Pablo Roman: Japanese in 6 months and DreamingSpanish

Welcome to the actual fluency podcast. Each week you'll find inspirational motivational interviews with some of the world's best language learners, industry experts, all trying to help you to learn foreign languages better, faster and more efficiently.

Uh, thank you, Chris. Yes, sure. Um, I'm original from Spain, but I guess as many people on this podcast, I've been living abroad for quite a few years. Every now and then, I still go back to Spain and I've spent like a year or two in between my my travels and, Um, I guess the first language that I learned, like many people, uh, was English, or at least the first one that I learned well. And at that point, I didn't consider myself, uh, somebody who was, who had a particular interest in languages. I did like languages to a certain point, and I I had studied French a little bit during, uh, primary school and a little bit on on in middle school.

Yeah, for sure. Or they have it as a as a side hobby where their main job as a as a programmer or developer. Yeah, right. Do with the kind of the problem-solving aspect of a language where you're trying to fill in the blanks in a way or kind of build something that you also do when you you do development.

Yeah, I wonder I wonder why. Uh, but yeah, when I was in Japan, I I joined a PhD program, uh, in computer science, which I didn't finish, by the way. I didn't I'm not a doctor. I didn't get my degree. But I was there. I was doing research in a lab in a university. But honestly, I didn't really get that much into my research. Like, I would be spending my time in my lab and really trying to do the research, but what really motivated me was to learn the language.

Right.

Yeah, I tried to do that for a while, but my approach now was a bit different compared to when I was learning Japanese. I was trying to look for really comprehensible, uh, materials. So, yeah, by the way, the method in this school in in Bangkok is based on comprehensible input, which I I've seen that some of your other guests also have talked about about that. So, I think nowadays it's pretty pretty known within the the world of language learning. Um, so, this this method is heavily based on that, heavily based on Stephen Krashen and on comprehensible input.

Right. The idea is that you should be studying, uh, some materials that are, is it just above your level or or is it at your level? I can't remember.

So, yeah, they they talk about I + 1. So, slightly above. But what slightly above means is just that there are some new words. So, in the input that you're getting, whatever you're listening to or reading, of course, you still need some new words there, so you'll get exposed to new words. But the context should be should be so clear that most of the time, most of the time you encounter new words, their meaning is clear from the context.

Right.

And at the very beginning because the language itself, the other words don't provide that context, because you don't know many words yet, you need things like pictures and gestures and etc. Um, and yeah, so I tried doing this for Chinese, but I just couldn't find enough comprehensible resources, enough like things that are easy enough, and I tried looking for for it really really heavily. And I some of the easiest things that I found were, for example, Peppa Pig.

Oh, really?

Yeah, you know that Peppa Pig has been translated to many languages.

My niece loves that show, so I've seen quite a bit of it.

Yeah, so I watched I watched dozens of hours in Chinese, and I did learn some words, but it still felt really slow. And if even myself, I've learned a few languages before, and even I I couldn't really feel too motivated to continue doing that. So, I wasn't I couldn't hope to really get other people to do what I was doing if it was being hard for me already.

Right.

Yeah. So, I decided that just there's not enough comprehensible material out there, so I decided to do to make my own to make my own videos. That's how Dreaming Spanish began. I started making my own videos to teach Spanish to other people. And I'm I'm not super motivated to teach Spanish specifically. Um, if I had had money, probably I would have paid for somebody to make Chinese videos. I would have hired them and worked with them to start making a Chinese course. But for, well, at the beginning, I was by myself, and my native languages are Spanish and Catalan, but I guess that many more people would be interested in learning Spanish. So, I decided to start making Spanish videos.

Fantastic. And that brings us up to, uh, to today, modern day.

Uh, yeah, because I'm still doing that. Uh, now I I don't need to work on the side anymore, because for a long time while I was recording the videos, I was still working part-time as a web developer. But on September last year, I started working working full-time on my videos. Now I've been working on them for a bit more than two years. And yeah, I'm trying to get I'm trying to make this into a full platform that people can use to learn Spanish from zero to whatever level they want to get at. So, the way I envision it is to have hundreds and hundreds of hours of content, maybe even a thousand or 2,000 hours of content on a platform that you can go there, register, and start watching things that are your level, that are really easy to understand, but also really engaging, really really fun to watch.

Right. Well, congratulations on that. That's a huge achievement to have built up something, uh, that you can now do full-time as as you please. You found your passion as as in the TED Talks.

