Impactful Things To Copy From Successful People
If you were to copy just a few things from successful people, the things that have the most impact in your life, what would those things be? Well, this is exactly what we're talking about in this video: the most impactful things you can copy from highly successful individuals. Welcome to a lux.
Number one: get a strong hard skill. Being successful is not a skill, and being an entrepreneur is not a job. This video is not about having connections or Daddy's credit card. So, we're starting off with something you can really put your hands on. You need to be really good at something that's easily monetizable. Managing a social media page is not a strong hard skill; that's a summer job for a TikToker. We're talking about heavy hitters: programming, designing, ads, building houses, making bread, and so on—something that can be measured and analyzed. Pick any successful individual that's actually worth something, and you'll find that all of them are really good at something, and they've leveraged that something to make it bigger. But you need a starting point.
People love to look at what jobs pay the most or what industries have the most money, but they fail to look at what skills they're actually good at and what things they can become great at. This is not how it works. So, the first thing you need to copy from successful people is proficiency, because if you become really proficient at something, then it's easy to translate that into a business or a high-paying job or into a strong independent career.
Now, the most common argument against this idea is that highly successful people always had a big break: like Elon’s parents already had a huge mining operation, Bill Gates's parents put him into an exclusive program. You find plenty of examples here. But here's the thing: if you want to become a billionaire by 30, then yeah, sure, some circumstances are mandatory. But do you need to become a billionaire by 30, or are you fine with being a millionaire by 30 or any age for that matter? Because for that, you don't need extraordinary circumstances; you need proficiency along with the next thing on our list.
Number two: get comfortable with sacrifice. Now, sacrifice is more of an umbrella term, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn't mean being miserable for a long time. The term sacrifice has actually been romanticized almost to a biblical point. You see it on social media where people boast about sacrificing nights of sleep or eating only fast food for five years to save up as much money as possible, and that's just stupid and no way to live life unless you're in deep [__]. When we say sacrifice, we mean finding a good trade-off.
You see, if you want to be able to do stuff that others can't do, you need to do stuff others aren't willing to do. That's essentially the definition of sacrifice. You find something not many people want to do, and you do it, and after a while, you'll be in a position where there's no competition because very few people went through the same things you did. Just think about serial entrepreneurs for a second: living without the security of a stable job to put food on your table in case things don't work out is a risky play, and there are very few people who have a stable income source, and enough time to try things out, and enough support, and no demanding responsibilities. It's a bit of a unicorn situation, so not many people are willing to go through that. Actually, an extremely low amount of people ever go through that. That's their sacrifice.
So, with that being said, why is this important, and why did you add this to the list? Well, the thing is, if you want to have an extraordinary life, you need to do extraordinary things. For example, if you want to feel amazing and have a great body, you need to do things out of the ordinary. Nobody lifts weights because it's fun and relaxing, and no matter what they tell you. Imagine there were suddenly no benefits to working out and exercising. You think all those gyms are going to stay open? Hell no, they're gonna close.
So, the trade-off here is spending some time in the gym, and what you get in return is a stronger, more athletic body that keeps you alive longer. That's a pretty good trade-off. Let's take money as another example. If you want an extraordinary financial situation, you need to do extraordinary things. That could be learning something incredibly valuable and selling it to the highest bidder or starting a business. Both require their respective levels of trade-offs.
If you want to have extraordinary mental health, the trade-off may be going to therapy and reliving difficult moments from your past in order to move past them and restructure yourself. The point is, if you want something worth having, there will always be a trade-off to be made. That's the sacrifice, and once you start adopting this trade-off mentality, you'll see the world with different eyes.
So, how can you start getting comfortable with sacrifice? Well, the first step is to look for trade-offs that are easy for you. For example, if you're a morning person and you naturally wake up at five to six a.m. for some reason, then you've got around three hours to trade off until the day officially starts. You can use those hours on something that nets you a plus one benefit to something you care about. Maybe those hours are in the gym, or doing a bit of creative work, or going on a walk with your dog—whatever makes you feel good. You already have those hours, so the trade-off is easy, and it's a good trade-off.
