What You Shouldn't Do When Trying To Achieve Success

John Assraff New York Times Best selling author of Having it all and the Answer and a lot of times people ask me, you know, what are the keys to success? Which I talk about a lot. But today I want to talk about something a little bit different that very few people ask me. And that is, what shouldn't they do in order to achieve success? Everybody wants to know what should I do? But very, very few people ask me what they shouldn't do. And here is something that is worth thinking about. One of the things you shouldn't do is confuse people's opinions with expertise. What do I mean by that? Well, when you talk to your friends or people in general about what you should do, most people haven't invested the time in becoming an expert. Now, based on all the research that's out there, it suggested that it takes about 10,000 hours to master something, whether it's chess, the cello, or to become a world class athlete or even musician. 10,000 hours of practice, drill, rehearsal, repeating. And so the thing that you shouldn't do is confuse people's opinions with expertise. So the question is, well, where do you get the expertise? What I always do before making a decision is I asked myself, who is an expert in the field that I want? The answer is, so whether it's my health, whether it's investing, whether it's in growing my company, whether it's in writing a book, whether it's in anything. I ask myself who are the top two or three people that are experts in that field? And instead of asking my friends for opinions, I go to experts first. So I look on YouTube, I'll Google them, I'll google the subject, I'll google the question, and then I'll find the people who are considered the experts. And then I will cross reference a variety of different answers, processes, recommendations from the experts first. Then if I feel like asking some friends what they think about that to see if they might have something that I've missed, then and only then will I make a decision on the step to take. So don't confuse opinions with expertise. Expertise will save you millions of dollars. It'll save you hundreds of hours of trying to figure it out on your own and trying to talk to people who haven't paid the price of becoming an expert. Now remember one thing, not all experts are right either. And that's why the cross referencing to try and get a trend and an idea from a variety of different sources will really help. And then the thing that you do is you trust your gut and your intuition to find the path that's best for you. So forget about opinions. Get expertise. Cross reference it. Trust your gut, then take action.