Yeah, definitely. And anytime you do something publicly, you publish some video that anybody can access, or you, um, open a website that you've been working on or anything. Any of these things, it's at the beginning, it's scary, because you don't know how people are going to react. So, doing that first step, like publishing your first video or publishing your first, uh, blog post at the beginning is scary. But then you don't know how many, um, things that how many opportunities that can open to you that you were not expecting. And that has happened with my videos. There are there have been many people who have contacted me with business opportunities and with opportunities for collaboration and doing things that I was not expecting and I was not not looking for. And and for example, even with the, uh, imaginary guy who's teaching Estonian that you just mentioned, if he just makes some Estonian videos publicly available for everybody, just the amount of people who are going to find it and the audience that you're going to build, it's just going to help you, for example, to sell your private lessons.

Exactly, yeah. And then you can choose how many hours you want to work per week. So, if you just want to have 10 hours of students per week, then you just increase your price till you have 10 students left. Then that's also your best students, which is the kind of a double benefit there, that you have the most serious students who know your value, and you work the amount of hours you want, and you're building up your, uh, sort of side business with the videos and and even courses you can build into with something like teachable. I mean, it's extremely easy to set up.

Yeah, definitely. And if your focus is building a lifestyle business, and what you care about is not having to work too much and living in the place where you want to be, then that's that's definitely a possibility, and it's I think it's not that hard. Just finding enough students to pay yourself a salary and be able to live in Nicaragua or in Thailand or or wherever.

Yeah, it's so flexible and you've got Skype and everything. So, there's always you have internet. You're fine.

In my case, I more than the lifestyle itself, I value how many people I can help. So, what I'm trying to to achieve is more creating a enough materials and creating a platform for people to really learn cheaply, so that anybody who wants to learn Spanish can can really take advantage of it. So, if I can spend an hour doing something that in the future is going to help 1,000 or 10,000 people, I prefer to do that than giving private lessons, for example.

Yeah. And maybe in the future I can hire teachers who give private lessons. And that way grow the business, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I I think that's the kind of goal that people should embrace when they start out on the process.

I have I can guess, because I think one important thing when one important thing when learning languages, and especially when learning, uh, languages that are very different, and languages that have such a strange writing system as Japanese, is to not be a perfectionist, to to be ready to accept to take in whatever you can take in at this moment, and don't and not worry about understanding every single detail of the grammar or the pronunciation or the meaning of the words.

And how many hours per would you say you spend on average per day, uh, from the time you knew you were going to to Japan to the day you, uh, got there? So, six was six months you said, right?

Yeah, six months. I think like almost almost every waking hour.

Really? So, you're talking you're talking 16 hours a day?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think most days I did about that, because, yeah, I I didn't have anything else to do. I was not during those six months, I was not working or studying. So, I was like, let's just watch some anime or some Japanese movies or TV shows. And then I would read for some time every day. I would finish my repetitions on Anki for the for the characters. And, yeah, the rest of the time I I would just read. When I got tired, I was I would just watch a movie or a TV show.

Right. So, that's a good distinction as well to make that. I mean, I'm sure it's helpful to watch, uh, uh, TV in your native like I mean, I I know it is useful. I should say. Uh, but it's a different it's a different level of studying than sitting with, let's say, Anki, which is quite mentally challenging, I would say. You you kind of, uh, well, maybe it's just me, but after a while, you just kind of I feel like I just get my brain starts hurting, because it's just too much information, almost. Or if you're sitting with a textbook, that could be quite intense as well. Um, so, I guess that's the the important bit is is to do what you feel like, right? You you want to make sure it's fun and not like a a torture chamber of learning languages where you just sit and do, uh, 16 hours of Anki every day.

Yeah, definitely. And I feel it now more than ever, because now I'm still trying to improve my Thai. I still want to get to a higher level of Thai. And I'm not as motivated as I was during those six months before going to Japan. So, I do need to do things that are less mentally taxing and more entertaining, things that are just want uh, fun to do by themselves.

Right. Well, I would say that's I've definitely discovered one of your talents, and that's, uh, your ability to focus, because I I think most people, even if they had all day to study, they just wouldn't do it. I mean, they either they would get so tired of, you know, studying, or they would just get bored with the materials or so that that's definitely one talent that I can tell you that I can see you have.

