Book summary “How to Make It Happen”: summary

Introduction

You often feel stuck in a comfortable routine while watching others achieve massive career success. You might lack the innate risk tolerance required to launch a business or push past early professional rejections. Maria Hatzistefanis faced these exact hurdles before building two global beauty brands from scratch.

You can override innate risk aversion and achieve massive success through relentless hustle, strict daily routines, and unwavering resilience in the face of rejection.

This book reveals the core secrets to hustling toward your goals by dismantling vague ambitions into daily targets. You will learn how to structure your mornings, handle intense pressure, and maintain balance without losing momentum. The following questions guide the journey ahead:

• How do you break ancestral survival instincts to embrace risk?
• What daily routines maximize high-willpower hours?
• How do you turn rejection into professional fuel?

1. Mindset and Goal Setting

Humans possess hardwired ancestral instincts like fight-or-flight that foster risk aversion and self-doubt. You can consciously override these survival impulses to pursue big dreams.

Overriding ancestral survival instincts and breaking down vague dreams into structured daily targets creates the foundation for professional achievement.

You easily fall back on excuses regarding your background, lack of connections, or circumstances to avoid failure and stay safe. By recognizing that these defensive reactions stem from ancient brain wiring, you can commit extra effort and belief to push past them and hustle for your success.

The author moved from a remote island in Greece without a beauty store or fancy schooling, got fired from her first job, failed to get initial investments, but built two global beauty brands anyway, known as Rodial and Nip + Fab.

To build motivation and overcome these initial mental barriers, you can follow specific steps:

• Choose the area you want to motivate yourself: work, fitness, family or lifestyle.
• Put together a mood board. Go through magazines, books, online articles and cut out everything that speaks to you.
• Complete your board, sit quietly and imagine you have everything on that board.
• Look at your board when you start your day to get yourself motivated or as often as you need.

True professional growth requires taking personal development into your own hands rather than depending on an employer to provide a formal plan. The author expresses frustration when employees ask for company-led personal development plans, emphasizing that she had to figure everything out herself by reading articles, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and constantly learning from diverse subjects like fashion, business, world affairs, and fitness.

When faced with difficult personal circumstances and feeling overwhelmed, reflecting on ordinary people or older relatives who show daily resilience can provide a powerful mental wake-up call to stop making excuses and follow through on commitments. When the author struggled with post-surgery vision issues right before a major speaking engagement, she thought of her nearly blind ninety-something grandmother who walks to the market every day, which motivated her to make the speech happen.

Comparing yourself to others or to overnight success narratives on social media is deeply demotivating. You should measure progress only against your own past performance.

Slaying Self-Doubt

You frequently compare yourself to competitors who seem to achieve instant success through social media buzz. However, these apparent overnight successes usually involve hidden prior setbacks and failures. Rereading past positive feedback and comparing your current self to who you were one or two years prior helps build confidence.

The author watched beauty bloggers with massive followings give vague advice while ignoring the teams and prior careers behind them, and witnessed a beauty specialist launch a failed brand before successfully returning with a new one years different direct-to-consumer models later. Her own definition of an overnight success required eighteen years of hard work.

You can manage this competition effectively with targeted actions:

• Compare yourself only to yourself and your own personal progression.
• Draw energy from small successes like a positive comment or a great meeting.
• Go back a year or two years to appreciate the progress you have made and feel confident.
• Remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing.

Even when lacking motivation or energy after a long workday, saying yes to unexpected networking and social opportunities can lead to golden professional connections. The author shares that she is not a natural party animal and often prefers staying home, but experience has taught her that putting in the mental energy to attend industry events and social gatherings usually produces positive, unexpected outcomes.

During New York Fashion Week in February 2018, exhausted after a full day of book events and wanting to sleep, the author was convinced by her PR to stop by a Stuart Weitzman party at the Pool, where she accidentally struck up a conversation with Solange Knowles.

Becoming a Goal Digger

Achieving massive long-term business or personal success requires breaking down vague dreams into specific yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily targets. You never need a five-year plan if you rely instead on a one-year plan broken down into granular milestones. Writing goals down changes your mindset from reactive to proactive, while maintaining strict deadlines creates a sense of urgency.

