[0:00]Earlier this year, we did something most people thought was pretty crazy.
[0:08]We didn't just promise to help people learn Mandarin. We didn't offer "tips" or "strategies." We guaranteed fluency. We put our money where our mouth is by saying, follow our system, and you will reach fluency -or we work with you until you do. And since then, we've spent every single day working closely with a small group of learners to make that promise real. And being under that kind of pressure, where failure really isn't an option, taught us more in six months than the previous six years combined. Now, no one's officially passed the B2 fluency test yet. The program's still very young. Most members are only 1 or 200 hours in, but the breakthroughs we're seeing are pretty amazing already. So, learners who couldn't hold a 30-second conversation, or even say a few phrases accurately, are now joking with their in-laws in Mandarin. People who struggled for years are reading full sentences without pinyin, and some are confidently speaking to native Chinese people for the first time in their lives. So, in this video, I'm pulling back the curtain on all this. I want to share the five biggest lessons that we've learned so far from guaranteeing fluency. What worked, what failed spectacularly, and how these discoveries can help you reach fluency in Mandarin faster than you ever thought possible. Oh, and if you want to see this whole system in action live, we're doing a free Black Friday masterclass next week. I'll drop the link below. So, let's start with what actually works when you're trying to get fluent fast. And before I get into the specific techniques, I'll just start with the single biggest shift that changed everything for our learners. Because when we first launched this program, we assumed that the key to fluency was just working harder or learning more words faster. But what we discovered surprised us, and we only discovered it pretty recently. And this has really changed the way we coach people on Mandarin learning forever. Something we gradually began to notice is that even with the perfect road map and ever-improving study regimen, many learners fell into the same trap. They kept collecting new words like Pokémon cards. Some people have learned 3,000+ characters, they were learning thousands more words, they were reading novels, following TV shows. They were working incredibly hard as well, but they couldn't hold a basic conversation. Why? Because they never activated what they learned. It was all passive knowledge sitting in their brain unused, and since the whole focus of our program is getting people speaking fluently, we knew we had to change that and get people on the right path. Now, we already knew something important. The first 1,000 Chinese words cover about 80% of everyday Mandarin, right? The next thousand words, maybe another 10%, the next thousand, another 5% if you're lucky. You see where this is going. And we had already based our entire curriculum, the blueprint on this knowledge. And so, we changed our approach with our new MB Elite members. We told learners, get to level 36 in the course, that's about 600 characters and 1,000 common words, and then slow down a bit. Keep going at a steady pace until you reach at least level 50, maximum level 60, and around that point, you'll have gathered 5,000 common Chinese words. And that's all you need for B2 or real conversational fluency. But while you're doing this, spend way more time activating what you've learned through listing, reading, shadowing, and active recall or retrieval, speaking practice. And once you hit level 50 to 60, just stop learning new characters, or at least go at a snail's pace, maybe 1 a day, or a handful of characters and their associated common words per week. We told people to focus the remaining time on activating the words you already know. And the results, people have started to become way more confident conversationally, which means some incredible breakthroughs, and they're already beginning to express themselves smoothly. We've seen some really good breakthroughs recently as a result of this change in focus. Check this out.
