One Question Friday: Where Did You Succeed Where Others Did Not?

oh gaston on what's the wifi f i can't no i can't get in oh it's ar ar connect your teams easier than connecting your wifi f hubspot grow better all hands on deck what's up it's sean and it is one question friday so we are taking one listener question and answering it on the spot hopefully five minutes maybe ten minutes let's see how this goes i'm gonna play this audio recording that ben sent to me i haven't heard it yet let's hear it together so was having a call at the other day and i was thinking about this question what do you do differently that allowed you to succeed that you think other people who had similar circumstances to you did not where did you succeed where they did not okay good question a very broad question right so we could take this a bunch of different ways here's how i wanna take it what are the common answers that you think people would give to a question like this so what do you do differently that helps you succeed well some people will say yeah was breaking into groups there's the overly humble the overly humble will say you know i've all credit to god i've been blessed i was really lucky and you know i just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other and worked hard and and and i you know i'm just fortunate to be born in this great place with all my my limbs and my brain and all this right okay there's that path all true things but not that useful to somebody listening so let's let's kick that out also that applies to many other people who didn't have the same result as you so that certainly couldn't be it okay second thing hard work right hard work is the next thing that people love to say i think because hard work feels like you earned it and it feels like you're not saying you're better than everybody else that feels like you made better choices than others that were available to them too and who can argue with hard work but the reality is i really don't work very hard or at least i don't feel that way the the thing i would say is i actually do work a lot but i only work on stuff i like and so i think hard workers you know like a jan works hard a line cook works hard you know a single mother works hard you know and so i i don't really put what i do has you know pretty much no physical strain no emotional you know small emotional strain i guess and you know honestly it's fun like i do it because i enjoyed it i'm not doing it because i kind of feel like i have to do this in order to get what i want that is not at all how i think about things and if there are many areas where i'm like oh man if i worked harder i'd get a better result i can't bring myself to do it i'm lazy in that way the reason i work a bunch is because i really like it feels like play to me it's like watching somebody play a video game you you don't have to tell them hey sit down and focus on this for three hours it's like what you talking about this call it of duty of course i'll play this as long as i can and so it's not hard work so what is it then well you said something in your question which was what's different about you than like what what did you do differently than like others like you in similar situations to you okay that's a good way of asking the question let's take my college right here more in the shirt i went to duke and there's a bunch of super smart people who went to duke in fact at duke i was a very mediocre student middle of the pack maybe slightly below average and you know whatever it's a good school a lot of smart people a lot of hard workers okay i do think that i've had probably more success you know by kind of a traditional definition but also just more fun than ninety nine percent of the other people who graduated in my class i could be wrong no way to really know but i believe that to be true from from what i've seen so what is different what i would say is that most of my friends from college most of the people i went to school with played it quote unquote safe and is it really safe that's the question and because to me safe is good if you can get the outcome you want with the least risk possible safe is awesome right like i don't wanna you know go to war because the outcome i want is to be alive and like i can just stay at home and that is way less risk than going to war but i also don't just stay at home and not drive places because i wanna go see i wanna go to a movie or i wanna go to the grocery store or whatever that i have an outcome i want but i'll take the least rich risk possible i'm not gonna you know drive from motorcycle drive call you get the idea so to me safety is when you get the outcome you want with the least risk taken what i saw was most of my friends from college took what was what you would call a safe path if you wanted that outcome the reality is that i definitely did not want the outcome that those jobs led to so the jobs the most popular tracks were doctor kind like lawyer consultant or banker those are like the kind of like high achieve or paths that i would say most of the smart smartest people in at at my school did and i guess the other one just be like corporate manager of some kind okay cool so the problem with that is when i look at what success looks like for a doctor for a lawyer for a consultant for a banker or for a corporate manager none of those by default would get me the outcome i want it right i was like dude i wanna make tons of money i wanna have fun every day i wanna have action creativity i don't wanna just be doing the same thing over and over right like i shadow to doctor because i was prem mad i took the mca i was planning to go to med school until i shadow to doctor and i went to shadow him to figure out can i do this but by the end of it the answer i walked away with was i don't want to do this because it was extremely repetitive what was happening every day and you're helping people which is awesome but i could not stand their repetitive nature of seeing patients and having the same you know it's orthopedic guy up yep you have torn meniscus you have a torn l you have joint pain and there's nothing we could do for you that's that's what it was over and over and over again and so i didn't want the winning path of that so financially some some paths i was like oh man you work how hard and you make how much and like is there a path here where i could have like i don't know fifty million dollars like what if i want fifty million dollars right you don't have to want it but let's say i do want it