I've been away from YouTube for a long time.
I think it's been 6 around months, right?.
There's a good reason for it.
So, I thought I shoot a video and explain where I've been but more importantly while
doing that I want to share with you something incredibly useful for your success in life.
Today, we're gonna talk about probabilities.
Probabilities of success.
Success in your career as well as success in your life.
I'm 100% sure it will be an eye opener video for you.
I don't know if I'll be able to present it well enough, I don't know if I'll be
able to convey its importance with my non-native English but I'll certainly try.
And if I can succeed in conveying its importance, then it'll be a life changer for you.
So, grab a cup of coffee, tea, water, relax then watch this video entirely.
So, let's get to it.
You know, I don't know if you watched my Desert Video where I talk about my background,
the challenges I had in my life, becoming homeless for a brief period in my early 20s,
and then how I was able to turn my life around and achieve massive success in my career.
Obviously there were so many factors in that turn-around which I lay them in that video,
but there is one aspect I never mentioned.
This one aspect is how I see the life outcomes in mathematical probabilities.
And how I assign those probabilities.
And also how important it is to do it.
Ok.
So first, back to why I was absent for 6 months.
Well, about 7 months ago, I won a very big, multi-million dollar project in Japan.
I was the main contractor for a corporate transformation project.
So, I won this project competing against giant firms in the industry like BCG, McKinsey,
and even PwC.
I was a one man team and they are corporate giants.
Absolute giants in consulting.
And I won the project.
Alone.
Of course, I hired all the subject matter experts to help me deliver the project successfully
but at the beginning I was all alone.
It's one of those few David versus Goliath moments of my life.
At the beginning, when I heard about the RFP – request for proposal, sorry it started
with an RFI, just a request for information.
So, anyway at the beginning I literally had very close to 0% chance of winning such a
project.
Fine, I've been a management consultant for a very long time and served great clients
but I was always working for big brand employers, like PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC Consulting,
AccountAbility.
I was an employee.
So, it's not extremely difficult to win a project when you are working for such a
big brand name.
But it's completely another ball game when you actually have your own firm with very
limited resources and very little credibility and then you try to compete against those
giants.
So, my chances of winning that project was close to 0%.
And the reason why I won that project had to do with the way I think – which is what
I'll share with you today.
It's about the way I see outcomes and probabilities.
Let me quickly explain this then I'll break it down and give you examples.
Now, most of us suffer from what I call a bodybuilder syndrome.
This is a term I just made up.
Such a syndrome doesn't exist but let me explain.
What happens when you go to gym, you work out, you get muscles.
You give the input of working out, you get the output of muscles.
This is a 100% guarantee.
Now, the effectiveness will obviously change based on your diet or workout program but
unless you have medical conditions you will 100% get muscles.
So, there is a direct link between a singular input and a singular output.
Good?
In life, most things are significantly more complex.
And Inputs and outputs don't have direct link between them.
Meaning, a single input will not lead to the output.
For example, in job hunting, online applications is a single input (and a very bad, useless
one), it will not lead to the job of your dreams.
Extremely unlikely.
Tomorrow you register your own company, you will not become a millionaire.
It just won't happen.
The trick that I always do is – now listen to this carefully - assigning completely arbitrary
probabilities to my success.
For example, I assigned myself 0% probability of winning that project in Japan at the beginning.
But with each actions I took, I again arbitrarily increased those probabilities by a few percentage
points.
For example, my proposal was already top notch.
But I got it entirely rewritten by a professional copywriter, that increased my probability
to 0.5%, I then used a professional designer for the look and feel of the document, up
to maybe 1%, I hired a former foreign minister as a subject matter expert in my team, that
upped my probabilities to 10%, I identified the decision makers, found out what international
business magazines they regularly read and I got my company featured in those magazines,
upped my probabilities to 12%.
See where I am going with this?
I've done so many little things like these that eventually, after about 30 days, in my
subjective evaluation, I gave myself a 50% chance of winning that project.
And…
Voila, luckily, I won.