[5:26]So as you can see, people are really starting to express themselves more smoothly after just a few weeks or months in the program, and I'm really confident we're going to have people passing that B2 or proficiency test very, very soon. So really, this was just us reminding ourselves of what we already knew, which was fluency comes from mastering a small number of common words and phrases, not dabbling in obscure characters and idioms and specialist vocabulary. So anyone going beyond 5,000 words is aiming for advanced professional fluency like C1 or even C2. But before focusing on that, make sure you have first a grasp of at least the most common few thousand words, how to use them in conversation. So the lesson really here is depth over breadth, right? So once you're around 5,000 common words, you've got more than enough for B2 fluency, once you're approaching that point, don't obsess over learning more and more words, more and more characters, just focus on mastering what you already know. That's where real fluency lives. Now, once people understood what to learn, the next question was obvious. How do you actually activate those words? And this is where we made a controversial discovery that goes against everything that most language learners believe, including ourselves, a year ago. Native speakers are overrated. Now, before you come at me in the comments, let me explain what I mean. I didn't say that speaking practice was overrated, you absolutely need to practice speaking. But you don't necessarily need to rely and depend fully on native speakers to do that. So my initial plan for MB Elite was simple, hire a bunch of really good native tutors, train them up, and push members to do as many speaking sessions as they possibly could. That's what worked for me anyway, but then I realized something, the way I did it was actually really frustrating and quite inefficient. I would switch from tutor to tutor, maybe like 5 or 10% of the tutors were both competent and dedicated, the ones that who would keep track of the words I didn't know and send me new vocabulary during and after the lessons. But here's the real problem, just like every other Chinese learner I've come across, I rarely practice speaking alone between sessions. I became dependent on native speakers for all output training, right? So think about it like learning the piano. If you wanted to get good at the piano fast, you wouldn't just book as many recitals as you could without practicing between the recitals, right? That's actually a really good way to get embarrassed and hate playing the piano. But that's exactly how most people, including myself, approach speaking Chinese. They only speak when they have a native tutor, never really practicing privately on their own because they don't know how. And what does this lead to? A negative cycle of stagnation and lowered confidence. If you're not activating that part of your brain between sessions, you're not going to improve that much, not with any efficiency anyway. You'll forget new vocabulary, speaking sessions will feel like a slog, like starting over and over again, and that's unless you have them constantly, which isn't efficient or realistic for most people anyway. So, we knew we had to do something different with MB Elite. Native sessions needed to be more of a benchmark or proof that the practice regimen was working, not the sole source of output. We created instead an output-based speaking regimen that members could do on their own, one that actually works. And here's the key, to earn their weekly native speaking sessions, MB Elite members have to stick to their regimen and prove that they've actually done it, that they've put in the time. Now, as for the regimen itself, let me show you the four techniques we now ask members to do every single day as much as they can within their daily schedule to earn their native speaking sessions. And also I'll show you the app that we built to make doing all these activities as smooth and simple as possible. So first off is shadowing. So, these are just some example sentences, some useful phrases from one of our courses. The idea is that you just hit play and repeat after each sentence. You can do this individually as well. You just repeat, repeat, repeat as many times as you can, ideally at least 3, between 5 and 10 times is ideal, especially if you're a beginner. And then, once you're sort of familiar with all of the phrases, you start shadowing. Now you can loop the sentences multiple times each if you want, or go at a faster speed or a slower speed. So I'm going to go with just in the interest of time, just going to do zero pause and full speed. So that is shadowing. So it'll encourage them to do that until they could follow along at native speed, even if they have to rely on the reading to sort of help them along with the understanding, that's okay. But the important thing is that they have a full understanding of what's being said, and then once they've got that, they just hit this little mark here to activate it, and then they move on to the second activity, active recall.
[10:21]They would look at the English and then produce the Chinese from memory. Doesn't have to be exactly correct, but as accurate as possible, and this activates the speaking side of your brain, rather than just understanding, you're also producing from memory, so it's a really important exercise.
[10:42]I'll mark that as correct.
[10:47]Correct.
