The Harder You Work, the Luckier You Get: An Entrepreneur's Memoir

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These jobs became a kind of parallel schooling for me, not in knowledge but in responsibility. I was fortunate to work for people who honored me by taking an interest in the character of a young man. My boss on the paper route was Mrs. Enright. She saw her role as teaching young boys to understand what it meant to do the job well. She gave us reasons: You have to be here by four in the afternoon and here is the reason why. You have to count your papers, and this is the reason why. You have to remember your bicycle or wagon, and these are the reasons why. She was a caring person who was teaching us responsibility with love and with explanations. At Boy Scout camp, it felt like we were a thousand miles away from home and church and all the rules, with nobody to oversee us. There was still somebody keeping an eye out though, so if a kid broke a leg, somebody was going to take care of it. I still remember our troop leader. He lived in the neighborhood and everybody knew and respected him. He was a bachelor, and later some people got upset because he was rumored to be a homosexual. He was made to leave the organization. We kids never had any idea about that, and he never did anything he shouldn’t have. He was a great scout leader—I can’t imagine anyone better as an ideal for young men—and I thought his being asked to leave was a tragedy. It made me sad.

Of course, I know it would be work, work, work, but this work would be an adventure. There was no class you could take to explain how to succeed as a broker in the new age of negotiated commissions. No one to tell us what to do. We had to get out there with our brains and our strength and make it succeed. We were the first beaver trappers in an unknown river valley. In my heart, I believed,But the version that Barber is quoted saying does not contain the word “practice”. Indeed, the version Barber uses invokes “hard work” and that variant appears more than a decade earlier in 1949 as shown further below. It is possible that Barber also used a version of the maxim containing the word “practice”, and Gary Player heard or was told of that version. My great-grandfather died knowing he had succeeded. My mother grew up on the first of those seven farms. She lived in Manley, Nebraska, in a family that was not only one of the most successful farm families but also one of the prominent families of the community. They were Catholic, and in those days in their church the people who gave the most money got the first pew, and the second biggest donors got the next pew, and so on. My grandfather’s family had the first pew in the church. They bought a new car every few years. Their house was big for its time, with a pillar on each side of the front door, as compared to my father’s family home, which was at that time a log cabin. They covered it with siding, so it looked like a regular house. But it was still a log cabin. Growing up in the 1920s, my mother’s family was not wealthy, but they lived well as proud and prominent members of the community. Taking action is one of the most important steps in achieving your goals. Without action, your goals are nothing more than wishes. Decide what you want to achieve, and then take steps towards making it happen. The more actions you take, the closer you reach your goal. When the penny brokers swindled Jay Gould out of his life savings, he was so impoverished that he had to live in a boarding house and do odd jobs to make ends meet. But he never gave up on his dream of making it big on Wall Street. He kept working hard and taking action, eventually becoming one of the most successful financiers of his time. My mother told me, “You ought to be proud of yourself, Joe, because he called and asked specifically for you. He wants you to work for him because you look like a person of worth. Take the job and prove to him that you are.” J. J. Lerner, owner of the stores bearing his name, met a great admirer of his playwright-son, Alan Jay, who auth’d such delights as “Brigadoon,”“Day Before Spring” and “Love Life.”

The diminutive Los Angeles golfer sank a 15-foot putt on the second hole for birdie-3 and a 20-footer on the eight for a birdie-2. Admittedly, about 30 minutes through the conversation, my mind began to wander. Another common practice in our family, ha! But it dawned on me just how far my sister and I have come, both professionally and in developing a genuine relationship with each other with meaningful discussion. And so after that 30 minute mark, I interrupted my sister. "Roxie, how wild is this? Did we ever expect to be having conversations about data and customer journeys with each other... and actually understanding and enjoying the passionate dialogue?" And that's the secret ingredient. Passion. Hard work will take you pretty far - but that hard work can only take you so far. You need to feel connected to your work. You need to feel excited. Have a sense of drive. A sense of purpose. This is what gets you over the big finish line - and makes you crave the next challenge. Every once in a while, as I worked my jobs and made my deposits into my savings account, I’d want to buy something. I would go talk to my dad about it. “You can buy it, Joe,” he would tell me. “It’s your money. You earned it. But understand what that’s going to do to your savings account, and what it’s going to do to you in the future.” When my grandfather saw that the stairway was off a quarter inch, he knew his reputation was at stake. He didn’t want to take that risk. He looked the staircase over, mused for a minute while the men held their breath, and said, “Build it over.”

