Darren Hardy, Success and the Compound Effect

In his role as publisher of SUCCESS magazine, which contained business and self-improvement advice from high-achievers, Darren Hardy interviewed a wide range of “fascinating, interesting people”. This post centres around his advice for success, including the power of the compound effect, and explores aspects like consistency, hard work, setting goals, making improvements, tracking progress, and the positive impact of advisors and mentors.

​Read more to watch a video of a presentation Darren gave about the lesson he learnt from his most personally meaningful interview for SUCCESS magazine, as well as discover key ideas from “The Compound Effect”*, a book about the impact of everyday decisions that Darren published at the start of the decade.

Lesson from a centenarian
Darren is an accomplished public speaker, and in the roughly 11 minute long video below, he speaks about the individual he interviewed who had the biggest impact on his life: a “wealthy, well-respected, and very loved” centenarian, who declined publicity as he’s a very private person. He learnt the following from him: only a few things matter to anything – find them, stick to them, and then master them.

In the video, Darren expands on this sentiment with anecdotes from named interviews he did:

• Discussing open-heart surgeries with Dr Oz: find your few vital functions to become masterful at, leaving the rest to the capable team
• Exploring focus with Steve Jobs, who was “as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do… [Focus] means saying no to the other hundred good ideas there are…”, a perspective echoed by Warren Buffett

...In any endeavour, in any activity, in anything you’re pursuing success in, there are only a few things that matter. Don’t leave the field of the few things that matter to chase the novel, the new and the exciting, because ultimately you’ll leave success on the table.”
DARREN HARDY

​The remainder of this article highlights some of Darren’s other advice for success, in the form of quotes from his first book, “The Compound Effect”*. Protagion’s members will recognise strong alignment between Darren’s main ideas below and our approach to active career management (underpinned by the support of mentors and coaches):
(i) understanding ourselves, including our values and goals
(ii) improving ourselves, through focused actions and feedback
(iii) tracking our progress

Consistency

• “I’m the world’s biggest believer in consistency. I’m living proof that it’s the ultimate key to success.”
• “...The only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time”
• “Isn’t it comforting to know that you only need to take a series of tiny steps consistently over time to radically improve your life?… We’ve been conditioned by society to believe in the effectiveness of great displays of massive effort” - this aligns with Simon Sinek’s thoughts on intensity versus consistency

The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices… These small changes offer little or no immediate result; no big win; no obvious ‘I told you so' payoff, so why bother?… These small, seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will create a radical difference…
small smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference.”
DARREN HARDY

Hard Work

• “We’ve lost sight of the good, old-fashioned value of hard, and consistent, work"

• “One of dad’s core philosophies was ‘It doesn’t matter how smart you are or aren’t, you need to make up in hard work what you lack in experience, skill, intelligence or innate ability. If your competitor is smarter, more talented or experienced, you just need to work three or four times as hard. You can still beat ‘em.”

When you understand how the compound effect works, you won’t pine for quick fixes or silver bullets. Don’t try to fool yourself into believing that a mega-successful athlete didn’t live through regular, bone-crushing drills and thousands of hours of practice. He got up early to practise and kept practising long after others had stopped. He faced the sheer agony and frustration of the failure, loneliness, hard work and disappointment it took to become number one.”
DARREN HARDY

Traditional Values

• “...What it really takes to create lasting success like grit, hard work and fortitude, just aren’t alluring, and thus have been mostly forgotten. We’ve lost respect for the strife and struggle of our forefathers. The massive effort they put forth instilled discipline, chiselled their character and stoked the spirit to brave new frontiers.”

The access point to your ‘why power’ is through your core values, which define both who you are and what you stand for. Your core values act as your navigation system through life. Your core values are the values you would fight for and defend to the death. These values make up your character. They are your non-negotiables in life. They are the attributes you would hope others would say about you in your absence and in your departure. They become what you are known for. They become your internal compass, your guiding beacon… If you haven’t clearly defined your values, you may end up making choices that conflict with them. And when your actions conflict with your values, the results are unhappiness, frustration and despondency. Psychologists tell us that nothing creates internal stress and trauma more than when what you’re doing on the outside – your actions and behaviours – is incongruent with your values on the inside… When you are certain of your core values, decision-making is simplified. When faced with a choice, you simply ask yourself ‘does this align with my core values?’. If yes, do it. If no, don’t and don’t look back.”
DARREN HARDY

Setting Goals

• “The one skill most responsible for the abundance in my life is learning how to effectively set and achieve goals. Something almost magical happens when you organise and focus your creative power on a well-defined target. I’ve seen this time and time again: the highest achievers in the world have all succeeded because they mapped out their visions. The person who has a clear, compelling, and white-hot burning ‘why’ will always defeat even the best of the best at doing the how.”

