MBA2635 How To Be More Successful Than 99% of Other People

Summary

Podcast Summary: The $100 MBA Show - Episode MBA2635 “How To Be More Successful Than 99% Of Other People”

Release Date: June 9, 2025

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Introduction to the Concept of Success

In Episode MBA2635 of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom delves into a fundamental principle that distinguishes the most successful individuals from the rest: the unwavering commitment to doing what you say you will do. Omar emphasizes that this simple yet powerful habit is the cornerstone of building trust, reputation, and ultimately, achieving unparalleled success in both personal and professional realms.

The Power of Follow-Through

Omar begins by posing a compelling question: “Do you want to be more successful than 99% of other people?” (00:58) He reveals that the secret lies in consistently fulfilling promises without excuses, backpedaling, or disappearing. Drawing from his two decades of entrepreneurial experience, Omar highlights that very few people maintain this level of commitment, making those who do stand out significantly in all areas of life.

Types of Promises

Omar categorizes promises into three distinct types, each playing a crucial role in personal and business success:

1. Public Promises

   • “If you told your audience that you are launching in 30 days, you need to launch in 30 days under any circumstance, right? You need to make sure it happens.” (02:15)

   Public promises involve commitments made to others, such as deadlines for product launches or public appearances. Omar stresses that failing to meet these promises erodes trust and damages one's reputation, making it difficult to garner future support or sales.

2. Private Commitments

   • “When you break promises to yourself, you erode your confidence.” (03:30)

   These are commitments individuals make to themselves, like completing specific tasks or achieving personal goals. Omar explains that consistently honoring these private commitments builds self-confidence and creates a compounding effect of reliability and self-trust.

3. Promises to Your Team

   • “When you say you have two weeks to finish a project and then extend it to three weeks, it means your deadlines mean nothing.” (06:53)

   Promises made to team members are vital for maintaining organizational integrity and team morale. Omar shares a personal anecdote about prioritizing a team retreat despite financial constraints to uphold his commitment, underscoring the long-term benefits of reliability.

Real-World Examples Illustrating Follow-Through

Omar fortifies his teachings with several real-world examples:

• Team Retreat Commitment: During a financially challenging year, Omar and his partner chose to honor their commitment to a team retreat by personally funding it, demonstrating their dedication to their promises and reinforcing team trust (06:20).

• Webinar Ninja Pre-Sale: Omar recounts the success of his software, Webinar Ninja, which was pre-sold with only mockups and a landing page. By delivering the product within the promised four months, he built instant trust with early adopters, leading to a multimillion-dollar SaaS business (07:45).

• Consistency in Podcast Publishing: Maintaining a strict publishing schedule of three episodes per week, regardless of personal circumstances, has been pivotal in growing The $100 MBA Show to over 2,600 episodes and millions of downloads (09:10).

The Psychological Impact of Keeping Promises

Omar delves into the psychological ramifications of honoring or breaking promises:

• Building Trust and Reputation: Consistently fulfilling promises fosters a reputation of reliability and trustworthiness, attracting more opportunities and loyal followers.

• Eroding Confidence: Conversely, failing to keep promises, whether to oneself or others, undermines self-confidence and diminishes others' trust, creating a negative feedback loop that hampers success.

Practical Application and Action Steps

To implement the principles discussed, Omar offers actionable strategies:

1. Make a Commitment to Yourself:

   • “Right now, make a commitment to yourself. Right now. I'm serious. Say it out loud.” (13:35)

   Encourage listeners to verbally affirm their commitment to follow through on their promises in every aspect of life.

2. Plan and Batch Tasks:

   • “This is why I batch my episodes. This is why I like to have a lead time of five, six, seven weeks.” (08:25)

   By planning ahead and batching tasks, individuals can ensure consistency and resilience against unexpected disruptions.

3. Monitor and Adjust Promises:

   • “You gotta be careful about what promises you tell yourself because you want to keep your promises.” (04:50)

   Setting realistic and achievable promises prevents overcommitment and enhances the likelihood of success.

