You already know that you have to work
hard to get ahead. That's a given. What I'm talking about is being
successful at your craft. And your craft can be a non-traditional
route like a pro athlete or some kind of artist, owning your own
restaurant, or just plain working in an office. To be good at it, to
get ahead, to get a real paycheck, you gotta do way more than phone
it in. I don't mean just “work hard;” I mean work so hard it
looks scary. I mean work that will kick your ass. Sure, you can work
at Home Depot, or CVS, but if you want to be the guy in charge, well,
you gotta do more than just show up on time. You gotta get used to
some long hours, tired nights where you collapse as soon as you get
home, and then start all over again the next day. Days where you're
gonna miss something fun with your friends, or something important
with your family. Maybe your girlfriend or wife will have some
emotional breakdown, and you know what you're going to do about it?
You're going to stay at work and do your job.
This is the difference between merely
getting by and getting ahead. If you're a musician, you can play in
that local cover band every Tuesday night and who knows, maybe you'll
even make enough to support yourself without a day job. But if you
want to be the next big thing, you gotta practice your ass off by
yourself and with your bandmates, and that's only half of it. You
gotta network, you gotta gig your ass off, and you'll drive so long
to places you'll lose money, you're gonna have your bass player
completely flake on you when you're about to play a gig opening for a
major label act with a talent scout in the crowd. It's gonna happen,
and you're gonna take it. You just are.
Maybe sales is your thing. Millions of
people do it, it's a typical enough job. But who makes it and who
doesn't? The guy who shows up for work is gonna wonder how the hell
the guy at the next desk makes three times what he makes. Well here's
his secret: he kicks ass. He does the follow-up and the
follow-through. He takes rejection after rejection after rejection
and he just takes it. He learns who's going to waste his time and who
is going to make him money, and you can't teach that. You can get a
few tips, but sizing up a lead in a second? Well, all it takes is
10,000 hours to learn. Better get started.
If you want to be great, like Tiger
Woods, Michael Jordan, Hulk Hogan, Lady Gaga great, well you gotta
put it all out there. Family time? Yeah, look at how good Tiger Woods
is with women. This is a guy who has to make his own bed in hotel
rooms, because it's gotta be perfect. It's gotta be his way. Hulk
Hogan was the greatest pro wrestling phenomenon of the 80's, and he
had to abandon his family to do it. UFC fighters of today, they train
40 hours a week when they don't even have a fight. When they sign up
to do a fight, they gotta go crazy, go away from their family, maybe
go to a higher altitude to train, make weight, which can mean losing
20 pounds in a week or two. And when you're training 50 hours a week,
how much more weight do you think you can lose? Oh yeah, after they
do all that...then they get punched in the face.
So if you interview for a job, and
what they tell you you have to do just sounds so scary you don't
think you can do it, chances are you really can. You just don't to,
because it sounds like work. Not just hard work, but scary hard work.
Work that is going to kick your ass, and you know what? It isn't
going to end. Because then you learn how to do that stuff that was
originally so hard, and it becomes a breeze, and then you gotta move
up. And that's gonna kick your ass, too.
When you achieve greatness, you
understand greatness. Alice Cooper was the scariest heavy metal act
of his day, with a huge stage show that climaxed with him getting his
head chopped off with a magician's guillotine. Now he's a great
golfer, almost at the pro level, and he's done some decent acting
too. Justin Timberlake because one of the greatest singers and
dancers in the world. Now he's an actor, and a legitimate one. And he
plays golf, too. Rob Zombie went from being a rock star to a top name
in horror films. He's no golfer, as far as I know, but he has written
comic books.
Speaking of comic books, Kevin Smith
went from visionary filmmaker, to spoken word artist, to buying a
small theater, to eventually becoming a category all his own in
iTunes podcasts. Any of that sound easy? And don't get me started on
Henry Rollins. That man has done more in his life than ten regular
Joes. And he's not even fucking slowing down.
So, just to wrap up, sometimes you
gotta just pay the bills. Sometimes you don't have much in the way of
options. But to be a success story, whether you're working at an
office, driving a garbage truck, or trying to become a famous artist
or athlete, just remember it's called a short cut because you're
cutting something short. You gotta be ready to get your ass kicked.
And to succeed, you gotta kick ass right back.
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