because i do right i i'm not afraid to say i'm not ashamed of the things i wanted i was like that sounds awesome if i could choose between less money and more money i'm choosing more money right that was very obvious to me at the time and when i looked at how much you could make in a certain amount of time the first let's say ten years of your career i was like wow okay finance i might be able to get there but not really these other paths okay maybe i do it in finance or consulting but what do i have to do to get there oh man i gotta grind eighty ninety hours a week kind of as the low man on the tote pole and i'm just like an excel monkey and i'm like you know i'm not building i'm not creating anything new and i'm not building my own business i'm like just this kind of like middle that's what i felt like or corporate management that's cool but like i gotta go to an office every day nine to five wear a certain thing and talk a certain way and spend a bunch of my days doing you know like you know certain meetings that i didn't wanna do like you know out talent calibration and like you know employee onboarding and all this bullshit right so i didn't find that fun and i even saw people who are playing that game at a high level so for example when we got acquired by twitch i saw well what does the ceo of a multi billion dollar company do every day and what does you know the vp product do and what does the cto what do these people do every everyday what if i look at their day and i don't want it then why am i in this track so i would say the fur the most important thing i did differently was get clear on what i actually wanted how i wanted my life to go and then i looked at the quote unquote safe tracks and i realized pretty quickly that those don't get me to that thing i want so in that sense they're not safe at all they're extremely dangerous to my goals right are you following that like if you if you look at what you want if you have a clear picture of what you want and then you look at these safe path and you say does the safe path get me to what i want and the answer is no then it is not safe it's extremely risky because it's putting my dream at risk and knowing what you want also takes a little bit of work so take some time take some imagining take some sampling i would go and meet bunch of people and be like so what's your life like you know okay you have this much money what how does that work you have this work schedule how does that you never see your kids okay that that doesn't sound like a win right like my buddy dated to girl in college my my roommate was dating a girl in college and her dad was a i you know whatever partner at whatever deloitte boston consulting whatever whatever it was and you know she was just like yeah growing up like he was home thursday through sunday and then he would fly out on or thursday through saturday you'd fly out sunday and he'd be at a client site i from you know sunday through thursday every week and they fly back and he was super tired and that was the first eighteen years of my life so i i immediately could cross that safe path of consulting off because if that's how the the top of the top do it in that field then i don't wanna do it and of course there are outliers in every in every industry every track there are outliers but then i'd have to be really clear that hey am i betting on being an outlier in that path if so then i gotta be willing to make that choice so for example i chose entrepreneurship what i knew was that the day to day of an entrepreneur sounded really fun i get to build a a product a create a product from scratch maybe invent a new product i get to sell it that sounds interesting marketing as i always found fun and you know i get to go on this ride where sometimes i'm pitching to investors sometimes customers sometimes i'm putting out a fire over here that sounded really fun to me and i tried it out and actually really enjoyed it and i knew that okay most entrepreneurs don't make it but i thought well if i really enjoy this i'm i'm probably gonna be willing to do it for ten fifteen years and what i saw was that most people would quote these statistics that ninety percent of businesses fail or that this individual idea has a very low chance of have very low chance of success and that is true most individual ideas and businesses do fail and the way the quote i heard was that yes startups fail but entrepreneurs don't what that means is that if you look at any great entrepreneur any entrepreneur who sticks with it who really tries hard and actually has some skill over a ten to fifteen year year period they all win right they tend to they tend to win mode the odds are in their favor that in a ten to fifteen year period they do have a win and when they win for they win in an order of magnitude of millions and millions of dollars okay great so even the one idea that i'm doing this year might not have the highest odds of success if i just keep keep at this for ten fifteen years my odds of success go from individually very low to collectively over ten fifty years very high so i love that i love the size of the prize i love the likelihood hit of success and i love the day day to get there which told me i'll probably stick with it long enough to hit a win and so that's how i chose what i wanted to do so in summary what i think i did differently was get clear on what i wanted and then i what i recognized was that the quote unquote safe paths weren't really so safe after all because they had a very low chance of getting me to that outcome that i wanted and so in that sense there were the risky paths of all whereas most people i think gravitate towards something that sounded good in theory or sounded good to their parents or sounded good to their aunts and uncles and their peers and their teachers and whoever and they said yep this this sounds good and they got onto a track that actually won't lead them to a lifestyle that they want whereas i figured out the lifestyle i wanted first and then i figured out and then i looked at what tracks can get me there and i chose the safest amongst those alright that's all i hope that was helpful come i know that was helpful it had to be helpful right i put my i put my heart into that one so i hope that it was helpful i hope i might have took an idea that you already had and maybe put it a little differently or to the front of your mind and maybe it was buried in the back of your mind that's that's a win for me out of these so one question friday in the books brought