Yeah, even then when I tried to to study Chinese, when I told you I was trying to to get other people to kind of learn with me, and I would be coaching them. I couldn't I couldn't really do it that much. Like, I would be I would sit down and trying to watch Peppa Pig or other easy videos for like 30 minutes. And I would be like, well, this is this is enough. So, I do think that, yeah, watching TV and cartoons and stuff, it's great, but it's great it's better when you already understand enough that you're having fun and you're genuinely enjoying what you're watching.

Yeah. And that's the thing about the comprehensible input as well, is that if the material is too difficult for you, then it's just not going to be fun to work with if you you know, every third word is unknown.

Yeah, definitely. To sit and I don't know even what you would do then. Would you look up every word or something? I don't know. I wouldn't recommend it in any case.

So, you just need to step back and say, okay, I'm I'm not quite at the level where this book or text is understandable to me, and you have to find something else. So, a simpler book, maybe reduced vocabulary books, or, um, maybe online, there's simple news sites or, uh, yeah, you can use online tools like that, or online different, uh, method even that's like, you know, apps and and stuff. So, yeah, that's that was something that I kind of missed in the beginning as well, because I thought that it was my lack of concentration or my or why can't I concentrate anymore? You know, I'm I'm getting old and it's been a while since I studied anything seriously, like in, you know, in school when you had to study for like a chemistry exam or something. I could do that for like 12 hours, but I think the the reason for that is the same reason as you did really well in Japanese, there was a an impending deadline. And there was a real motivating factor there, because if you arrived in Japan and you wouldn't be able to say anything, you would consider those six months wasted because you you knew you're going to stay in Japan for a while. So, you might as well use it. And the same with me, the night before a chemistry exam, it's like, okay, it's tomorrow, you know, I have to get it done now. Um, whereas if I open up a book that's too difficult, I don't really need to read it. Nobody knows I'm reading it. Finishing it won't really change my life. There's just no motivation there, really. So, it's much better to, um, uh, to simply go for the what you can understand and what you enjoy as well, I always say is important as well. Sometimes you can read and watch stuff that you might not be able to understand as much, but you enjoy kind of the subject matter anyway, so that gives you that general idea of what they're talking about. So, that that definitely helped you.

Yeah, definitely. And that's why in the videos that I'm making, I'm really focusing on making it very easy to understand. And the videos, they're leveled, so they're super beginner level, which is really really easy, and even somebody who doesn't know any Spanish should be able to get most of what what's going on. And then like different levels, depending on how much people know. But I also try to talk about many different topics and try to have guests on my videos also to tell us like their stories and try to make it so that everybody has something to enjoy. I even have some some videos playing video games, for example, right?

Right. That's a good idea. People love video games and they have that kind of, uh, second life aspect where you can live yourself into the story and you can, yeah, you can kind of shut off the world for a second and and be part of this imaginary world, which is that's what what I like about books that when you read a book that's really well-written, you feel like you are in that story. And and that's really helpful for language learning if you can create that kind of illusion with video games or books or even podcasts can probably do that to some degree. Um, so, that's kind of like the the secret, I guess, to doing 16 hours a day is is having that deadline, but also doing things that you find interesting. So, you're not doing, you know, 16 hours of textbooks a day. You you're choosing depending on your energy level and and what you feel like at that time.

Yeah, definitely. And one really good example is babies, like children. Children have they get everything done to them. Like, people feed them. People, uh, make them wear clothes. They get everything done. They don't have any impending feeling that, oh, I need to learn this because if I don't, I won't be able to order food or to find a place to stay or something. No, they don't care. It's just included within their daily dose of fun is people talking to them. So, they just do it because it's included with whatever they're doing, which is important to them because it's like talking to their parents or to friends or or, right?

Exactly, yeah. They just they just kind of fully immersed and they they're not afraid of making mistakes either when they get a little bit older, which is, uh, another interesting thing that you also mentioned when you came to Japan, or when you were doing Japanese, is that you weren't afraid to make mistakes and you weren't you didn't expect to be perfect in any way. So, you could just kind of try it out and and apply whatever you were able to do.

Sure. And this, of course, is going to be different for different people, how afraid they are of of making mistakes, right?

Yeah. But still, there are there are many things that can be done to to avoid that even because I I wouldn't say that you need to be able to power through shyness to be able to learn a language, because there's plenty of shy people who really who who succeed at learning a language. Um, and if you if you are better at the language, if you just have a deeper knowledge of the language, then you're probably going to just feel more confident and have fewer problems going and talking to people and fewer, you're not going to be so afraid of of making mistakes.

