SDS 042: Secret to success

This has been the hardest episode for me to record yet. This is probably my eighth time recording this episode, and the reason for that is because of the question in this episode and what I’m trying to answer. So I’m just going to make this the last time I’m doing this, and whatever comes out of it comes out of it. Basically, let’s get to the point. Not so long ago, I got a question where a person was asking me, “Kirill, how have you managed to accomplish what you’ve accomplished? What is your success story? Basically, what is the driver for your success story?” And it’s a hard question to answer because it kind of puts you in a position where something is telling you that you are successful and you have to build it for yourself. Your definition of success is different. Everybody has their own definition of success.

And in fact, success is, stepping to the side a bit, veering off on a tangent for a second, success — I don’t think success is just a career, or finance, or business. There’s lots of elements of success. There’s personal life, there’s sports, there’s health, there’s family that are part of success. There’s lots of areas that make up success, and when one person might see another person has been successful, that same person might not think they are successful, or not yet. That’s kind of like the general thing.

But in this case, the question was specific around, well the way I understand it, it was specific around careers, business, startups, and so on. And then again, it’s also a hard question because you’re kind of being put in the position where – I don’t want to say, I don’t want to position myself as I am successful, and I am going to now preach to you, I’m going to teach you how to be successful. Not at all. I think I have so much more that I want to accomplish, so many more goals, so many more targets and things I want to do in the not so distant future, in the near future, that I want to achieve. So by far, I’m not anywhere even close to where I want to be. So that’s that part.

But at the same time, it is important, I think, for everybody to, when you have certain wins, when you have certain accomplishments, to sometimes save some time to reassess what has helped you get here. What should you be doing more of, what should you be doing less of. And that’s how I took this situation. That this is a situation for me to stop and understand what I am doing right, that I’m on the right track. I think I’m on the right track, and I’m going towards my goals, and I’m accomplishing things that I want to accomplish. And so basically, what are the options here? Well let’s review the question again. The question is, what is that one key driver for success? What do you view as that one key driver? And there are a couple of options, or multiple-choice answer questions. I feel we’ve all got multiple-choice. And these are just some of the ones that popped to mind.

For instance, networks. Networks could be a reason for somebody’s success, because they are very well connected, they know influencers, and within the click of their fingers, they can open doors and so on. And talent. Talent could be a reason for success. Maybe from birth, you were very good at music or something. Talent doesn’t go without hard work still, but some people are very extremely talented, and maybe that’s the reason to success. Some people are just lucky. That’s luck, and they win the lottery, or something like that. And that can be their reason for success.

But out of all of them, for me, and I think for many people, many people agree with this. The one that stands out is hard work. Hard work is often quoted as the reason for success, and this time, it’s not going to be different. For me, it’s always been hard work, whether it was at school, high school, whether it was at university, whether it was at Deloitte, in the industry, in my own business, it’s always been hard work all the time every day. And whenever I stop working hard, I think everybody has those times, and me definitely, I have times when I stop working hard and, for some reason, whether I’m just tired, I’m getting burned out, or something else is going on in life, then I can see that progress is slowing down. My progress specifically in career, in business, in entrepreneurship, in data science, in all of these things that are related to career, that progress really starts slowing down then when I stop working hard.

So answering that question, definitely 100%, it’s always been hard work. It’s probably not the case for everybody, but for me, it’s been always a safe bet. I’ve always thought, what is something that I can definitely rely on myself, where I don’t have to be dependent on others, or dependent on factors that I can’t control. Like networks, that’s being dependent on others. Luck, definitely those are factors you can’t control. Talent, it’s a bit of something you can’t control, something you can control. But again, I’ve heard of cases where somebody has a talent and then something happens, and then they don’t have a talent any more, and that’s it.

So for me it’s always been hard work is the safe bet, and basically that’s the secret of success. And I have a little note that hangs on my wall where it says, it used to be, “Work hard.” It used to always be, work hard, and that’s going to bring you success. And then I listened to some people, I read some books, and then I changed it. I crossed it out and I changed it to “Be efficient.” Or “work efficiently.” Or something like that, where some people say, “You don’t have to work hard, you just have to work very efficiently.” But then, I thought about it, and I actually watched quite a few videos by Gary Vaynerchuk, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but if you haven’t, check him out. So Gary Vaynerchuk, or Gary Vee, is a very influential person in the space of entrepreneurship and shares a lot of information about how he’s done his businesses and he’s got a daily show on Youtube, he’s got a few books, his awesome book “Crush It”, his first book, definitely check that out.

So “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk, and with a lot of his videos, or even in the book, he says that people come to him and say, “Hey Gary, you always say work hard, work hard, work hard. But I work efficient.” But Gary is actually quite unapologetic in the words that he uses, but putting it in a nice way, he just tells them that, “Well actually, you know what, I work efficient and I work hard.” That working efficient and working hard beats working efficient by itself. So basically, then I crossed it out again after a year or so, and now it says again, “Work hard.” Out-work the competition, basically. But that’s related to business. But in other aspects of life, out-work everybody else. Be the hardest worker and you will get your success.

So that’s my two cents on being successful. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Hope you got a bit of a takeaway from here. If anything, check out Gary Vaynerchuk “Crush It”, great book. I listened to it on an audio book. If you have audible.com, it takes I think 4 or 6 hours to go through that book. Definitely worth checking it out. All about hard work. Thank you very much for being here today with me. I hope to see you next time. And until then, happy analyzing.