Most people think they have a learning problem. Really they have a method problem.
Tom Vorselen, founder of The Study Coach, came on the Infinite Income Podcast and laid out exactly why. He failed his first six classes in college back to back. Then he learned a real system for studying, passed every retake, and never failed a class again. Today he coaches people through professional exams and has built a big audience doing it.
This matters for business owners too. Every skill you need to grow, from sales to marketing to hiring, has to be learned. Here is what Tom taught.
Rereading is not studying
Tom cited research claiming 84 percent of people use rereading as their main way to study. He calls that passive learning, and it is the main problem.
When you reread something, it feels familiar, so you think you know it. You do not. Familiar is not the same as being able to recall and use it.
He also talked about levels of learning. Most people stop at remembering, understanding and applying. The higher levels are analyzing, evaluating and creating. That is where knowledge actually sticks.
Active recall builds the real skill
The fix is retrieval. Pulling information out of your head is what strengthens it.
Tom recommends teaching the material to someone else, answering application questions, and taking mock exams. Flashcards are useful, but mainly for pure memorization. They do not build understanding on their own.
If you want to learn a sales framework, do not read the script five times. Explain it to someone. Run a practice call. Answer the question “what would I say if the prospect said this?” That is active recall.
Spaced repetition beats cramming
Tom cited forgetting numbers of about 60 percent within a day and about 80 percent within a week. If you learn something once and never come back to it, most of it is gone.
His schedule is simple. Review the same day, then one day later, then one week later, then four weeks later.
Most people study once, ignore it for weeks, then cram right before the exam. Tom recommends about 15 minutes of daily quizzing instead of one long session at the end. He also said students who actually schedule their study time get better grades, because scheduling cuts down on procrastination.
The SQ3R method
This is the framework Tom uses. SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall, Review.
Survey first. Skim the headings, the bold and italic text, the bullet points and lists. That is the Pareto principle in action, getting the most important 20 percent first.
Then turn each heading into a question. Read to answer those questions. Then recall what you learned without looking, and review it.
For learning any skill in 30 days, Tom says to start with SQ3R, then teach the material to someone or create content about it. Repeat at spaced intervals and switch up the method with application questions, case studies or interviews.
How to use AI without making yourself worse
This was the part I found most useful. Tom warned against using AI to do your thinking for you. Summarizing texts with AI and skipping the active work hurts learning.
He cited a study he saw that reportedly found AI use improved homework grades but lowered exam scores. The AI did the work, so the student never learned it.
The right way is to use AI to make you work harder. His team uses AI to generate practice questions that are harder than the real exam. Things like planted grammar errors to find, or patient case studies to work through. AI becomes the trainer, not the one doing the reps.
The business behind the method
Tom built his business by accident. Friends asked how he balanced a seat on his student association board with his studies. He started coaching them, their results improved, and it turned into a business that is now about three years old.
His audience today is mostly adult learners, roughly 25 to 40 years old, who need to pass professional exams. Accountants, medical board candidates and lawyers. One to one coaching is his strongest seller, plus weekly workshops where people implement live on the call.
He grew to about 671,000 Instagram followers in three years and grew YouTube from about 6,000 to 50,000 subscribers this year. His content is short, captioned clips on procrastination, time management and learning strategies, with a full time team handling scripting and editing.
He also shared a lesson about audience quality. About 25 percent of his Instagram followers are in a market that does not buy his offer. Big numbers do not mean buyers. He has shifted his content to target the adult learners who actually need what he sells.
Procrastination starts with beliefs
Tom uses a core beliefs framework from his mentor Rob Dial. Thoughts drive feelings, and feelings drive action. If you keep putting something off, look at the belief underneath it.
He also kept it simple on the basics. Sleep eight hours, exercise and eat well. You cannot learn well on a broken body.
My takeaway
Learning is a skill, and most of us were never taught how to do it. If you are trying to get better at sales, marketing or leadership, stop rereading and start retrieving. Teach it, test yourself, and come back to it on a schedule.
And use AI to push you, not to replace you. The people who let AI do all their thinking will look smart on homework and fail the real exam. In business, the real exam is your numbers.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
