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What if I told you that the key to winning in business, life, and relationships isn’t a secret strategy, but a set of simple, decisive actions that anyone can take?
In this episode, Sharran shares his ten “shortcuts” to success in a world that’s obsessed with quick fixes. These principles are designed to help you level up your business, personal growth, and overall mindset.
The ideas he outlines aren’t just motivational; they’re actionable. If you want to separate yourself from the crowd and make your success inevitable, this episode will give you the tools to do just that. Tune in to hear Sharran break down the ten lessons that have helped him achieve enormous success.
“The thing that actually moves the needle comes from the boring stuff that nobody sees–the extra call, the late-night email, the hard conversation that you didn’t want to have but you had to have anyway, the person you had to let go, the person you needed to hire.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
02:35 – Effort is the Ultimate Equalizer: Why focused work beats talent
03:40 – Stacking the Proof: Building confidence through reps, not affirmations
05:37 – Nobody Sees the Work: The importance of working in silence
06:55 – Obsession Over Average: How obsession drives success
08:57 – Using Doubt as Fuel: How to turn criticism into motivation
10:28 – The Power of One More: Why doing one more thing can make the difference
11:47 – Suffering with Intention: Embracing discomfort as part of the process
13:48 – Track the Ledger: How to stay on track with your goals
15:46 – Boring is the Battleground: Doing the mundane stuff consistently
17:29 – Outwork Your Excuses: Don’t wait for motivation; follow the plan
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Join the Future Proof Community
– Join the 10K Wisdom Private Partner Podcast, now available to you for free
– Join Sharran’s VIP Community
– ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Sharran’s Partnership Program
– Grab Sharran’s 4-Week MBA for Free
Connect with Sharran:
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– YouTube
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. And what if I could tell you how to win? Alright. What if I could tell you how to win and I could give you the logic behind winning? In fact, what if I could give you the 10 shortcuts to win in a world without any shortcuts? I break down these 10 big ideas that if I could just.
[00:00:18] Package them up and give them to everybody in the world. This is what I would do. There is no unfair advantage that anyone needs to execute on these 10 ideas. These are the 10 things that have helped me build whatever I have built, and I wanna share them with you all starting right now.
[00:00:40] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to, how to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:02] That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:15] So if I could package all my advice into a giant snowball and throw it at you, that is what this episode is going to be about. I really, really hope that some of these ideas really impact you because these are really very dear to me. So let me tell you something that I believe with all my heart. If you gave me a whiteboard and asked me to draw a path from A to B, from winning to winning at anything in life, business, life, relationships, whatever it, it would all come down to this one thing.
[00:01:44] And I know this is gonna sound hard. You have to outwork everyone. You have to outwork everyone. And I don’t mean the whole, you gotta hustle like kind, kind of. So the sake of hustle, I mean something thoughtful, something focused, sustained effort. Especially when it’s boring because especially when no one’s watching.
[00:02:02] Because when, when it’s boring and no one’s watching, it’s easy to tap out. And I get it like everyone wants a shortcut. But here is my big idea for you today. There are 10 shortcuts. That I wanna share with you. But these are 10 shortcuts in a world without shortcuts. All right? These are 10 shortcuts in a world without shortcuts, and they may not feel like it in the moment, but I will tell you, they are like a force multiplier.
[00:02:23] They are the ones that help you buy back your time, create the separation season that you want. So let me walk you through kinda like my personal 10 that I wrote down that I’d love to share with you at a very high level. So number one, effort is the ultimate equalizer. Some people honestly start ahead based on where you were born, how much money you have, all of that.
[00:02:42] Uh, in fact, you may have the talent, the timing, the network, all of it. Good for them, good for you. But I will tell you, for the rest of us, and I put myself in that bucket, in that category, we only win by working through it. You don’t have to be flashy. You don’t have to drive a Lambo. You don’t need a perfect plan.
[00:02:58] You just need good enough clean reps that it becomes unreasonable for you to fail. I’ll say it again. You just need good enough clean reps that it becomes unreasonable for you to fail. Is there something that you can tell yourself that, Hey, if I did this thing a hundred times, it would be unreasonable for me to fail?
[00:03:14] If I made 100 calls, it would be unreasonable for me to get two appointments. If I door knocked 30 homes, it would be unreasonable that I don’t talk to 10 people. That’s what we want to talk about then. That’s what I mean by effort being the ultimate equalizer. It keeps you, it keeps you in the game long enough so that luck can catch up, right?
