The Reason Why Your Hard Work Will ALWAYS Pay Off

And I got another question on Instagram from my guy, Flame Hoops. And you know, he was asking, he was asking, you know, does, does hard work pay off? And you know, we talked a little bit about this, me and him, but you know, to me this is a multi layered question. And actually it's an interesting conversation to have too. I think there's a lot of, a lot of ways that this can go. But the answer is yes and no. Okay, Answer is yes and no. So I think that yes, hard work does pay off, but also it's not just hard work that, that pays off. Like it's not only about the hard work, okay? Because listen, you can work as hard as you want to. You know, you can work harder than everybody else, but you might not be set, you might not be seven feet tall, okay? You might not be, you know, whatever, 260 pounds with a 40 inch vertical. You just might not be, okay? And you might lose somebody who is right. And all that hard work, you can still lose. So if we look at it surface level, like, no, it does not always pay. Like hardware does not always pay off. So FIBA estimated that there were 450 million basketball players around the world. Okay? That's their estimate. So we'll go ahead and we'll just assume that that's the number, right? Keep it easy for us. 450 million basketball players around the world, NBA players are the top 450 of those guys. So that would mean that you would need to be in the top 0.000001% of basketball players in the world to even make an NBA roster, just to get, just to be the 15th guy on the roster who's never going to play. You need to be in the top 0.000001% of those guys. That's five zeros. That's that decimal which is just an unreal number right there. Okay? So, so just think about how great you have to be to be in that number. So obviously, look amongst those 450 guys. How, like how much different, talent wise are we talking, right? I mean, talent wise, aside from the top guys, you know, guys like LeBron, Kobe guys, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry guys who are the very, very top. The talent difference between those 450 is not that, it's not that much, right? There's not that much of a difference in talent. And also in order to get to that, that 450, you've got to work really hard. Now, some guys work harder than others. Again, a guy like LeBron, Kobe, Michael Jordan, those guys, those guys were just on a whole different level in terms of the way that they worked, okay? But all these guys in the NBA with, you know, with the exception of a few, work really ridiculously hard to get where they are. Ridiculously hard, okay? Harder than most people work at it. And obviously it shows. That's how they're in the top 450. Okay? But, you know, so what separates those guys? How what separates a guy, you know, an upper echelon guy, we'll tell you. We'll take a guy like, you know, like a Khris Middleton, right? What separates him from a guy who obviously, Chris Middleton, all Star, you know, great player for the Bucs, you know, obviously the Bucs, one of the best teams in the NBA. What separates a guy like that from a guy who is the 9th or 10th guy on a team? Well, to me, and you hear a lot of guys talk about this, but a lot of it has to do with the way that these guys work, okay? Because they all work hard. But what separates guys when they get to the league is what guys are meticulous with how they prepare, what guys are incredibly detailed with what they put into their bodies, right? Who. Which guys are still, regardless of any success that they have, still not satisfied with what they've gotten so far. Those tend to be the guys who end up having long, successful careers and becoming the best because they're obsessed with how they work. It's not just about the hard work because all those guys work hard, but it's also about how they approach the game, you know, what approach they take. And essentially the. That's why you see these guys with these massive team. Like, you know, LeBron has a team of guys. Kawhi Leonard has a team of guys, right? Where you've got, you know, you've got your strength guy, you got your new, you got your nutrition guy, you got your chef, you got your, you got your whatever. Like, you got obviously your whole business side of the team. You got guys take care of everything for you so that you can just focus on making on. On making sure that the product you put on the floor is the best it can possibly be, right? That's why these guys are willing to invest. Obviously, it's not cheap to invest in a full time chef or to invest in a full time strength coach, right? But these guys understand that if they want to be the best out of the 450 million players in the world, they have to be very, very smart and detailed in how they Prepare. Okay? So if you want to be great, take that. Take that sort of example of make sure the work you're putting in is smart. It can't just be that you're working hard, because a lot of guys are working hard, but it's also about the type of work that you put in. Okay? So, you know, and at the same time, me saying all that, I actually, I do believe that hard work does pay off all the time. I think. I think there. There is. If you look at it a certain way, hard work will always pay off. And here's why. So learning to work hard and to dedicate yourself to something is being able to dedicate your focus, your time, your energy into something that in itself is a skill and one of the most valuable skills you can have in life. Okay? Not only is that going to help you in basketball to become the best you