One Question Friday: Where Did You Succeed Where Others Did Not?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. Talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's podcast network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales. You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.
Oh, Gaston, what's the Wi-Fi?

**Shaan Puri** (1:05)
I can't, no, I can't get in. Oh, it's argh, argh, argh.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
Connect your teams easier than connecting your Wi-Fi.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:13)
HubSpot, grow better.

**Shaan Puri** (1:15)
All hands on deck.
What's up, it's Shaan, and it is One Question Friday, so we are taking one listener question and answering it on the spot. Hopefully, five minutes, maybe 10 minutes. Let's see how this goes. I'm gonna play this audio recording that Ben sent to me. I haven't heard it yet. Let's hear it together.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:40)
So I was having a cola the other day, and I was thinking about this question.
What do you do differently that allowed you to succeed that you think other people who had similar circumstances to you did not? Where did you succeed where they did not?

**Shaan Puri** (1:55)
Okay, good question. Very broad question, right? So we could take this a bunch of different ways. Here's how I want to take it. What are the common answers that you think people would give to a question like this? So, what do you do differently that helps you succeed? Well, some people will say, let's break it into groups. There's the overly humble. The overly humble will say, all credit to God, I've been blessed, I was really lucky.
And I just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other and worked hard. And I'm just fortunate to be born in this great place with all my limbs and my brain and all this, right? Okay, there's that path.
All true things, but not that useful to somebody listening. So, let's kick that out.
Also, that applies to many other people who didn't have the same result as you. So, that certainly couldn't be it. Okay, second thing, hard work. Hard work is the next thing that people love to say. I think because hard work feels like you earned it and it feels like you're not saying you're better than everybody else. It feels like you made better choices than others that were available to them too.
And who can argue with hard work? But the reality is, I really don't work very hard, or at least I don't feel that way. The thing I would say is I actually do work a lot, but I only work on stuff I like. And so, I think hard workers, you know, like a janitor works hard, a line cook works hard, you know, a single mother works hard, you know. And so, I don't really put...
What I do has, you know, pretty much no physical strain, no emotional strain, small emotional strain, I guess. And, you know, honestly, it's fun. Like I do it because I enjoy it. I'm not doing it because I kind of feel like I have to do this in order to get what I want. That is not at all how I think about things. And there are many areas where I'm like, oh man, if I worked harder, I'd get a better result. I can't bring myself to do it. I'm lazy in that way. The reason I work a bunch is because I really, like it feels like play to me. It's like watching somebody play a video game. You don't have to tell them, hey, sit down and focus on this for three hours. It's like, what are you talking about? This is called a duty, of course. I'll play this as long as I can. And so it's not hard work. So what is it then? Well, you said something in your question, which was what's different about you than like, what did you do differently than like others like you in similar situations to you? Okay, that's a good way of asking that question.