[00:03:33] It keeps you in the game long enough so that luck. Luck can catch up. And I think that’s what the best part is. So, number one, effort is the ultimate equalizer. Number two, you gotta stack the proof. My friend Leila Hormoz says she’s awesome. She’s like, you can’t, you don’t get self-confidence by, you know, yelling, affirmation, standing in front of the mirror, right?
[00:03:51] And. But here’s something that I understood earlier. You gotta stack the proof. You do not build confidence by hyping yourself up. You do not build confidence by, you know, yelling affirmations front of the mirror. You do not build confidence by quote, being in alignment. You do not build confidence by vibing.
[00:04:06] I don’t know what any of that means. You only build confidence by doing the thing. That’s it. You only build confidence by doing the thing. The reason you are confident hitting a golf ball off the tee is because you’ve hit the golf ball off the tee, not because you got an alignment off the tee, not because you felt vibey off the tee, not because of your new Nike shorts, not because of your new fantastic club.
[00:04:24] Sure that helps. But you build confidence by doing the thing. And so when your calendar or your schedule is full of real reps, when your track record is. What undeniable is just you are doing the reps. You don’t need to convince anyone, including yourself, that who you are, who you say you are. The work is the proof.
[00:04:47] The work is the proof. You either did it or you didn’t. That’s it. The work is the proof. So lesson number two is to stack the proof. I would ask every single morning, and I, I promise you, I don’t know how to tell you this. I promise you, every single night before I go to bed, I ask myself this question. Hey, Sharan, what do you have to show for today?
[00:05:05] It is a really harsh question to ask yourself, and I will tell you there are nights where I sat in bed, lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and I asked myself, what do you have to show for today? There are times when I had a tear rolled down my eyes because I worked so hard that day and I had nothing to show for today.
[00:05:20] I had all these meetings, I wrote all these emails, I made all this content, I did it. I sure I did it, but I had nothing material, nothing important, nothing valuable, nothing amazing, nothing cool, nothing elegant to show for today. You either you did it or you didn’t. You gotta stack the proof, and that is lesson number two.
[00:05:36] And here’s lesson number three. Honestly, nobody sees the work and that is the point. I’ll say it again. Nobody sees the work, and that is the point. When you can get to the point in your life where you don’t need the credit to do the work, that’s when you have won. When you can get to the point in your life when you don’t need the credit to do the work, that is when you have won.
[00:05:55] And I’ll tell you this, when you get to a certain level, people just only see the outcomes. I’m sorry. Like in my life right now, I, I, I, I don’t need to do this, but there’s already a baseline of expectation of, man, you know. He’s gonna do this. There’s a baseline of expectation for yourself that you’re gonna do this, but what is that?
[00:06:15] People only see the outcomes. They see the sale, they see the success, they see the highlight reel, they see that. But the thing that actually moves the needle comes from the boring stuff that nobody sees. The, the extra call, the the late night email, the hard conversation that you didn’t want to have, but you had to have anyway.
[00:06:33] The person you had to let go, the person you needed to hire, right? If you can learn to love that part, if you can learn to love the invisible stuff, if you can learn to appreciate that about yourself, about doing the work that no one is going to give you credit for, that’s when you’re gonna crush it.
[00:06:48] That’s when you’re gonna be just fine. Lesson number three is nobody sees the work and that is the point. Here’s lesson number four. There is this great acronym called Boba. And I like Boba because I [00:07:00] like the little tapioca pearls, but Boba is be obsessed or be average. And I really will tell you that obsession wins.
[00:07:05] Let me be super real with you, and I tell you this, every time I have gone all in on something, when I’ve been obsessed with something, I have won in some way. And every time I have asked it. I got beat. This whole balance thing, like work-life balance, all sounds nice, but the truth is that people who win are obsessed, at least for a season.
[00:07:27] People who win are obsessed, at least for a short time. Obsession is important. Have you ever seen someone in a while, you’ve not seen them for a quarter, and then you see them and they have lost a bunch of weight. No one loses weight over eight years. They only lose weight over eight weeks, right? It is very hard to sustain obsession for a very long amount of time.
[00:07:46] Those are the people that really win. But if you can’t sustain obsession for a long amount of time, you can sustain obsession for a short amount of time. And the crazy part is this, people always say, oh no, the, you know, life is not a sprint, it’s a marathon that is false. Life is not a marathon, it’s a sprint.
[00:08:01] It’s not as false. Neither are true. This is the problem by saying it’s not one or it’s the other. It is actually both. Life is a series of sprints. Life is you. You don’t, you can’t just sprint through life. You can’t marathon your way through life. Life is a series of sprints. You gotta run hard. Take a break, run hard.
