one minute blog: stop working so hard

This is the One Minute Blog (OMB). An email of good stuff for you to think about over the weekend, that takes a minute to read.

Today’s word count: 745

Estimated read time: 2 mins 09 sec.

“Hard work is the key to success”

Is it?

Then shouldn’t the guys sweating their ass off doing construction get paid more than the architect who drew a picture of the house?

Or the banker who pushed a button on his keyboard to give a construction loan?

“Hard work” sounds great. It sounds fair. Work harder. Get more.

That’s why rich geniuses like to say “hard work” is the key to their success. Because it sounds a hell of a lot better than:

“I’m just smarter than you, and my father paid for private math tutoring while you were stuck picking boogers in daycare”

Hard work helps. Certainly. But hard work alone doesn’t equal success.

So what else does it take?

If you open Instagram or Pinterest, you’ll see a flood of inspirational posts about the “keys” to success – “passion”, “hard work”, “discipline”, “determination” 

Yo… how many god damn keys are there? I need a janitor’s keychain to hold all these things…

The best advice I’ve gotten on this is from my personal trainer.

I was asking him about what I should do next in my career and he said: “Find the product that is you pushed out.”

What?

Basically - find a thing that’s so you, that doing it is just a natural extension of you being yourself.

For me, that became my podcast. The product is me pushed out.

I love talking to my friend, Sam. We nerd out about business stuff. We make dumb jokes. We did this for fun, with no microphone.

All we needed to do was add a microphone, and boom. I found the perfect job for me.

Hard work? This feels like play. I can’t believe my luck. I get paid to do this?!

As Naval says:

That’s the key. Looks like work to others.

Examples:

• My personal trainer: He’s doing 5-6 workouts a day with clients. That looks exhausting to me. He loves it. He’s filled with energy. Because of that, he’s like a magnet for more clients and has a waiting list of people who want to work with him.

• Nick Gray: My buddy Nick is a social butterfly. He loves it so much, he wrote a book called “The 2 hour cocktail party” on how to host like a champ. Now - he gets paid $10K+ to fly to cool parties or events and host. He gets paid to party!

• Joe Rogan: Broke every rule of podcasting. 3 hour interviews? Too long! What’s his niche? One day he’s talking MMA, the next comedy, politics, or conspiracies about the pyramids. It’s his tastes and interests, pushed out for the world to see.

The flywheel you want is:

If you become the best at anything - you get paid handsomely.

The best croissant maker in LA is making more than a hedge fund guy in NY. The best pre-school teachers (e.g. Ms. Rachel, Blippi) are making millions on YouTube.

That’s the power of the internet. The best people get found, and get huge rewards.

Look at this lady. She makes millions of dollars and has millions of followers who watch her clean her house.

^ 17M people watched that video of her organizing her fridge. WTF?

That looks like work to me. But she loves it. And the internet lets her turn that into a career.

So - forget about hard work. Forget about finding a ‘good job’. Find the product that’s just you pushed out.

You can steal my career goal: “Get paid a King's ransom for something that I would do for free.”

– Uncle Shaan

P.S. – I just did an interview with MrBeast. He’s a great example of this…

Since the age of 11, he’s been making videos. Today - he’s the most famous YouTuber in the entire world.

But as he said on the podcast:

“When I was 11, nobody watched.
When I was 12, nobody watched.
13. Nobody watched. 14. Nobody. 15. Still nobody.
16 - is anyone ever going to watch these?”

Finally - age 19, he broke through.

Was it hard work? Not really. He loved making videos. He didn’t want to be doing anything else. So he stuck with it. And when you stick with something for 8 years. You get good. And when you get good enough. You win.

Watch the episode here - it’s a must watch for anyone ambitious.

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