Moment 193: Hard Work Doesn't Equal Success…Try This Instead...: Former Netflix CEO

Many people dream of quitting a job and becoming their own boss by starting a business. A million new businesses are started each year, but 40 percent fail within the first year and 80 percent fail within five years. Underlying the high failure rate are persistent romantic notions about how businesses are born and what it takes to succeed.

In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber explains how focusing solely on the product undermines new businesses and just trying to work harder undermines new businesses. The right approach is to view your business like a franchise—to systematize operations so that it no longer relies on you. This thirty-year-old classic is a part-practical and part-philosophical guide to conceptualizing and starting a business.

We’ve all felt trapped at some point in our lives, when our motivation falters and all our hard work grinds to a halt. In Anatomy of a Breakthrough, Adam Alter argues that everybody hits roadblocks in life, and because we hide our frustration, we’re unaware that everyone else goes through the same thing. However, there’s hope even when you feel trapped, and Alter proposes a range of solutions that might help you find your way out of the woods.

In this guide, we’ll explain what it means to be “stuck,” the barriers that often cause this, and how reacting poorly to a perceived lack of progress can only dig you in deeper. We’ll then describe Alter’s remedy—slowing down, exploring new perspectives, and making your own luck through persistence. We’ll also connect Alter’s ideas with those of other motivation experts, what other writers say about perseverance, and how exploring uncharted terrain can turn failures into opportunities.

What is the key to success? It's hard to tell when so much success advice is contradictory: Should you be kind, or is being nice for losers? Should you spend every waking hour at work, or focus on work-life balance? In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, peak performance expert Eric Barker examines the research on every option—and shares what he believes are the secrets to success.

In this guide, you'll learn why context is king—in other words, why the rules for success depend on who you are—and examine interpersonal relationships, reviewing the importance of kindness, networks, and your attitude towards success. We'll also present Barker's views on persistence and hard work, namely why you need to stick to some things and quit others, and how you can achieve the ideal balance of work and play. Along the way, we'll examine how Barker’s ideas compare with those of other thought leaders and introduce even more ways to implement his suggestions.

While many business books tell you how to manage other people, this 1966 classic by management expert Peter F. Drucker explains how to manage yourself to be effective. Effectiveness is key to individual and organizational success. Without it, other attributes, such as talent, intelligence, knowledge, and hard work, are useless.

Drucker says anyone can learn five practices for effectiveness: managing your time, focusing on just a few key tasks, making a unique contribution, maximizing your strengths, and making sound decisions. He explains how to implement these practices, which have remained relevant for over 50 years, even as technology and organizations have evolved. This guide examines how Drucker’s ideas on effectiveness hold up today and how others have built on them.

In Unscripted, MJ DeMarco—entrepreneur, investor, and best-selling author of The Millionaire Fastlane—insists that there’s only one way to achieve financial success: Adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.

He claims that most people don’t practice this mindset and can’t achieve financial success because they have unproductive beliefs about money that dissuade them from pursuing an entrepreneurial path. However, he argues that though these beliefs are pervasive, they’re surmountable: You can remove their influence, cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, and achieve your financial goals.

This guide walks you through DeMarco’s advice for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset and achieving financial success, covering:

• How beliefs about money fall into one of three financial mindsets—each influencing how you manage your finances and the amount of wealth you accumulate
• Eight unproductive beliefs about money that prevent you from achieving the wealth that you want
• Actionable ways to remove the influence of unproductive beliefs and adopt an entrepreneurial mindset

Additionally, we’ll supplement DeMarco’s ideas with psychological research and practical advice from financial advisors and successful entrepreneurs.

The way we think about and measure productivity is all wrong, according to Cal Newport. In Slow Productivity, Newport argues for a new definition of productivity—one that prioritizes outcomes and deep focus over frenetic busyness. Slow productivity is designed for anyone with ambitious goals who doesn’t want to compromise their time or mental health.

In this guide, we’ll explain why Newport argues that traditional definitions of productivity are flawed and why he thinks “slow productivity” is an effective and sustainable model that will increase your professional success and improve your work-life balance. We’ll introduce Newport’s key principles of slow productivity and provide practical strategies for how to implement them in your personal and professional life. We’ll also supplement Newport’s advice with insight from other productivity experts like Stephen Covey, David Allen, and Laura Vanderkam.

In a span of just 15 years, Netflix underwent four major evolutions to grow from a fledgling DVD-by-mail company to an award-winning entertainment behemoth, boasting over 200 million subscribers across 190 countries. In No Rules Rules, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and business professor and author Erin Meyer detail how the company achieved this level of success by implementing unconventional management practices that empower employees and promote innovation.

In this guide, you’ll learn why Netflix fires adequate employees, why employees need to critique their bosses, and why it pays to give workers unlimited vacation time.

We’ll compare the Netflix culture with other unorthodox workplace cultures—such as those at Pixar Animation Studios and hedge fund Bridgewater—and cite other works to support or offer counter-arguments to the management ideas detailed in the book.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is considered a bible in the tech entrepreneurship community. It’s a methodology for creating businesses that focuses you on finding out what customers actually want. It uses concepts of scientific experimentation to prove that you’re making progress. It encourages you to launch as early and cheaply as possible so you don’t waste time and money.

Learn the critical concepts of the Minimum Viable Product, cohort metrics, A/B testing, virality, and startup pivots.

Creating a successful product can feel like a risky gamble, but what if it doesn’t have to be? In The Lean Product Playbook, entrepreneur Dan Olsen argues that you can feel confident in your product’s success by making sure it has product-market fit—that it satisfies customer needs better than other available options. Olsen provides a practical guide to finding product-market fit using the lean startup approach, presenting repeatable and systematic steps for identifying target customers, understanding their needs, and creating a winning product strategy. By following Olsen’s Lean Product Process, you can craft winning products with minimum time, effort, and costs.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to find product-market fit, validate your product idea with a minimum viable product, and build and optimize your complete product using key metrics. Along the way, we’ll supplement Olsen’s strategies with insights and advice from other product experts and entrepreneurs.