Award-winning strategy consultant and Harvard Business Review contributor Kyle Austin Young joins us to reveal the surprising math behind every success story. His new book, Success Is a Numbers Game: Achieve Bigger Goals by Changing the Odds, challenges the way we think about goals, risk, and achievement—showing that success is less about luck and more about probability.
Kyle shares how being laid off twice during an adoption journey pushed him to diversify his career and build a thriving consulting practice. Over a decade of helping entrepreneurs and leaders achieve ambitious outcomes, he discovered that every goal has two hidden numbers: a probability of success and a probability of failure. The key, he argues, is learning to “hack” those odds—by identifying potential bad outcomes and systematically reducing their likelihood. From business ventures to personal growth, his framework helps us shift from wishful thinking to strategic action.
The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway
There’s real power in asking “what if.” Thinking through what could go wrong isn’t negativity—it’s strategy. When you remove the barriers that make success less likely, you change your odds and make your goals achievable.
—
Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.
Resources:
Produced by NOVA