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For Subscribers

How to Become the Person Everyone Roots For Good things don't just happen. They happen to people who hustle for them.

By Jason Feifer

This story appears in the June 2019 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Nigel Parry

We've all done it: We see someone score amazing attention, or win some award, or snag the perfect client, and we wonder, How'd they pull that off?

It can seem random. What do they have that we don't? How did luck happen to break their way? I used to wonder this all the time. But now, after meeting so many entrepreneurs who have triumphed in so many ways, I see a pattern in their success. Here it is: They make it as easy as possible to be rewarded. They become the most responsive, most motivated person available. They become solution machines. They become impossible to not help.

That might sound obvious, but it's not. It's like a violation of physics! Remember Newton's third law? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's similar to how we act. We're asked to do something, and we do it. We're asked for 15 minutes, and we give 15 minutes. Equal, opposite.