The Three Indisputable Secrets To Success. No, Really.

You know, when you say someone has it, what's the it?

We're builders. We're not traders. We're builders. We view things over the long term.

They just have a high capacity to take on a lot of work and it doesn't burn them out. They're able to manage through all of the chaos of what life brings.

The one thing on top of all that is you have to have exquisite judgment.

We have an expression in our business which is better to be the second broker and the second wife.

Today we are talking about, if you could not guess already, we're talking about success, long term success and how, how, how it happens. Specifically how it can happen for you, you, you. And yes, we will find out what that last comment about being the second broker and the second wife means along the way when it comes to success, because it means a lot.

Hello. Hi. I love you. I desperately want you to succeed. This is Susie Welch and this is becoming you. Oh, my God, what an episode we have today. Because, lucky you, you do not just get me and my big old opinions, but you are going to hear from some of the smartest, wisest people I know. Very, very successful people who have spent their careers around other successful people. Because the question at the center of today's episode is what accounts for long term, sustained success? I am talking, by the way, and to be very clear, about professional success today. Now believe me when I tell you, I know that success comes in a lot of packages and varieties. Some of the most common successful people in the world do not work in business. They are elementary school teachers. They are, they run nonprofit groups or they're nurses, they're artists, they're bodega owners, they're dog walkers. God bless the dog walkers. Or they do their work at home taking care of other people like their kids or their parents. I get this, I revere this. I respect it. But our podcast today is talking about success for a very specific group of people in, in the workforce. Those who work in organizations and who would like to thrive there. People who like the feeling of what we call seen achievement, if you will. People who want to be able to say at some point in their lives, I had a successful career. Now, as a disclaimer, right off the bat, I want to say that you may listen to this podcast and say everything you're talking about with success. Susie, this is too much. These secrets are too hard. They're unattainable. I can't be all these things and I can't do all those things. Bye. Bye. To which I would say, I hear you. I get it. Success is hard. It's hard by definition. Otherwise everyone would be successful. There wouldn't be a word for it. And success is not only hard, it can take you a super long time to achieve. It can take your whole life. People still, sometimes they say to me, you're such a success. And I think to myself, am I? I'm 65. And so here's what I want to say. Please listen to the advice and the opinions ahead with a learner's heart. Okay, Almost every secret of success that I talk about and our guests talk about today can be developed with time and practice and intention. And the point of this podcast is not to scare you, but to inform you and inspire you. Now, when we started talking about this podcast over here at BecomingU HQ, thought was that I would just opine on, well, you know, as usual, what I think, because I have very strong views on success and I think there are three very distinct drivers of long term success. I do three. I teach them, I believe in them so strongly. I mean, I've created a theory about it. It's called the PI Theory of long term success. And I teach that theory at NYU Stern School of Business where I'm a professor of management practice and I have it in my book and I give speeches about this theory and I created a tool to actually measure yourself in terms of this theory. I mean, I am all in on the PI theory of success, but as we were planning this podcast, you all won the lottery because one of my producers said, well, why don't we ask other successful people what they think? Susie and I agreed immediately, by the way, that that was a great idea. And so I wrangled five incredible folks to opine on this as well. And maybe at the end of the podcast, you will agree with all of them more than you agree with me or you will agree with all of us and you will decide. But first, let me pause before we get off to the races here and say hello and mention that Becoming youg is the podcast designed to help you figure out what to do with this thing called life. To quote the late great artist Prince, this podcast is called Becoming youg because it's based on a class I teach at NYU Stern about a three part purpose discovery methodology. You can hear all about that methodology in episode 46. And I hope you do if you are new to the podcast. And by the way, if you are new, honest to God, I am so happy you are here. Thank you. Now let's get talking about Success. I'm going to go first with my theory. I just am. It's my podcast and whatever. Let's start with me. So the facts are, I have been a long time student of success. First over my career as a business journalist, a large portion of my career, I've been able to interview some of the world's top leaders. Jamie Dimon, Michael Eisner, Warren Buffett, Ursula Burns. The list is very, very long. And then, well, there's the small fact that I was married to one of the most successful CEOs in the history of business, my late husband Jack. But I've also been a literal student of success as the editor of the Harvard Business Review and as an academic. I've read probably hundreds of research papers about the drivers of success, good and bad, by the way, many, many papers. Finally, one day, about four years ago, I put it all together, as I said, into a theory, which I call the PI theory of long term success. And it goes like this. Long term success, sustained success, is a function of the quality of your relationships with people. That's the P in pie. In other words, you have authentic, trustworthy, mature relationships with people. You're honest, you're good, you're likable, you're kind, you're real, you're not transactional. You're a decent human being and you're a friend. And by the way, way, this is not about the number of people you're friends with, the size of your network. This is about the quality of your friendships and relationships.

