While casual side hustles can sometimes pay off, the most successful people prioritize their passion to turn it into profit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Business coach and ex\u2013Wall Streeter Codie Sanchez says<\/a> all the successful people she\u2019s met have one thing in common: \u201cThey\u2019re obsessed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s it. That\u2019s the secret,\u201d says Sanchez, who has nearly 2 million TikTok followers and has interviewed nearly a dozen billionaires, including Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n While all of the billionaires she\u2019s interviewed on her podcast BigDeal<\/a> are \u201cwildly different,\u201d she says in a video on her TikTok account that they\u2019re all obsessed with what they do \u201calmost to the point of it being uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanchez actually got her start in journalism, winning the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, before transitioning into finance, working for firms such as Vanguard<\/a>, Goldman Sachs, and State Street<\/a>. She\u2019s the founder and CEO of Contrarian Thinking, a media and finance education company with millions of followers and subscribers, aimed at empowering people to take control of their financial future through unconventional paths like small-business ownership. She also runs venture fund Contrarian Thinking Capital, earned her MBA from Georgetown University, and is a New York Times bestselling author. Her estimated net worth<\/a> is about $17 million.<\/p>\n What obsession means in entrepreneurship<\/p>\n One of the biggest debates in the workforce and entrepreneurship is whether work-life balance can really exist and whether it\u2019s effective.\u00a0<\/p>\n If in fact, as Sanchez says, the most successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople are \u201cobsessed,\u201d this leaves little room to achieve what one might consider traditional work-life balance. It requires being more than just curious, Sanchez says, and obsession can help you beat someone who is richer and smarter than you.<\/p>\n \u201cObsession means that you\u2019re thinking nonstop until your relentless action makes it unreasonable for you to not win,\u201d she says. \u201cQuantity overwhelms failure. Repetition steers fate.\u201d<\/p>\n There are countless examples of successful entrepreneurs and investors who were obsessed with their work\u2014so much so that they never took a break during years of hard work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Billionaire Mark Cuban<\/a> went seven years without a vacation<\/a> starting his first business and worked late nights learning new software details until he sold it for $7 million. Today he\u2019s worth<\/a> more than $9 billion.<\/p>\n Amazon<\/a> founder Jeff Bezos worked 12-hour days, seven days a week<\/a>, in the early days of his company<\/a>, staying up until 3 a.m. to fulfill orders. Now he\u2019s the fourth-richest person in the world with a $253 billion net worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Apple<\/a> cofounder Steve Jobs was also obsessed with his craft, and was infamous for going into \u201cfounder mode.\u201d<\/a> He was known for \u201crolling up his sleeves and, true to his word, working more closely with all of us, at every level, to make sure that when we got our next opportunity, we hit it out of the park,\u201d Shalini Govil-Pai wrote in a 2024 op-ed for Fortune. Govil-Pai is vice president and general manager of Android TV at Google<\/a> and previously worked with Jobs.<\/p>\n And although these entrepreneurs were dedicated to their craft for years, Sanchez says, it doesn\u2019t necessarily require a lifetime of dedication to be successful.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is shocking to me is what can happen with three to five years of absolute dedication,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you make that 10 years, that\u2019s where billionaires start to land.\u201d\n<\/p>\n