The Greatest Factor That Determines If You'll Be Successful

Alright, so I know there's a lot of factors, but if you had to choose the one thing that determines if a person is successful or if they're not successful, or let's say like greatly successful, like world class, like everyone knows that that person is successful at that. What would that one factor be if it had to be one?

I've thought a lot about this because I've wanted to know what that thing is myself so that I can get better. And it's also fascinated me because with our online training programs@consulting.com we help people start consulting businesses and become successful. And it's always been one of the things I've been looking at among all the students in there. Like the people who make six figures and seven figures, what is it about them? Are they smarter? Are they like, are they more educated? Do they work harder? Do they wake up early? Like, you know, do they read a lot? Like, what things do they have in common? It's always fascinated me and a lot of the time I think I've found the thing and then it turns out that I haven't. But recently I've observed that there's one thing that's true in every single instance. And I learned this from watching like all these documentaries from all of these different people in all different industries and you know, from like, from athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and Michael Jordan and you know, all the different athletes in all their different fields. Then like musicians like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and then even like David Bowie and Michael Jackson and then into business people as well. And I just looked across the board and even movie directors and stuff. Like what is the thing that makes people really good at stuff? And then in the people in my programs as well. And I think the one thing that it is is like pure love and obsession for what they do. And I don't mean they just like it. I mean they're, they're probably to the point that it's. That most people would argue that it's, it's bad and disturbing and all of this. Like they, they love it so much that they would give themselves for it. Like they, they're like infatuated by it, obsessed. It's the thing they think about from the minute they wake up in the morning. Growing up, right? So when I was talking about skateboarding and counter strike and all, that's when I was like, like 12, 15, you know, different ages. Then my obsession really at like 21 became with like business. So it was a broad obsession. And then what changed and Iterated inside of that was the type of business and the niche and what I was selling and what I was good at and how I actually did business. So business overall is like an obsession, but then within that obsession, you've got other obsessions. You know what I mean?

Got it.

And, you know, if someone's really, really interested in, say, like, partying or something, then they've got to ask themselves if they're also interested in, like, in business at all. You know, you have to have a desire to make money and to put a lot of effort into a business to make it work, but you also need to have a desire and an interest in the nature of your business. I learned that lesson when I built this property inspection app called Snap Inspect Back. It was one of my first businesses, but I went to the market and I looked for needs and I found that they needed this property inspection app. And then I matched the need with the software and it was a success. The company worked. But I was not obsessed with property managers and the property management field. One, I didn't know much about it. Two, I definitely didn't think about it or dream about it. It wasn't. It wasn't an obsession. So I had the obsession of business, but the nature of my business wasn't something I was obsessed with. So naturally that led to me changing and going more into consulting, which was something that I was more, way more interested in within the field of business, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, that does make sense because, yeah, the money is just a byproduct. I'm sure it was good to get the money if the business was successful, but if you truly didn't love it at some point, it just. It's never enough.

You have to love both. Like, you know, if you don't like money at all, then there's no point in being in business. You just do it as a hobby, right? So you got to like the money and the thing you, you know, you can't. It's not like a binary state thing. You don't just like one or the other. You got to like both, right?

So. And even now, as our business grows, there's a lot more things that we're doing now that we weren't doing last year or the year before, like, or even you personally were doing before. So how do you keep that same drive and fire as the company grows? Like, is there certain jobs that you've learned to outsource that you know, I definitely don't want to do that, because if I do, you know, I I'm gonna fall out in love with the whole business thing. Like, how do you keep yourself focused and obsessed and really loving what you do every day?