[10:50]And so on and so forth. So I like this exercise a lot because it forces your brain to retrieve words and construct sentences, but without the pressure of real conversation, and also all the friction involved with setting those up. So it's very effective, but it's not enough on its own, we discovered. You also need a more dynamic practice that simulates real conversation, and that's where the next two techniques come in. So first off, there's the AI chatbot, which is not quite finished at the time of making this video, we're still working on it. But when it's done, it's going to do two things. One is that it provide a more sort of dynamic, random active recall testing where it takes all of what they've been learning, the sentences they've been learning within the app, and then just randomly give them English translations for them to produce the Chinese from. And you can use the prompt like the one I have here on screen, and it will produce random, simple sentences that will just spark conversations. So, for example, it's asking me here what did I do this morning? So I say what I did this morning, and then it asks a follow-up question, but it also gives me corrections on how I spoke, and it's just a good way of having basic conversations without again, that pressure or feeling like you're looking silly or making mistakes. So it's just a way of simulating a real conversation that's not too far outside your level. It's also going to give you correct Chinese sentences based on mistakes that you've made, so you can then add that to your flash cards. And very soon we're going to have this built in so that it actually knows what you've been learning and it bases the sentences and the conversation around that. Now the final technique that I've been encouraging our elite members to do recently is self-talk or just talking to yourself. Now this would be very scary for beginners, and it is the most challenging of these four different techniques. But for beginners, if you don't have much language, you just literally practice producing the sentences you've been working with, you've been learning with in shadowing with, listening, reading. You can just practice producing those off the cuff and maybe trying to produce a few in a row. And you can also have again AI sort of give you prompts or questions that are related to your sentences as well. Now, slightly more advanced learners can do things like narrate their day or describe what they see around them. They could even tell a short story. Now we ask our members to do this only in 30 to 60 second bursts as like a minimum. And you can go on for longer if you want, but don't force yourself to just keep droning on and on and on, because it can be tough, right? So it's much better to do it in short bursts of between 30 and 60 seconds, but do that multiple times throughout your day or within a single study session. So, for example, the AI just asked me before, what did you do this morning? I could say, I've been working all morning, I woke up at 6:00 o'clock and rode my electric scooter directly to my office, my office isn't far from my home, it only takes about 5 to 10 minutes to get there. The weather has become very cold lately because winter is almost here, so I felt particularly cold while riding my scooter. So I'm just trying to sort of expand on what I'm saying, right, with some extra details. And I'll try to push myself to give as many details as I can exactly what I did this morning, and then after 30 seconds to a minute, I'll take a rest. And here's an extra thing you can do when you're doing this exercise that it's really going to make a big difference, is that when you try and say something in Chinese and you realize that you don't have the language for it, but you really want to be able to say it, and it's something that, oh, do you know what, this is something I actually do want to be able to say, note it down in English. And then later on, you can create flash cards, you can translate them. We will we'll do it for our members, obviously, but if you're doing this on your own without coaching, you can just translate it and create study materials yourself. And if you just do that every day, you just build up this bigger and bigger collection of personalized sentences that you're really going to help you speak much better very quickly. So whichever one of these techniques you use, ideally, several of them or all four of them, it's structured practice that builds real fluency. And because you're practicing between your speaking sessions with native speakers, you will notice an improvement every single time. These native sessions become something you actually look forward to. It's like a positive cycle because they build your confidence instead of destroying it. And plus, you get to make most of your silly mistakes and embarrassments privately on your own. So here's the bottom line. Native speakers do not need to be your primary method for speaking practice, they're a benchmark. The vast majority of your speaking practice can be done and should be done alone, using highly effective scientific proven techniques like the ones I just showed you. And when you do that practice consistently, your native sessions become celebrations of your progress instead of these painful reminders of how far you still have to go. Now, here's the thing. We had developed an awesome speaking practice regimen that actually works, right? But even with that dialed in, we noticed something rather strange. People would start strong and then slowly veer off course, not because the regimen didn't work, but because of something far more human. So what was happening with these members was they were drifting, and that's when we realized something that became our third crucial lesson. People need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. So, even when we gave people the best possible regimen to get to fluency fast, the exact steps to