Conclusion: The Transformative Power of Commitment

Omar concludes the episode by reiterating that this isn't about hustle culture but about cultivating trustworthiness and dependability. By consistently doing what you say you will do, you build a life, business, and reputation that inherently attract success.

• “Say what you'll do and do it. No drama, no flair, just action. And over time, you'll build a life, a business, and a reputation that speaks for itself.” (13:10)

He encourages listeners to adopt this unwavering commitment as a non-negotiable habit to surpass the majority in success and fulfillment.

Notable Quotes

• “Do what you said you're going to do. No excuses, no backpedaling, no disappearing.” – Omar Zenhom (00:58)

• “When you break promises to yourself, you erode your confidence.” – Omar Zenhom (03:30)

• “If you don’t let yourself off the hook, you will pass 99% of people around you quietly, steadily, relentlessly.” – Omar Zenhom (12:15)

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Additional Resources

For those interested in furthering their business acumen and personal development, Omar invites listeners to subscribe to his “three Things” newsletter, providing weekly insights on mindset growth, actionable tasks, and skill enhancement. Visit 100mba.net to join and access free guides.

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This summary encapsulates the core teachings and insights shared by Omar Zenhom in Episode MBA2635 of The $100 MBA Show, offering actionable advice for listeners aiming to elevate their success beyond the ordinary.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Five year guarantee on eligible plans exclusion supplies. See website for details. Not available Fab Metro with T Mobile in the past six months tax applies.

[D]

Do you want to be more successful than 99% of other people? Here's a secret. Lean in. Listen closely. Just do what you said you're going to do. That's it. Do what you said you're going to do. No excuses, no backpedaling, no disappearing. It sounds simple and it is. But it's also rare. So rare in fact that if you make this one habit a non negotiable for you, you, you will become unstoppable. I know this because I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I can probably count on one or two hands the people I know that do this and are highly successful because of it. You'll stand out everywhere. Business, career, life, relationships. I'm talking everything you do. Let me show you why this works, how to master it, and I'm going to give you examples. Real world examples where it changed everything for me. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. As you get older, as you live life, you learn that most people don't follow through. Most people, they say they're gonna launch a website, they say they're gonna ship a product, they say they're gonna show up on time, they say they're gonna deliver the work, they say they're gonna start a business. And they don't. But when they do, they become the person who follows through. It becomes their reputation. You become somebody that's trusted, that's Respected, that gets opportunities, that gets sales, that gets all of it. But the opposite is also true. All those wonderful positive attributes that I just mentioned, think of the opposite of those attributes. You known for those things. You become unreliable. Somebody that can't be counted on, somebody that can't be trusted, somebody that doesn't deliver, Somebody that is just not respected amongst your peers because you just don't do what you say you're going to do. Now, I'm here to tell you why this happens and why this habit applies in every corner of your life and your business. Number one thing you need to remember, it's not just any promises, but it's all the promises you make in life. The first type of promise is your public promises. If you told your audience that you are launching in 30 days, you need to launch in 30 days under any circumstance, right? You need to make sure it happens. Even if it's not perfect. You need to launch because you said you're going to launch in 30 days. And if you don't launch in 30 days, it means that you can't be trusted. Why would I buy from you if you can't even stick to a deadline? The second type, private commitments. This second one might be more important in my opinion, than the first one, but I wanted to ease you into it. When you tell yourself anything, when you tell yourself, for example, I'm going to send 20 cold emails today, you need to do it, even if no one's watching. Why? Because when you break promises to yourself, you erode your confidence. The opposite is also true. When you constantly fulfill your promises to yourself. When you tell yourself, hey, I need to write this blog post by the end of the day. And you don't end the day, you don't go to bed until that blog post is written, you build, like, a little higher percentage of confidence inside of you. All of a sudden, you start to believe that you can do things. This starts to stack. This starts to compound every time you tell yourself you're going to do something and you do it. This builds unstoppable confidence over time because you believe in yourself. Because when you say you're going to do something, you do it. Listen, I told myself, today I'm going to do three podcast episodes. This is my third podcast episode. Okay, I could have easily said, hey, two's enough. I'm five weeks ahead in the publishing schedule. It's totally fine. Yes, it's totally fine. But what's not totally fine is me telling myself that I'm going to do three episodes and not fulfill that commitment. You need to make sure that what you say to yourself actually happens. So this also means you gotta be careful about what promises you tell yourself, because you want to keep your promises. And this applies to everything in life. If you're at the gym and you got to do four sets of 10 reps, you got to do four sets of 10 repsS, not four sets of eight reps, not three sets of 10 reps, it doesn't matter. You need to fulfill your obligation to yourself. And the more you let that kind of slide even in other parts of your life, you start to tell yourself it's okay to break promises. It's okay for me not to fulfill my agreement with myself. And that is not on. Okay? This is one of the cases where how you do anything is how you do everything. So keep your private commitments by any means possible.

