There is an ongoing debate on what makes people and entrepreneurs successful, and a lot of people have

different ideas, but there was one study from Stanford University that actually became a tremendous

and very accurate predictor of success.

And you can test this in kids as young as four or five years old.

Here's the study.

This is the Wikipedia page for that study.

I'll have this linked in the resources of this video so you can come here and read it in detail.

And there's a lot of YouTube videos about it.

There's a lot of articles about it.

It's a really famous study.

Here's how it worked.

They got a lot of kids into the study and they were told that the study is something else.

And every kid got into a room with the professor and the professor said, I'll give you this marshmallow

to eat.

And then they pretended like they forgot something and they said, if you don't need this marshmallow

before I come back, I'll give you another one.

So you'll have to.

So the test was really whether the kid would delay gratification and wait to get the second marshmallow

because of the kid waited until the professor came back.

That kid would get the second marshmallow.

And some kids, of course, ate the marshmallow right away.

Some kids waited and got their second marshmallow.

But then this study.

Track these kids throughout their lives, and it was very consistent that the kids who were able to

delay gratification to get a bigger reward later, they succeeded in their studies in university, in

career, in business.

And there's an interesting takeaway here.

This suggested that it's not economic background or anything else that predicts success.

It's actually willpower.

And willpower is something that more or less can be trained in everybody.

Of course, some people have more or less of it, but everybody can work on disciplining themselves.

And even understanding this very test highlights how important willpower is and how important it is

to delay gratification for bigger rewards later.

And knowing this alone, people start to focus a little more on disciplining themselves.

And for intrapreneurs.

This is incredibly important because just about every project I've worked on starting over a decade

ago to starting this year, there was always a ton of failure in the beginning.

And most people, they get excited about a project, they work on it.

It becomes frustrating, they quit or another way.

This manifests itself as a lot of my clients right away.

They ask, well, how much money is going to make?

Can I make a million dollars?

These kinds of questions and it's not a terrible question on its own, but it's a little bit of a sign

and a clue that this person is focusing on the very short term, very zero then on the reward and not

really focusing on.

The long term of it, the work, actually, all the things that will make them successful and I see

this in my clients all the time, and I actually myself face this as well, because even though I have

a lot of experience doing different projects, still many things are new for me.

For example, I've got this little T-shirt store wave, if you like.

It's a very beginning, early days of it.

I'm working on the redesign everything, but it's kind of a cool brand that I want to see it through

and I want to make it a bigger thing.

You know, it's wavy.

If you like dotcom or the T-shirts are like Wavish, you like boxing, if you like soccer, hiking,

whether you like wine and so on.

And so that's the brand.

And guess what?

I thought in the beginning, I was going to have like, smooth, smooth sailing.

Right.

But it's never like that, even if you have experience like I do.

So a lot of the people around me, they ask me, how are your sales going?

What about now then the simulator?

How your sales going?

How are things going?

Are you selling right.

Those kinds of questions.

And then sometimes if I say, well, the sales are not exactly what I was hoping at the moment, then

they say, well, why don't you quit?

It's not working.

And this is the marshmallow test in practice, because most of the people I talk to there than non intrapreneurs,

they're on the outside looking in and I know that, OK, sure.

I imagined myself succeeding immediately, but we all do it and then we kind of face reality.

And then when reality hits, I'm able to postpone gratification like I'm OK.

If this succeeds in two years, three years, it's OK.

I know that's fine.

And I'm actually not quitting.

Despite that most people would quit is the very same thing with like my YouTube channel for music.

I have a big YouTube channel for business, but music is like a passion of mine.

And of course you can imagine how hard it is as an adult to start your music journey.

Right.

So many things to learn.

And guess what happened in my early songs, everybody was like, we don't want to listen to this.

It's painful to listen to this.

And actually, I don't blame them because it was painful to listen to it.

But then it took me a lot of time perfecting every little bit, becoming less bad, less bad, less

bad, and still, you know, focusing on becoming less bad.

This is, again, marshmallow test.

Most people, when they're adults, how do they do music?

They get excited about it.

They spend a couple of months, they get busy, and then the music kind of you know, they always take

it as a beginner.

But now, you know, marshmallow test, right.

You got to focus on the long term.

So a lot of things, it's wiser to create your plans and position everything with the vision that,

OK, maybe not now, maybe not in six months, maybe like in two or three years.

But in the meantime, every day you got to work towards this goal and perfect, perfected, perfected,

perfected, improve, improve, improve.

And then success will happen.

It's the persistence and the discipline that can help achieve great long term goals, not getting excited

about it and quitting quickly.

So if you're in your Intrapreneurship journey and a lot of people are nagging you, this thing is not

working, what are you doing?

Do something else.

Get a job, then, you know, marshmallow test.

They're wrong because the long term is where success happens.