The Mindset Mentor - The Science Behind Sudden Success

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Do you know how long it really takes to become successful, and are you willing to be patient enough to get there? In this episode, I talk about why success isn’t a destination but a journey, why most people quit too early, and how the Chinese bamboo story perfectly explains why your hard work might not show results yet. If you can stay consistent, focus on the right direction, take the right actions, and simply refuse to quit, your breakthrough will come — it just takes time. Feeling stuck? It's time to take back control. If you're ready to master your mind and create real, lasting change, click the link below and start transforming your life today. 👉 http://coachwithrob.com   The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life.     Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll, and Dr. Steven Gundry.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me if ever. Give us a rating and review, however you listen to us, the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and allows us to impact more people.

So the biggest way that you can give back to this podcast is by giving us a rating. a review. Today, we're going to talk about how long it takes to be quote unquote successful, whatever success means to you. And if you're watching on video, you can see that this is episode two from my living room. And you might be able to hear a little bit of a difference for those you guys that are listening on just audio. I'm sitting in my living room just because I wanted a different vibe. I wanted to be in some sunlight, not in some darkness. And so here we are. And the first thing I think about when I think about success is this is what does success mean to you and you know when we're younger when I was younger specifically success was only viewed through I only viewed success

through money how much money I make all of that type of stuff now when I see a successful person has nothing to do with how much money they make I would say more than anything else the the my definition of success is how free somebody is and how happy they are and how much joy and peace they have in their life. I know people that are worth billions of dollars that are stressed out every single day. I know people who are just getting by and paying their bills and they're the most joyful, peaceful, happy people I know. I would not say that the billionaire is more successful than those people who have ultimate peace in their life. And so, but what is, what is it really more than you? More than anything else. What does me for you is is what's important to think about? When you look at success, a lot of people are like, I want to be

successful. What does what does that mean to you? That's the first thing that I think that you really need to figure out. The second thing I'll tell you is this is success is not really a destination. It is more of a journey. It is more of something that you decide to work on for a while. And so the way I like to think about is like the story of the Chinese bamboo. If you're unfamiliar with the of the Chinese bamboo. The older I get, the more I realize that the story of the Chinese bamboo is so true. It's so much how life is. It's so much how quote-unquote success is. The story of the Chinese bamboo is that you plant the bamboo seed and you put it in the ground and you water it, you give it sunlight, you get everything it needs. First year doesn't even pop out of the ground.

second year you water it you give it sunlight give it everything it's needs second year doesn't pop out of the ground third year fourth year fifth year none of those years it pops out of the ground and then the sixth year it's the craziest thing it grows up to 60 feet i'm sorry it goes up to 80 feet in six weeks it just explodes and so we've all heard of the phrase of like an overnight success oh they were an overnight success but really most of the time when someone's an overnight success you don't see their 10 years of hard work and dedication and grueling practice to get them to have that quote-unquote overnight success. When you see someone who's like a breakout actor and they start to win all of the awards,

everyone's like they came out of nowhere. Well, they were working and grueling and barely getting by for so long before you ever found out who this person was. And so we live in a world of instant gratification. you know like we are so trained to think that what we want we can get immediately like if i want if i get hungry and i want groceries to my house like the other day i decided you know what i would like some this is a true story two weeks ago i was like you know what i want to start making some fresh squeeze orange juice lorne and i are at a a cafe we got fresh creased orange juice it was really

good and i was like you know what i'm going to go on amazon i'm going to get a juicer just a one you know it's like $30. Just an orange juice juicer, an electric one. And I'm going to see if I can get it delivered to the house. I'm thinking it'll be here in a couple days as typical with Amazon. And it was like, it'll be there in three hours. And we got home. We went and did a couple errands.

We got home. It was a Saturday. It was already at my house. And then I was like, this is crazy. It's already here. I wasn't even expect to be here so quick. I was like, we need to order some oranges. So we order oranges from, it was like five pounds of oranges.

We ended up ordering from, from Whole Foods and it was at our house that night. And I was making orange juice that day. I didn't have to, I had already left my house, but I didn't have to leave my house to get the juicer. I didn't have to leave my house to get the orange juice. We're so trained to think that everything happens immediately. I want a juicer.

I can have a juicer immediately. I want orange juice. I'm going to get oranges delivered to my house. I want, you know, someone to come, I want to be at the airport. Oh, I want someone to come pick me up right now. I'll just get an Uber sent to my house. house. I'm hungry. I'm going to get some sort of food delivery sent to my house. And we can get everything that we want almost immediately. Do you remember when when movies used to come out or you wanted

to see a movie? You wanted to rent a movie. You'd have to get in your car. You'd have to go to Blockbuster. You'd have to hope that Blockbuster had your movie that you wanted to see. Sometimes you get there and realize that somebody had rented it out and then you couldn't watch the movie and had to wait three or four days for them to get it in and they'd call you until your movie's finally in. then you could go pick it up. Now it's like, hey, I want to watch any movie. I can go to Amazon. I can go to YouTube on my phone. I can, you know, literally pay $4 for it. I can watch the movie immediately. So we are so trained with how great technology is nowadays and how convenient our lives have become that when we want something, we immediately get it. But life, success, happiness, joy,

everything that's great in this world takes time. And we have to understand that there is a retraining of ourselves that we kind of have to do. You know, like, you would never think that you could go to the gym one time and you would wake up the next morning and you would have a six-pack. It'd be crazy, right? You know that it takes time and dedicated effort to get in the shape that you want. You can't just go one time and you have it, right? You can't eat one salad and lose the weight that you want to. You can't save $20 and wake up and be financially free the next day.

