How Long Does It Take To Be Successful?

How long does it take to be successful? I'm gonna tell you in this video. And I am sweaty and I am gross and I'm nasty and I stink. You don't want to be around me right now. And that's why I'm making this video right now, because I am just coming back from the gym where I got my butt kicked. I did hit a new PR on squat 325, which is really good for me. I weigh about 165 or so. I want to get that down about 155 and lift a thousand pounds across. The major lifts, bench press, squat and deadlift. Right now I'm at like 950, 960, and I would need to drop about 10 pounds to hit my goal. And everything in me, everything in me this week wanted to quit. And I almost did. I kind of did. I took two days off and I caught up on a lot of sleep. And I have been at this for quite a while, a long time. And I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. And this week I wanted to quit both. I kind of hit a wall, just a minor wall. And I hit walls all the time. I'll be the first to tell you, I am an emotional person. Some days I think I'm the king. Sometimes I think I am a big old loser. And I keep going, keep going, keep going. And that's the difference.

There's a great book by Jeff Olson called the Slight Edge, and he makes this very simple argument, and he says that the results we get in our life are never. I don't think it's never very rarely the result of big swings up. They're the result of compound habits that happen over time and give us exponential results. Now the big jump does happen. You know, you have a video go viral, you have somebody get big on American Idol. That stuff happens. But even them, even they are usually the results of things that didn't work. Trying a whole lot of things before that one hit.

How long does it take? How long does it take for that thing to hit? How long does it take to reach big goals? How long does it take for you to be successful? How long does it take for you to get rich? How long does it take for you to have the body that you want? I used to say one year.

Now I have a little bit of a different answer. I'll tell you why. There's a YouTuber in the fitness space. His name is Greco Gallagher. His channel is Kinobody. He's super honest about this and I like the way that he approaches this. He says, how long does it take to get the body that you want? He gets that question a lot. And he very, very straightforward, says two years. Takes two years to get the body that you want. And when he says that, according to him, people freak out. I'm not gonna have the body that I want for two years. Are you kidding me? And he says, wait.

Before you freak out about two years. It's not like you're gonna be working super hard and not seeing any progress for two years and then wake up two years in and you've got the perfect body. It doesn't work like that. What it means is that six months are gonna go by and you're gonna have a whole lot of progress. A year is going to go by and you have a whole lot of progress. Then two years come and you reach that goal. Now I used to say one year, but I noticed something. I noticed that at the one year point, that's when you have proven that you've got something. And so that's when you are basically free from wherever you moved away from. But it's not until the end of year two that you really reach the level in which you have made it. And sometimes it takes longer than that. But I've noticed that at the end of the one year mark, there's a plateau, a big old plateau. So I coach a lot of entrepreneurs. I have a video that has a few million views on YouTube that is about building a million dollar business in 12 months or less. And I have had hundreds of people watch that and tell me that they now run a million dollar business. But I would say the majority of them after the 12 month period plateau. They plateau at a million dollars. Very few of them, unless we're working together or they're around a group that is holding them accountable, spend the next year working just as hard to get to 3 million or 5 million or 10 million. Now I know I have other students who have gone all in for two years and have hit $10 million after a couple of years. Maybe not two years, but sometimes three years. I have one student who sold a company for $20 million. After three and a half years. I have a student that got to $25 million a year. Two years. Now the first year is like proving the concept. It's kind of like your newbie gains as a person who's working out. Like if you read any men's fitness stuff, you'll know after the first year you think you're the king because your Body's changing so fast, you're all excited. And after 12 months, your newbie gains pretty much gone. Your newbie gains, like, it starts to get harder. Progress starts to happen more slowly. But the people who put in that second year of work, they look completely different than the person who only worked for a year. Some people work for, you know, they lose their newbie gains and then they stop. They stop doing the habits and they start looking for those big curves up. They start looking for cheats and hacks and shortcuts. Same thing with business. With business, you have a lot of entrepreneurs who put in the work for a year, are willing to sweat it out for one year. They might hit the first million, and then it's like, what if it changes? What if Amazon makes a change? What if Facebook makes a change and they go into defense mode rather than staying on the offense? It takes two years of offense for you to really break out. Going just as hard on the first year.

Just as hard on the second year as you did on the first year. That first year is when you've got skin in the game. It's when you reach a point in which you have proven yourself in the marketplace. But it's the second year where you break out from the rest of the crowd. And most people won't do it. Most people will not put in the second year. They'll hit the first year and they'll plateau. But at the end of the second year, that's when your business starts spitting off cash. That's when it's independent of whatever sales channel you came from. That's when it's a sellable business. That's when it's got enough momentum and enough cash flow for you to be investing into other places. Or two years of fitness. That's when you look different than the person who only put in a year or relationships. Did you know? Did you know that you are biologically only sexually attracted to one person for two years? Two years.

That is when all romantic attraction is gone.

First year, most of it's gone. Second year. Now you're in a relationship. Now you're not relying on hormones anymore. The end of two years, your newbie gains and relationships are gone, too. That's why most people's relationships end after two years.

Two years is what it takes. Two years is enough time to make a million bucks, build a big following.

Two years of consistent showing up consistent habits, creating compound results. That's what it takes. That's how long it takes to be successful. If you are not willing to put at least one year to do something new. Don't start. And I mean one year of not even evaluating the results. A year of just showing up without getting anything in return. Don't do it. If you can't put in one year and two years to be at the level that you want to be, that's what it takes. Two years is when you have proven something enough to where you are successful in that area. And you know what that means. It's not like at that point you're done. That's the point at which you've built the foundation to be able to do it consistently for as long as you want. After two years, now you've got the body that can be sustained for the rest of your life. After two years you've got a business that you can grow and be a full time entrepreneur for the rest of your life. After two years you've proven that you're in a relationship that has the staying power to last for the rest of your life, if such a thing exists. Two years, how long does it take to be successful? One year to have skin of the game and two to reach the level that you want? If you're not willing, if that scares you in any area, don't start. Because you can spend two years doing lots of things.

And we don't like this. Like we want the quick fix, we want the shortcut. We don't want to sleep on the floor when you're an entrepreneur. We want to live in the downtown high rise. That's what we want that right away. We want to show off on Instagram, we want to show our rockin body right away. We want it right now. But I am telling you, if you discover what the habit is.

The habit that is going to lead you to success, if you do that for two years, you will be farther ahead and get there faster than all the people who are looking for shortcuts. Maybe not in the first 90 days. Maybe the person looking for the shortcut is going to pass you in the first 90 days. But if you do the habit for a year, two years, you will be ahead of all of those people, all of them. And only a few of you are going to do that in any area, only a few of you, because they've like studies show that the biggest contribution to success is one's ability to delay gratification. So you've got to delay it for two years. Now that doesn't mean you wake up two years from now and you're rich. It doesn't mean two years from now you wake up and you got the body. It means that you've had progress along the way, and you blasted through the walls and and you kept practicing the habit. And sometimes you took two days to catch up on sleep only so that you could take a breath and go back to the habits. Cause that's what it takes for two years. And that is what is required of you if you're gonna be successful. And some people will say, like, give up sleep for two years, or give up living luxury in two years, give up time for two years. The universe always requires that you make a trade. You are always making a trade. You're making a trade for two years.

And then you have more resources to trade for the rest of your life. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments.