What Successful People Do - Business School with Sharran Srivatsaa

Summary

Podcast Summary: "What Successful People Do"

Business School with Sharran Srivatsaa
Host: Sharran Srivatsaa
Episode: What Successful People Do
Release Date: October 15, 2024

Introduction

In the episode titled "What Successful People Do," Sharran Srivatsaa delves into the core habits and strategies that set highly successful individuals apart. Drawing from personal experiences and observations of accomplished entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, and consultants, Sharran identifies five simple yet powerful traits that contribute to sustained success. These traits are not only actionable but also straightforward enough to be implemented by anyone aiming to elevate their personal and professional lives.

1. Focused Vision

Timestamp: [00:00 - 09:00]

Sharran emphasizes that a focused vision is the cornerstone of success. Unlike vague aspirations such as "making more money" or "building better relationships," successful people define their goals with precision and clarity. They know exactly what they want, how to achieve it, and are committed to doing the work necessary.

Notable Quote:
"Success is all about knowing what you want, having a plan to get there, and doing the work, literally, that's it."
— Sharran Srivatsaa [00:39]

Practical Application: Sharran advises listeners to write and rewrite their goals daily from memory. This practice ensures that goals are not just abstract ideas but are internalized and become a guiding force in daily actions.

Example:
Instead of saying, "I want to lose weight," specify, "I want to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks."

2. Investment in Talent and Knowledge

Timestamp: [09:01 - 16:00]

Successful individuals understand the immense value of investing in talented people and continuous learning. Sharran points out that having the right team can exponentially amplify one's success. Rather than cutting corners to save money, they prioritize bringing in A-players who can deliver superior results.

Notable Quote:
"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
— Sharran Srivatsaa [14:30]

Practical Application: Sharran encourages listeners to seek partnerships and collaborations with highly skilled individuals. Whether it's hiring, investing, or forming joint ventures, aligning with talented individuals can open doors to unprecedented opportunities.

Action Step:
Reach out to potential partners or hire top talent even if it requires a higher investment, as the returns on quality can far exceed the initial costs.

3. Time Mastery

Timestamp: [16:01 - 23:00]

Mastering time management is crucial for maintaining productivity and achieving goals. Sharran shares personal strategies for handling overwhelming communication channels, such as managing multiple phones and prioritizing emails over text messages.

Notable Quote:
"Successful people run most of their lives on energy-centric schedules."
— Sharran Srivatsaa [22:15]

Practical Application: Identify and optimize your primary medium of communication. By setting boundaries and focusing on platforms that align with your workflow, you can protect your time and energy from unnecessary distractions.

Example:
If emails are more manageable than texts for you, prioritize email communication and set clear expectations with your contacts.

4. Relationship Building

Timestamp: [23:01 - 28:30]

Building and managing relationships effectively is another trait of successful individuals. Sharran highlights the importance of integrating positive relationships and compartmentalizing negative ones to maintain focus and emotional stability.

Notable Quote:
"Being able to compartmentalize distractions is a superpower for successful people."
— Sharran Srivatsaa [27:45]

Practical Application: Cultivate relationships that provide support and strength, while learning to set aside or manage those that drain your energy. This balance allows you to stay focused on your objectives without being hindered by personal conflicts or stressors.

Action Step:
Regularly assess your relationships and determine which ones contribute positively to your life and which ones may need to be managed differently for your well-being.

5. Personal Growth and Reflection

Timestamp: [28:31 - 30:58]

The final trait discussed is the commitment to continuous personal growth and reflection. Sharran asserts that success is deeply connected to how you think about your thinking. By constantly evaluating and refining their thought processes, successful people enhance their problem-solving abilities and adapt more effectively to challenges.

Notable Quote:
"Success is about thinking about your thinking."
— Sharran Srivatsaa [29:45]

Practical Application: Engage in regular self-reflection practices, such as journaling or seeking feedback from mentors or coaches. This introspection helps in identifying areas for improvement and fosters a mindset geared toward growth and resilience.

Example:
When faced with a setback, instead of viewing it purely as a failure, analyze how your thoughts and strategies contributed to the outcome and how you can adjust moving forward.

Conclusion

Sharran Srivatsaa's episode on "What Successful People Do" offers actionable insights into five fundamental traits that drive success:

Focused Vision: Clearly define what you want and internalize your goals.
Investment in Talent and Knowledge: Surround yourself with talented individuals who can amplify your efforts.
Time Mastery: Manage your time and energy by prioritizing effective communication channels.
Relationship Building: Foster positive relationships and effectively manage or compartmentalize negative ones.
Personal Growth and Reflection: Continuously evaluate and improve your thought processes to adapt and grow.

By implementing these strategies, listeners can create a robust roadmap for their own success, aligning their actions with their goals and maintaining the focus necessary to achieve them.

For more insights and resources, visit Sharran.com.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Hey, this is Sharon Srivatsa. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to break down for you the five simple things that successful people do. I actually did a little study and I looked at all the successful people that I know, my friends who I know personally, who I know well, who are amazing entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, consultants. I'm like, what is what makes them deeply successful? And I wanted to kind of understand that. And I found five really powerful traits that make them successful. They're simple, they're tactical, and you could do them just like they do it for themselves. And I break it all down for you, starting right now.

B (0:39)

One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and.

A (0:53)

The exact how to.

B (0:55)

How to grow your business, how to.

A (0:58)

Blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.

B (1:01)

That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Srivatta, and welcome to Business School.

A (1:14)

Successful people clearly do things differently and we all know what they are, but no one has actually given us the simple things that, that they do differently. And I have had a chance to spend a lot of time with a lot of successful people and I always look past the obvious. I want to see what do they do that is a pattern? What do they do that's repeatable? What do they do that's simple? What do they do that is a simple shift that I can install in my life and in my business and I can create this roadmap for you. I actually summarize this into 13 things, but I'm only going to give you five today because what is the point of being simple if I can't keep it short? I want to give you five simple things that successful people do. Going to give you the big idea and practically how I've seen other people do it, how I've tried it in my life, and maybe that will help you as well. So let's get into number one. And the first one is there is a focused vision. We've talked about successful people having vision and all of that, but let me tell you how I understand this. What is really success all about? And if you take that, anyone in the world can have success, and that is knowing what you want, having a plan to get there, and doing the work, literally, that's it. That's what success is all about. Knowing what you want Having a plan to get there and doing the work right. And now, each of the while, I understand that this is easier said than done from a very simplistic perspective. If you can just ask yourself, hey, do I know exactly what I want? Do I have a plan to get there? And can I do? Am I doing the work right? Most of the time, it breaks down in one of these three things. But the focused vision for successful people is that they know exactly what they want. They can define success very clearly. And most of us don't have that. Most people in the world, they just say, oh, I want to make more money. I want to have better relationships, I want to be healthier, I want to lose some weight, I want to start a business, I want to become famous. But they don't say, hey, I want to make $10,000 in the next month. I want to make a million dollars in the next three years. They don't say, I want to grow my profitability by 21%. They don't say, I want to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. They don't say, I want to find somebody who I can have a relationship with that can do A, B, and C. The clarity that goes into this is really important. And it's not like having this master document that you write a bunch of stuff into that you can never refer to. You just need to know it and internalize it. Successful people have a very clear vision where they have summarized it in language and made that a part of who they are. And how you want to think about this is this one very simple thing. And I want to tell you a story which will change your life forever. Because it did for me. I was speaking on stage one time, and somebody came up after, and I was having the conversation. They're like, hey, Sharon, what would be one thing that you would suggest to me so that will allow me to achieve my goals? And while that is a pretty generic question, I have a very specific answer, and that is to write and rewrite your goals from memory every single day in the present tense, right? Write and rewrite your goals from memory every single day. Now, it's cool if you had five goals, such as make a million dollars, lose 12 pounds, learn how to fly a kite, and buy a Lambo, if those were your goals, those are cool. Those are your goals. But the job to really embed that, to really make that the filtering mechanism for your life, is to write and rewrite them from memory. So if you're not able to write and rewrite your goals from memory, I'M sorry, you just don't have them. The idea of like planning and creating a kind of goal infrastructure is one thing, but actually being able to recall it and, and make it a part of your daily life is something completely different. So I told this guy, I said, hey, I would wake up every morning and I would write your goals. I would write and rewrite them from memory every morning. And about like 45, 50 days later, I can't remember the exact timeline. He writes me a message and sends me a picture, direct message on Instagram. He sends me a picture of how he wrote and rewrote his goals from memory every single day. And he's like, sean, I can't believe it. I've already started to like check things off my list. Now I'm not trying to say that this is the secret or anything like that. What I am saying is there is a filter to how we all live our lives. And if you were hungry, right if you were hungry right now, your body and your mind and your spirit and everything is looking around to see where you can get food. If you were driving on the highway and you had to go to the bathroom, all you're looking for is a rest stop. If you are stuck trying to solve a personal problem or all you're looking for is a solution. If you are single and you want to find a partner, all you're looking for is a spouse. If you don't have money and you really need to make some, all you're looking for is a way to find money. Now that is the level of a heat seeking missile that we need to have in our level of focus. Because there's a great Dan Sullivan quote where he says your eyes only see and your ears only hear what you're looking for. Did you hear that? It's the, the cool part about that is the last few words what you are looking for. Your eyes only see and your ears only hear what you are looking for. And that's what I want to kind of communicate with you is what is the definition of success? The definition of success for each of us is very different. Some people want to make more money. Some people want to have better health. Some people want to have time, freedom. Some people want to have financial freedom. Some people want to have, want to buy a boat, a yacht. Some people want to have better relationships. Some people want mastery. Success is very different, which is why all of us seek different things. So what is success? Knowing exactly what you want, having a plan to get there and doing the work. And I think the Thing that successful people do better than any of us is that there's no way that they don't know exactly what they want. And that is my number one thing, which is the focus vision. You ask a successful person, hey, tell me about your goals. Now, not every like Bezos and Zuck are not going to tell you their goals. Like that doesn't make any sense. But if you ask your peer, hey, talk to me about your goals and you have a good enough relationship. And if they are dialed in, if they are successful, if they have the right mindset, they'll be able to reel out their goals because they can write and rewrite it from memory every single day. So that's the one thing that I have done that has changed my life forever, which is writing and rewriting my key goals every single day. I do not start my day without rewriting my goals every single morning. I write them in the same place, I write them in the same notebook. I write them by hand. But doing that allows me, gives me this filter of looking through the lens of my goals in everything that I am doing. It allows me to say yes more easily, it allows me to say no more effortlessly. So the focused vision is super important. And I see that is the number one thing what successful people do. So if you don't write and rewrite your goals from memory, heck, if you don't even have a very specific way to hit it, no problem at all. Now is your chance to write it down once. I'd say no more than three to five goals at any given time. I'll tell you what I do. I try doing quarterly kind of bigger rocks based on these annual, you know, kind of bigger targets. And so I can write and rewrite my goals every single day. So that's what I would recommend that you do. Because that is what successful people do. Here's number two, which is the investment in talent and knowledge. I'll tell you what I mean by this is that I have found the best, biggest leverage is all about getting the greatest people in your corner. Now, sure, you could be like, yeah, I'm not a manager. I could create a little quick small business for myself and make some have some success. Yes, for sure. But if you want anything major, if you want the massive insurance policies on achieving your goals, that is making sure you have the right people in your corner. And I will tell you right now, in my life, I've realized that it's not about the strategy or the tactics. It is only about the people. If I can find one person that is talented. Any person that I find, that I feel, that I meet, that I know is talented, I want to figure out how I can do something with them. I want to figure out, can I hire this person? Can I offer this person a piece of my company? Can I give them a shot at doing a project? Can I joint venture with them? Can I invest in their business? Can I do something to be involved with them so that I know that I can have a partner that I can work with in some way? Right now I've changed my mindset of looking for, quote, talent and employees, and I'm looking for this idea of partnership. Who can I find that is so darn successful, so darn talented? They just have not been given the vehicle, they have not been given the environment, they've not been given the support system that I could probably give them. I will tell you, behind every super successful person is their number two. Is their number two who wants to be the number two, is their number two who gets insane glory, insane fulfillment from being the number two. If the job is not to always be number one, the job is to be successful. And what is to be successful? To be very clear, to know exactly what you want, to have a plan of getting there, and to do the work. If that is truly the case, then why does anything matter whether you're a number one or number two or number 55? I have zero problems stripping myself of all titles if I know that from a being successful perspective, if I can get truly whatever I want, and that's what's super exciting. So today I believe that we are in the game of talent, talent to get great people in their own unique ability, to see if we can figure out how we can give them great partnership. So if you're a founder, if you're listening to this and you're a founder of a company and it's struggling to grow, or if you are an operator and you haven't found the company that you want to be a part of, or if you're just an expert in your field, right? If you're an entrepreneur and you have a company, if you're an operator and you want and you're looking for your next gig, or, or if you're just an expert in your field, can you just go ahead and just DM me on like one of the platforms, Instagram maybe, and just tell me about you? Because I have not had a chance to meet you. And what you may want is probably what I already have. I probably have a business that you can be a COO or a president or a director of operations in and if you're a founder, I probably have an operator for you. If you're a technician, I probably have a way to plug you into something that can get you amazing results. I probably have that. And so I found that the most successful people have turned their mindset away from how do I make more money, how to have a better business model. And they've just realized that if they, they're in the business of having great partners with the most amazing people in the world. The quote substandard successful people, you know what they do? They always try