Then it comes to you, the quality of your ideas. That's the I do. You have thoughtful, original ideas consistently. Now, this doesn't mean you have to be a genius. No, you don't have to be a genius, but you have to be listening. You have to react. You're engaged with the work, you care about the work, you're on top of it. And there's this part of it as well. If you're not spewing creativity yourself, if you're not an idea factory yourself, that at least you are shepherding other people's ideas forward. When somebody comes up with an idea, you ask questions about it, you move it along, you help it progress. In other words, in one way or another, your brain is, is fully in the game. And now let's get to the E. In pie, it's execution. E. What is it all about? It means you get stuff done. You finish what you start, you do what you say you're going to do. You deliver early and beyond expectations. Oh my God, you Cannot believe how much this matters. Okay, but you put these three together. Quality of your people, relationships, the quality of your ideas and the quality of your execution. And, and you're going to succeed eventually. You are, you're going to be unstoppable again. This can take years, it can take decades. But P and I and E should be on your mind along the way. If success matters to you, they should be on your mind like beacons leading you forward. And you need to be asking yourself along the way, how am I doing on these three dimensions? How am I with people? What's the quality of my relationships with people? Am I transactional? Am I real? Am I authentic? Do people want to see me a second and a third and a fourth time? Am I trusted? Do I have high emotional intelligence, as they say? And how are my ideas? Am I original? Do I have ideas? Do I engage with things that people are talking about and thinking about and sharing? Do I offer my ideas? Do I ask questions to open up other people's ideas? And how's my execution? Do I get things done? Do I get them done on time? Do I get them done above expectations? Do I say, do I do what I say I'm going to do? How am I in all those three? Now, you may be doing great on all three P, I, N, E. Maybe you're patting yourself on the back and you're just cheering, or you may be falling short. And now look, you can ask other people around you for their very blunt opinions. You can go find some three people you really trust and you can say, how am I doing in terms of my relationships with people? How am I doing on my ideas and how am I doing on my execution? You got to hope that they look you right in the face and they answer you. That's one way of doing it. You can evaluate yourself and you can ask other people you trust. Or frankly, you can do what the students in becoming you do at NYU. They survey up to 40 people who know them anonymously with the Pi360 feedback tool, which I invented for this exact purpose because it drove me out of my everlasting mind that this tool did not exist. I went looking for this tool and I thought, surely somebody's invented a tool tool that gives people feedback on how they're doing, that's easy and quick. And I thought this tool had to exist and it didn't. So I went and invented it. Now, if you want to do that, please do it. Head over to pi360feedback.com and go for it. It's not free. It costs 12.99, about $13, by the way, which I understand is not free. I wish it could be free, but it wasn't free for me to develop it. And, you know, I still love it at that price. It's cheaper than anything around and it could save you like a decade of figuring it out on your own. So I think it's okay. I kind of think it's a deal, but you don't have to do it. And regardless whether you go use pi360 or not, my point is exactly the same. And my contention is that long term success comes from your long term commitment to great, robust, real relationships, great, consistent, meaningful ideas and getting stuff done. Immaculate execution. All right. No one, by the way, is perfect at all of these things because we are all human beings, but.

We can always be trying to be better. And that's what, that's what really counts. That's how you get there. Always trying. Now, with all that said.

I am not alone in having a theory of success. All right. And we're about to hear from some very smart people who I really trust and really revere about their ideas about what accounts for success. And we'll be hearing from them after short break.