can possibly be, but it's literally going to help develop the mindset that it's going to take to succeed in anything that you do in life. Okay? And that goes far outside of just basketball. But obviously we can. We can develop that through the game of basketball. So I think that working hard at it, even if you're doing the wrong things, even if the drills you're doing aren't perfect, even if the way you do things isn't perfect, just by you working hard and being committed to something, you're going to develop skills that are going to help you to succeed. And I think what it comes next to, and actually this is something I'll be talking about in the mental toughness masterclass with my guys and is, you can't, like, not be. Not settling for. Not settling for doing things that aren't as great as it can possibly be. Essentially, you don't want to just be like, oh, you know what I'm going to do. This thing might or might not get me results, Whatever. I'll just do it. The guys who are the best, the guys are saying, no, I got to figure out what the best thing to do is. I'm going to do the research, I'm going to put the time in, and I'm going to focus myself to doing this. I'll. Guys who are obsessed with the process, obsessed with maximizing the time that they have. Those are the guys who are the most successful down the line. But even if you don't do that, even if you just work hard at something, you don't work smart at it. There is nothing that you do that necessarily. I even just talked about now. You just work Hard, you're going to develop the ability to translate that into other areas of your life and you become a more successful person in general. Okay? And so for me, you know, that's why I've never understood people who can't get into sports. And, you know, I get it. Like, everyone has their thing. I don't like to draw or paint. Not my thing. I don't like to hunt or fish. Not my thing. Like, plenty of people are into those things. And obviously you can learn how to work hard through those things, too. I'm not saying that you, you don't have to work hard to be good at painting or to be good at hunting, whatever, okay? But what I'm saying is that sports are just different because you're thrown into the fire, right? Obviously, basketball, it's a team setting. You've told how to work with your teammates, how to motivate your teammates, how to take coaching, how to be teachable, right? How to. All these skills that you need. I think that when people don't. Aren't involved in sports, they're missing out on a crucial area of development in life. Okay? And, you know, the, the, I mean, like, think about the ability to bring 100% every day, right? Whether or not you feel like it or not, you got to bring that same sort of effort every day. Even if you just lost by 20 the night before and you got a 9am practice on a Saturday the next morning, like, you got to be able to come and bring it the next day. That's. That's a valuable skill to have when, you know, if you're, you're, you know, you're in business and, you know, you, you know, you lose a sponsorship deal that, that was worth $2 million, you got to get up the next day, you got to do the same. You got to keep working, right? It doesn't stop just because something bad happened, okay? You don't get to quit. You don't get to feel bad. You just got to get up and you got to do it. You know, the, I mean, that takes mental toughness to be able to do, and it takes dedication. And you know that mindset that you're going to go, that you're going to reach towards a goal and you're never going to give up, regardless of the adversity that you face. That is something that translates to every area of life. And the guys who have that or the ones who are successful, which is why you see all these athletes who go on to become successful in other areas of life. You Know, he said guys like, you know, I was listening to Sean Merriman, who played in the NFL, was a Pro Bowler, great player for the Chargers. I mean, he's got his, his whole clothing brand now. Like, you got guys who, who go out and become entrepreneurs in these other sort of areas. And, you know, I mean, look at LeBron. LeBron is going to become a. He's going to be, he's going to be a billionaire. Like, he's, he's going to be a billionaire. He already has a billion dollar deal with Nike. The only question is when exactly will he cross a billion dollars? Right. He learned those sort of business skills through the game of basketball. And because of that, when he retires, I mean, I don't think that's the question to say LeBron is going to be an NBA owner one day if he wants to do that. Like, LeBron, like, there's, there's so much on the table he's going to do. And a lot of these NBA are the same exact way, right? A lot of these guys, when they retire are going to have things set up for them. I know Steph is another guy who's like that. Like, you got guys who set themselves up. Tom Brady, look at him as well, you know, with the little TB12 thing. I mean, that's a guy who is going to make a massive impact. And it all starts with, with the skills he developed through the sport of football. Okay. So I think sports are so crucial when it comes to helping guys develop those things. And, you know, I, you know, I talked about it on the podcast before. I believe it was episode two, talking about how to play at the college level, kind of my backstory and everything. But, you know, since, you know, my goal Since I was 12 years old was to play college basketball. And, you know, for a lot of reasons that, a lot of those reasons were out