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. Downstairs was supply storage and a bathroom. The building had been constructed before running water, so the plumbing was an afterthought. The bathroom was terrible. In this small, unremarkable office, there was nothing physically distinctive or appealing anywhere, but my spirit was soaring. In the world of entrepreneurship and startups, hard work is not just important — it’s essential. It’s the fuel that drives your business forward, transforming ideas into tangible products or services. Let’s explore why hard work holds such paramount importance in the journey of a startup or entrepreneur: One Sunday morning, after I’d been working all night on the production line, the sun was coming up, ushering in a bright, beautiful day. We didn’t have any windows we could see out of, but there were windows near the ceiling. Later, I climbed up on some of the huge pans to look out, and I could see young people in convertibles going on picnics or to the beach. They were having a nice, leisurely day. I thought, Boy, you know, that looks fun. I want to make enough money so I don’t have to work on Sunday and I can go to the beach too. I felt what it would be like to get out of that factory and make sure I could have a good job, a house in a nice neighborhood, a car, and some leisure time. I will never forget that first day. The pride. This was our own office, the office of the business we ourselves had started, and our business was to be honest brokers. We weren't padding our commissions or taking our customers' money in ways I didn't think was right. We were not going to cut corners. We could establish the type of operation and destiny we believed in.

Innovation: Hard work fuels innovation. The effort you put into researching, understanding your market, and developing solutions to meet your customers’ needs can lead to novel ideas and products. Additionally, a strong work ethic often involves constantly seeking better ways to do things, pushing you towards innovation. Sometime after the party, it was discovered that the new bull was diseased. It might have had tuberculosis or hoof-and-mouth, a deadly infection that could spread through a community and ruin all the farmers around. This was before science understood the transmission of the disease, so to make sure it would not pass beyond my grandfather's farm, his entire herd had to be destroyed. Once the vet made his diagnosis, my grandfather had no more say in the matter. The state sent men to dig an enormous hole, drive the animals in, slaughter them all, and fill the hole with dirt. That was what he wanted me to understand: the effect this tool could have on their work and their lives. In that sense, he had an innovator’s eye, not because he had invented the buzz saw but because he saw the possible benefit in it. I did not need to know the concept of productivity or the term early adopter. I could hear the meaning in my father’s voice and see it in the men’s smiling, sawdust-covered faces. I believe in Communism. Rom-communism, that is. If Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan can go through some heartfelt struggles and still end up happy, then so can we." If you’ve ever watched the hit Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso, then you’re very aware of how amazingly quotable it is, and not just because of all the great British accents. Every one of the characters is written with so much depth, but Ted Lasso himself, the loveable, optimistic, mustache-wearing American football coach who’s hired to head up a British football (AKA soccer) team, is known for being endlessly full of lil’ nuggets of wisdom. And that’s kinda important when you’re coaching a sport you know absolutely nothing about!

Step 1: Take advantage of lucky breaks generated by hard work

You know how they say that 'youth is wasted on the young'? Well, I say don't let the wisdom of age be wasted on you.” Guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years, I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day, I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman, and it was painted on the wall there. It said, 'Be curious, not judgmental.' I like that." There are few true overnight successes. Behind what looks like sudden success is often years of work, trial and error, and failures. But the harder you work, the more good ideas and chances you may make for yourself. As I got older, of course, I had to give up that kind of freedom. And by the time I was a senior in high school, I knew that what I wanted was to go away to college, not stay in town and get a job. As one of my friends from Nebraska City liked to say, it was a great place to grow up and then a great place to get away from. I’d had enough of a place where everybody knew everybody else, where there were eyes and expectations everywhere. HGSI] 1981 January 26, Sports Illustrated, “19th Hole: The Readers Take Over” edited by Gary Flood, Time Inc. (SIVault) link

In 1984 the father of a young woman who is an expert in shooting basketball foul shots credits the saying to another famous golfer [APN]: Once Jerry Barber, a great sand player, was practicing bunker shots. He hit one ball near the flag. The next shot went in. My mother didn't tell their story all at once. There were many different parts and versions, and they would come out while she was cleaning the house or painting, home all day with us kids and thirsty for someone to talk to. I can picture her with her sleeves rolled and her hair tied up in a scarf—she reminded me of the wartime poster of Rosie the Riveter, with the slogan "We Can Do It!" Like my father, she was a person resigned to adversity, but she could not talk about her family history without emotion. In my first newsletter last month, I talked about the importance of dreaming, which is crucial to any entrepreneur. Great things start with a dream, or an idea, and the entrepreneurial mindset is what brings it to life. For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It's about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field."Quote Investigator: Gary Player is a very fine golfer, but he is not responsible for this well-known maxim. The best evidence that he did not coin the adage is in a book written by Player himself in 1962 where he credits the aphorism to fellow golfer Jerry Barber. Before discussing that book QI will review support for Player and some other claimants to the phrase. The earliest instance of the expression found by QI that uses the word “practice” is not from a golfer. It appears in a memoir published in 1961 by a soldier of fortune during the Cuban revolution.