- Finding Signal
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- Hard Work Pays Off
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Welcome to the 333 (yes 333!) new people who joined since the last post!
I’m so glad you could join our exclusive community of top-performers.
In Today’s Issue
We discuss how a simple trait — doing hard things — leads to career and financial prosperity
There has been one constant theme across my career that has led to success.
It’s helped me convince employers of my value, demonstrate my abilities and communicate the impact I can deliver.
Now as a leader of teams for the past 3.5 years, it’s a key indicator I look for in potential new hires as a key signal of future success.
And that trait is the ability to do hard things.
In fact, recent research and expert opinions suggest that one’s capacity to endure challenges, persevere through adversity, and maintain a resilient mindset— having “grit” —plays a pivotal role in achieving long-term success.
Steve Magness, the coauthor of Peak Performance, wrote a book on it.
Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
Embracing hard things accomplishes 3 crucial objectives for your career:
1. Building Resilience and Personal Growth: The foundation for success.
One thing’s for certain, you are going to fail. You will make mistakes. You are going to face stress and self-doubt.
Building the resilience and mental toughness to handle these challenges, learn from them and keep moving forward is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.
2. Creating Scarcity and Narrowing Competition: People don’t like hard. Most people take the easy and comfortable route. This makes those who embrace difficult challenges scarce commodities.
For example, being an astronaut is incredibly hard. There are only 48 active NASA astronauts.
In contrast, there are around 2.2 million restaurant servers in the US.
3. Achieving Financial Success: Companies pay more for harder and more complex jobs.
The Sales Account Executive (AE) is a very common sales role, but the salary range varies dramatically depending on how complex the product you are selling is.
Selling Low Complexity Products: Ex. Staples AE (Office Supplies) base salary $45,000
Selling Moderate Complexity Products: Ex. Oracle AE (Mid-Tier Software) base salary $70,000
Selling High Complexity Products: Ex. Microsoft/Google/Amazon AE (Cloud Solutions) base salary $150,000
In Conclusion
Don’t shy away from hard challenges. Run towards them.
Your career and financial prosperity will be brighter for it.
Go hard,
-CJ
P.S. Want more? Follow me on LinkedIn and let’s keep this learning journey going.
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