[A]

Stripe is the go to choice for AI companies. From early stage startups to scaled enterprises. 78% of the leading AI companies use Stripe to go to market quickly and scale globally. That includes pioneers like Nvidia, OpenAI and Perplexity. Stripe has developed cutting edge tools to improve everything from fraud detection to checkout optimization. Whether you're aiming for incremental gains or planning for enterprise transformation, see how Stripe can [e-mail].

[B]

Going up, prices keep going up. These days it feels like being on an elevator that only goes up, going up. But not at Metro. We're pushing the down button. Going down, we've lowered prices. Get one line of 5G data for $40 period, that's 20% lower. And you get a free Samsung 5G phone when you bring your number. Only at Metro.

[C]

Five year guarantee on eligible plans. Exclusion supplies. See website for details. Not available Fab Metro with T Mobile in the past six months. Tax supplies.

[D]

Number three, your promises to your team. If you said to the team, hey, we have two weeks to finish this project and when the two weeks is up, you just extended to three weeks. That means your deadlines mean nothing. That means that whenever you say two weeks, it doesn't really mean two weeks. It means whenever the project gets done, you need to make sure that you wrap up that project. Whenever you said you were going to wrap up, no rescheduling, you have to make it happen. Listen, people remember who delivers and they also remember who doesn't deliver. Especially your team. Listen, I'm going to share a very vulnerable story. We like to do team retreats, right with our team. We like to get on site, go to a nice location, nice hotel, three, four, Five days and a beautiful beach and do team building activities, get to know each other, have some fun. And one year in particular, we were not making as much profit as we'd like and we were thinking about, oh, maybe we should cancel the retreat. There was no way possible. I was canceling the retreat because we already told the team we're going to have this retreat. We already booked the dates or we already told them the date dates and the location. So this retreat is going to happen, even if it meant pulling money out of our own pockets, Nicole and I. And that's exactly what happened. Why? Because I said to the team, this is going to happen. I got to keep my promises, I got to keep my commitments. Because I know in my core that when I do this, always consistently in my life, in my business, with my customers, with myself, with my team, that's the recipe for of success. Let me give you some more examples. When we pre sold our software Webinar Ninja back in 2014, we had nothing but mockups, a landing page and a buy button. But I said to them that in four months we're going to deliver the software. And guess what? We did. We built instant trust with our early adopters. Hey, they trusted me in buying the software before it was ready. And then I had to make sure that they can trust me again when I said four months. And if I broke that promise, I'm going to be starting on a wrong foot and there's a really low chance they're ever going to trust me again and buy anything from me again. But because I did fulfill my promise, I did deliver that user base became a multimillion dollar SaaS. And I truly believe if I missed that deadline, I don't think the business would have grown the way it grew. I don't think it would have been a multimillion dollar business that got acquired by Proprofs. None of that would have happened. Another example, this podcast, a hundred dollar MBA show we publish three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, rain or shine. If I feel, if I don't feel like it, if I'm busy, if I get sick, if I'm tired, if I'm traveling, if I'm not, all that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That's what I'm trying to say to you. Like all the stuff I just mentioned. The consumer, the listener, the customer of yours, they have nothing to do with that. If you said you're going to do something, you got to do it. So you got to plan accordingly. This is why I batch My episodes. This is why I like to have a lead time of five, six, seven weeks so that I can travel or I can make sure that it gets published even when I'm six, because we have some lead time, you know, or my voice goes away because I went to some, you know, crazy fun concert or whatever it might be. And that consistency of publishing regularly day after day, week after week, you know, for 2,600 plus episodes, that built our loyal audience. And that's frankly why we