Hard Work is Everything

"Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”- Unknown

There's no way of getting around it, hard work is one of the biggest keys to success.

It doesn't matter if it's Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Serena Williams, they all worked as hard as they could to become what they are today. Putting in the hard yards doesn't just mean spending months or years working towards your goals. It's also about getting knocked down and getting back up, being put down but never loosing sight of your goal. It's about doing things that most wouldn't do to achieve their vision.

Thinking back to my previous post, or more specifically to Michelle More, I remember her saying that she spent the first 3 years of her career at ultimo working in her bedroom. Big things truly do come from humble beginnings. Jim Carrey, Sylvester Stallone and even Mr Bond himself Daniel Craig were at one point during their lives homeless. And yet today they are some of the most successful and well known people on earth. Why? Because they didn't give in at the first sign of hard work.

To give a more personal example I'd like to use my Dad. Today, along with a dedicated team, he runs a business called Coolkidz,which sells products for mothers, babies and young children. It's been a few years since its conception and I can tell you that today it looks a lot different to it did on day 1. I remember distinctly the afternoon when a 20ft container was lowered onto our driveway to be emptied into the garage. No warehouse, no employees and little to no orders. Thinking back I'm not sure if I could have turned a garages' worth of stock into enough to fill a warehouse that's over 16,000 square feet in size. But he did, and he did it because he pulled endless late nights and early starts. He made phone calls at cringe worthy times to overseas suppliers and spent countless hours on planes chasing new products. For every problem there was going to be a solution. Right there is (as I eluded to in my last post) the key to being an entrepreneur. Not taking no for an answer.

So the next time someone throws a spanner into the works of your big idea remember that being able to overcome those challenges is what will bring you more success than giving in will ever would.