Barry's Economics Is Making You Less Successful

There's a video going viral right now that has nearly a million views that made me genuinely angry. Not because it's completely wrong, but because it's right about just enough things to be dangerous. This video is telling you that your hard work doesn't matter. The reason you aren't successful isn't your strategy, isn't your habits or what you do every day. It's just that luck hasn't found you yet. This video is titled The Diary of a CEO Is Making You Less Successful. Let me show you the science-backed uncomfortable truth about why Diary of a CEO might be the very thing standing between you and actual success. The central argument around this video is actually buried under some genuinely interesting science, but he's really trying to convince you that successful people are just basically lucky and that's why they're successful. So in today's video, I'm going to break down why this creator left out some really important things that make it so dangerous, make this video so dangerous to watch for people that are really trying hard. But more importantly, we're going to talk about luck. We're going to talk about how How much of an influence does it have on success? Let's get into it. Before I destroy this argument, I want to be honest about what the video gets right, because it does get some things right. Survivorship bias is real. When we study successful people, we try to extract the formula and we're only looking at the people who made it, who are successful. We don't see the millions of people who follow the same exact strategy and didn't make it. That is a legitimate problem with a lot of self-help content, business content, finance content, success content. There's something called the Music Lab Experiment. Let me tell you about it, where 14,000 people were placed in separate music markets and the same songs rose and fell to completely different positions on the charts depending on which market they were in. And that is genuinely a fascinating study because it shows that early social momentum has an enormous influence on which things become popular. That is true. We're not denying that. And yes, some content in the self-help space is designed to keep people anxious and keep people consuming and keep people feeling like they're one framework away, one hack away from a breakthrough. That is also true. And I call this out constantly on this podcast. But I'm here to say that in the video, he's coming to conclusions about luck and success that are never supported by science. Let me break this down and make it super simple. With the Music Lab experiment where they have all these different songs in different markets and some are rising and some are falling. The fact of the matter is, is that you have to create the song, right? You have to actually do the work and be in the marketplace in the first place to even rank as a top song. You can feel he misses that idea. The fact that people are watching a podcast, Diary of a CEO in this example, and thinking that they're going to be successful by just merely watching the podcast is just ridiculous. You have to do something with what you're learning, okay? You have to implement. I mean, in the comments, there are people saying, yeah, I've been watching this podcast for years and nothing's changed. He He can't just do the work for you. Okay? He's presenting you information. And by the way, anytime you are consuming information, whether it's a podcast, a book, there's going to be information that's useful and some of it's not useful. Take what's good, leave what's bad. But you can't say, "I didn't come in first place in the marathon because I was unlucky," and not run the race. You have to at least participate. In order for you to qualify for luck, you need to actually, one, participate, two, participate at a level of quality that the market demands. Quality is the entry ticket. And with that ticket, the rooms you walk into, the relationships you build, the consistency that you bring, the hard work, the timing, it all capitalizes on which determines where you end up. Like they say, luck is when preparation and opportunity meet. You got to be ready. You got to be doing the work. You got to be qualified to get lucky. I'm gonna give you an example and then share a story to really capsulize what we're talking about here. I go to a lot of conferences, I go to a lot of festivals, I go to a lot of conventions for business, for my work. And if you go to these conferences, you know that the number one reason why you should be going and the number one value you can extract is the networking opportunity, or the people that you're going to meet there. Because the sessions, you can probably watch the recording later, but the people that you meet are only there at a limited time. So you need to really put on your networking hat and come in feeling like, I got to meet people, I got to be helpful, I got to make sure that I'm showing up at my best self. This is not my natural state, right? I'm not naturally a networker. I'm not naturally somebody who's like, loves to party and loves to be around a lot of people and talk and ask questions and be gregarious. But I understand in order for me to succeed at these events, I need to do my best. I need to actually participate. I got to make an effort. And by making an effort, I then have a chance to meet interesting people that can then you know, possibly collaborate with me. I can work with them. They can open doors. They can introduce me to somebody else. And that's how it works. That's how life works. And let me share a story with you that illustrates this crystal clear. A friend of mine, Matthew Kimberly, who is a fellow entrepreneur, invited me to a dinner. At that dinner was a man called Michael Port, who's a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, very successful entrepreneur. He had a large engaged audience of entrepreneurs and business owners on his email list. At the dinner, Michael and I really, really hit it off. We became fast friends and really got to know each other. And towards the end of the dinner, he offered to let me do a webinar to his list. Now, at the time, I was just starting out with my webinar software, Webinar Ninja, and I was telling him about my software and why I built it and the problem it solves. And he says, that sounds really interesting. How about you run a webinar for my list and tell them about it? We're talking about over 100,000 people. Okay, here's the kicker. Michael didn't ask for a penny. Didn't ask for commission. He wasn't asking for a brand deal. Nothing like that. He wasn't doing a deal. OK? He was just trying to help me. And that webinar changed the trajectory of my business, validated a lot of things I needed to test out in terms of the product itself. I asked Michael years later when we were on a holiday together, "Why did you help me that day? We just met at that dinner. We were strangers just a few hours ago." And he said to me, "Omar, I saw my younger self in you." and I wanted to help you. Here's my question to you. Was that luck? My answer to that question is yes, 100%. But how did I get access to that luck? Okay. If Matthew Kimberley, my friend, doesn't invite me to that dinner, then that moment of horror happens. How did I meet Matthew Kimberley? I actually met him at an event. I had to get up from my couch in my house and go to that event and meet random strangers. At the time, that was Matthew, and Matthew