringing things into your life that would help you get there.

Exactly, you’re basically calling it out, this is what I want, and then what happens is people are coming to support you.

Very very cool, very cool. So I want to hear now though, about the day, the moment, the hour, the minute, you were sitting in front of your father in law, ready to show him how much German you had learned. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah. So we were driving to his house and I was very nervous. I actually . The whole thing is online because I documented the whole thing on YouTube.

Oh wow, very cool, I’ll post that on my blog post, or my website as well, that’s very interesting.

Yeah, so in the video it actually had me driving and saying how I feel, so. I felt nervous, and the next clip is, you know, me pulling up to his house. And then we sat down and had our first conversation. It’s not fluent, I need to think of what to say and things like that, but it was my first time connecting with him.

Very cool. So you have this Add One Challenge and it is directly related to your journey, through learning a language in ninety days.

Right.

Can you tell the audience how that works? What is the Add One Challenge all about?

So basically the Add One Challenge . The idea of the Add One Challenge, came directly from this journey that I had with my father in law.

Doing the journey of the ninety days when I was learning German, I was posting my updates in Benny Lewis Fluent in Three Msonths forum. I was just sharing my progress in the forum and about the same time that I started, I saw . There’s this guy named Byron John, who lives in New York and he was learning Mandarin Chinese. And then, throughout the ninety days I would read his update. Whenever I’m not motivated or I’m a little bit down or I hit a wall, or I’m just not very happy with my progress or anything like that, I would read his update to get inspiration and get motivation.

After I had my conversation with my father in law, I messaged Byron John and said “Hey Byron John thank you so much for updating your journey of learning Mandarin, because you gave me a lot of inspiration and motivation” and after I sent that message he sent me a message, like five minutes later. He said “Brian, I was watching your update, I was reading your update because you motivated me.”

Wow, so you guys were motivating each other and you had no idea, but you were feeding off each other’s progress.

I had no idea. So that’s when I got the idea of What if we can support each other, motivate each other. We can start together on day zero, and end on day ninety together, on this journey together, and we can support and motivate each other through this journey, and aim for this same goal of having that fifteen minute conversation together in the community. Wouldn’t that be a lot more fun and effective, than me just trying to learn by myself?

Yeah, it sounds like you get a lot of . You get a lot more energy behind it when you’re joining forces with other people, especially when you have a very specific goal and a specific time frame. It’s kinda like “alright guys this is what we’re going to do, let’s make it happen, we’re in this together.”

Exactly. That’s what the Add One Challenge is about. One of my favorite quotes that I actually share in the Add One Challenge is that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

[NOISE OF AGREEMENT] So what does that mean to you?

For me it’s when you want to go far, just fast as this doesn’t really do much. So when we go far . When we want to go far we go together as a community. We support each other, we have the same goal together, and that’s how we can go far together. That’s what it means for me.

Very cool. With all my years of teaching English and doing what I do, it can be very difficult for . You know, the content is there, the methods are there, you can find so much stuff online too, these days, that show you the answer of how you can become fluent in a foreign language, how you can be fluent in English. However the motivation is . Is tough.

And for a lot of learners, especially with English I’d say, because often they’re doing it out of necessity, they need to learn English to be able to connect with the world. But over time, over months and years, the can lose motivation, so I think what you’re doing, it sounds like you’re creating an network of motivation to keep people on track and keep people moving forward with their language learning process. Awesome . Great idea.

So you have something coming up with the Add One Challenge, this is something that’s currently going on, to give the listeners a little bit better idea how the Add One Challenge actually works and what’s coming up soon, can you tell us about that?

So how it works is that I would open the Add One Challenge when we have a new Add One Challenge coming up and when open people can apply for it. Once they apply for it we look at the application and then we . We can accept people. After we accept people, they will need to make a video of their application. The whole point of that is that it’s part of accountability. Once you make a video, even if you’re just sharing with the Add One Challenge community, somebody is holding you accountable.

Somebody can see, oh you’re learning English, or you’re learning Italian. At the same time it would be a great way for you to document your progress.

So everybody in the community, in the same challenge would do a day zero video, a day thirty video, day sixty video, basically sharing their updates on day thirty and day sixty, and on day ninety you have a fifteen minute conversation with a native speaker on video.

So what kind of people are applying to this program? What languages are they learning, what’s their level, can you give me an idea of that?