Well, no one ever loves anything every day, like, ever. That never happens. So, you know, every. A good thing to learn is that there's going to be cycles, but you're not going to love it. And then you're going to love it. Like, the key is that you just love it on average because you're always going to have days. Everyone has that. You might even have some weeks and things. And you're always going to have to do things you don't like to do. Like, if I think just over the past two weeks, you know, I've had to get really in the trenches in my company with all of the financials and everything, because we restructured a whole bunch of stuff. So I've just been living in Excel and talking to accountants and attorneys and things for, like, two weeks. And that is not, like, something I really love, but it's just something which I have to do at this particular stage to keep moving. And that's fine. I understand that. It's like if you have a wife and she asks you to do something and you don't like that, you don't think, oh, this wife isn't for me anymore. You know what I mean? Like, the business asks you to do things that you don't want to do, but provided you love it, on average, it works. So it's also good to learn the things you like and you don't like because you can, over time, you can actually start doing less of what you don't like. But it's silly to look at, you know, to look at something and think that you're going to love it every day and every week, because, you know, even, like, you know, even if you ask, even if you watch, like, Michael Jordan documentaries or something, I keep coming back to him because he's like, everyone knows he's the greatest of all time at, like, basketball. So he's a really good example of this. And, you know, he. He loved basketball and he loved winning at basketball. But in order to do that, he had to train extremely hard. And training that hard is agonizing, and you don't like it, but you have to go through that pain in order to achieve the love. You know what I mean? So he put himself in situations which he absolutely hated in order to win at the thing which he loved. Do you see how that works?

I do.

Yeah. And then at the end, like his coach, when he finally retired. When he talked to his coach, he said, if I ever see you around my house again, I'm gonna shoot you. It's like a famous line which he said to one of his coaches which is just like shows you like, you know when he was around like he was always like on edge and he knew it was gonna be hard and everything. But he put himself through that pain to achieve what he wanted to achieve. And a business is very much like that. Like it's like training at the gym on a lot of days. You know, you've got to put yourself through pressure and through stress and all of that to, to achieve the thing which you love. There's not a one sided thing which you're always going to love. Goes back between the two.

So kind of going off of that because we talked about Jordan, obviously he had a bunch of coaches, he was the best ever. Do you think someone needs a coach in order to be world class or like great?

I think they are gonna have lots of coaches like you at different part, different stages of your life, you know, different. You're gonna come across different things that teach you. And it doesn't always have to be a person. Sometimes it can be like a philosophy or something like that. So if you look at Jordan, he like had, you know, Phil Jackson taught him a lot and then also Zen, like Zen Buddhism taught him a lot that whole philosophy which he looked into and became a good teacher of his. But then he had like other coaches which he used for like extra performance in the gym. So he found he sought out other coaches and he did training outside of the normal team training to get an edge. Then he brought in people which helped him with diet and all sorts. So it's, you know, you're always going to have teachers because that's the only way you can get better. And they change over time. But it's, I think it's always important to have one, at least one thing which is your or one person who is your teacher at all stages. Otherwise you've got nothing to really look up to or learn.

Got it? So the kind of, the ideal scenario is some sort of like having the self motivation too. Like finding like what you're obsessed about finding what you're on this earth to do. And then also the accountability of having a coach in order to like kind of get to that next level where it always times just have a philosophy or something like that.

Well, the coach can be just like, it can be like an author, right? So like let's say this one person is really inspiring you right now. Like it could even be someone like Elon Musk. And you've never met him, probably not going to meet him, probably not going to be able to email him, he's not going to be holding you accountable. But you can read his books, you can watch his videos and he is being your teacher and your coach through those vehicles.

Right.

So people often think I need a coach that's literally coaching me. Like a teacher can. Anything can be your teacher.

Got it. And how do you, how do you. Is it good to have a mix of both throughout your life or do you know people or yourself? How do you prefer, do you prefer to have someone that you talk to over the phone, someone just philosophies, books that you read or people that are actually more one on one kind of relationship or a mix of all?

It's honestly a mix. It's just whatever you can get. Like sometimes in some fields you're not going to be able to get like a one on one person. That's they're just going to be way out of reach. And it makes more sense to have somebody just by, you know, just learning through their materials and their work and things like that than it is to bring someone in. I mean, you've always just got to do a like, way off of like pros and cons. Like a lot of the time if you get someone in, sure you've got them there watching you and all of that stuff, but they're often not going to have the knowledge that's as good as you might get from someone in a book because that person might be the best in the world. So you've got to decide what's more important. Having the actual accountability and all of that or having the depth of knowledge and expertise.