It has occurred to me that when I give the advice “just work harder and you’ll go places” I am being somewhat misleading. Let me explain. First, I realize that I’m not exactly the image of success in many ways. My life has had ups and downs and I am thankful for that because I have learned how to get from “down” to “up”. Mostly through hard work. So why then is my advice misleading? Because too many people have a false sense of what hard work means. Flipping burgers is, in its own right, hardwork but everyone else flipping burgers is doing the same work. What sets you apart? Do you show up early and stay late? Do you volunteer to do the crap tasks? “Working hard” means working hard enough to force people to take note!
I often hear people say that it’s not how hard you work or what you know, it’s who you know and working hard won’t change that. To that I say, having a wide spread network of friends and acquaintances is important and can lead to great opportunities if you know when and how to capitalize on them. I had a man tell me once “never pass up an opportunity to meet someone new. You never know who that person might be or who they know”. People may get a job because they know the right person but they may have worked hard to make that connection and probably have to work twice as hard to prove they deserve that position. I don’t advocate using people. What I mean is, be a people person. Be genuine about it, not insincere like you are looking at a human as a stepping stone. Be friendly, be likeable and know how to use that to your advantage. “Hard work” means politicing. Get out of your comfort zone and network. If you surround yourself with unmotivated folks content with mediocrity guess where you’ll end up. Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers and people that see greatness in you even when you don’t see it in yourself. Work hard…. it’s easy to get lost in the shallow meaning of words but you have to look deeper.
Mowing grass is hard work (it put food on my table for many years) so you could mow grass for 20 years and say “Hard work never got me anywhere.” Again I say, stand out, be an asset. If you are stuck at a job in an industry that you don’t wish to have a career in then now is a good time to develop those networking skills. I’m certainly not content with where I am in life but I am nowhere near ashamed of it and I got here by “working hard” and to me that means, working harder than the next person, standing out, knowing what is expected of me and exceeding that daily, making new friends and business connections, and busting my back everyday like there is someone else working twice as hard to take away what I have worked for. Somewhere along the way we have lost the true definition of “hard work”. Don’t walk a picket line and demand more, show the world you deserve it because you are willing to earn it……….with “hard work”!