When writing books, rather than trying to write fifty thousand words at once, the author sets a goal to put aside one hour every weekend and write down one page.

To master this goal-setting process, you must execute specific practices:

• Write down your personal and professional goals on a piece of paper starting with the big picture.
• Break down these goals into smaller bites monthly, weekly, and daily.
• Keep a summary of your goals on a small piece of paper and carry it with you.
• Always have a deadline for your goals and measure yourself against it.

Utilizing the Kaizen principle of taking extremely small, imperceptible steps prevents you from triggering your innate fear of risk and helps bypass self-imposed mental barriers. Taking tiny, manageable steps instead of exhausting yourself all at once ensures long-term consistency and prevents burnout. This approach mimics the Japanese manufacturing philosophy that drove mid-twentieth-century industrial success.

In fitness conditioning classes, the author chooses lighter weights that allow her to return the next day rather than lifting heavy and exhausting herself for a week.

Maintain this momentum by applying these final steps:

• Start small and grow the goals as you go so that you gain confidence.
• Keep consistency, and if you miss your goal for a few days, start afresh.
• Review your goals and adjust them as needed when circumstances change.

2. Action and Overcoming Rejection

Taking consistent daily action without waiting for perfection, combined with a structured approach to processing rejection, builds unstoppable momentum.

Nothing fabulous happens inside a comfort zone. Instead of waiting for the ideal moment to take a giant leap, you should break your goals into manageable pieces and execute one small, consistent step daily. Action generates momentum, and momentum brings success.

You can apply these practical steps to get your projects moving:

• Break the project down into small bites and tackle one a day minimum.
• Make the decision to send that first email to a key person to get the project moving.
• Do your research by reading online articles, books, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos.
• Limit distractions by finding a quiet space and switching off your phone.
• Group your meetings around a certain time and leave mornings free for creative thinking and big projects.
• Announce the project on social media to commit yourself to it.
• Don't wait until everything is perfect because there will never be an ideal time.
• Never compare yourself to others; compare yourself only to where you started.
• Analyze where your self-doubt is coming from, but don't dwell on it much.
• Take a meditation break for a few minutes when you feel overwhelmed.

Initial rejections and lack of funding should not stop a venture. Bootstrapping and learning from mistakes build resilience and organic growth.

Maria contacted 20 investors, received 6 responses, set up 3 meetings, and secured 0 investment. She launched Rodial with £20,000 savings used for bootstrapping. Making mistakes and learning through trial and error provides the best training for an entrepreneur, much better than a flawless, risk-free plan.

Large-scale projects like awards events should start small and evolve through continuous learning, rebranding, and professional input over several years.

In its 8th year of running the business when the awards concept started, Maria launched an event with about 10 people on the initial office team and no initial budget for branding. Over 4 years taken to reach the final desired scale, she systematically upgraded the event by adding step and repeat walls and increasing the budget. In its fourth year, the Rodial Beautiful Awards featured top celebrities like Kate Moss winning awards, transforming into a key event in the social calendar.

Navigating Rejection and Crises

Rejection is an inevitable part of the hustle and should be processed through a structured three-phase system rather than personalizing the setback.

Rejection happens daily across all career stages. Instead of adopting a victim mindset, Maria breaks down the processing of rejection into a concise three-phase framework:

• Phase 1: Shock. Calm your nerves, avoid knee-jerk actions, and log initial thoughts for 24 to 48 hours.
• Phase 2: Acceptance. Look at the situation objectively after initial emotions fade for another 24 to 48 hours.
• Phase 3: Action. Challenge yourself to find creative solutions, alternative plans, or ways to improve skills.

Maria spent 7 years of trying before entering the luxury department store. Specific mental and physical recovery tools can help you bounce back quickly from professional disappointments and maintain momentum.

When facing rejection, you must avoid magnifying the loss and instead engage in soothing and grounding practices. Shifting attention away from the ego, practicing gratitude, and realizing that rejections are usually about a lack of fit rather than personal worth help maintain psychological balance.