became my friend. And then Matthew and I stayed in touch. That takes effort. And then Matthew when he was in my neck of the woods, invited me to dinner. I go to this dinner, I meet Michael, and if I talk to Michael and I say to him, I'm doing nothing with my life, I haven't done anything. I've kind of played around. I had some ideas I never actually implemented. Yeah, that's me. Would he help me out? No. I had to show up with something, right? I said to him, I have a product that's already been launched, that has users, that does XYZ, that solves X problem. If I don't have that to present to Michael, to talk about to Michael, then there is no opportunity. There are so many other ways this could have played out, but it played out in a certain way. So many things happened before that. So much work, so much effort, a lot of thought, a lot of deliberation, a lot of heartache in order to reach that moment. And then that moment happened. Yes, I got lucky that I met Michael that night. But I was able to do something with that luck because of the preparation. If this episode is getting your blood pumping a little bit, good. Mine is pumping too. I think you should subscribe to the show because I have an episode that I'm working on right now that's about to get released titled "Are You Rich? The 5 Levels of Wealth and What You Need to Do to Reach Each One." You know, rich, poor, they seem very binary. What I've discovered that there are actually levels of wealth and some levels are actually more attainable than others. And some of these levels are actually not too dissimilar to the higher levels. Your life doesn't really change much. If you want to learn more about that, hit subscribe so you don't miss it when that episode drops. The real problem with this argument about it's all luck is that— not that it's wrong, but that it's conveniently wrong. And this is what bothers me the most, is that when people hear this, when people hear like, oh yeah, I'm not successful because I'm just not lucky. All these other people that are successful got lucky. It's not my fault. You are relieved of the responsibility of any solution once you hear that and think it's facts. When you believe success is random, if you believe that there's nothing that you can do to influence your ability to be successful, then you just give up. It just— it's easy just to be like, okay, then I can just give up and can stop trying. It's comforting. It's also making you feel better about yourself because it means that you're not doing anything wrong. And in a lot of ways, you become a victim. You start asking yourself the question, why should I try? Why should I grind? Why should I sacrifice? Why should I show up on the days when I don't feel like it? At the end of the day, the universe will decide. And here is where the video becomes genuinely irresponsible, in my opinion. It's really dressing up as an intellectual argument that's really just a big excuse. That's just the truth. And the reason why it has nearly a million views is because it's confirming a lot of people's feelings about how disappointed they are in their life. There's an answer why they're not doing well. Listen, I've watched people succeed. I've watched people fail. I've watched people almost make it and then quit at the last moment. But I've never, not once, seen someone put in years of genuine, consistent, focused effort on something the market wanted and walked away with nothing. Not once. I've never saw somebody actually do the work consistently for years and not benefit. I want to say one more thing because this needs to be said, okay? Because this video is part of a trend that is genuinely frustrating. I'm not talking about any random creator. I'm talking about a creator who's built an audience, who is monetizing that audience, who's succeeding in the very creator economy they're criticizing, making a video that says the people who are giving you advice about success are the reason why you're not succeeding. Think about that for a second. This is the argument that's being made. Don't listen to successful people talk about how they succeeded because they're just lucky and they don't know why it happened. But do listen to me, someone telling you that all the other content is making you less successful. And if survivorship bias is a problem, it applies to that video as well. If the business model of keeping people anxious and consuming is a problem, a video designed to make you distrust every other source of information, which is conveniently driving you back to his channel, is a part of the same machine. He's criticizing what he is doing. I'm not saying this creator is a bad person, and he probably has good intention. I'm saying his argument has a blind spot the size of China. And the point of this video is that I really wanted to expose it. I wanted you to see it, and I wanted to just really talk about this whole narrative that people just get lucky and that's why they're successful. Here's my honest, complete take. Luck is real. Timing matters. Social momentum matters. Being in the right room at the right time matters. And some people work incredibly hard and face circumstances so unfair, so stacked against them that the odds are generally not equal. And I acknowledge all that. But to just conclude that you should be skeptical of all efforts and all habits and all skill building and all learning is a really horrible conclusion. That's not a growth mindset. That's a victim mindset. That is a mindset of saying that, hey, You know, things are not working out because of other things around me and not me. Guess what? You can't control the things around you. So that means you're going to be there forever. You like that answer? No, I don't like that answer. I rather just focus on the things I can control, which is what I do and how I live and how I think and how I behave. And I want to be that kind of person so that when luck comes my way, I know how to take advantage of it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I spent the last 20 years building businesses, and in that experience, it taught me one thing above everything else, and that is the people who succeed are not the luckiest. They are the most prepared when luck arrives. Listen, there are plenty of successful people that are not brilliant. They're not smart. They're not hardworking. They just got— yes, yes, that happens. But that's the aberration. That's the exception. And also, can we just for a moment just say, like, success has many forms? Okay. It's not just financial success. If you want to be a successful husband, happened. You can't just get lucky, okay? You have to work on it. You have to be a better listener. You have to have some compromise. You have to care. You want to see your partner succeed. You have to show love. You have to show compassion. You can't not do those things and say, oh, my relationship failed because I got unlucky. Give me a break. If this episode got you fired up, great. I encourage you to keep moving forward. Learn from your experiences, your mistakes. Through the experiences you're having, keep building And in my opinion, you only fail when you quit. If you want to keep learning, check out one of my most recent episodes called 20 Years of Business Knowledge in 20 Minutes. I share the things that really matter, the essentials to succeeding in business. Go ahead and check it out. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And I'll check you on the next one.