In this episode, we discuss how hard work is what gets you to the top of the ladder.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets. I got this quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commencement speech at USC. I found this speech very motivating and there is a nice YouTube that condenses the speech into his six rules of success which are:
- Trust Yourself
- Break The Rules
- Don’t Be Afraid To Fail
- Don’t Listen To The Naysayers
- Work Your Butt Off
- Give Back
I’ll have a link to this video in the show notes. I got today’s episode from the work your butt off rule. If you truly want to succeed in life, you have to work your butt off but also make sure you’re working your butt off on the right things.
Success really is a ladder and if you want to reach the top then you have to work hard. It’s also lonely at the top because you’re going to go through a lot of uncertainty as you climb. It’s never going to be a straight line and there are going to be many detours. You might even go back but if you work hard, you can get back on the right track.
I work hard on this Grow With Joe Business and I work hard on myself. I make sure I go to the gym and workout, I also take time to read and learn different things that I can use in my life.
I also spend a lot of time taking action. I make sure that I do the work that most people won’t do and spend the hours on the task until I get it done. Some days I work long hours and other days I take time to rest but I make sure I’m hustling when I’m working.
When I was working at my last firm, I had to go to marketing booths to generate some business. I was basically trying to convince people to come to have a financial planning meeting with me. I go to a lot of expos and I hardly see anyone in front of the booth. I usually just see people sitting behind them and waiting for the business to come to them.
Doing this type of activity is not going to really help you out. It is nice that you went out there and set up a shop but that’s the bare minimum work. I made sure to organize my table when people took some merchandise or brochures. I also made sure to stand in front of the table and greet people as they walked by. I would also ask them if they heard of my company. If they didn’t, I would ask them if they wanted to see some amazing things.
This type of action put me in front of a lot more people if I just waited for people to come to me. This was only this first step though. I also had to collect their contact information if they were interested in sitting down for a financial consultation and then follow-up with a phone call.
This meant after a long day of standing at a marketing booth, I also had to pack up, go back to the office, unload my car, put everything away, and then spend time after work to call people, which was typically 6 pm since people didn’t want to be contacted at work. Then I would spend the hour calling people and I usually got a lot of no or I have to think about it.
I had to do this over and over again, it was a grind. I wasn’t very successful at this and I didn’t think it was very effective but it gave me a lot of valuable experience in dealing with no and following-up. There was one person that I had to follow-up for a year, who finally became a client. The fortune is in the follow-up and it typically takes 8-12 contacts before someone is comfortable enough to buy from you or have a meeting. If you want to become a success in life, you have to do the little things to separate yourself from the pack and you have to be good at following-up and asking for the business. Some people are just busy and just need to have someone else keep them accountable and this takes effort to do so.
This is a lot more work than just waiting for someone to come to you and to stop calling someone after the first call. If you don’t do all this extra work, then you just have your hands in your pocket and won’t climb the ladder of success. When you’re in the start-up phase of a new career or a business, you just have to put in a lot of sweat equity that will give you experience. I would never expect someone to give me experience and I would go out and get it. I remember I would take time to sit on other advisor’s meetings to see how they did business just to shadow them. This is also a very valuable experience that requires you to go the extra mile.
As I’m working on growing my financial planning firm, I keep telling myself that it takes ten years to become an overnight success and that I just need to keep taking action. Some days I have losses, some days I have won, but most days are just a wash. The wins are coming in and I just know that if I keep taking action and not keep my hands in my pockets, then I will reach the top of the ladder. Make sure you work hard on the right things when you’re young because you’ll have more energy and fewer responsibilities. It will take a lot of energy to climb the success, it’s kind of like a rocket ship that needs to escape the atmosphere. It needs a lot of fuel to help it escape the gravity of the earth, but once the rocket ship leaves the atmosphere, it can chill for a while before it has to start getting back to work.
That’s it for today’s episode, and to summarize it, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pocket as Arnold Schwarzenegger says. To become successful it’s going to be exhausting at times, and you may need to rest, but don’t’ rest for too long or quit. If you quit, then you’ll never reach the top of the ladder and success won’t come your way. Nature is a very ruthless place, but the society we live in isn’t as bad as it used to be when your town would get invaded and they would blind all the citizens of the village to send a message. Some of that goes on today but we live in a much more civilized world and the only way we are going to create a more perfect society is if we work hard on the right things that will make it successful. You can have the life you want as well, you just need to get your hands out of your pockets and start climbing.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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