You can use these recovery tools when setbacks occur:

• Take time to digest the rejection and avoid immediate knee-jerk actions.
• Say to yourself that it's not the end of the world.
• Shift your attention to someone else by doing something nice for a loved one or colleague.
• Don't put yourself in the position of the victim for the first 48 hours.
• Do something nice for yourself, such as buying something desired, getting a manicure, or visiting a coffee shop.
• Talk to someone trustworthy who will listen without judging.
• Focus on what you have in life by writing a list of the top ten things you are grateful for.
• Reset by redefining your goals and coming up with a plan B.
• Remember that rejection is about fit, so do not blame yourself.
• Remember that a great day is statistically waiting for you around the corner if you keep a positive attitude.

Maintaining a calm demeanor during simultaneous crises and successes prevents panic and preserves creative energy for problem-solving. Running a business involves constant fluctuations between high achievements and crushing lows.

In November 2017 when the Sofia Richie campaign took place at the Bulgari Hotel in London, Maria received news that her creative director had resigned. She had to maintain outward composure until the shoot wrapped, just as she did prior to early 2018 when the US book tour hit the bestseller list.

3. Hustle and Morning Routines

To achieve success, you must outwork your competition and strive to be the absolute best at whatever situation or small opportunity you are given.

Hard work means putting in the required hours, effort, and practice to become the best version of yourself. Rather than waiting for a dream scenario, you must seize early, imperfect opportunities and treat them with maximum dedication to build your reputation and create bigger future openings. The author dreamed of speaking at the prestigious WWD conference but lacked experience, so she accepted an invitation to speak at a small 50-person conference in London, prepared meticulously, and used it as a stepping stone to eventually speak at her dream event.

Talent alone is insufficient for expertise; achieving mastery requires massive amounts of deliberate practice. Malcolm Gladwell analyses how The Beatles honed their skills by playing approximately 1,200 live shows in little clubs in Hamburg starting in 1960 before achieving worldwide success in 1964. Your standard working hours pay the bills, but your personal career growth happens during your out-of-hours time through continuous self-education. The author works an 8 hours a day spent working at the office, then spends at least an hour each morning and evening reading, researching, writing her book, or preparing podcasts.

When you do not feel like working hard, you can use a structured set of actionable habits to reset your energy and mindset:

• Connect yourself with new people
• Read one hour a day
• Keep on learning
• Find a mentor
• Rewrite or edit your to-do list
• Reward yourself when you finish a challenging piece of work
• Declutter your workspace
• Listen to your favourite music
• Brainstorm ideas for a project that you are excited about
• Celebrate your wins

Mastering Your Mornings

Early mornings are your golden hours because human willpower is highest at the beginning of the day and depletes as challenges accumulate.

Willpower acts like a muscle that fatigues over the course of the day when dealing with traffic, colleagues, and stress. Using the early morning hours allows you to tackle non-urgent, high-value tasks like fitness, meditation, and personal development before daily distractions drain your energy. Celebrity makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic has 18 years to become an overnight success for Mario Dedivanovic, yet he still spends his evenings researching and planning shoots rather than resting on his laurels. High-profile leaders maintain strict early schedules, including Tim Cook with a 3.45am wakeup time for Tim Cook, Michelle Obama with a 4.30am workout for Michelle Obama, Jack Dorsey with a 5.30am wakeup for Jack Dorsey, Anna Wintour with a 5.45am tennis for Anna Wintour, Oprah with a 6.02am wakeup for Oprah, Victoria Beckham and Kim Kardashian with a 6am workout for Victoria Beckham and Kim Kardashian, and Mark Wahlberg with a 2.30am wakeup for Mark Wahlberg utilizing a 150°C minus temperature of Mark Wahlberg's cryotherapy chamber.

Structuring your early morning with specific rituals sets the tone for daily success:

• Working on Personal Development
• Making a Plan for the Day
• Working Out
• Meditating

Developing a sustainable morning routine requires gradual adjustments to your wake-up time and preparation of your evening habits. You must align your evening habits to ensure adequate sleep quality and prepare your reading and workout materials in advance.