follow, the proven methodology we wish we had when we were learning, they still wandered off course after only a couple of months, sometimes even just a few weeks. They would inevitably begin doing things different from the regimen, and struggling as a result. And of course, this was not out of laziness or just an unwillingness to follow instructions, or because they didn't care. This is simply human nature. We all drift, right? We forget what matters most when we're in the thick of things. We had learners who started reviewing flash cards for 4 hours a day instead of 1 hour a day. That's because they weren't doing their reviews in the way that we taught it in the training. Others might skip listening practice altogether because they felt more comfortable reading. Some would obsess over learning rare characters while neglecting speaking practice with more useful words and phrases, which is not what we told them to do, right? So these members were working super hard, but they were working on the wrong things or working in the wrong way. And this frustrated me for a while. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, and then I realized it. They didn't need more lessons, they didn't need more content, they just needed reminders, and lots of them. So here's what we ended up doing. Everyone already had a PLT or a personal language trainer, that's just a coach, a non-native fluent speaker of Mandarin to provide one-to-one support, monthly calls, this kind of thing. Answer any questions that the member needed, and just be there for them. Phil and I also run two weekly calls every single week to solve problems, share wins, that kind of thing. But we realized that once people started drifting, despite all this, we needed to step it up a bit. So here's what we started doing. We added weekly reports, so every week at the end of the week, members filled in a form as much detail as they want, saying how the week went and if they need any help from their PLTs. And we kind of started more and more to sneak in reminders of their regimens throughout these sort of weekly reports. Then members fill in this form, this report in as much detail as they want, saying how the week went and if they need any help from their PLTs. And then all the PLTs send everything to Phil and myself, the two co-founders. We look at the wins and the challenges across all members, and then we identify patterns, what's working, what's not, where people are struggling. And then very recently, I started doing something new with this information. The weekly momentum post. So, in the community, every single week, we remind people of the key points of the regimen. What matters, what to avoid based on those reports, the mistakes that people tend to make, or where they would veer off from the regimen. And we've had awesome results from this. People clearly really enjoy these weekly reminders, thank you for reminding me, you know, keeping me on track. And I realized just like how important reminders are, not just in language learning, but in every aspect of our lives. Why do husband and wives, including me and my wife have a date night? It's to make sure that we don't drift apart. It's at least once a week where we get together, despite having kids and whatever, we're going to sit together, even if it's just for a lunch date for 45 minutes, we're going to sit and we're going to have a chat, we're going to connect. Why do we run weekly meetings in our business? Our whole leadership team get together every single week to make sure that we are on track with our quarterly goals. And then every quarter, are we on track with our annual goals? Let's have a big meeting about that too. And then in our weekly business meetings, we identify problems, discuss them and solve them, and we do a similar thing with Elite now. And everything we learn feeds back into the regimen itself. So it's kind of this continuous cycle of improvement, and this combination of personal coaching plus weekly reminders has made a way bigger impact than if I'd just shot yet another video teaching some technique or tool. And now, I know that not everyone can afford elite level personal coaching, right? But here's the thing, you can still get support and accountability. We run a weekly Q&A in our free community where you can ask questions and get guidance. And for our pro members, we do live weekly coaching calls where we address your specific challenges live. But here's something special, this Black Friday, starting November 25th, we're giving the first 100 people who join MB Pro one month of free personal coaching. So that includes two one-to-one calls, four weekly check-ins and direct communication for 30 days. And you can activate it within 90 days of purchase as well. And this is so you can experience what personalized coaching is really like. So click the link in the description of this video to save your spot for our Black Friday week masterclass. Anyone who shows up as well live gets a really cool free gift usually only available for our MB Elite coaching clients. So, here's the key takeaway here. Consistency isn't just doing the work, it's remembering what the right work is and keeping it in mind every day. Whether it's a personal coach, weekly reminders, a community, a study partner, or just a habit tracking app. Build systems that keep you on track when motivation fades. Now, reminders and coaching help you stay on track, but there's another way people drift, and this one's even more common. So the amount of time our coaching clients invest each week into Chinese varies wildly. We've got busy moms and dads with half an hour to an hour a day, then there are some absolute warriors who grind 8 to 10 hours a day with the Elite practice regimen. And you might think that the warriors would just blow everyone else out of the water, right? Well, they did make more progress, of course, but not nearly as much as you would expect, nowhere