of my control, I wasn't able to do that. And, you know, again, if you want to know more about that specifically, check out podcast two. I believe it's Podcast two. Check that out. And he. And so for me, it became like, how do I view that now? Okay. Even though all the hard work that I put in initially didn't pay off. Right. My payoff, I thought was, I want to go play in college. Like, that's what I want. Right? That's why, that's why I put the work in. But that didn't happen. So you, like, do I look at that as the hardware didn't pay off? Well, no, because then, oh, this stuff happened. I have people who are like, hey, can you, can you, can you train me? Right? I had people who came up to me out of nowhere and I'm like, well, I mean, I know a lot from, from my own training. I've worked with a lot of great trainers. I've worked with a lot of great players before, so. And obviously through my own career, like, I know, I know how to, you know, I know how I need to help guys approach the game, and I know it can help guys with that. So all of a sudden, the skills that I learned through my own playing career, which I didn't get to my goal, those skills helped me propel me into what I'm doing now, right? So now all the stuff that I learned I can help give to you guys as well. So now from what I see, that hard work has 100% paid off, 100% paid off. And just in a way that I didn't expect, way that I didn't see. Also, that's just the actual skill part of it. If I had done something else, like if this whole vision driven Basel thing wasn't a thing, I know that I would be doing something else and I would be able to succeed at that too. Because the skills that I had to learn, being able to lose, being able to lose my starting spot, still work hard to get it back. That stuff that is real, I mean, that's real life stuff you got to learn right there, okay? So I know that whatever adversity I face, as long as I stick to what I'm doing, I can get past it. And not only that, I'm going to use it to make me better, okay? Because down the line now I'm going to be more and more confident in my ability to overcome anything that comes my way. So that in itself, the mindset that you develop through the game of basketball, through working hard at it, I mean, that right there, that's something that translates to everything. I mean, your ability to be like, you know what? I'm going to get up at 5 o' clock in the morning so I can go to the gym before school starts. Then when school's up, I'm gonna go lift, right? Then at night I'm gonna get up some more shots. Like, that work ethic translates to every other area of life. You know, when I've got to be up till 4 o' clock in the morning editing something like it is what it is. If I gotta be up at 9 o' clock the next morning to film something else, whatever, like what I Can. I mean, that's something that. That developed through the game. Basketball. Okay. And, you know, that's why I think sports is so incredibly important for society, but especially for schools. Right. I think. I think having sports in schools is just such an important thing because, you know, we have. That's where kids learn those life skills. Right. It's not, you know, learning is not just through the classroom. I had a good talk with my cousin yesterday, actually about, you know, learning. And, you know, because he was talking about how he's trying to read more because he wanted to become, you know, he wanted to actually enjoy learning. And that's such a great point. Once you start to actually find things you enjoy doing and you enjoy learning about, you actually can become great at learning. Right? And I think sports, that's the avenue. A lot of kids don't really care much about school. They don't really care about their math class or their English class. They do care about basketball, though. So you can teach those kids life skills through sports, through basketball. That's going to help them just as much as any math class is going to help them. Okay. When we talk about them actually being successful down the line. So. Which, I mean, again, it's sad to see a lot of these athletic programs getting shut down at the collegiate level because of the whole coronavirus thing, you know. I know, I know. The University of Cincinnati just, just, you know, closed down their men's soccer program. Central Michigan just shut down their track and field program. Eastern Carolina just just canceled their swimming and diving and their tennis teams. Like, it's. It's. It really is sad to see because sports are such an important part of. Of society. So, you know, again, we've talked about this before, but, like, people will be like, oh, man, it's just sports. Like, why do people care? Like, you guys can't go. Like, you guys need your sports. Sports is such a massive part of life. The competition, the skills that you learn. It's not just about sports. So everything else associated with it. So, you know, for me, I think the ultimate thing I can leave you with is that, you know, there will always be something that you gain when you work hard. It might not be exactly what you thought you wanted or thought that you would get, but there will always be something that you gain when you have the ability to work hard at something. I want to hook you guys up with my free elite perimeter score workout. This workout is going to help you develop the skills that you need to be an elite scorer on the perimeter. And I'm going to send it to you guys completely free. All you need to do is click the top link in my description below. I'll get that right to you.