Yeah. Well, in general, I yeah, that definitely true. I mean, all the advice and all the suggestions and tips on the podcast are are always going to be depending on the listener. You know, what what are they what is their personality like and what what do you like to do? Uh, it doesn't mean that there and that's one thing I learned actually doing the podcast is there's no one way to do any language learning. You know, there's a million different ways, and we all have our different kind of preferences when it comes to how to learn. And and I think that you're definitely right that not everyone can just run into the into a crowd and start speaking Japanese after six months. You know, that that's definitely true. That's not going to happen. Um, but I would say for those people, let's say you're you're you're shy and and and introverted or or both, um, pushing yourself a little bit can really grow your grow a lot, not just language learning, but also personally. You might find it easier and easier to socialize with people or or talk to strangers or practice your foreign language or whatever. Um, so, in that sense, the advice almost applies universally, because if you really if you are an extrovert, you really like talking to people, you don't care how bad you make mistakes or anything. It it it will be good for you because that's your natural kind of drive. But if you're the opposite, then I would say it also helps because you can push you a little bit to do something that you, you know, a little bit of discomfort is always good for growth, isn't it?

Yes, definitely. Getting out of your comfort zone, it also it always helps you expand your horizons and realize that you can do things that before you didn't think you could do.

Yeah. Definitely. It's only that it's it's hard, right? So, expecting, yeah, there are a lot of people who just they're just not going to be able to do it. So, at least in my case, because I'm trying to get many people, for example, with my videos, right? I'm trying to get many people to learn Spanish. Uh, in that case, you want to, you don't want to rely on people being able to do things that are like too hard or that are going to take going to take a big effort, right? You want to make it as easy for everybody to to do and to learn as as possible.

Yeah, for sure. So, I think this is very important. If if somebody can give a clear feeling for that, then you've you've you've won a lot. You've you can get people to really be interested in what you're offering them.

Yeah, because the you have the European framework thing, is where you get officially tested and stuff. That it doesn't really work, because they test all four skills, and especially speaking, then you can be, you know, you can be C2 in speaking, but if you're useless in writing, you don't know any letters, then then you're not going to get the C2 exam, and then you don't actually know where you are. So, that that's actually a really good idea. I think app apps or maybe methods or even, uh, textbooks could use more of that that says, maybe in the first chapter, it will say, after this chapter, you should be able to. And then people know if they're not, then they need to go back and revise some of the materials.

Yeah, so each unit should have that, and you also should get a perspective of the whole trip, like where are you in the overall path to your goal, right?

Yeah. And I think that's the reason that's a kind of a motivational failure sometimes, because it's very hard to evaluate your progress if you don't know what you're able to do. So, I've studied, let's say, I've studied for a month and I don't really feel any different, that can be demotivating because you don't feel like you're making any progress either. So, if you had some way of knowing this month I could do this, which I couldn't do last month, that could actually push your head as well.

Yeah, definitely. I'm feeling that I'm feeling that right now with my Thai, because I'm I'm pretty comfortable in intermediate level. I would say high intermediate. And I'm right at the point at which sure I'm learning new words, but I wouldn't be able to tell you like how many new words I know that I didn't know last month.

Right. And yeah, and I think for most people that can that can feel kind of frustrating.

Yeah, and it's hard to track as well. It's just it's just strange, uh, how that works in terms of motivation if it's just kind of like a mystery. What my level is.

Definitely. Yeah, super cool.

So, in terms of the the interesting thing you said about Thai was all these like no homework, no writing, no translations. Um, to what degree did you feel like that worked? And is that something that you've implemented in your own videos and and teaching, or is there some where you said I didn't really like that part of it, so I've I've changed it.

So, um, most of the issues that I found with with this method are about the particular way they implemented it in this school, or about specific things that certain teachers did, which didn't really adhere to the method. So, maybe one teacher every now and then would cheat and would like give you the English word or would get somebody else, some other student, to translate the word so the rest of the class understood, things like that. Um, but besides that, my main concerns were not with the method or the way it was taught, but rather with limitations that are specific to to not having many teachers, because you cannot have many because you don't have many students. Right. And that school, I mean, the the Thai program is not that big. So, in some classes, we would have maybe like 20, 25 students, but in many classes, we would be like three or four people. So, the amount of teachers, the amount of salaries that you can pay having those students is is limited. And we had 10 teachers, which is which is not bad. You still get to hear different ways of speaking. Um, but that meant that the amount of levels that they could have was limited. Right. So, yeah. So, they only had, because most classes there will be two teachers teaching at the same time. And it's great because they can have a conversation. You can see actual Thai people having a conversation and and see how the language is actually used. But that also means that there's only three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. And for many hours during the day, the intermediate and advanced levels are together. The classes are together.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah. So, you don't get any more advanced language that you would get if you get want to the intermediate level. And then even the last two hours of the day, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., uh, all the three levels are together. There's not even a distinction between beginner and intermediate. So, those are limitations that I would rather prefer weren't there. But of course, I understand that unless they get more students, they cannot get more teachers, and they cannot have more levels, right?

