A first-person YouTube monologue (by George Foley) comparing Gary Vaynerchuk’s 'work harder' ethos with Tai Lopez’s 'work smarter' approach. The speaker recounts starting in recruitment with long hours, then building an entrepreneurial recruitment business by systemizing, delegating, and prioritizing self-education; as a result he now works ~25 hours/week, takes Mondays off, travels frequently, and runs webinars/coachings. The core claim: hustle is necessary early, but long-term success requires working smarter to gain freedom and scale without burning out.
Chapters
There's been a lot of talk by the likes of Gary Vayanchuk and Tai Lopez about do you work harder or smarter. So on one end you've got Gary Vee who always says work hard. Jab, jab, right hook, keep hustling, keep hustling, keep grinding away, which I agree with. I mean, I brought myself up like that all the time, working 60, 70 hours a week, investing hours and hours in personal development as well as working hard business. But also you've got Tai Lopez, who someone I've followed for three, four years now. He really got me into reading and books and helped me read a book a week and made me realize that the knowledge and self education is where it's at. And he always sells herself as work smarter. So he works less and less and he surrounds himself with people and invests in the right businesses to make sure that he, he just works smart. So there is, there's yes and nos in both. So yes, Gary V. Pushes the hustle. You do have to. When you start in the recruitment business, like I did over two years ago now, there was a lot of hustle involved. There was a lot of hustle when I worked at a recruitment company for five years, that was always eight to eight hours. And it was always drilled into me military style, that you had to be there on time, dress more and make sure that you're there, the first one in the office, last one to leave. And I was always like that. And then when I started my business, I wanted that freedom. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Yes, I wanted to be a millionaire and very successful. But also I still wanted to have the lifestyle. So I wanted to make sure that I could work the hours that I wanted to work. And ever since I built the business, I was always making sure, like tylope, as I said, working smarter. So I would always look for shortcuts, but I would always look for how can I systemize or how can I build this process to someone else can do it, how can I train someone to do this task? And that's how I built my business, by working smarter. So now I only work 25 hours a week. I have Mondays off, which are great. So I'm here with my little puppy Kobe at the moment, just waiting to pick my fiance up. But I just thought I'd share that with you. The fact of working smarter, really the way to go when you want to build your recruitment business. So making sure that you're creative. So the fact that I work less hours, I still make more money, funny enough. Because I'm focused on the hours that I put in work. It's true work where I'm a master at what I do. And then the times that I have my free time, that time is either building my coaching business or it is on self development, so personal development. So I'm always still technically sort of working, but not actually working in the business. I'm either working on the business or on my personal stuff. So it gives me that freedom. So I just thought I would share that with you because Gary Vaynerchuk, who I love, and Tai Lopez, who I do like, he markets himself very well. Obviously from what he's been putting out at the moment, some of his content is still very good because he is very clever. But it was always an interesting subject. Do you work harder or do you work smarter? So to summarize, yes, I worked harder at the start, but now then you must work smarter. The better your business does and the more money you bring in. Technically you should be working less and less. You should be less involved in the business as it goes. Because there's a lot of business owners that are stuck in that vicious cycle, the white rabbit chasing the white rabbit around the race track off more and more money. So once I get the 10 heads and million pounds, then I want to get to 100 heads and 100 million pounds and then it never stops because they're stuck in that cycle and they're still working 60, 70 hours a week. I see a lot of recruitment business owners, CEOs, directors who are still unhappy outside of work because they've built a business around them and they're very, very immersed and very involved in that business. And that's something that I didn't decide I wanted to do. I want to have a lifestyle and freedom so I can go on holiday when I want. I can took six holidays last year. I've had four so far this year, so went to the likes of Tenerife, Marbella, Saint Tropez, Paris, Barcelona. I want to go to all of those nice places and enjoy the time with my family and friends as well as working. So it's really important that when you have that mindset that you do want to build a lifestyle business. Yes, you have to work harder at the start, but then you have to have the mindset that you want to start working smarter, start working less and less. And that's why I decided to have the approach where I want to target to have Mondays off. So now I have Mondays off work where I only do a four day week and that is doable. It is doable, and you can still bring in more and more money. But you've just got to be smart on how you delegate the tasks and how you outsource them to the right people. So just thought I would share those little bits of golden nuggets about working harder or working smarter. Check out the links below. So I've got a free webinar going on every month on entrepreneurjames.com and I can show you core strategies on how to build a millionaire lifestyle recruitment business. If you're interested in keeping in touch with the further blogs, make sure you subscribe to my website and check out the next blog soon. Thank you.