[00:08:16] Take a break. Run hard. Take a break, run hard. Take a break, run hard. Take a break, run harder, harder, harder, harder, harder. Life is a series of sprints. I don’t know what to tell you. That is the truth. You have to run hard and you have to run harder, and you have to run harder, and you have to run harder.
[00:08:27] Otherwise, someone else that is willing to run harder will beat you. And that’s what obsession is. Life is not a marathon. It is not a sprint. Life is a series of sprints and you just have to figure out what you’re gonna sprint about, what you’re gonna sprint on, what you’re gonna be obsessed with. I will tell you this, you cannot be obsessed with 14 things at the same time, but you can obsess people with one and you will see results for that one, and you will see, you will have something to show for it.
[00:08:50] And when you have something to show for it, it gives you confidence that you can do that all over again. That is lesson number four, which is obsession wins. Here’s lesson number five, which is you’ve got to use the doubt. You gotta use the doubt. Have you ever noticed that? Nobody hates on people who aren’t doing anything.
[00:09:06] If you get hate, that means you’re doing something valuable. People who don’t get hate, like if you are not getting any hate right now, I will tell you, you’re not pushing the limit. You’re not pushing the boundary, you’re not speaking up, you’re not being yourself, you’re not being honest. You’re not working hard enough, you’re not putting out more content.
[00:09:21] You’re not, you’re not speaking the truth. If you are not getting hate, people don’t care. That’s what’s the crazy part is, but you get. But, but the second you get momentum here, the haters come. They hate, they snark, they jab, they’re nonstop. They, they create fake accounts about you. They try to, like, you sell stuff on your brand.
[00:09:39] They try to bring you down. They use the doubt. Honestly, I used to get bothered by it. I used to get irritated by it, but now I treat it like gas in the tank. To me, it’s more fuel in the tank. It’s more fire for me to work on. The more people hate on me, the better it is for me. And if the less people hate on me, I’m mad.
[00:09:55] That means I’m not actually making a podcast like this. I’m not actually using the F-bomb. I’m not actually dropping the tough stuff. I’m not actually telling the truth. If people are taking shots at you, it means you’re finally visible. It means you’re finally pushing the limit. If it means you’re finally pointing out to them that.
[00:10:10] Their own insecurities and inconsistencies and the things that they could do better. And people don’t like being, being singled out. People don’t like their, their flaws being pointed out. People don’t like their hard hit, you know, hard truths being revealed to them, and you’re doing that. Let that fuel you.
[00:10:25] Lesson number five is use the doubt because lesson number six. I think I got this from Ed Millet. I think this may be the name of his new book. It was really good. By the way, I, I’ve not read the book, but I really like this idea, which is the idea of one more, if there’s anything that is practical. I love the idea of, like my partner Alex Hormozi always says the reason why his quotes hit or his ideas hit is he makes it all very behavioral.
[00:10:46] And when I say behavioral, it means that when you read something that he writes or thinks about, you can do something with it. Like it is an actionable thing. Right? And I like this idea of one more and it is. Probably the most practical one of all, which is make one more call. Have, do one more rep, have one more round of edits.
[00:11:05] That little extra like life is, you know, I think one in the inches, which is super cool, right? That little extra, that’s where the compounding happens. That’s the other part where people skip. That’s then they’re like, Hey, I don’t want to floss one more teeth tooth tonight. I don’t wanna do one more squat today.
[00:11:20] I don’t wanna do one more pushup today. I don’t want to make one more call today. I don’t wanna send one more text today. I want to, I don’t wanna do the one more. You don’t have to do that a hundred extra things. Just do one more than you feel like doing. One more. What is one more thing that you can do right now that you’re already doing?
[00:11:35] What is one more thing? I really think that that’s the edge. Just do one more and that is lesson number six. Here’s lesson number seven, which is. Suffering is just normal. And I just think that you gotta suffer with some intention. Suffering is really powerful and people don’t wanna suffer. They want the comfortable life.
[00:11:53] And I, I really think that when you suffer intentionally, you actually bring the suffering upon yourself. It’s not, I’m saying, I’m telling you, this is not easy to say. But at some point it is going to get uncomfortable. You remember the great times in your life because you were uncomfortable and you grew.
[00:12:08] You don’t, if you look back, you do not remember the 15 days that you sat on the couch and ate potato chips. You do not remember those days. Those days meant nothing. They, they were B baseline blah days. For you, you only remember the days that you worked hard. You only remember the days that you pushed hard.
[00:12:22] You only remember the days that you threw up in training. You worked hard at night. You only remember the days that you suffered. Maybe it’s a little fatigue. Fatigue. Maybe it’s loneliness. Maybe it’s self-doubt. But you can choose your pain. You have to choose your pain because through the pain is something special.
