Hey there. It’s Mike Cooch with LVRG.
I’m going to share with you how your work ethic, hustle and willingness to do whatever it takes can sabotage your chances of success as an entrepreneur.
Your hustle can be your downfall
Now, I know that is totally counter to what you hear out there all the time. What you hear is you got to work like crazy.
You have to hustle like crazy and I’m not saying that that’s not true.
If you’re going to be an entrepreneur and successful in anything you are going to have to put a lot of work. You’re going to have to put in a tremendous amount of work at least at some point or another and for a period of time.
However, personally I found that I have absolutely no shortage of motivation, no shortage of work ethic.
I’ve never had a problem with either of those, but that can actually sabotage my chances of success and I know this happens to many other people and here’s why.
The reality is that I’m so willing to hustle. I’m so willing to work that what I do is I take on anything and everything then I just kind of assume that I’m going to get it all done.
I’m going to move it all forward.
But I don’t take the real discipline of actually determining what is the most important thing that I should be working on. I don’t determine which things should I say no or which things to push down further.
Either organizationally by delegating them or pushing them down further on my list of priorities in my calendar so that I’m not working on them right now when I should be working on other more important things. It’s just a psychological thing.
I have so much optimism around being able to get things done. I have such a willingness to work to get things done that I will actually put too much on my plate and too many things that are not important.
I’m not taking the time to truly differentiate what’s actually most important. So that’s something I had to learn to become very, very aware of.
Because it’s too easy for me to just say yes and I see many, many other entrepreneurs suffer from the same thing.
Be lazy
There’s a quote that I read from Bill Gates that actually shocked me when I first read it. He was talking about how he actually preferred to hire smart, lazy people.
Imagine that, one of the biggest company and one who belongs to the top 5 richest people hiring smart LAZY people.
The reason why he said that is because he said a lazy person will find out the most efficient way to get something done and to get it done once.
Because they’ll create a process around it or they’ll develop software or run or whatever so they don’t have to do it again. And those hardworking people who were really motivated would actually just take that thing and do it as fast as they could.
Just get it done and move onto the next thing without really sitting there and thinking about, you know, this maybe isn’t that important.
Maybe I can find a way to get it off of my plate. To actually approach it with a little bit more of a lazy mindset actually resulted in a more strategic outcome.
And that was an eye-opener to me because you know, Bill Gates is, of course, is infamous for his work ethic.
The guy apparently didn’t take any days off in his thirties but he still was always looking for the smartest way to get things done. The fact that he would hire smart, lazy people because he knew that those people would push off the things that were not that important and move forward with the things that were important. Those which needed to get done.
They were trying to find the way to do it once and do it best so that they didn’t have to do it again.
Work smarter not harder
So if you’re a hustler, if you’ve got that crazy work ethic, if you’re trying to build your empire, understand that it may be counterproductive.
Understand that your desire to work so hard and to say yes to all of those opportunities and to not slow down long enough to really differentiate between the most important things could actually be sabotaging your success and costing you.
Slow down a little.
Be willing to be lazy.
“Lazy.”
Be willing to actually slow down and take a look at the things that you’re doing and determine what can you get rid of. What can you delegate down to somebody? What can you delay to another day?
And for the things that are really important, how can you create a process around them so that maybe somebody else can do them and you can move on to other more important things.
Again, you’re going to have to work hard to be a successful entrepreneur.
If you work hard on the right and important things that are going to put you on a totally different path than if you’re just doing everything because you’re willing to hustle.
Have that discipline. I hope this serves you. Take care of it.