won best of itunes. This is why we grew to millions of downloads. This is why we have any audience at all. Because we showed up, we did what we said we're going to do. Another example before all that, back when I was the head of department at the high school I was working at, when I was an educator, I built a reputation for one thing. When Omar says he's going to do something, it gets done right. You know that old saying, if you want to get something done, give it to somebody who's busy. I was like the poster child for that, to a fault. I know people abuse that, but I'm okay with that because it allowed me to become who I am today. But anything the institution needed, curriculum design, staff support, parent communications, I was known for following through, for getting things done. And that's really honestly why I got promoted in my career. That's what got me trust. And I wasn't like incredibly talented, but I was incredibly reliable. And that's why people actually trusted me enough with responsibility, with position, with the ability to manage other people. And I used that experience in my career as an entrepreneur later on. But forget about me, let's talk about some famous brands like Apple. When Apple says the iPhone ships on September 22, it ships on September 22. Not in October, not when they feel like it, not when they get around to it. It ships on September 22nd. That's what professionals do. That's why they have raving fans, because their delivery is part of their brand. Amazon prime shipping two days. Done. Say what you want to say about Amazon, but they built an empire on doing what they said they're going to do again and again. Now, why most people won't do this, because it's uncomfortable. Because life gets in the way. Because they let themself off the hook. Because, because, because, because I can go on and on, but if you don't let yourself off the hook, you will pass 99% of people around you quietly, steadily, relentlessly. So right now, make a commitment to yourself. Right now. I'm serious. Say it out loud. If you want to make a commitment, I will do what I say I'm going to do. Every single time, in every aspect of my life, my business, my work, my relationships, I will become that person. Your life will change forever from this moment forward. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This isn't about hustle culture or never missing a beat. It's about becoming the kind of person you can trust. Say what you'll do and do it. No drama, no flair, just action. And over time, you'll build a life, a business, and a reputation that speaks for itself. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show for tuning in. If you love this podcast, if you want to support us, the biggest thank you you can give me is by subscribing or hitting that follow button on whatever you use to consume this podcast. Whether it's Spotify or Apple or YouTube or whatever you're using. To listen to this podcast, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. Thank you in advance for doing that. Now, if you want to go deeper with me, if you want to continue to learn from me, you should join my three Things newsletter. It's absolutely free. Every week I send you three things. Something to think about to grow your mindset. Number two, something to do so you're getting traction week after week. And number three, something to learn so you're skilling up every single week. It's absolutely free. Just go to 100mba.net sign up for any of our guides and you'll be a part of our newsletter automatically. Thanks again. I know that today was a little bit of tough love and maybe I was a little bit over passionate, but I really believe in what I shared with you today. It's really something that changed my life. Once I got this, once I took responsibility. Once I owned this, I realized I need to start fulfilling my own promises to myself, to others and never back down, never compromise, never say oh, it's okay, whatever. Next time, treat yourself with dignity, okay? Treat yourself better than that because you are better than that. Thanks again. I'll check you next time.

[B]

Going up Prices keep going up. These days it feels like being on an elevator that only goes up, going up. But not at Metro. We're pushing the down button. Going down, we've lowered prices. Get one line of 5G data for $40, period. That's 20% lower and you get a free Samsung 5 phone when you bring your number only at Metro.

[C]

Five year guarantee on eligible plans exclusion supply. See website for details. Not available. Fab Metro with T mobile in the past six months Tax supplies.