[00:12:39] The the, I imagine this, if you write down the num, all the things you’re not willing to give up in order to achieve your goals, just write down the things that you’re not willing to give up in order to achieve your goals. That is what someone is willing to give up in order to achieve theirs, which means they will beat you.
[00:12:55] They will beat me. You have to choose your pain. You can either choose the pain of staying right here, the pain of mediocrity, or you can choose the, choose the pain of doing the thing that moves you forward. Choose the pain of being embarrassed and making that phone call. Choose the pain of not knowing and saying, Hey, can someone help me with this AI thing?
[00:13:13] Choosing the pain of saying, Hey, of embarrassment and saying that your pipeline dried up and that you don’t have any more deals. Do. Choosing the pain of saying that you made 50 videos and they all, none of them got any views and you need some help choosing the pain, you’re gonna feel it either way.
[00:13:30] You’re gonna feel it either in the regret. Or in the growth, you might as well just feel it in the growth because choosing the pain and feeling regret is just not getting any better. You might as well make it count. Here’s lesson number seven, which is, uh, to suffer with intention. And here’s lesson number eight.
[00:13:48] I should track the ledger. What I track, the ledger. All I mean by is keeping, keeping score of some, some sort, but for yourself, I have this invisible scorecard in my head and every. Action I take or decision I make, I take it as either helping me or hurting me. It’s a very simple decision, Hey, is this moving me closer to my goals or away from my goals?
[00:14:08] Every time you have to make a choice, you say, is this making me closer to my goals or away from my goals? There is no neutral. Hey, you, you’re, you go to a restaurant and you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna order the fries and the shake. You just ask a question, is it getting me closer to my goals or away from my goals?
[00:14:21] You’re, you, you wanna take a minute and you know, and watch a bunch of YouTube. You say, Hey, is this getting closer to my goals or away from my goals? You don’t even have to make an take an action. You just have to answer that question because it is easier to answer the question honestly, and you’ll automatically recalibrate your behavior because.
[00:14:37] The reason you don’t have. The ability to recalibrate your behavior is because you don’t ask yourself the important question. My question is really simple. Is it taking me closer to my goals or away from my goals? I don’t write a score down. I don’t do any hashtags. I don’t do any hash marks. I don’t keep a count, nothing.
[00:14:52] Anytime I’m make a decision that is away from a plan that I have, I just ask, is this closer to my goals or away from my goals? When I wake up in the morning or before I hit snooze? And I hit snooze. I’m like, is this getting me closer to my goals or away from my goals? And that morning if I’m really tired and I say it’s away from my goals, but I’m still tired because it’s getting me closer to my goals tomorrow, I can only rationalize it so many times.
[00:15:10] So I try to really be honest about what I’m building every day, every minute, every second, I just ask a question, is getting me closer to my goals or away from my goals? Someone asks the meeting, do I wanna take it? The question is really simple. It’s not a, do I wanna meet with this person? It is, is it getting me closer to my goals or away from my goals?
[00:15:23] That’s it. ’cause at the end of the day. You just have to ask that question. Is it getting you closer to your goals, away from your goals? Are you making moves that are adding up? Are you making moves that, are you making decisions that are getting you to the right spot? Are you getting making choices that are getting you closer to your goals, away from your goals?
[00:15:39] Or you are you just kind of going with whatever flow you have? So big lesson number eight is attract the ledger. Here’s lesson number nine, and I will tell you this. If you can internalize this lesson, you will be unbeatable. And I believe that the boring is the battleground. Boring is the battleground.
[00:15:57] This is, I don’t know how else to frame it other than it’s a quiet killer in our lives because all the big wins, they come from doing the simple things, the over simple things, over and over. The most mundane things without burning out or without checking out. Doing the simple, boring, mundane things is really, really hard.
[00:16:19] Everyone talks about momentum, but the what is momentum? The momentum is doing, having the discipline that does the boring things that sustains it. No one has a problem doing the exciting things. No one has the problem going on vacation. No one has a problem going out to dinner. No one has a problem ordering DoorDash.
[00:16:36] No one has a problem flipping. Uh, flipping on Netflix and watching not 1, 2, 3, 4, sometimes five episodes because you didn’t have the courage and the self self restraint to say no more. Everyone talks about momentum, but nobody talks about the discipline takes you to sustain it, right? Because boring is the battleground.
