10 Ways To Make Your Success Inevitable

Episode #384 10 Ways To Make Your Success Inevitable

PRINCIPLES THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

New Year’s resolutions tend to be pretty ineffective, which is why in this episode, I’m going to show you how to focus on the things that really make a difference: the timeless principles that will make your success inevitable.

Traditionally, around this time we produce an episode focused on the outlook for the year ahead. This year, we decided to do something a little different. Rather than revisiting global macroeconomics, workforce trends, and the potential impact of AI on business, we’re going to focus on the success principles that will make a genuine difference… to you.

Your job is to distill the one or two principles that are most important in your context and work out how to embrace them in the coming year. There’s some work in this. It’s not just a casual listen, but I know you’re up for it. It’ll make all the difference as to how you launch into 2026.

Our CEO and producer, Em, sent me a link to a podcast episode from Alex Hormozi that really captivated me. Hormozi is the ultimate entrepreneur, and he really cuts to the chase. He’s absolutely done the work, he’s made gobs of money, and he understands the principles of success as well as anyone I’ve heard articulate them.

This is pretty simple. I’ll start by polishing up some of the success principles that I laid out in an earlier episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership, and then I’ll give you my spin on Hormozi’s brutal truths.

They’re guaranteed to give you a different perspective. If you can apply them consistently, your success will be inevitable.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE THEM…

The principles of success are universal. Whether you believe them or not, they are continually operating in the background. Just like Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market, there are unseen forces that determine where you’re likely to end up.

If you understand these principles and apply them in your life, it’s likely that you will be successful, and you’ll soon see why. By “successful”, I mean having the things in your life that make you truly happy and fulfilled.

For the purpose of this nerwsletter, we’ll focus mainly on career and business success, but I’m sure you’ll see the parallels with every other area of your life.

10 KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

A number of years ago, I took a deep dive into the things that I believe are the greatest predictors of success: Ep.138: It’s Not What You Know. I looked at the 10 factors that I think are the most likely to drive success in your career and business. So I want to start by taking a fly over the top of these.

1. It’s where you start.

I firmly believe that anyone can be successful if they were born in a developed country: Western Europe, Scandinavia, the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK… you know, the usual suspects. Every OECD country has sufficient access to education, healthcare, and social welfare (and, of course, even some of these are more favorable than others).

If you were born in the developed world, there is nothing to hold you back… except what’s in the six inches between your ears.

How do I know? Because over and over and over, people from all walks of life, all types of adversity, every variety of upbringing, and every socioeconomic background show us that it’s true.

2. It’s the values you hold.

Some people are doomed to follow the path of least resistance. Their values are malleable, and they adapt them depending on the situation. Having strong, consistent values that guide your behaviour is going to put you on the fast track to success, because they enable you to do things that are hard, unpalatable, or just plain scary.

3. It’s the work you put in.

Hard work is just table stakes. Don’t kid yourself that you can take it easy, choose to have balance in your life, and still reach the pinnacle of your career. The world simply doesn’t work like that.

In these strange days of ninth-place medals and participation trophies, it’s easy to forget that the world is a competitive place, and the people who outwork you are way more likely to succeed than you are. I hate to tell you this, it’s just true. You need to decide what trade-offs you’re willing to make.

4. It’s your willingness to do more than the next person.

As an extension of the last point on hard work, are you prepared to do what others won’t? Are you prepared to take accountability for your team and lead them to deliver superior results? Are you prepared to step into a volatile negotiation and work through the issues? Are you prepared to attack the root cause of a problem instead of fixing the symptoms with spit and gaffer tape? Are you prepared to hold your people to account for their behavior and performance?

This matters more than you can imagine.

5. It’s the tenacity you have.

Can you persevere? Do you have the stamina to withstand major setbacks and disappointments, and keep going anyway? Can you push ahead against all odds when others around you are giving up? Perseverance, resilience, and passion all seem to coexist in people who are successful: in both business and in life.

6. It’s the teams you build.

You’re going to come to realise that a lot of your success depends on being able to build the right team, and then get the most out of each individual. But this takes work. It takes attention. It takes focus. It requires hard decisions to be made about good people who can’t meet the standard you set. It takes a constant focus on developing their talent and not trying to show off your own.

7. It’s the reputation you carve out.

Every interaction you have builds your reputation. Are you reliable? Are you a hard worker? Are you prepared to do difficult things when they need to be done? Do you put self-interest aside to the greatest extent possible? And do you give a sh!t about others, or just yourself?

Your reputation will either enhance or damage your career progression. So start acting like you really believe that that’s true.

Every meeting is a job interview.

Every decision is an opportunity to improve your performance and the performance of your team.

Every interaction with your people either increases trust or diminishes it.

8. It’s the risks you take.

When I left CS Energy to start up Your CEO Mentor, I had more than one colleague come and say to me, “Oh, Marty, I’m incredibly impressed by your decision. You’re leaving a safe, secure, highly paid CEO job to pursue your passion. What a gutsy move.”

And yeah, I could have easily settled into CS Energy for another five years. but then I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

Every successful person knows that taking calculated risks is essential for success. But we tend to massively over-index the risk of doing something bold and different, and we under-index the risk of staying where we are.

9. It’s your attitude to learning.

I found a really big difference over the years between those people who rely on knowledge and those who rely on continuous learning.

The principle that knowledge is power can be extremely detrimental. It’ll actually rob you of the exponential growth that lifelong learners manage to achieve.

Continuous learning is incredibly valuable: making mistakes and learning from them; always having a keen interest to know more; seeking out alternative views to give you a more balanced perspective; listening to other people’s viewpoints; and being a student of life and business and people.

