Netflix Co-Founder Doesn’t Attribute Success to Hard Work: What To Focus On Instead
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Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph has helped turn the streaming giant into a household name with a market cap of $356.95 billion. But he doesn’t see hard work as the key to his success.
“I think ‘hard work leading to success’ is a myth,” he said while appearing on “The Diary of a CEO With Steven Bartlett” podcast.
Here’s what Randolph said to do instead to achieve success.
Sprint Early on in Your Career — Then Slow Down
Randolph does believe that when you are first starting off in your career, it is essential to work hard — but you shouldn’t keep that pace up throughout your career. To explain this concept, he gave the analogy of a triathlon with a mass water start.
“You have 400 or 500 people, who when the gun sounds, all plow into the water simultaneously,” Randolph said. “As you can imagine, it is a s—show.
“You’re getting kicked and your goggles are being knocked off and you’re being held under water, and you quickly realize that if you want to be able to survive in this mass start, you’re going to sprint for those first 400, 500, 600 yards to get yourself far enough in the front of the pack that you have open water.”
He views work life like a triathlon.
“When you’re younger, when you don’t really know what you’re doing, when you have to go down a lot of false ends … you better work your a– off,” Randolph said. “You better sprint. You better work three times harder than everybody else in the company. It’s essential.
“But ideally, you get yourself far enough ahead that you recognize, ‘I can’t go at this pace for the entirety of the triathlon. I needed to to get myself some breathing room, but now I can back off.'”
Focus On the Things That Actually Matter
Randolph believes that entrepreneurs often focus on minute details that don’t matter instead of the impactful details that make all the difference.
“So many entrepreneurs … are up all night polishing their deck. They’re reviewing the work of other people to make sure the spelling is correct. They’re double-checking every detail. They are working so hard, but I know from experience that … most of the time it doesn’t make a difference,” he said.
“You don’t lose the deal at two o’clock that morning because you didn’t check the fonts,” Randolph continued. “You lost that deal four weeks ago when you didn’t have some fundamentals right or you just weren’t the right company to begin with. No matter how hard you worked, you weren’t going to change the outcome.”
Instead of putting your energy into the wrong things — which can cause burnout — only give your full focus to the things that really matter.
“The key to having some balance in your life as an entrepreneur is this recognition that if you’re smart about the things that you choose to focus on, you make 99% of the difference,” Randolph said. “All that extra work does not really change the outcome.”
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