Of course, they're they're limited by kind of how much money's coming in for for both. But it's cool that they they did it in such a a I don't know if it's revolutionary, but it's definitely a different way than most language schools. And having two teachers, like you said, I think that's a a great start as well. Um, yeah.

Yeah, that's a that's a really great idea. And my overall my overall experience is that it worked. Like, I acquired Thai. And now I can I can understand even TV shows. I can understand them pretty well. Maybe like 70, 80% of what's going on. And I've never opened a dictionary in Thai. I've never opened a textbook. I've never looked up the meaning of a word. So, I know it works. I do know if it's the most efficient way of learning. So, I do have a few I'll we'll get a feeling that there are some things that could be made a bit more efficient. And I'm trying to apply that on on my videos. But I think that definitely you learn and you acquire the language even if you don't make any connections with your native language.

Right. That's cool. And I hope that, uh, the the general school program normal language programs in in high schools and stuff. I hope that they take some inspiration from from some of these ideas and and start to make it a little bit more like that, because I find that often language learning in schools are so is so boring and it's just repeating grammar tables and you know, it's just so boring. So, I hope that they actually get to to improve that a little bit and take a leaf out of this.

I know that now, since these last few years, uh, there have been a lot of teachers in middle schools and high schools in in the US. In Europe, a bit, but more in the US, who are using comprehensible input-based methods.

Yeah. That's becoming quite popular. So, I think that's that's that's good. That's those are good news. And I hope it continues becoming more popular. I hope that universities pick up on it, because there's barely anybody any teachers in universities who are really doing doing this.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, universities are the worst because you you see people at the end

Universities are the worst. Yeah. Have that as a sound bite. That's actually really funny. Well, I mean, uh, they're the worst because, um, when you see people do a language degree in university, they come out with this amazing level of, uh, comprehension, listening, reading. But speaking is just awful. So, they can basically read high-level even poetry and academic writing. And they can translate perfectly from one language to the other. But then they go into a bar and they get like they just can't really have a conversation. And I know I'm, uh, obviously, that's a quite a generalization. That doesn't happen on every university degree, especially, I guess, if you're using if you're going for interpretation, then you you definitely have to know how to talk. But in general, I find that the the university degrees are very much centered around reading and and writing. So, so that's the problem where I think speaking is possibly more important. I guess it depends what you want to achieve. But but for most people, I would guess that speaking is their number one priority.

Yeah, and even language schools haven't really picked up on on the trend and on the fact that people are having hard time and they're not really learning much by just studying grammar and studying translation and reading. Because they passed the test still, so that seems good for them.

Sure. Sure. I know. At some point, people start realizing that tests don't really match what you need for for real life.

Yeah, me too. But that's probably going to take a while. Um, but but anyway, uh, my last question today is, um, you you called your website Dreaming Spanish, or your project, Dreaming Spanish. Is that mean that you have, uh, when you sleep, you have your headphones in and it's trying to you get the vocabulary while you sleep?

Not really. Like, I actually tried to do that when I started learning Japanese.

Really?

Yeah, this website recommended you that. The guy was really hardcore into just being listening to Japanese like all the time. He said that even when he was talking to his girlfriend, he would have he would be listening he would have one earphone in his ear and listening to Japanese at the same time.

Right.

Myself, I did try I did try at the beginning. Uh, I didn't like it because every now and then it would wake me up. I I didn't really believe that it worked.

Right. Yeah, I still don't believe that it really does anything for you because if you, because comprehensible input, right? If you need to understand, if you need to get information from the context to to be able to understand new words and stuff, then when you're sleeping, you're not really doing that.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's all a bit of a, I don't know what to call it, like a it's a bit too hardcore for me. I've I've tried it as well. I don't think it works at all, but it was just funny that your website had that title. I just I just wanted to get your perspective on that as well.