Oh, I said luckily.
Didn't I?
I said luckily I won.
What does luck have to do in this case you?
Everything.
Luck or badluck is just a very simple mathematical, rather statistical concept.
It's just a distribution of events without a sequence.
For example, you have have 5 Xs and 5 Ys.
The probabilities of you getting X is 50% and getting Y is 50%.
Right?
Right.
But in life, they are not in sequences.
So, you end up getting events like XXXYYYXXYYYXYX.
You still get 50% but the distribution is not equally sequential.
They are random.
That patch of XXX in sequence is your luck and getting YYY is your bad luck.
That's why you may win even when you have a 20% chance of winning or lose even when
you have an only 10% chance of losing.
Luck.
That's what it is.
Now, back to the topic, at the moment, probabilities exist for everything you want out of life
in the future.
The future is nothing but a bunch probability streams with branches.
That's it.
Great career in PwC, P&G, having your own firm and becoming a millionaire, a billionaire.
Those probabilities are out there.
They are invisible to your eye, but it doesn't mean they don't exist.
For example, 1% chance to become a millionaire, 0.1% chance to become a billionaire, 5% chance
to work for a great multinational employer in your field, 3% chance to one day becoming
a partner in a consulting firm, 5% chance to die of cancer (based on your genetics).
So, your job is very simple.
You take action to change those probabilities into your favor.
That's very simple.
And you can only do that if you can somehow track it.
And the only way you can track such invisible events is if you assign arbitrary numbers
to them – just like I do.
And that's how you get closer to getting everything you want out of life.
The other benefit is that it limits your discouragement.
It keeps you on track.
When you don't achieve that output you sought for so long, you don't get discouraged.
You just know that the arbitrary probability score you assigned was maybe too optimistic.
For example, you thought getting an MBA from London Business School would bump you up to
100% of staying in London and working for HSBC, renting an apartment in Chelsea, or
South Kensington, shopping from Harrods all day long.
Far from it.
In reality, it'll maybe get you up to 20%.
I've so many LIG members who have gone through this.
They invested significant amount of their savings to have an MBA degree in London with
hopes to stay in London and have a great lifestyle.
Majority got disappointed when they realized things just don't work that way.
Hence the reason why they joined LIG to change those probabilities.
And eventually they did.
As I said at the beginning, unless it's body building, a single input like getting
an MBA will not give you that single output of getting a job with a consulting firm or
a reputable firm.
You only play the odds of probabilities.
You won't see any progress until that probability is high enough.
It's like Chinese Bamboo tree.
You water it for 5 years.
Only after 5 years, it breaks ground.
But once it does, it reaches 90 feet height in 2 months.
First 5 years it was invisible, but it was getting stronger underground and increasing
its chances to break the ground.
This applies to everything that requires multiple, complex, and dependent inputs which result
in a single output, getting a promotion, getting a job, setting up your own successful company,
winning projects.
For example, getting promotions.
You don't put efforts into your promotions, you don't spend time to write an impactful
self-assessment report, you don't engage in positive corporate politics, you don't
influence the decision makers, you don't make sure your achievements are highly visible,
and then you complain when you don't get a promotion.
You never took action to increase those probabilities.
Basically, you maintain the status-quo.
It just won't work like that.
Same with a getting a job, new job.
You make click applications, you go to Monster.com and apply to 300 jobs, most of them are fake,
you spend 6 months unemployed or underemployed and even further reduce your attractiveness
in the market then complain about your life.
Your way of thinking needs to change.
Ok.
What I shared with you today is not special relativity.
It's not very difficult.
It's very simple.
But if you can develop that mindset, the results you'll get won't be simple.
You can apply this to your everyday life.
Create a little note in your phone and start assigning probabilities for the things you
want in life.
And with every little action you take towards that goal, increase those probabilities by
few percentage points.
You'll see, eventually, not too long in the future, you'll hit that good luck patch
of XXX, remember?
And you'll get what you want significantly earlier than you initially anticipated.
I'll see you next time.
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