You can't work 10 hours today and just be a millionaire. We all know that. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. But for some reason, we have this feeling of why am I not there yet? I deserve to be there. I should be there. I've been working so hard in my business for three months.

Why am I not successful yet? Because great things take time. You can't work out once and be fit. You can't save $20 and be financially free. You can't work one really hard day and be ultra successful. But if you do it every day for five years, different world. If you work out every day for five years, different. If you save $20 every day for the next five years, you put it into a good investment account

and you just leave it for the rest of your life, different financial freedom. You work 10 hours a day or eight hours a day every day for five years or Monday through Friday and you don't distract yourself. Let's say you just do eight hours, nine hours a day, Monday through Friday in your business from scratch and you don't have any distraction. You're not on Instagram. You're not doing other things. You're not cleaning up around the house.

but you're fully dedicated in your business, five years from today, different life. Great things take time. I had one time I was at an event and a lady came up to you and she's like, Rob, I listened to your podcast and I love it. I just started a podcast. How do I get my podcast to millions of downloads a month? And I was like, can I be honest with you? And she's like, yeah.

And I was like, do three episodes a week for eight years. And I guarantee you you'll figure it out. And she's like, well, what's like the story? shortcut and I was like there is no shortcut that's the thing is you just have to put the work in and it's not me trying to flex on the lady or trying to you know disregard her question but really what people always looking for like tips and tricks and how do I get to shortcuts there is no shortcut for hard work there aren't shortcuts for some of the greatest things in life like when I look back at my podcast my very first day of having a podcast I put out three episodes the very first day and I got 44

downloads. So if you divide 44 by three, I basically had 15 people listen on day one. And then the podcast grew and it grew and I kept putting in work and I didn't make any money off the podcast for four and a half, five years. And I just kept doing it because it was just a passion. I love this. I don't know if there's anything else I've loved more in my entire life than doing this thing and putting this message out and helping people. And it started growing. because I was passionate about it. I wanted to put time into it. And I have not missed an episode in almost nine years.

And we've just hit over 1,400 podcast episodes. And, you know, the podcasts, I'll give you numbers. Most podcasters don't give you numbers. I don't know why it's crazy. But, you know, literally it was like it grew, it grew, it grew. And then within the first year, it got to about 80,000 downloads a month. And it stayed there. This is what's crazy.

It grew to 80,000 downloads a month. And it stayed there for three. years. I could not break past 80, 85,000 downloads a month. But it was, I was just kept putting it out. I was like, I'm just going to keep putting it out. I was just going to keep trying to help people, all of this stuff. And then something happened. And it was like the Chinese bamboo in the podcast, like 10x, 15 X'd in one year. And it just exploded. And it was like the hockey stick where it's like, it's kind of growing just a teeny tiny bit, and then it was just a hockey stick moment. But it took five years to get to that hockey stick moment.

And then, you know, now the podcast is, you know, 7x that. And it's just because of the fact that I think it takes time for great things to happen. It's almost like the universe, God, whatever you believe in, knows how long it's going to take and how much effort is needed for you to get to where you want to go. and you want to be there sooner, but you just have to trust I'm heading in the right direction, eventually I'm going to get to where I want to go.

And so, you know, it took me four years to get to four million downloads in the podcast. And now it does it in less than 30 days. And it's just a crazy thing to think about that it's gotten there and it's grown to what it is. Once again, I'm not saying it to flex or anything. I'm saying it because it took so much time. it took so much effort, it took so many hours and hours and hours of trying to get better at it.

And if you just don't stop, you cannot fail at anything because eventually you figure it out. But most people don't give themselves a long enough runway. They don't. They say, oh, I'm going to try this out for six months. And then if it doesn't work, I'm going to try something else out. And they're bouncing from one thing to another to another to another every six months. and they never fully get the chance to be a master at something. What you've got to do is you've got to ask yourself,

what's something that I love so much and that I'm so passionate about or that I want to get better at that I'm okay dedicating the next two or three years of my life, two to three years in my life, like really trying to figure out what it is that I want to do. And I can think about many instances where this happened in my life where there was a hockey stick moment. My income was the exact same thing.

I was first growing my business. It took time. It took time. It took time. And it took about four years before there was a huge hockey stick moment where it just exploded. And so, you know, the reason why I love life is because, and I love the idea of trying to master something is because as humans, we can master anything that we want to. We just have to be able to make the decision of the thing that we want to master.

and we have to dedicate ourselves to it. And I think too few people in this world want to dedicate themselves to something. But if you just decide that you're not going to stop, you can never lose. It might take you longer than it took someone else, but eventually you're going to get there. And I always use the example.

