When asked, most successful people will tell you a story about how they became successful, but unfortunately it won’t often be true. It will just be what they wished was true, like they worked hard, or were courageous, or broke the rules in some dashing way.
In this video series (3 parts), we’ll break down the proven strategies and tactics of success that don’t require any starting advantage and actually align with scientific studies on what makes people successful.
This second video covers these strategies:
4. Serve consistently, give freely
5. Shoot out of your league
6. Quality over quantity
7. Stop at good enough
8. Go deep on what you love
9. Teach what you’ve learned
10. Serve high quality people
11. Set very long term goals
Dan’s Top Resources
The Naked Truth: Using Shameless Honesty to Enhance Your Confidence, Connections and Integrity
Get Dan Munro’s latest book to learn how to build your integrity and truly be yourself without fear.
The 3X Confidence and Authenticity Masterclass Program [Udemy course]
A complete in-depth guide on how to build your confidence by being authentic and living with integrity, following Dan Munro’s secret 3X Confidence formula.
Overcome Your Fear of Rejection… Permanently [Udemy course]
Say goodbye to fear of rejection, approach anxiety, and missing out on opportunities. This quick but thorough course will destroy your limiting beliefs around rejection.
The Legendary Life: Build the Motivation and Confidence to Create an Authentic Lifestyle [book]
Dan’s first book covers a complete blueprint for designing your life in a way that matches your core values, showing you how to overcome fear, set and achieve powerful goals, and build your confidence without needing other people to like you.
Nothing to Lose: Using Curiosity to Destroy Hesitation, Procrastination and Limiting Beliefs [book]
A philosophical examination of the confident mindset, from a scientific and practical viewpoint. This book will help you decode confidence into a set of beliefs and behaviours that you can control.
Full transcript (unedited)
welcome back to the brojo online podcast today we’re going to talk about how to win at everything
number four or whatever the [ __ ] we’re up to i’m gonna stop counting because i didn’t write down the numbers in my notes serve consistently give freely most people trying to succeed focus on taking they try to get something from someone else they try to acquire results for themselves and resources for themselves ironically in my experience the most successful approach is to do the exact opposite give give surprisingly more than others give you know and this is not the same as self-sacrifice okay so self-sacrifice is where it hurts you to give and it’s this kind of martyrdom victim hero thing that you’re doing that’s not what i’m talking about what i’m talking about is finding a way to enjoy giving so it’s a reward for you as well you know when i first started coaching i used to try and get clients you know whenever i reached out to someone i was always with this kind of intention of like basically them becoming a client which really means their money coming into my bank account it was a very needy approach i mean obviously i wanted to do more good than that but when you’re struggling to pay the rent kind of clouds your thinking i switched to this new approach after some great coaching i received where when i wanted to reach out to someone i made them a custom video that solved a problem that they had and i sent it to them without even asking them a question nothing that might elicit a response no pressure on them to reciprocate nothing was just freely given i used to do like 10 of these a day i just find someone who was struggling or someone who’s trying to achieve a goal and i just send them my thoughts and ideas as to what might help them in a personalized video and like nobody does this i don’t know why nobody does this in business it’s such a great approach these people are like holy [ __ ] this dude made me a [ __ ] video like they’d open the video suspiciously and then they’d see me say their name and talk about their specific life and it’ll just blow their mind like oh my god he made like a 10 minute video just for me i don’t even know this guy and they would watch now not all of them would watch but some of them would and some of them ended up becoming clients enough of them that i coached full-time for a living
i give surprisingly more than others like if you if you’re on linkedin and you receive messages you know most of them are just thinly veiled attempts to get something from you if someone was to actually give freely to you in one of those messages it would stand out amongst all the noise all the crap and neediness that’s on there the same applies to anything else dating for example you can go out there and try to get laid or whatever or you can go out there and try to make someone’s day better you can go out there and try to surprise them with you know restoring their faith in humanity that there are some good people out there you can try and do that and stay try and give to them and you will stand out so not only do you get to enjoy giving it works out best for you in the long run and of course you develop a reputation you develop an overall sense that this is a very giving person if i get in contact with dan it’s going to be good for me and if that’s your reputation life becomes very effortless for you next tip shoot out of your league stop going for the easy thing that you know you can get and go for the ridiculous thing that you really don’t think you can get the kind of thing that it would be worth it even if you only had a one percent success rate right think like that like what’s the thing that if somebody said yes just one times out of 100 it would be worth the other 99 times the other 99 rejections what does that look like in dating life does that mean going after the people that you’re most