Welcome back once again, I'm Susie Welch, and this is Becoming youg. And today we are all about the secrets of success. Now, we have heard my opinion with the PI theory of success, but other people have very smart things to say and I have things to say about their smart things that they say. And I know that will probably come as a shock to many of you that I have opinions about other people's opinions. So we heard a snippet at the top of the show from Ken Langone.

We're builders. We're not traders. We're builders. We view things over the long term.

Ken Langone, what a giant of a human being he is. He's actually physically a giant. I mean, he's a very, very tall guy, but he's a giant of a human being. He's such a hero to so many. Ken, who I think he turns this year, he came from extremely modest beginnings, very working class beginnings. And he went on, he was a voracious entrepreneur. He failed a whole bunch of times. And then he found a company that you may have heard of, Home Depot. He turned around and became a massive philanthropist who has funded so many incredibly important causes. He is the reason why NYU's medical school is completely now tuition free. And when I called him to talk to him about success the first Thing that he said right off the bat, you already heard, which is that successful people share one quality, basically, and that is that they are not about succeeding fast, which is really good news, isn't it? They are long term builders of things. They see things strategically. Now, a little bit later, Ken went on to note that successful people generally are not about the money. Let's listen to him talk about that. And by the way, please pardon my French in this exchange, if you would.

If I'm building a company and it's doing very well, and it continues to do well, no matter what I have, it'll be worth a lot more than if I'm focusing on what it's worth and not worrying about how I'm going to get there.

Right, so you're going to. They're not thinking about the money, right, Susie?

The money comes down. Jack never expected to be the awesome.

Jack uniquely did not give a shit about money. He did.

But Jack was focused on how do I make my businesses better? What do I do to single us out from everybody else? Look at what he did with it. He drove. He drove.

Building a business, being strategic. And there's that quote where he says, what do I do to single us out from everyone else? I think all of that falls into the I, the ideas part of pie. And then at the part at the end when Ken says he drove and he drove, I hear that as execution, getting things done. And so I think Ken and I are very aligned. And I don't want to claim to have one iota, one fraction of the brilliant brain that he has, but I'm very glad that we seem to agree with each other on, on this part of this success formula, if you will.

Okay. You also heard from Linda Robinson at the beginning of the podcast.

You know when you say someone has it, what's the it?

Linda Robinson basically invented public relations. Her firm was iconic. It was Robinson, Lehrer and Montgomery. It was the best there ever was, best PR firm that there ever was. She sold it, it got absorbed by a gigantic conglomerate. And then they quickly came and got her to be the vice chairwoman of BlackRock. We're talking superstar here. But the funny thing about Linda is that she's incapable of being anyone's acquaintance. Just not possible. The minute you meet her, you are her intimate friend. When I called Linda about this success podcast, she was so laser like in her answer. She didn't go here and then go there. She just went right in, which was, as you heard, this word, judgment. Let's hear a little bit more from her about that.

What's the it? And I think the it is exquisite. Judgment and discernment doesn't always come with age. It's something that's wired in there. And you build upon learning how to evaluate and how to use that good judgment and how to have that good judgment. But sometimes for the smartest, hardest working people, they don't have that good judgment. And I think that's what makes the difference.

That's fantastic. Can you develop it or is it. Is it kind of hardwired?

I think it's hardwired from the beginning, and it can be nurtured through experience, through mentors, through watching how people operate. I think all of that is possible. But if you don't have judgment, I see really smart. We have people. People are willing to stay up all night and work hard. I see all that all the time. And they don't succeed because they don't have that judgment.

Oh, God, she's smart. I cannot disagree. I can never really disagree with anything Linda Robinson says. And to be honest, after I spoke with her, I went back and I changed my pi360 tool that I mentioned above. I changed it a little bit to reflect her thinking about judgment, which falls, I think, into each one of the categories. People, ideas, and execution. So thank you, Lind. Now, you may be thinking here, but what if I don't have judgment? Like Linda Robinson says, what if I don't have it? And my answer is that worrying about whether you have judgment is half the battle. Actually, some people just forge ahead and they do what they want and when they want and how they want. But people with that judgment she's talking about, they have a propensity to stop and ask, is this the only way? Am I deciding too hastily? Do I need more inputs? I mean, they have discernment. This stopping and asking can be developed. And in fact, just by listening to this podcast, you're already starting to do so, which is very good news, isn't it? So thank you, Linda. You know, it's a tall order when she says, either you have it or you don't. But it can be developed with self awareness. Okay. I also rang up my friend Andrew Davis, who is the head of HR for Sony globally.