Tracking Progress

• “Tracking my progress and missteps is one of the reasons I accumulated the success I’ve had. The process forces you to become conscious of your decisions.”

Tracking… works because it brings moment-to-moment awareness to the actions you take in the area of your life that you want to improve. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll observe about your behaviour. You cannot manage or improve something until you measure it. Likewise, you can’t make the most of whom you are, your talents and resources and capabilities until you are aware of and accountable for your actions. Every professional athlete and his or her coach track each performance down to the smallest minutiae… Professional athletes know how to adjust their performances based on what they’ve tracked. They pay attention to what they record and make changes accordingly because they know when their stats improve, they win more games and earn more in endorsement deals. At any given moment, I want you to know how well you’re doing.”
DARREN HARDY

Your own advisors and mentors

• “I’ve handselected a dozen people because of their areas of expertise, creative thinking ability and/or my great respect for who they are… Seek out positive people who have achieved the success you want to create in your own life.”
• “During my interview with Harvey Mackay, he told me: ‘I have 20 coaches if you can believe it. I have a speech coach. I have a writing coach. I have a humour coach. I’ve got a language coach’, and on and on. I have always found it interesting that the most successful people, the truly top performers, are the ones willing to hire and pay for the best coaches and trainers there are. It pays to invest in your improved performance.”
• Darren acknowledges his mentors too:
  • Paul J Myer “was a very powerful spirit in my life… my association with him raised my game. His walking pace was my running pace. It expanded my ideas about how big I could play and how ambitious I could be. You have to get around people like that. You’re never too good for a mentor.”
  • Jim Rohn who was a strong advocate for personal development and focusing on what you are becoming. Jim himself credited Earl Schoaff with this insight: “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job”. In Darren’s words about Jim’s impact on his life (from a different interview): “His influence is indelible, and took me from the disciplined upbringing my father gave me, and Jim helped me craft my philosophy and my character and the attributes that were most important to being an influential leader and communicating.”

Mentoring is your true legacy. It’s the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It’s why you get up every day: to teach and to be taught.”
JOHN WOODEN, quoted by Darren Hardy

Feedback

• “You want real feedback? Find people who care enough about you who will be honest with you when you ask them this: How do I show up to you? What are my strengths? Where can I improve? Where do you think I sabotage myself? What’s the one thing I could stop doing that would benefit me the most? Ask those questions, get real feedback, and that will be the seed of great growth.”

Act, Review and Improve

• “...Learning is not the problem. The lack of study and implementation is… Act, review and improve. Act again, review and improve until those ideas have effected results in your life. I suggest a study and growth plan under these time parameters: 
  • First is 21 days. Pick a new discipline, behaviour or habit you want to form and then commit to it for a minimum of 21 days. 21 days is a short enough period of time to give you hope of completion, and long enough to form a new habit. I also suggest that you only work on one or two new habits and disciplines at a time. That’s a minimum of 17 new disciplines and habits that you can form over the period of an entire year. That will revolutionise your life… 
  • Second, 90 days. Pick a theme of growth to work on and then commit to it for 90 days… This could be a get fit theme, or magical marriage, or servant leader, or dinnertime dad. Whatever significant improvement you’d like to make in your life, focus on it for a 90 day stretch. 
  • The next time chunk: three years. With focused and concerted study, I have found that it takes about three years to get good at anything you set out to improve. Our microwave, insta-results expectation falsifies what it really takes for true transformational growth and improvement. One of the most important skills and attitudes you can develop is patience. Give yourself a break. Don’t expect to be an overnight sensation: there’s no such thing. Stick with your growth plan. It will pay huge dividends in the end. 
  • And lastly, five to seven years. This is the time that it takes to develop mastery. You can master most any skill, quality or attribute if you study, practise, review and improve over a five to seven year period of time. You could become world class at most anything, but it takes focused study.”

What are your thoughts on Darren’s advice for success, including the compound effect?​

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