Stop Chasing Celebrities: The Secret to Success Taught to Me By a CEO

“Know yourself before the world tells you who to be.”

We live in an age that's completely obsessed with knowing other people. We eagerly consume every detail of a celebrity’s life, follow the success formulas of billionaires, and draw inspiration from philosophical giants. This intense focus on external lives—their triumphs, routines, and challenges—is understandable; it absolutely fuels our ambition.

But here’s the strange paradox: While we’re busy meticulously tracking the achievements of others, we often neglect the one person whose life truly matters to our success: ourselves.

In our communities, this outward focus easily shifts from genuine inspiration to envious comparison or even intrusive meddling. The world’s most successful individuals didn’t get where they are by perfectly replicating someone else’s playbook. They did it by mastering their own variables. They fundamentally shifted their focus from "knowing others" to "knowing themselves."

This crucial, fundamental lesson wasn't driven home to me by a motivational speaker or a self-help book, but by a leading Pakistani entrepreneur, Mr. Almas Hyder, in the most unusual, and frankly, hilarious way.

The CEO’s Unconventional Sales Training

Back in 2010, I was a young, enthusiastic member of the sales team at SPEL Group, a major manufacturer serving corporate giants like Toyota, Honda, Nestle, Unilever, and Pepsi. Mr. Hyder, who was then the CEO, had a brilliant, if slightly intimidating, method for training his teams: highly personalized, often counter-intuitive storytelling sessions.

As a junior member, I didn't interact with him often, but when we did, his meetings felt less like a briefing and more like a high-stakes, live psychological test. He would pose incredibly sharp, challenging questions, leaving us salespeople—who were used to having quick answers—completely speechless. Looking back, these weren't boring meetings; they were a unique, unscripted form of leadership training.

One summer morning, during a routine discussion about sales targets, we failed to meet his expectations. Sensing our confusion and frustration, he suddenly changed the topic. He leveled a question at us that had nothing to do with market share or revenue:

“How much do you know yourselves?”

We mumbled vague, intellectual-sounding answers. He let our confusion settle before delivering the punchline, asking a question that sounded completely ridiculous:

“How many steps do you take every day?”

The Joke That Became a Revelation

In Pakistan in 2010, smartphones and fitness apps were a luxury item, not a standard tool. The question felt like an outright joke. When Mr. Hyder confidently stated his own number—he knew he took 8,000 steps when he played golf—we immediately dismissed it. It seemed humanly impossible to track, and frankly, totally irrelevant to closing a sale. We secretly thought it was a bluff, or at best, an eccentric detail only the elite could afford to track.

His message, however, was profound:

"You should know yourself that much. Every single detail about yourself is the key to your success. You will start achieving big when you know everything small about yourselves.”

For days afterward, the session became office fodder. We joked endlessly about counting steps. Our skepticism only deepened when an even more absurd story emerged about his father and the company’s founder, the late S.M. Naqi. A senior colleague told us that Mr. Naqi once asked a coworker:

“When you shave in the morning, how many times does the razor touch your skin?”

The joke was cemented. We had confirmed it: the eccentric training methods ran in the family. We’d tease a colleague about their morning shave, asking for the exact razor-to-skin count, followed by collective laughter.

The Hard Truth of Self-Mastery

Time, as it always does, kept moving. Soon after 2010, I moved away, and those intense, often awkward, sessions at SPEL became a fondly remembered corporate memory.

However, after spending more than 16 years navigating the corporate world, the golden words of Mr. Hyder and Mr. Naqi keep echoing back to me. The joke was on us. They weren't asking us to physically count steps or razor strokes. They were demanding a radical level of self-awareness and control.

• The Steps (Big Picture): Know your energy levels, your true productivity hours, your physical limits, and what specific routine best fuels your mind. Don’t rely on generic advice; rely on your personal data.

• The Razor Strokes (Micro-Discipline): Be present in the small, repetitive actions of your life. Success isn’t just about the big pitch; it’s about the micro-discipline applied to every daily routine.

The true breakthrough in performance doesn’t come from obsessing over a competitor’s strategy or a celebrity’s diet. It comes from understanding your own operating system: your habits, your limits, and your optimal performance state.

To conclude, if you want to move forward—in your career, your personal life, or your dreams—the goal is simple, but often overlooked: Know Thyself.

Stop checking how many goals your idol has scored this week. Start tracking what your own mind and body need to win your day.