attracted to in this world in your business doesn’t mean like reaching out to the highest level podcasts and asking to be a guest what is it because that’s what happened to me actually in a number of ways but one thing that happened to me when i was in department of corrections was applying for the service manager role way before i’m kind of deemed to be ready for it i lost out three times because you know it was ridiculous that i was applying for it but the third time i got the job it only took three and i became the youngest service manager at least that i had ever heard of right every time i went for it i learned something i adjusted my approach i went for it again and this is the thing if you keep going for it you will get some feedback i mean if you’re applying for something that’s way out of your league you’re gonna not get feedback a lot of time you won’t even get a response but when you do you’ll get a little something a little something you can use like i said what would be worth 99 failures because tell you what if you try for something out of your league 99 times you’re pretty much guaranteed to get it that hundredth time and probably sooner next tip quality over quantity most people want a high quality life and yet they go for a high quantity approach for example somebody wants a great partner a high quality partner but they date a lot of people that’s a quantity approach or they try to get laid as often as possible that’s a quantity approach somebody wants to be totally free in their lifestyle but they try to make as much money as possible it’s a quantity approach not a quality one a quality approach if you want to be free would be working on your mind so that you feel free all the time it doesn’t matter how much money you got in the bank if you need money to feel free then you’re not really free you’re imprisoned by money you’ve had financial constraints if you can travel just within your hometown then you don’t need to fly around the world to be able to travel and so on what does quality look like quality looks like less quantity doesn’t it it’s it’s five good friends instead of a hundred associates right it’s two amazing clients rather than a hundred crappy clients that cause lots of complaints it’s about doing a few exercises that are ideal for building your body rather than spending three hours at the gym okay always ask yourself what’s the quality approach that creates high quality results not what’s the quantity approach that creates high quantity results there’s an exception to this and this is in creative production perfectionism is probably the number one barrier to creatives pulling stuff out there and here’s where i actually recommend a quantity approach because it actually is a quality approach what i mean is pump stuff out if you’re an artist keep painting pump out painting after painting after painting because you’re developing your quality as an artist by doing that like me i just pump out video after video podcast after podcast i don’t push that much thought into them i learn a little bit of each one and improve the next time and just pump them out i’m not trying to create a quantity i actually delete videos or hide them when i think they’re just it’s about practice lots and lots of practice right so if you’re an artist or a creative type you want to be pumping stuff out rather than trying to do everything perfect you want to have a thousand things in the bin just to create one thing that you keep on the wall next tip figure out what good enough means what some people would call the maximum efficiency point now this is where the amount that you’ve done or the the level of quality that you’ve achieved is enough to meet the standard or achieve the goal that you’re trying to achieve what this means is anything more than that is waste okay so people try to do things perfectly are usually doing it 30 40 50 percent more than it needs to be done great example this is working out you know there’s some really rock solid science now that shows that short high intensity workouts very specific slow painful reps are the way to go whereas most guys go and spend hours and hours at the gym and they hit their maximum efficiency point early on after that they’re just injuring themselves you know there’s a lot of science now to show that if you’re sore the next day after a workout you did too much that’s what that means you actually create inflammation which attracts fat so you’re actually doing your yourself a disservice if you’re trying to look good at least but you’re you’re going the longest slowest way to achieving your goal fitness wise with big long workouts what most fitness experts nowadays will tell you is a short sharp workout a couple of times a week is more efficient than spending half your life at the gym this kind of thing applies all across the board you might be thinking of the perfect thing to say to the person you’re attracted to when actually high is enough just get in there and say hi how’s it going and you’re away running you don’t need to be more impressive than that to get the conversation started so why would you think anything beyond that usually just showing up’s enough making yourself known and let the conversation roll out authentically start to figure out what’s the minimum i need to do to achieve the short-term goal of whatever it is i’m trying to achieve and then aim to only reach that minimum and not go beyond it think of anything beyond it as wastage that you want to conserve for something better next tip the most likely person to have sex with you is somebody you’ve already had sex with