No, but there's a reason for for the name Dreaming Spanish. And it's that something that I experienced when I was really into learning a language and when I was getting a lot of exposure is that I would dream in the language. And when I was around like one or two months in, uh, learning Japanese, I started dreaming in Japanese.

Right. Yeah, that's super cool. I've tried that before as well. It's it's kind of strange.

Yeah, so for me, if you're getting that, that means that you're doing the right thing. You're getting a lot of immersion. You're doing enough for really be learning the language at a good pace.

Yeah, you're on your way to, uh, somewhere. That's really cool. So, uh, just give people, um, you know, the the full address of that project and any other place you you want people to check out. Uh, any place where they can get in touch with you?

Yeah, just go to youtube.com/dreamingspanish. Or just search Dreaming Spanish on YouTube. And you'll find me. If you go to the description of any of the videos, you can get links to to my Twitter and to, uh, a blog that I write. I don't have a blog, but I write more about language acquisition theory, and not that much about practical stuff about learning a language.

Okay. But if people are interested interested on theory, then they can check that out. And I have links to all of that in the description of every video.

Okay, cool. I'll I'll add a a link to your your YouTube channel in the in the show notes as well, so people can find it from there.

Cool. And yeah, especially anybody who's interested in learning Spanish. I have videos for every level, super beginner, beginner, intermediate. This week, we're I'm I'm starting I'm starting to make advanced videos. So, it's going to be things for every level.

Cool. Super cool. And you do you do the videos yourself or do you have like a a speaking partner or another teacher to to spar with in the videos?

For now, there's no nobody else who has joined me in the project and working on it full-time with me. There's a supporter that I have. Uh, there's Luke. Luke is in a school in China, but he supports me more more morally. He's been supporting me with money for for a long time, and that's what helped me start working on this full-time. But now he's more of a moral support and we still meet every week. And he works for me as a way to keep myself accountable. Yeah. But people who appear on my videos are people who I managed to convince to just come and record a video with me. They're friends or family or people that I meet, um, where I live. But in the future, I really hope to get somebody else to join my project that will help me and to get some of the workload and also some also people to appear on my videos. In my future in the future, my goal is not to become a to become a famous YouTuber, but rather to get other people who are, uh, more interesting and more handsome to appear on my videos. And for myself to be more on the on the business side and on on the strategy side of of things.

Right. Well, then going back to the business discussion, that's the the natural progression. You know, you start out doing everything yourself, and then as as the business, uh, has more and more success, you can sort of offload that and hire people to do some things full-time that maybe it's not ideal for you to do or be part of. So, you can focus more on the strategy part of it and and growing marketing, you know, all the other important elements, sales even, you know, that that's kind of the most important thing for a business is to, uh, to sell more of the product that it offers, whether that's coaching or teaching or or courses.

Yes, definitely. In the future, I would love also to to expand into other languages. But for now, for now just Spanish.

That's a big project, uh, but I think with your experience in these languages, that could be some great kind of personal experience that you can use, especially for the Japanese and and Thai, I would say. So, that would be cool if you if you went into that at some point. But obviously, it's not a good idea to divide your attention too much. You want to make sure to to put all your focus into one project before moving on to the next.

Exactly. People ask me, are you going to do other languages? Are you going to do Catalan? But for now, I really want to focus on having a really good solution, a really good product. And not divide my attention. Not make it less than it can be, because unless we make it like really really good, not not going to get a lot of attention. So, I want to focus on managing to solve the problem really really well. And when we know the perfect solution, then we can expand and do it in in other languages.

Yeah, that that has to be the focus. For anything you do in in business, this quality first comes first. You know, with bad quality, you're never going to really make it anywhere. So, I agree with that plan of action for you. Right. Fantastic. Well, Pablo, thank you so much for coming onto the show and and sharing your language learning experience and your tips and advice about language learning. And also the the business tenure that we had. I I really enjoyed that too. Like I said, if people want more of that, check out the the Influencer Summit or the cruise, which is going to be really cool to have that kind of business focus. And in the meantime, um, yeah, thank you for coming and have a fantastic day wherever you are.

Thank you for having me.

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the actual fluency podcast. I really appreciate having you here today. Just before you leave, I just want to give a quick shout-out to today's sponsor, which is Italki. Italki is a tutoring platform where you can find affordable tutors for every language in the world, pretty much. So, get started today and get a free $10 credit when you book your first lesson. If you go to actual fluency.com/italki and that's spelled I T A L K I. So, give it a go and feel how tutoring can really boost and enhance your language learning.