close to the ratio of time that they were putting in. Why? Well, the law of diminishing returns, right? So, those legends, and they are legend. They would push themselves to hit 6, 8, or even more hours per day of study, but for those last few hours, let's be honest, they're probably barely absorbing anything because they were mentally exhausted or bored, or just kind of ending up just going through the motions. And so they would tend to get less and less out of their study as their day goes on. And look, if you are one of these people that can maintain razor-sharp focus for like six or more hours a day, please go for it, enjoy. But there's no point grinding if you're not actually focused. It's better to do 3 hours of deep, intentional work with regular breaks in between, then force yourself to go through 8 hours where half of it is wasted. Think about bodybuilding. Look at legends like Dorian Yates or Mike Mentzer. They didn't get massive by doing endless sets and workout, they went for intensity during their sessions, then they gave themselves increasing, not decreasing, increasing amounts of rest times to actually build more and more muscle. And this is because you cannot physically grow by doing more and more. In fact, that's going to hurt you. Your muscles need time to recover and rebuild. So I think language learning works in a similar way. Your brain needs time to form new neural pathways and to consolidate what you've already learned previously. You need rest, you need variety, different types of input, output practice working together. Remember that. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, okay, Luke, I get it. Focus on the right words, practice output the right way, get reminders, stay consistent, don't burn out. But all this sounds complicated, there's so much to remember, so much to get right, and that's exactly what the final lesson is all about. And this is the most important one. Fluency is not complicated. It's very simple and it's predictable. But first, let's define what fluency actually is. There are lots of definitions out there, but in my opinion, here's what matters. Fluency is the ability to speak and communicate on a wide range of topics in a language without constantly stopping or getting stuck. We tend to aim for B2 level because that's what we consider to be, and what a lot of polyglots that we've studied consider to be like real fluency, and that's what we want to go for. B2 is where you've got enough vocabulary, you're proficient enough where you're not constantly struggling to find the right word due to a lack of vocabulary. Now, fluency doesn't mean saying everything that you can say in your native language with the same level of proficiency, speed and accuracy. It just means getting your point across smoothly. You might simplify how you express certain ideas. You might not have the perfect word for everything, but you can communicate clearly without hesitating every few seconds or just giving up and switching to English. That's fluency. And based on the breakthroughs we're seeing in Elite, I can tell you with confidence, anyone can get there, as long as you have three things. The right structure, what to learn in what order, the right methodology, how to learn efficiently, using memory techniques, comprehensive input and active recall, that kind of thing.
[25:01]And then finally, the right consistency system to make it automatic so that you actually show up, even when you don't feel like it, and follow that structure and apply that methodology. Think about it. Right now, hundreds of millions of children, 4, 5, 6, 7 years old around the world are becoming fluent in different languages everywhere. They are not geniuses, they're not using specialist apps or secret techniques, they're just following a natural process. Exposure, repetition, practice. Now, yes, proficiency, as in the amount of words you know, that takes longer, that's more difficult. Building your vocabulary to the level of say an educated native speaker, that's going to take you years of consistent practice. But that's not fluency. Fluency is what I just described, and it is achievable far faster than most people realize. Now, that said, fluency does take time, it's not going to happen in like 50 hours or 100 hours. If you search online for how long it takes to become fluent in Chinese, you'll find estimates ranging from 2,200 to 4,000 hours. Now with our method, along with our coaching, we're aiming to get people there in under 1,000 hours on average. And people are already starting to speak with confidence already, have actual conversations. They're well on their way to B2 level fluency, they're not wandering around aimlessly trying random apps and classes, they're not guessing, they're not bouncing between 10 different methods hoping something sticks. They know exactly what to do, they're doing it consistently, and they're seeing predictable results. And that's what happens when you combine the right structure, with the right methodology, and apply yourself consistently. And so, those are the five lessons that cost us thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to learn over the last few months, but you don't need to spend thousands of dollars to use them. Join the free Black Friday masterclass where I will break down this entire system live. I'll show you the exact structure, the proven methodology, and the consistency systems that make fluency predictable. We'll answer your questions in real time, and everyone who shows up live gets a special gift. The link's in the description, and if you're serious about finally making Chinese, click, you don't want to miss this one. So click the link below to book your spot, sign up, and show up, and let's make this the year you finally get on the path to fluent Chinese. And if you're watching this video and Black Friday's already gone, no worries, just check out this one next and I'll see you there.