the best clients are repeat clients the best business is repeat business often people feel urged to constantly find new all the time like if they’re traveling they always try to go to a new country they’re dating they’re always trying to date new people or they’re making friends they try to meet new people they’re trying hobbies they always try lots of different things when actually what you’ll find is the most enjoyable and rewarding stuff is something you’ve already done and need to do again and go deeper with i’ve found that like my coaching business now about 80 of my clients are repeat clients now i’m actually looking forward to a time in the future where there is nobody new essentially i just keep repeating with people i’ve already worked with it’s better to spend three hours with a great friend in three hours trying to find new friends it’s better to return to the country that was your most enjoyed to visit than to try and lots of different countries all the time i’m not saying that new is always wrong what i’m saying is you’ve probably already found a lot of good stuff and you should be doubling down on that rather than trying to find new stuff and trying to fix something that isn’t broken next tip as soon as you’ve learned about how to do anything to some degree competency try to teach it there’s almost nothing i’ve found more humbling and more helpful for learning than trying to teach something you think you know if you can’t teach it you don’t really know it and as you learn how to teach it you actually learn the thing properly yourself like i got into teaching salsa dancing shortly after i’d won a couple of competitions but i wasn’t an expert i didn’t have all my [ __ ] sorted but i knew enough to get a beginner off the ground and what i found trying to teach beginners is sometimes i didn’t know how to explain to them what they needed to do i could do it but i couldn’t explain it which means i didn’t really know how i did it so in in teaching i had to learn how i did it so i could pass that information on to someone else and that made me so much better at doing it because a lot of the time you’re good at something by kind of luck you don’t really know how to repeat that or transfer it to other areas of your life but if you try to teach it you’ll quickly figure out if the other person picks it up or not and if they don’t then you don’t really understand it and you need to dive deeper into it it also helps with giving back if you constantly give back what you’ve got as soon as it comes to you it goes to somebody else it also helps to that overall giving reputation and way of living that’s so rewarding you feel like you’re just this vessel that you know good stuff passes through onto other people you’re like a distributor of good stuff and that creates a really good feeling about yourself and if that isn’t success i don’t know what is next point connect with high quality people and serve them the best way to create high quality connections people who are like way above you and whatever grade you want to think of is to make their life better not to try and get from them you quite often get requests for people to be on my podcast even though i’m not a big deal but the requests are so needy like here’s a guy who’s you’ve never heard of can he promote his stuff on your podcast i’m like no he can’t it really stands out to me because when i reach out to someone i try to give to them i’ve got a great story i was on the art of charm podcast back when i was hosted by jordan harbinger and i got in touch with him and i can’t remember exactly what i did but i tried to serve him you know i shared his podcast around with my minuscule little audience at the time and just gave him lots of compliments on what he was doing and just basically tried to improve his day and he responded by inviting me onto his podcast which was at the time like the biggest thing i’d ever done and it just doubled my business overnight i wasn’t trying to achieve that i was trying to serve him as the same thing happened with my book publisher i reached out to him to thank him for his book that he had written next thing i know he’s publishing my book you know so always try to serve the people above you rather try and get something from them they never get this from people below them they always get people trying to take when they get someone trying to give it stands out they do notice and also makes them go this guy’s special he gets it i’m like this guy and they connect with that make sure your goals are really long term 10 20 30 years type thing if your goals are short like i want this really soon then you’re gonna probably engage in an inefficient or unsustainable practice but if your goals are way into the future and you have to live a certain way consistently small pieces at a time cumulative build up you’re more likely to create a sustainable way of living that feels successful before you ever achieve the goal think of it like investing i do this with my investment portfolio i’ve aimed for the long term i’m not you know fast day trading or cryptocurrency like binging trying to make quick money i’m doing the long steady index fund diverse portfolio with different things in case anything falls down including my own business as part of that i guess and i’m just looking to become a multi-millionaire in like 30 years which i’m looking pretty pretty good for at the moment i get a 13 average return on my investments doing it the slow mixture of risk moderately safe way the boring way that actually works based on all the expert advice right building a business building a social life if you think more like in 10 years this is where i want to be not this is where i want to be right now because i’m desperate you’re more likely to engage in sort of longer more boring but more successful strategies that create a high quality of life and they build as you go so as you get to see your bank account slowly getting bigger and as you get to see your social circle just improving in quality or you get to see your strength going up a little bit every week it’s like all right and then you get to feel like that all the times and i built some more and i built some more not like quick rush and then crash and then start from zero again