Page 58 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

But the funny thing about using only another language is that you learn it much
more quickly than when you rely on English as a backup. Within a few weeks,
Benny was speaking comfortably. The month-long immersion was much better
than the six months before it, and he was now hooked on learning other
languages. He moved to Berlin and learned German, then to Paris to learn
French, and then to Prague to learn Czech, a notoriously difficult language.

Putting his engineering career on hold, Benny started traveling and never
stopped, working at short-term consulting jobs to pay the bills wherever he
could. With his non-stop energy, he got up in the middle of the night for
conference calls in North America. Being single (and not drinking) made it easy
to live on a small amount of money, but it was obvious that Benny had a great
skill to share with the world. His message to everyone who would listen—by this
point the whole bar of expats had heard about it—was that anyone can learn
another language even if you think you aren’t “gifted” or spoke only one
language as a child.

Benny’s method was based on proven success. Within two years, he had
learned seven languages (fluently!), and regularly tested himself with native
speakers he met while traveling. Once in a while, he tutored someone in
language learning, but the approach was scattershot.

“Benny, your skill is amazing,” I said when I met him that night in Bangkok.
“Why don’t you get more serious about teaching this method to more people?”
(To be fair, I can’t take much credit for pushing him. Benny had been thinking
about the idea for a while, and many other people had gathered around the bar at
that point, encouraging him.)

He toyed with a few different names for the idea before hitting on the perfect
one: Fluent in 3 Months. Everyone raised a bottle of beer in approval while
Benny sipped his juice. Just as soon as he learned Thai (his eighth language), he
would get to work outlining everything he knew about language hacking.

The vision was solid, but the work was tough. Benny struggled with fitting
everything he knew into a collection of documents, videos, and interviews. He
kept waiting for it to be perfect … and then he kept waiting. “I finally just had to
give up on perfection and get the thing out the door,” he said later. The course is
now available in eight languages—all taught by Benny himself, naturally.

To market Fluent in 3 Months, Benny made YouTube videos giving a tour of
his apartment in five languages (including different dialects). He stood on street
corners in various countries and sang in the national language, dressing up in
native costume and offering free hugs. When I ran into him next in Texas, he
was wearing a set of goggles on top of a hat. “Uh, what’s with the goggles?” I
asked. His answer was typical: “I wear them when I travel so people will ask,