You're able to manage through all of the chaos of what life brings.

He is an absolute icon in HR and in business, and he's also been around icons his entire career as well. Andrew started his life in Jamaica, and his career, like the career of any successful person, has not been without its challenges. And I think that's what gives him the heart he has for inclusion and for people who are facing health battles. When I met Andrew, I met him on the train, the Amtrak. I was going down to teach in NYU's program in D.C. and there was this guy sitting next to me, and he was watching the Dolphins, which are my favorite football team, on his laptop. And I just butt my head in and started watching it with him. And he turned. This is just so Andrew. He turned his computer towards me so I could see it better. The rest is history. You heard a clip from Andrew Davis about multitasking, but I want to be clear that he said some other stuff first. He did. He mentioned relationship management, which he defined as being great with meeting people where they are, being great at listening, which is also part of people management. He mentioned resilience and emotional maturity, all part of the P part. He mentioned authenticity. These are all very true. And as I said, the P part of pie. But the thing that he said that I loved the most is captured by the E part of the my theory.

They're able to, you know, even when they get knocked down, they have such a incredible ability to get back up and to deal with multiple things at once. You know, I think about the things that you're. You're dealing with, right? And the things that you've got to manage in terms of, you know, your work life, your home life, you know, university, your books, podcast. They can juggle so many, but they're able to manage all that in a. In a very manageable way to make that stuff successful for their lives. So I'd say resilience, I'd say relationship management. And if there is probably a third, is authenticity. You're able to manage through all of the chaos of what life brings to solve other people problems, take care of their problems, and still be okay. There's something innate into someone's mind, heart and ability that they can actually take on so many things and wear the. Have these big shoulders to take on the world, but it doesn't feel like they have the weight of the world on their backs.

I just think what he said is so, so true. As he was saying it, I was nodding and nodding, and I think the question for today's podcast, is it true about you? Maybe what Andrew just said is the place in this podcast where you're thinking, well, I'm doomed. I. I can't do what he's saying. The juggling of a million things at one time, having the world weight on my shoulders and not feeling it But I, I would get fatalistic about it. You to get fatalistic about it. Again, the podcast is meant to inform and inspire you. No one starts out with the kind of capacity that Andrew was just talking about. He wouldn't say that. You can develop it with awareness, like, hey, I need capacity, I need to develop those muscles. And you can do that with deliberation and practice. So I hope we're all good. This is not meant to exclude you from success. It's meant to open your eyes and your arms to what success involves. Now we're coming to the second broker, second wife comment from the top of the podcast. But first, I have one other input which I really want to include, and it comes from John Byrne, who was the longtime editor of Business Week magazine, where he had an absolute front row seat on the world's most successful leaders. And then if that was not enough, he himself became a very successful entrepreneur and leader, launching and running Poets and Quants, which is a platform that covers the NBA world. So when I asked John, his first answer to me about success was immediately.

Execution, table stakes is simply delivering on what you commit to.

Then he went on to mention relationships, especially in terms of building long term allies, to use his word, that protect you and make work fun. But then he said something else.

I mean, I think there's one other thing, and we've seen it in a number of people that we both know, and that is having an outsized passion for what you do. You love what you do. You'd almost rather do nothing except that you live, you breathe it, you go home at night, you think about it, your mind is always working about how you can do things better. And you're sharing those thoughts with a bunch of people.

Who act as sounding boards and, and it's, it is all consuming and maybe a lot of people don't want to hear that. But if you're really want to be incredibly successful, and we're talking like uber success, you got to live it, you got to breathe it every single day of the week.

