The goal isn't to be successful. It's to become valuable. Because when you're valuable, success attracts itself to you.
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For most of my 20s and 30s, work was my whole life.
I traveled constantly. I worked nights. Weekends. Holidays.
I took calls from airports, hotel rooms, and occasionally from the back of a cab trying to make a connection.
I told myself I was achieving something.
Really, I was chasing something.
The next title. The next raise. The next rung on a ladder I couldn't see the top of.
I missed dinners. Missed birthdays. Missed the quiet, ordinary moments that I'd later realize were the whole point.
And I kept telling myself it would be worth it.
Until my body decided it had seen enough.
I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that stopped me cold.
Not a speed bump. A full stop.
Suddenly I couldn't out-hustle anything. I couldn't power through.
For the first time in years, I had to sit still.
And in that stillness, I started asking questions I'd been too busy to ask.
What was I actually pursuing?
Who was I doing it for?
If I hit every goal on the list, would any of it matter?
That's when I remembered something one of my earliest mentors used to say. He'd said it to me so many times I'd stopped hearing it.
"Success is a byproduct of helping others."
7 words. I'd been ignoring them for a decade.
Because I'd been chasing success directly.
Trying to grab it. Trying to earn it. Trying to prove I deserved it.
He was telling me to stop chasing it entirely.
Focus on being valuable to other people. Success would take care of itself.
I'd just been too self-absorbed to understand what he meant.
Why chasing success doesn't work
When you chase success, you make every decision about you.
How does this make me look?
How does this get me ahead?
How does this get me credit?
It turns every conversation into a transaction. Every relationship into leverage. Every task into a résumé line.
People can feel that. Even when you think you're hiding it.
The moment you start optimizing for your own success, you stop being useful to anyone else.
You might win for a while. But it won't last.
Success built on self-interest is a house you have to keep propping up.
One bad quarter, one failed project, one reorg, and the whole thing comes down.
What valuable people understand
The most successful people I know got there by becoming the person others couldn't imagine working without.
They are stupidly generous with their time, their knowledge, and their relationships.
They give credit away freely and absorb blame without flinching.
And they don't keep score.
That's the secret. The people at the top didn't claw their way there. They were pulled there by the people they helped on the way up.
They stopped chasing success. They became valuable.
(I wrote a post on this idea that struck a nerve on LinkedIn. If it resonates, you can read it here.)
3 actions that build real value
Understanding the idea is easy. Changing what you do on Monday morning is the hard part.
These are the actions that worked for me.
Solve problems you weren't asked to solve. When you notice something broken, don't wait for permission. Fix it, or point to a solution. The people who get promoted are the ones who see what needs doing before anyone hands it to them.
Teach what you know without keeping score. Every time you hoard knowledge, you signal insecurity. Every time you share it freely, you signal abundance. Write the doc. Record the Loom. Run the workshop. Give away 10x what you think is reasonable.
Make other people look good. Prep your boss for meetings. Give a colleague credit in front of their manager. Share a win that isn't yours. When you make others shine, they remember. That's how reputation compounds.
What I finally understood
Success isn't a scoreboard. It's a reflection of how many lives you made better along the way.
The corner office, the title, the money. Those are byproducts. They show up after you've spent years being useful to other people.
If you skip the work of being valuable and try to grab the byproducts directly, you'll spend your whole career wondering why nothing ever feels like enough.
I know. I tried it that way for a long time.
But if you flip it, if you wake up every day asking "who can I help today," something strange happens.
The door opens without you having to knock.
Pick one person in your professional life this week. Ask yourself what you could do to make their life easier, with no expectation in return.
Then do it before Friday.
That's where it starts.
Keep leading forward,
Justin
P.S. My first-ever KnownLeaders cohort opens soon. If you've built the expertise but not the audience, this is for you. Only 35 founding spots. Waitlist gets first access.