10. It’s your ability to build relationships.

Relationships are incredibly important to your success, but it’s not just about having powerful allies. Relationships swing in all directions. You need great relationships with your team members based on trust and respect, and you also need the people above you to support you and to believe in you.

They call these soft skills. But if you don’t have them, you’ll never be truly successful. Oh, and by the way, the people you choose to spend your time with really makes a difference.

As well as episode 138, there are two other episodes where I delve into success principles that are well worth revisiting:

• Ep.130: Counterintuitive Truths
• Ep.311: 12 Hard Leadership Truths.

THE WISDOM OF ALEX HORMOZI

Let me move on to Alex Hormozi’s wisdom. More and more, I found myself drawn to Hormozi via his podcast, The Game. And I also often listen to his wife, Leila, who has a podcast called Build.

Between them, there’s a huge amount of wisdom to be had, especially if you’re running your own business. They are the real deal, and the episode I’m going to look at today was called 15 Brutal Truths I Know at 36 That I Wish I Knew at 20.

I’m not going to go through all of them. Instead, I’m going to cherry-pick the stuff that I think will resonate most with our community of No Bullsh!t Leaders.
 

1. If you want to be successful, you will suffer.

… so, you have to choose a goal that’s sufficiently worth it.

Building a big business will suck. Alex even says the process is “horrible”. Making bets with uncertain outcomes; feeling the sting of criticism.

Make goals that are so big that they’re easily worth the pain. The cost of suffering is fixed, but the size of the goal isn’t, and you get to pick this.

2. You can beat 99% of people if you can master the shame of rejection, the boredom of repetition, and the pain of feedback.

This is super interesting. In the world of the No Bullsh!t Leader, we know that leading is hard, and to do it well demands that we let go of some of our most basic urges:

• Respect before popularity
• Excellence over perfection
• Friendly, not friends
• Saying no to dumb shit

All of these things go against the grain, and most leaders never master them.

3. What you do next is always more important than what you did last.

I love this one. I was watching a college football playoff game today, and one of the head coaches was being interviewed after the halftime break. He said something super interesting: “We’ve got to get good at selective amnesia. If we make a bad play, we wipe it and move on. It’s only the next play that counts.”

Always look to the next play.

4. You need to do so much volume that it’s unreasonable that you would fail.

People grossly underestimate how many reps it takes to get good at something. In the beginning of anything, you will suck.

I wish I was a better golfer, but I don’t play often enough to be better: I know that I could be a really good golfer, but I’d have to dedicate a lot more time to it: to practice enough; to play enough rounds; to take enough lessons that failure would become unreasonable.

You can apply this principle to anything: learning to fly a plane; dating; having difficult conversations with your people.

Volume counts.

5. Extrapolate any past successes to future success.

We tend to fear new situations, because we don’t see the applicability of our previous successes. Working this out is a huge confidence builder. Skills are generalisable.

Because I did it in this area, I can apply it in another area. For example, in my case, because I’ve run a few marathons, I know I have the mental strength to keep going through virtually any hardship.

And if you’re one of our younger, up-and-coming, No Bullsh!t Leaders, you’ll find this one interesting: Hormozi says that if you’re young, you should work as many hours as you possibly can, while you can. You won’t always have that much energy to give, trust me.

I still have enormous energy, but it’s not a patch on the energy I had in my 20s and 30s. Hormozi says you should capitalise on it while you have it. Dig the well before you’re thirsty.

6. Keep showing up every day, even when the rewards are not guaranteed.

Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty that you’re able to tolerate, and for how long: you don’t know whether or not you’re going to get the promotion; you don’t know if your new product will sell; you don’t know if anyone’s going to listen to your podcast.

The people who keep showing up are the ones who eventually succeed. In another episode, Hormozi said, “If you’re building a business, you have to work your face off for 10 years. If you haven’t been hard at it for 10 years, you can’t really expect to be successful.”

7. One of the biggest returns on effort is long-term thinking.

Why? Because so few people are willing to do it.

Even though there’s a big push at the moment around being present and being in the moment, sometimes that focus can be an anchor on progress. If you can think about your long-term position, it’s going to force you to solve today’s problems.

If you’re in a hole, do whatever it takes to get out of it quickly. There’s no way you’re going to be able to think about self-actualisation as long as you’re worried about how to pay the rent.

8. Sadness comes from a perceived lack of options.

I’ve had a number of clients over the last several years who’ve confessed to me that they’d rather not be doing what they’re doing, but they feel trapped.

Hormozi says that fear exists in the vague, not in the specific. And this one is incredibly insightful. I call it naming the beast, and I speak about this principle at length in the Resilience module of Leadership Beyond the Theory.

Be specific about what you would prefer and what it would take to get it. What trade-offs are you currently unwilling to make? What are you afraid of? And what’s the worst that can happen?

If you call it out explicitly, it takes a lot of the power out of your fear.

9. Saying no to almost everything is the price for getting good at the most important thing.

This is just simplicity and focus in action.

Focus on the thing that makes the most difference. Don’t expect that you’re going to find success by shot-gunning around and trying a million different things. Focus on the one thing that you’re trying to achieve, and be relentless. You get lucky by staying in the game for long enough for luck to find you.

Some call this serendipity.

10. The only belief you need is belief in your own ability to figure it out.

Huge shout-out here to my daughter and the CEO of our business, Em, on this one. She’s been beating the house odds for years by constantly evolving, growing, and figuring it out for our business. Em’s learnt more about running a business in the last seven years than I did in my first 20.

So the moral of the story is, don’t wait for perfect conditions. Just start. And once you start, stick with the uncommon path for an extended period of time, long after it makes sense to stop.