Developing your routine involves specific steps:

• Start by setting your alarm 30 minutes earlier than your usual wake-up time.
• Work out your ideal wake-up time.
• While you are setting up your morning routine, develop an evening routine.
• You need to be away from your phone for at least 30 minutes (ideally an hour) before you go to bed for a good night’s sleep.
• Get an actual alarm clock to avoid having your phone next to you during the night.
• Decide if your morning routine will involve any workout sessions and book them in your diary like meetings.
• Have a stack of inspiring books and magazines ready to be read.
• I like to make a hot water with lemon and an organic espresso. Find what you like and have it ready to go in the morning.
• Get a supply of coloured pencils.
• When you are jet lagged, get back to your routine as soon as possible.

4. Managing Career and Family

Trying to simultaneously maintain a thriving career, a family, and an active social life is unsustainable. You can choose two to do well, but you cannot excel at all three at once.

Balancing professional ambition with personal life requires establishing strict boundaries, building a reliable support network, and protecting your time.

Boundaries and Support

A career or business needs constant attention. A support system of partners, family, in-laws, nurseries, or nannies becomes essential. You must overcome paranoia, trust others, and accept that delegation is necessary to make the workload manageable.

The author’s children spent time with various grandparents, nannies, and day-care centers. This arrangement ultimately helped them become independent individuals.

Bringing work stress directly home makes life feel like doing two jobs. Find a small pocket of time to do something unrelated to work or family to clear your mind before re-entering the home environment.

The author walks around the block a few times, listens to a playlist or podcast, calls a friend, or checks an online magazine before getting back home.

Treat your time like money by setting firm boundaries and learning to say no. Giving away time for free is like handing someone 500 pounds with no return.

• Buy time before answering by stating you need to check or think about it first.
• Be honest with yourself about whether an occasion will bring happiness or fulfillment.
• Be brief and direct when giving a negative response without over-explaining with detailed excuses.

Practical Frameworks for Balance

Intentionally schedule personal self-care time into your calendar and protect it strictly from outside interruptions. When life revolves around prioritizing others, creating a daily or weekly space to disconnect is crucial to center yourself and avoid burnout.

The author wakes up at 5 am before her kids are awake to enjoy quiet personal time for inspiration and writing.

• Book activities like a manicure, massage, walk in the park, or bubble bath into your diary.
• Let everyone know about your scheduled time so you are not disturbed.

Protect your mental resilience by avoiding energy vampires who thrive on negativity.

• Recognize negative people in your circle who always see the dark side.
• Avoid too much contact with them until your resilience is built up.
• Stay upbeat and dazzle them with light instead of going along with their negativity.

Maintain high efficiency at work and keep your inbox tight by processing emails immediately rather than postponing them.

• Deal with emails as they come up by opening and addressing them immediately.
• Break down emails into three categories: quick answers, items where you are cc'd that can be immediately deleted, and items requiring deeper thought.

Use practical organizational habits to streamline family and career management.

• Treat your iPhone as your PA by booking all meetings, school events, and appointments.
• Embrace online grocery shopping and out-of-hours delivery services.
• Prioritize tasks by creating two lists: one for urgent to-dos and one for long-term to-dos.
• Utilize shortcuts like frozen vegetables or occasional meal deliveries to save time.
• Catch up on sleep by taking afternoon naps during the weekend if weekday sleep is low.
• Plan your seven-day week in advance and discuss action plans with your partner.
• Accept that childcare plans will experience ups and downs and you are not alone.
• Take a break with a 20-minute hot bath, brisk walk, or podcast when things get overwhelming.
• Find a support group of parents at the same stage to connect and empower each other.
• Create a world outside of parenting like work, a hobby, or personal interest to maintain your identity.

5. Presentation and Deep Focus

Dressing purposefully and dedicating uninterrupted blocks of time to major projects elevate your internal drive and drive execution.

Wardrobe and Presentation

Clothing acts as a form of self-communication that sets boundaries between work and home. Working in sloppy clothes fosters a low-energy mindset, while dressing purposefully cultivates success.

When starting Rodial, Maria worked from home in old sweatpants and husband tees until she realized it hurt her control. She created a work-at-home uniform of stretchy black pants, neat tops, clean hair, and light makeup done in 20 minutes.

• Have a few fallback outfits that look neat, purposeful, and stylish.
• Style your hair so it looks decent.
• Take no more than 10 minutes to do your makeup to encourage the right frame of mind.