to get the cheapest stuff. Hey, I'm going to hire, I'm going to go on a random Filipino VA board, I'm going to try to go to onlinejobs ph and try to like put out these resumes and try to find a candidate and try to get them to and then negotiate them to like a $1 an hour and then I'm mad because they stole my credit card information instead of just going to a company like assistantly telling them what you want and having them find the best talent for you, right? The unsuccessful people cut corners but the successful people do not cut corners. They have no problem paying for great talent. And paying for great talent is a really powerful thing because. Because if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, right? You probably will pay an a player 10 to 20% more than market but the output is probably 8 to 10x more. Think about this for a second. You're going to pay somebody 10 to 20 times 20% more than market but they will give you 10x better results. And when you realize that that's how much you can create amazing result in your business, you realize that it's not about the money anymore. It's about making it work for that talented individual. So if I were you, I would think about who could I partner with, who could I have a relationship with, who can I bring into my business, how can I structure this deal? Successful people also know that it's not just about the money. Most people just want a shot. I have found, I have multiple times started businesses, started companies, hired people in my business. I know they were great. I told them the truth, that hey, this business is not making money. And I've had people tell me hey man, I'll work with you for free. I know you'll make it right. I know you'll always do right by me. And those are the people that are still with me today. And there's so many things that I've done. The reason why, if you told me, hey Sharon, I'm looking for a media buyer, the reason I can pull out one and make an introduction to the courses immediately is because I know that they're that good because they've been with me through thick and thin. Right? That's why this is really important. So number two, successful people understand an investment in talent and knowledge that when you hire an A player, when you find somebody that's talented, you want to do whatever it takes to, to do something with them because that's what's going to open up great opportunities for you. Here's number three, which is time mastery. Now a lot of people think about time mastery as successful people are just rude with their time. Now I'll give you a different example. My many of you know, my really good friend Alex Ramosi shared this cool idea with me and he's like, because I was struggling with just keeping up with the email and I get a lot of email every day and he's like, Sean and I. And I was just like trying to get inbox zero. And he goes, sean, you told me that you get two to 3,000 text messages a day. And I'm like, yes, I do. He goes, are you able to get through all of them? I'm like, nope. He goes, do you think you'll ever get through all your text messages? I'm like, no. He goes, well, assume the same thing happened with email. I go, what do you mean? He's like, shan, you're able to do work on your email right now because you just don't have that volume that you have in your text messages. So like I personally cannot respond to 3,000 plus text messages a day. I get that many because we have a 22,000 person organization and every time Dick inherit he just wants to text me, right? And that's okay. Like I text people too. But I'm, I'm on the receiving end of an insane amount of volume of text messages and I just, I absolutely cannot keep up and I have, I don't have one, one spare phone. I have two. So I actually carry around three phones which one is my current phone, one is my quote, work phone and one is my ultra secret personal phone. I carry three phones and even then I can't keep up. Now the key part of what I'm telling you is from a time mastery perspective, what successful people have figured out is they've figured out their medium, they figure out how they work. So for example, for you, if you text me, I'm going To tell you right now, I will never respond to you, right? Because they're like, oh, for a faster response, just text me. No, do not text me because you will never get a response. Now, I have wired my life where I can actually respond to email. So I am very good on my email. I stay on top of it. And if I need help, I can loop other people in, but I stay on top of my email. I'm actually. I get through most of my email in 24 to 48 hours, which is as fast as I can get to it. But there are text messages that will fall through the cracks. And what I mean by time mastery is two things. One, successful people have figured out that their medium of communication is whatever their choice is. I actually have a friend right now who told me that he never wants to check email ever again. Now, it's completely opposite to me. He said to me he wants to run all his businesses and all his initiatives just on text message. He does not ever want to check his email again. He. He also told me that he doesn't want any meetings on his calendar. So he's choosing to put whatever he wants on his calendar. He has no calendar link. He only wants to communicate in text message, and he doesn't want any email. It's very opposite to me. I run my calendar. My calendar runs my life. I'm very like, time focused on how I manage stuff and I use email. He's 100% the opposite, but him and I are good friends. But he has a very clear perspective on how he's actually going to run his life. Now, the people that check DMs on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera, then they checked all the text messages and all their social platforms. Then they check their pings, dings and Bings, Then they check their emails and voicemails. Then they check whatever else, Slack and Microsoft Teams, et cetera. You can spend your whole day just checking inbound messages. At some point, you have to run your world the way you want to run your world. And if you have to come into other people's worlds because they have the upper hand, then you do that. If you have to come into my world, you have to email me. I don't care who you are. You have to. You have no choice. But if I have to come into your world and I have to find a way to talk to you, and you tell me the only way I.