It's like very simple. I live in Austin, Texas, and if I want to get to Dallas, Dallas is north of Austin. And it doesn't matter how I decide to get there. I could walk, I could crawl, I could take a bike, I could take a car, I could hop in a plane. As long as I'm traveling north, eventually I'm going to end up in Dallas. So for some people, success, you might see other people and their quote unquote success might be as

fast as taking a plane. They get to Dallas very quickly and they seem like they're beating you and they seem like they're quote unquote better than you. For you, it might be like walking to Dallas, but you're heading in the right direction. As long as you're, as you don't give up, you cannot fail. When people want to grow a business and they say, I'm going to give myself six months, I know very few businesses that are successful in six months. If you say I'm going to give myself three years and I'm not going to, I'm not going to sway, I'm not going to give up, I'm not going to have a plan B. I'm going to put 100% of my working effort when I decide that I'm working into that. So if I work nine to five in my business,

100% of my focused effort goes into that. Give yourself a couple years, it's night and day difference. And usually, and I've seen it over and over and over again, and my life in many different ways, and friends' life in many different ways, usually you hit a hockey stick moment where everything explodes and it goes way better than you ever possibly imagined. Like when I look at the podcast, I never ever thought it would hit 300 million downloads. I never, I could have thought that I would have been doing it for 30 years. years and still not hit 300 million downloads. But it did. And it's only gotten there because I think of just the dedicated effort I put into it of wanting to get better and wanting to work on myself and just passionately wanting to help people. And so if you want to be successful, whatever success means

to you, what does it require, what time, what do you need to learn? How do you need to figure out how to do it? You know, most people start, they get excited and then they stop. If you just don't stop, you can't lose. And I remember seeing this before. I was watching a video as an interview with Jared Leto. And I've said this before on the podcast, but Jared Leto is, you know, an extremely successful musician. He's also an extremely successful actor, like the highest of the highest of both. He goes, when he goes as a musician, they sell out stadiums. He has won Academy Awards for the best actor for movies that he's been in. So he's like hit the top of the top in two separate categories that most people never even get to. I remember watching this video from him about 10 years ago

and he was being interviewed and a lady was asking him and she said, what do you think the secret to your successes? And he said, I realize that most people just don't start. And as long as I start, as long as I start, I'm already light years ahead of everybody else. And then if I just don't stop, I'm going to beat everybody else who gives out. Everybody else who gives up, you're just going to be past. And so, like, I love the idea of mastery as a human, because we can learn anything that we want to as long as we put effort in towards it. And I have a tattoo on my wrist. For those you guys are on video, you can see it. And it's a Roman numeral of 10,000. The Roman numeral for 10,000, it's an X with a line above it. Because I truly believe in the 10,000 hour rule, which is it takes

10,000 hours at least of dedicated practice to master something, to become a master at something. but the problem is most people want to try to get to mastery in 100 hours and that's just not going to happen and so when you look at your goals your goals really only take three things they take direction they take action they take time direction am i heading in the right direction to get me to where i want to go the eventual destination that i'm working towards that's something that i control the direction that i'm heading in number two is action am i taking the right actions to eventually get me to to where I want to go as well. Yes, that's something that I control. Time, that's the secret. You can't control that. It's like the Chinese bamboo. It takes the time that it's going to take.

That's something that, once again, God, the universe, life, whatever it is that you believe in, is in control of. We cannot control the time. We can only control the direction and the actions that we're taking. It's kind of like the example I always love to give is imagine if you're a husband, your wife is pregnant and you go up to one you're like hey honey listen i know this um i know this pregnancy thing it's supposed to take about nine months uh i would really like to get a vacation by the end of the year do you think that maybe you could hurry it up like can you speed this thing up maybe we can get done in like five months so we could take a vacation by the end of year your wife would think that you were insane why because pregnancy creating a child takes about nine months that's what the

has decided. Your success, you don't know how long it takes. The only thing that you can do is control what you can control, which is the direction that you're heading and the actions that you're taking. And just like the Chinese bamboo, the Chinese bamboo takes six years before it finally comes out of the ground. But when it comes out of the ground, it grows 80 feet in six weeks. Your success, the thing that you're working for is exactly the same. It will take longer than you probably we want it to. But when it happens, it will be so much greater than you could possibly imagine. So figure out where you're going. Take the right actions, head in the right direction, and then just don't stop. And that is how you create a life that's successful. So that's what I got

for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So the best way that you could really help us help other people and help pay it forward is just to share it. Share it on your Instagram stories. Share it anywhere that you possibly can. The other day, I got a screenshot from one of my friends who's in a group text, a WhatsApp. He lives over in Rome, and one of his friends sent my episodes, two of my episodes, in her group chat of friends that all play volleyball out there in Rome. And so whatever you can do to spread the message, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart so we can impact more people.

And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way to leave you every single episode. Making your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.