It doesn’t really matter what level you’re in as long as you want to take your level up to another level and in the application process you need to tell us, okay how many times per week and how long would you like to study. As I said earlier, five days a week, thirty minutes a day, that’s a schedule that you create for yourself. So when we . At the end of the day if you put time into your language, you have progress. The only problem is that we don’t do that. I created a structure, a process, a mixture you put in time, of course you still need to put in time yourself, I’m not going to come knock over your door if you’re not going to study or anything like that. But with the community, and the inside of the structure that you can follow, for example the update and things like that, and accountability, that makes it a lot easier.

So it’s very cool, and what I’m seeing here is that you don’t have to be just somebody, let’s say you want to learn Italian from day one, and in ninety days I want to have a fifteen minute conversation. You could also be an intermediate or and advanced speaker in say, ninety days from now, I want to be so comfortable in giving a presentation about my business. Or if I’m an entrepreneur, I want to be able to give a presentation about my ideas and what I’m presenting to somebody in ninety days, so it’s a very open format, a very open structure.

Exactly. It’s flexible, at the same time inside of accountability structure. So it’s up to you where you want to take you’re English, to what level it is.

Cool. And what I really like about this too is, it’s ninety days. A lot of times people don’t really have a concept of how long it takes to see bit improvements in language, and I like to put a ninety day time frame on that, because a lot of people have busy lives. They’re doing a lot of other things, they’re not just speaking their target language every day, all day long.

Right.

Ninety days seems like a good timeframe where you can see good, big results. Sounds really cool!

Well one of the cool things that we do in the Add One Challenge is that . In each Add One Challenge we give away a flight ticket. So one person will with the flight ticket to the target language that they want to go to, a value of five hundred dollars. So it’s just . Imagine you can speak . You can expand your English, and then you actually go to the country, and I don’t know if you would like to go to the UK or America. What if you can win [inaudible 00:21:08] and you can go there and experience the culture and eat the food, and actually practice speaking in the target language. So that’s what the Add One Challenge is, there’s other things, I think I can go on for a long time just explaining how it works. Basically it’s a structure to keep you motivated so you put in the work, so you can get the result you want in ninety days together with the community.

That’s awesome, and I think the structure is such a big part of it, and a lot of times what you find online is missing that structure. So it sounds like the Add One Challenge provides that.

Very cool story, very interesting, you’re doing something I think so valuable for language learners out there, for providing that structure, and support, and accountability, somebody looking, not literally but figuratively, behind you looking over your shoulder, making sure you’re putting in that time to . That necessary time to get to where you want to get. So cheers, cheers to you.

Thanks, man.

And before I let you go, for the listeners out there, I want you to give them one bit of advice, for you, what do you think is the most . The biggest tip for language learners?

The biggest tip that I have for a language learner is to do whatever it takes in this hour, so you want to learn in an hour tomorrow.

Wow, very interesting! I have never heard that before. Can you explain that?

So, this is a quote from a polyglot, his name is Anthony Lauder, what it means is that if you can do whatever it takes so that in this hour, you make it fun for you. You make if effective for you , you figure out .

Basically most of us don’t know how we learn the language best. We don’t know, we have no idea. So we need to explore how we learn best. And in that exploration, you look at, hmm what do I like. Okay I’m a visual learner, okay I like to watch. Or, I’m an audio learner, okay. Basically you just find ways how you learn that, you enjoy the process so much that you want to learn an hour tomorrow.

Because that’s what it’s really all about. If you want to . If you can make yourself want to learn an hour tomorrow, you’re on the right track. Versus, the other way around is, if you torture yourself through grammar drills, and you know you hate grammar, how likely would you want to learn an hour tomorrow? No, right? And if you don’t want to learn an hour tomorrow, it’s pretty much . You’re going on a downhill spiral.

I love that, and that’s so awesome, I love how your polyglot friend put that. And I agree, it’s almost like if you put in . If you spend that extra time experimenting with different methods and finding out how you learn, spend time on that as opposed to just thinking that you need to study English for an hour, which sounds so dry and empty. So .

Exactly.

So research and experiment for an hour, it’s so cool.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

Experiment, explore, discover how you learn best so that you want to learn an hour tomorrow. So that’s the best tip that I can give to language learners.

So, that’s awesome. Great stuff here today, thanks a lot for coming on the show, Brian.

Thank you, goodbye.