Or let’s say you're paid more than enough at your job, and you've got excess capital—that’s something to trade off that many others don't have. You can start investing a bit and see how investing feels, watch the markets, get familiar with investing tools and financial lingo. Again, that's a good trade-off. But let’s imagine you're an incredibly social person and you recharge your batteries by hanging around other people. Then trading off your weekend and evenings with your friends is a bad trade-off if it makes you miserable, because you'll be hard-pressed to find something more beneficial that makes feeling miserable worth it.
It's important to look around in your life and find things you're comfortable trading off, just to get used to it. After that, you move on to things that are a little bit more demanding, but which also have a way bigger return. For example, living way below your means for an entire year to save up enough money to make a down payment for a house is a huge trade-off, and it may very well kick-start a career in real estate. But if you're not comfortable with small trade-offs first, this kind of sacrifice will seem out of your reach. Remember this: those who are comfortable with sacrifice will always have more. It's a rule of life.
Number three: treat yourself as a business. So, what does treating yourself as a business mean? Well, imagine the whole world has stocks in yourself, and we all want to have a positive return at the end of the year. You are getting paid to be you, so what does that look like?
Well, let's break it down into different departments:
Accounting: Do you have good financial hygiene or not? Are you tracking things? Do you know where money comes from and where does it go? Is your budgeting on lock? Can you pay yourself? All of these things matter and need to be tracked and accounted for (pun intended).
Marketing: How do you present yourself to the world? What do we know about you? What do you wish more people knew about you? How would you like the world to see you? What should we expect from you?
Product Development: Are you investing in yourself? Do you polish up what you can do? Do you do stuff when you don't want to because you know it's good for you? We can go on and on, but you get the point here.
Why is this so important? Well, if you want to run your life as smoothly as possible, it helps a lot to think about it as a business and act as the CEO. It'll make things easier to manage and easier to navigate. When successful people pick up habits and make routines, they're essentially investing in the company's time and resources. The better you are at this, the more you'll get out of life.
Number four: show up consistently. Everything you do at a constant time base becomes the new you. If you go for a run every single day, you become a runner. If you invest a little bit of money every week, you become an investor. If you wake up early every morning, you become a morning person.
So, you need to be extremely mindful of what you do every single day because that will define the person you become. Which is great news, because if you look at this from the other perspective, if you want to become a certain person, all you have to do is be consistent with the things that that person would do. Now, more often than not, the thing you need to do is boring or uncomfortable. That's why we added being comfortable with sacrifice early in the list, and why it also is the longest chapter.
But doing the right thing consistently is the single most impactful thing you can copy from highly successful people, and the reason why so many people are not doing it is because it's boring and unfulfilling for most of the time. Let's take, for example, learning a new skill. You decided you need to upgrade your palette of things that you're good at. So, let's say knowing how to code is the thing you want to add. Now, before doing amazing and cool things with code, you need to learn how to do it. And that process most of the time is really boring and unfulfilling, and the only way to move past it is to keep doing it at a consistent rate.
The same concept applies to absolutely everything. A while ago, we shared some behind-the-scenes info from our analytics: for the first three years, we barely had any views, not to mention monetization to be able to afford to build the things we wanted to build. So, for that period of time, things were pretty boring and unfulfilling, and the only way forward was to keep doing it. Do not underestimate the power of showing up. It might be the single most important thing on this list. If you manage to find a way to keep showing up every single day and do the things you know you must do, success is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. Trust us.
And that's all for this list. Now, of course, for those of you who always stick with us until the end, we've got a bonus for you, and that's number five: mind your own business. Don't disregard those who are not on the same journey as you and don't get discouraged by those who don't understand what you're doing. Everyone is playing their own game in their own little world.
This is important because it's easy to get sidetracked. Okay, maybe you're having some doubts. Maybe peer pressure is a little too much to handle sometimes. Maybe others make you feel weird for playing a certain game. The point is, there are a million ways to get sidetracked and out of focus. Acknowledge them, but let them be. Distractions are temporary, but your own business is forever. So, mind your own business. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Alexer, take care.