[00:16:55] If you can find a way to find the joy, to find the courage, to find the extreme, you know, uh, satisfaction in doing the boring. If the boring gives you the satisfaction, that’s when you have one. You don’t need any credit for the boring ’cause. That’s where all the growth hides. All the growth hides in the boring, because the boring is the battlefield.
[00:17:16] Your job is to continue to stay boring. Boring is everything. And the more boring you can do, the more easy it is to get to do all the other fancy stuff. And that is lesson number nine, which is boring as a battlefield. Here’s lesson number 10, which is we have to find a way to outwork our excuses. So lesson number 10, outwork your excuses.
[00:17:38] So I’ll kind of end on this big idea. You don’t have to feel great to do great work, right? My partner, Leila Hormozi, has this great saying where she says, sorry for the bad language. She says, freak your mood. Follow the plan. She’s a freak. Your mood, follow the plan, and every time you get stuck, if you just say freak your mood, follow the plan you always bring, it brings you back to what needs to be done.
[00:18:01] You don’t have to feel great to do great work, and most of the time the work will make you feel better anyway. Here’s my point. The way you feel great is by doing great work you don’t do like it’s, it’s doing the great work allows you to feel great. You don’t feel great to do great work. Only the if. If you always do the work and then feel great, that is a perfect recipe to always feel great.
[00:18:26] At the end of the day, if your job is to wanting to feel great, right? There’s two ways to feel great. You can wake up and feel great, or you can wake up and not feel great. However, I’m gonna give you a guaranteed way to feel great. Meaning if you do the work, you’ll always end up feeling great. It’s just like working out.
[00:18:41] When you work out at the end, you get the endorphins and you always feel great. So working out. Doing the work makes you feel great. Some days you’re ready to work out and you feel good and you’re ready to work. Some days you’re not, but doesn’t matter because you always know that you don’t work, you don’t feel great to work out.
[00:18:57] You work out to feel great. So the workout is the thing. The feeling great is the reward. You don’t need the reward to do the work. You need the work to do the reward. You need the work to get paid. You don’t get paid to do the work. Right? That’s the important part in all of this. So when you’re like in a slump or you’re second guessing yourself or you, or just don’t wait to be inspired.
[00:19:20] Just know that the work comes first. Just go do something. Action beats anxiety, right? You gotta show yourself that you’re still in the game. You gotta show yourself that you’re still willing to do the work because the work come before the war. And the trick that I use is, if you can do this for enough days in a row, the results actually stop being random and they start becoming.
[00:19:41] I dunno, in undeniable, inevitable, unstoppable, because you’ve done so much work that it actually starts to show up. You gotta outwork your excuses and just to believe that this formula, you gotta do the work to get the reward, doing the work makes you feel great, makes you feeling great, does not make you do the work.
[00:19:58] So that’s the kind of the big list, 10 big things. These 10 may not look like the shortcuts that you want, but I will tell you in, if you think about it. These are the 10 shortcuts in a world without shortcuts. I’m gonna read them to you one more time. Number one, effort is the ultimate equalizer. Number two, you gotta stack the proof in your favor.
[00:20:18] Number three, the world. Nobody sees the work they, that is exactly the point. Number four, be obsessed or be average, meaning obsession wins. Number five, use the doubt. To fuel you. Number six, just one more. Number seven, you gotta suffer with intention because you might as well make it count. Number eight, you gotta track the ledger.
[00:20:33] Ask the question, is it getting me to my goal closer to my goals, or away from my goals? Number nine, boring is the battleground because you know that the more boring work you do, the better you’re gonna win. Number 10, you gotta outwork your excuses because you do work to feel great. You don’t feel great to do the work.
[00:20:48] That’s essentially the list. These, you know, these are the ones that separate you. Not because you’re smarter, by the way, not be it. It’s not because you had some kind of edge grown up, but because you didn’t stop because you were unstoppable. Because I know it sounds simple, but that’s exactly why this works.
[00:21:03] Most people just won’t do it. They will overcomplicate it, they will overthink it, they will overanalyze it. But I hope you don’t, I hope you’ll just keep working. I hope you will outwork yourself and one day you will look up and wonder how you passed all of them. Why? How you. How you made them all. Second, how you win because how to win is just outworking yourself.
[00:21:25] These are 10 shortcuts in a world without shortcuts. I hope you enjoyed that. Hey, by the way, if you like this, do me a favor. Can you screenshot this and tag me on social That way I know you like this and I make more like this for you again. So, uh, screenshot this, tag me, and I can make more like this. For you.
[00:21:47] Hey, it’s Sharran, I have a cool gift for you. Since you like this podcast, I actually have an ultra super-secret private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. It’s called 10 K wisdom because I try to wrap 10, 000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes.
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