Fitness Business School – The Truth About Hard Work

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about what I consider the truth regarding hard work, got a lot to cover. So let’s get to it.

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Growing up for me like the, in the world, I lived in this, this idea of being a hard worker. That was a badge of honor. I mean, you’d hear people talk about somebody, and that was almost one of the defaults when they wanted to give somebody a compliment that say, man, this guy’s a hard worker. It, it might have been like the strongest compliment somebody could give. I know for my dad, that’s probably the, the strongest compliment. He might give someone, right. It, if someone’s was willing to do things that other people didn’t want to do, climb on a roof and, and you know, hang shingles or, you know, get out and do some uncomfortable work in, in the heat or thing. You know, if they’re willing to sweat a little more, go a little longer, that was this kind of mark of success, but I’ll tell you what I figured out O over the years, it’s the wrong way to look at things.

Now, I grew up working in my, my dad’s garage. He owned, owned, and cont and used to own a, an auto repair business. And he, you know, so he’d had me come in and work. And man, when I was probably, I think, 13, I started doing work as, as the de facto janitor, and then later kind of janitor slash mechanic during the summers. And when I say mechanic, definitely just like a, a, a parts changer. I wasn’t any sort of highly skilled mechanic, but man, I can’t tell you how many times I was under the hood of a car sweat. And, you know, in, in this building that felt like an oven during the summers. It was not like air conditioning or anything and straining and trying to, to, to, you know, get part loose or something. Then my dad come over with some different tool and accomplish what I had been working on for 15 minutes. He’d, he’d get done in, you know, a couple twists with, you know, some sort of you know, tool that, that really kind of automated the process, if you will. And you know, it was kind of then and there that of, of all places in, you know, probably the hardest working environment I had been exposed to and may, may still have been exposed to.

I saw very quickly that smart work, beat hard work. Now my, my first real career was I was a college baseball coach among other jobs that I held at the university. And I remember how I spent my time versus the coach who followed me in the same position spent his, I spent about 90% of my time on recruiting players and developing players. And we won, I don’t know, 70% of our games, roughly I think, you know, 69.4% of our games or something. And he focused about two 20% of his time on those same things. And, you know, and then he’d, he’d get out and do the, the, the hard work working on the field and that sort of stuff. And the field was prettier when he coached, but they won about 45% of their games. Now, you know, for me, that was another reminder of how hard work didn’t necessarily beat smart work.

Now make no mistake. I’m I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t take hard work to build a business. In fact, the, the opposite is true. I’ve yet to meet a person who didn’t put in a bunch of hours in, or to have any degree of success. You know, I, I’ve never met the person who actually worked the four hour work week, but I’ve also never met anybody. Who’s built a great business and it was just hard work. It wasn’t smart work too. It wasn’t being strategic. It wasn’t finding ways to create, leverage every great business that I’ve been around. You know, they, they didn’t just say, well, Hey, I’m gonna throw more hours at the situation and that’ll solve it. No, they, they look for a way to, to better solve the problem. So here’s some, some thoughts on how you may be able to, to work a little bit smarter. The first is deciding where you want to go. And if you do that and then reverse engineer a plan to get there, you know, now we’ve got a framework to, to work from. And then the, the next thing is understanding that being busy is, is not a good thing. Like how many people brag about being busy. In fact, when somebody tells me, Hey, you’re so busy, I’m, I’m a little bit offended by it, to be honest, because like, if that’s the way that you’re interpreting this, and you’re not just saying it because that’s what people just kind of throw out there, then I’m doing this wrong.

If I appear to be really, really busy and not protective of my time and not strategic with my time, then that’s not good. Anybody can be busy. The more important thing is who gets more of the right stuff done each and every day. And that kinda leads me to the next idea. I I’ve used a daily planner since about 1994. And, you know, if, if I go into the day already identifying the, the two to three most important tasks and focusing on those, I know that I’m ahead of the game because most people don’t, most people are reactive. And you know, the last thing that, that I would say can, can kind of help you make sure that you’re working smart is when you spend time on something, the, the way that I look at this is you’re basically saying, Hey, this is the most important thing I could be doing right now. And sometimes we just need to be a little bit more self aware and ask ourself, the question is this the most important thing? Is this the most valuable thing I can be spending my time on? And if it’s not, perhaps we need to find a way to reallocate our time and our resources.

So if you know, I mean, if you want to, to build something better, wanna build a great business, you know, you’re, you’re going to have to put in plenty of hard work. There’s no getting around that. In fact, I think that’s a wonderful filter that, that weeds out a lot of those people who like the idea of having a great business, but are unwilling to build one. But, but no, that I, if you are just constantly busy doing, you know, $5, $10 an hour tasks, then you are not finding ways to work smarter a and leverage your time better and make your time more valuable. Then you’ve just got yourself a really challenging, low paying job that you’re gonna be tethered to for a long in time. So take the tips that I just shared and figure out how to work smarter. Your business will be better for it.

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