Honestly, I'm not sure that's explicitly in the PI theory in any way, but it's in there implicitly. I think it is. Passion is what, what drives you. It drives you towards being great in your relationships. It drives you in terms of coming up with great ideas, it drives great execution. It's the fuel. And the question that maybe you could be asking yourself right now is, do I have that passion? Because I don't know. I don't know a single successful person who is without it. So it's food for thought, this one. It's food for thought. Okay, now let us get to Deborah Grubin, our last guest on the show, our last visitor. If you live in New York City, you already know who she is because she is an icon. She's probably the single most successful real estate broker in the city, decade over decade. And she always has these record breaking sales. And she spent her career, career rubbing shoulders with the city's most successful people. And you know what? She's also one of them. Now. I will say those things about her, but I will never forget. I'll never forget Deborah sitting in my living room after Jack died. And I just felt her empathy pouring out all over me. And she just listened to me grieve. You know, we always think that successful people are kind of sharks and that real estate is sort of the. The most ferocious of the sharks. And not all of them are. Some of them are just wonderful, warm, giving people. And Deborah Grubman is exhibit A. So when I called Deborah for her insights on success, I was so happy to do it. Any excuse to speak to her is a good day. She came out with one answer.

You have to be honest. What happens is, if you're looking for a long career, you have to be honest. In the end, it has always served me well. If you're dishonest and you get the one deal, yes, you'll do the one deal, but you'll have no longevity. And I think that's true with everything, with every career, with every business, with doctors, with lawyers, with business people. I think that being honest always stands you in good stead. Occasionally being honest will go in what we call do a pitch for a property, and they'll say, what do you think it's worth? And I'll say 10 million. They'll have two other brokers come. One tells them 14, one tells them 15. They hire the one that tells them 15 because they like to think their property is worth more than I think it's worth. And what ends up happening is a year later, when the exclusive is up, they call me and they say, would you take it on? We overpriced it. It sat around. You were right. You told us the truth. We didn't want to hear it. We have an expression in our business which is better to be the second broker and the second wife.

Obviously. Let's focus on what she's saying about the second broker. When you're the second broker, people are coming to you because they are looking for the truth. They've been screwed or they've been misled and they want integrity. And they see that in you. They see someone they can trust. Trust is huge. It's huge when it comes to success. It shows up in the longevity and depth of your relationships with people. It shows up in the consistency of your ideas or importantly, you're willing, willingness to shepherd other people's ideas. It shows up in the reliability of your execution. People can trust you to do what you say you're going to do and get stuff done, you know, like passion. I think trust just knits it all together. I think it does. And so there you have it, the secrets of success. Being a builder, having judgment, demonstrating outsized capacity to carry the world on your shoulders and not think it's a burden. Burning with passion, being. Being filled with honesty and integrity. I mean, I still think it all comes down to pie. I do. I think it's all wrapped up in that. The quality of your relationships with people, your ideas and your execution. I think, and as I've said, all those things are part of pie. They amplify it, they make it richer, but it's all part of a piece. A piece of pie. Okay, that was bad. Sorry. Look, these drivers of success are so simple, aren't they? And they are so complex. They are so, so hard. You can't possibly have all of them right now. You can't. Nobody knows that's all of them right now. But you can have them as goals. I said that before and I want to say it again. The point of this podcast is not to scare you, intimidate you, make you think you're never going to be successful, but to inform and inspire you. Now, I want to say before we close that I know that there's. There are people out there right now who are asking, well, what about luck? Isn't success all luck? I hear this every single time I talk about pie. Isn't it all about luck? And I know some of you are going there in your heads, but here's my thinking from experience, by the way, luck is real. I've been the beneficiary of luck, but over the long term, luck tends to cancel itself out. You have good luck and then you have bad luck over decades. Luck evens out, generally over time. But the levers of success that we talked about today, they are not awash, they are real. And if you want real success, they are yours to grow into. Maybe not all at once, maybe not today, but over your life, slowly and surely, with deliberation and with intent. So that if you yearn for success, you can find it and become that you that you want to be.

Becoming youg is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muska Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Elisa Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul, and Tanya Joji. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is becoming you.