Devin Zander shares what he sees as the single most important factor in achieving success, drawing on biographies of famous figures and his own path from delivery driver to CEO. The episode emphasizes perseverance and learning from failure as the core ingredients that separate people who make it from those who don't.
What's up, guys? Devin Zander here, your host, and today we're talking about perseverance. Hey. This is the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. I'm Devin Zander. I just said that. And these are lessons, tales, stories of how I went from a high school dropout and Jimmy John's delivery driver to the CEO of an eight figure software and education company. Let's get into today's dang episode. All right, so over the past few weeks, I've been in serious grind mode. Work wise, but also reading wise. Because as Tai Lopez once said, the more you learn, the more you earn. That's a joke. I think it was a genius, by the way, because when you say that and you get people indoctrinated into that idea, the more you learn, the more you earn. You can sell them an infinite amount of courses because you have made them, like, believe that they need to just consume, which means you can sell. But that's an idea. That's just. That's a tangent. Now. Over the past few weeks, I've been reading some biographies. Estee Lauder, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Napoleon Bonaparte, Michael Jordan. And you might notice all these people were billionaires. Napoleon Bonaparte, I don't know if he was a billionaire, but because it was so long ago. But if you adjust for inflation and if you adjust for how much power he had, obviously very wealthy and also just badass. By the way, Napoleon Bonaparte is worth studying if you haven't. Estee Lauder, at one point, the richest woman in the world. I wanted to discuss a trait that all these people had in common. And it comes up again and again in their biographies, some of which are autobiographies, by the way. So their own words is just the act of perseverance. And we mentioned this before on the podcast, but the number one thing that dictates success is how much someone is willing to fail and just get back up again. And for some people, that might be, like, disheartening, that, okay, I don't want to fail. Number one, we must accept that. Failure, setbacks, bad feelings, these are all normal parts of life. We can't avoid it. We have to accept this. And number two, it's okay to fail. Everybody's failed. Michael Jordan. What's that saying? Let's see, how many shots has Michael Jordan missed? All right, we're gonna look up the quote. I got my laptop right in front of me. So Michael Jordan, right? He talks about the power of failure. He says that I've missed 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 3,000 games. 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I failed over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. That is exactly what I'm trying to tell you is that failure means that you are making progress. It is something to be celebrated. You are on the right path. And this is actually an amazing thing. I want you to view this as a good thing because that, and by the way, all these people agreed that this was the most important factor in success, was just the ability to fail and keep trying to. This is amazing because it means you don't need a superpower. It means that you don't need some magical hack. It means you don't need a billion dollars to start. It means you don't need this or that. The number one thing that makes people successful is just the ability to keep trying. That's all. That's all you need to do. It's that easy. I. I would say that a little caveat there is you need to also learn from your mistakes, learn from your failures. And this is something a lot of people aren't willing to do. They're not willing to accept that maybe they could have done things better or maybe they had done something wrong and when they fail, they don't take anything away from it. And now I can imagine why that would be so painful. Because then you basically failed for no reason. If you're not going to find a lesson in it, if you're not going to take something away, there was no point in failing. And of course when you look at it that way, it sucks. But if you can view it as a lesson that brings you closer to your goal, that is massive. That is huge. And according to some of the most successful people of all time, people who we all love, respect and look up to that we say we want to be like when we were children. They all value this one trait and say it is the most important trait. I want you to think about this. I want you to get excited by it because of how massive of a deal this really is. You don't have to be a superhero. You don't have to be amazing. You don't have to be the best. You just have to be the one who's still standing at the end, who doesn't give up, who learns from their mistakes and keeps pressing on. And if you can do that, you will win. And that is extremely exciting. I hope that you realize how amazing that actually is. It's a really short episode. I just wanted to share that with you. It's something that just keeps popping up again and again. And it's like, I can't understate the importance of this. You've got the tools that you need. You live in the best time ever. It is easier than ever for anyone to start a business. Twenty years ago, you needed tons of money to build a startup or a business, right? 100 years ago, you. Logistically, it was extremely difficult. Now you have the Internet. You can market people anywhere around the world. You can get started for as little as $30. Like, people didn't have this 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Literally, like even 10 years ago, this was almost impossible. I didn't discover Shopify until about 2014. Before then, I was selling on Teespring. So you have just this beautiful golden opportunity, and all the universe wants from you is that you don't give up, that you keep trying. That's the secret. It's crazy, actually. There's two secrets. There's that and there's visualization. That's what I'm learning from about all these successful people. It's funny that all successful people have these things in common. They believe that, number one, the most important thing is never giving up. And they believe that, number two, the second most important thing is visualizing and seeing your success at the end. And we'll do an episode on that later. But I just thought this was so powerful I had to share it with you. I want you to see how lucky you are and. And that it's not that bad. Just don't give up. All right? This is Devin Zander. This is from delivery driver to CEO podcast. I will see you guys on the next episode. Make sure to leave a five star review like comment. Subscribe. Catch you guys on the next episode. Peace.