Accumulating clothes for a fantasy lifestyle creates chaos. Editing down to a core uniform frees up mental energy. Maria sold or donated 75 per cent of her massive wardrobe on Vestiaire Collective, eBay, and to charity shops.

• Ask yourself if you would buy the item today at a store; if no or maybe, get rid of it.
• Discard items that are past their prime, worn out, or unused.
• Stick to a tight color palette like neutrals, black, white, or grey.
• Follow the rule of one in, one out for seasonal pieces and shoes.

A well-fitted jacket or pair of trousers elevates your presence. When shooting a NIP+FAB campaign in LA, Kylie Jenner brought a full-time seamstress to the set to make adjustments.

• Devote extra attention to ensuring clothes fit your height and size correctly.
• Utilize a seamstress to alter inexpensive items for a custom fit.
• Make trips as short as necessary, opting for day trips without checked luggage when possible.
• Keep two sets of wash bags so travel toiletries are always packed and ready.
• Always bring a generous scarf to use as a wrap against cold airplane air conditioning.
• Pack snacks like cashew nuts and tea bags to maintain your nutrition plan.

Maria travels extensively, waking up at 3 am for day trips without checking luggage.

Mega Focus and Travel

Consistency relies on taking action regardless of how you feel. Maria followed an inspiring blogger named Erin who suddenly stopped posting after losing her motivation.

• Break down intimidating tasks like exercising or writing a presentation into sequential micro-steps.
• Step 1 for working out: Have an espresso for an instant energy fix.
• Step 2 for working out: Put on your nicest workout clothes and sneakers.
• Step 1 for a presentation: Tidy your workspace, burn a candle, and get fresh flowers.
• Step 2 for a presentation: Open your computer application and close all notifications.
• Step 3 for a presentation: Set a strict 30-minute time frame and write the title.

Procrastination on large projects can be overcome by dedicating a full weekend day with zero distractions. Maria successfully launched her Overnight Success podcast only after scheduling a Mega Make It Happen Day on a Sunday.

• Tell your family or roommates you will be completing a project and must not be interrupted.
• Declutter your workspace the day before and prepare a clean, luxurious environment.
• Write a to-do list for the day and check items off as you complete them.
• Put your phone on silent and ban all social media checking.
• Start your day earlier than usual, such as 7 am instead of 9 am.
• Reward yourself at the end of the day with a long bubble bath or a chat.

You become the average of the five people you hang out with the most. To elevate yourself, you must surround yourself with successful people and eliminate negativity.

• Choose your circles carefully and surround yourself with positive and successful people.
• Follow successful people and those who inspire you on social media.
• Eliminate any negativity, toxic people, or situations that sap your positive energy.
• Be grateful, thankful, and proud of what you have achieved so far.
• Cultivate a positive, grateful mindset to attract more positivity.
• Keep on learning by reading, listening to podcasts, and attending conferences.

10 Key Ideas

1. You can consciously override ancestral survival instincts and break down vague dreams into structured daily targets to create the foundation for professional achievement.
2. Taking consistent daily action without waiting for perfection, combined with a structured approach to processing rejection, builds unstoppable momentum.
3. Nothing fabulous happens inside a comfort zone because true growth requires you to break goals into manageable pieces and execute one small, consistent step daily.
4. Rejection is an inevitable part of the hustle and should be processed through a structured three-phase system of shock, acceptance, and action rather than personalizing the setback.
5. To achieve success, you must outwork your competition by putting in the required hours, effort, and deliberate practice to become the absolute best at whatever opportunity you are given.
6. Early mornings are your golden hours because human willpower is highest at the beginning of the day and depletes as challenges accumulate.
7. Balancing professional ambition with personal life requires establishing strict boundaries, treating your time like money, and building a reliable support network.
8. Dressing purposefully with a core wardrobe uniform elevates your internal drive, sets clear boundaries between work and home, and cultivates success.
9. Procrastination on large projects can be overcome by dedicating full, uninterrupted blocks of time like a Mega Make It Happen Day with zero distractions.
10. Building two global beauty brands from scratch required an eighteen-year journey of relentless hustle, daily routines, and unwavering resilience in the face of continuous rejections and crises.