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

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To me, looking out that factory window at the beautiful convertible, the open road, the day that could take me anywhere, was a vision of freedom. To know that I have earned the freedom to do something, that feels glorious. But actually doing it? That’s not the point. Rewards, for me, were the wrong motivation. I wanted to work hard, make money, give it everything I had, and build something that would last for myself, my children, and the people who worked for me. I just didn’t know, yet, what to build. Risk-Taking: Entrepreneurs need to take calculated risks to reap significant rewards. While it’s essential to be cautious, avoiding risks entirely can mean missed opportunities. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

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.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.” It may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out." Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself daily. They are a powerful tool to help you attract what you want into your life. For example, if you want to attract more money, you can tell yourself, “I am a magnet for money. It flows to me easily and effortlessly.” Say your affirmation out loud several times a day, and make sure to believe it when you say it. The more conviction you have, the better results you’ll see. There were a lot of examples when customer committed massive fraud against business, and as a result, businesses went bankrupt. But still, some people didn’t give up and continued to work hard. Whether it is your brother’s death or an early embrace of adulthood, it is always better not to give up and to face all the challenges head on.

I must have sent out hundreds of job applications, and to add to the challenge, my Dyslexia made the simple act of filling out an application form a Herculean task. I’d rarely receive a response, and to the few that bothered to respond, it wouldn’t be the response I was hoping for. Find yourself reaching a breaking point? There's nothing wrong with letting issues percolate for a while. Find a way to take your mind off things for a while. Change your routine or talk to someone new in search of inspiration. The next day, that impossible task might not seem quite as daunting. 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. 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. At the time it really did begin to feel like a hopeless situation, but I knew that I had to persevere, and one thing that this period of my life taught me was to take something away from every experience, and what I took away from this episode was also life-changing.

I want you to be grateful that you're going through this sad moment with all these other folks. Because I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad, and that is being alone and being sad. Ain't nobody in this room alone. Let's be sad now. Let's be sad together.” 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.” 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. 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. My friends would ask me why I wasn’t playing baseball, why I wasn’t playing basketball. I told them, “I got a job. I prefer to work.” My parents had never discouraged me from playing sports, but they did encourage me to make money. And my friends didn’t understand that I did not have the urge to do what they did. It hurt sometimes that my peers rejected what I cared about. Especially with girls—it seemed the girls all went after athletes, but I was carrying newspapers, clerking in a drugstore. None of the girls seemed to care about boys with jobs.

In the next generation, my great-grandmother was ambitious and married a banker. This was before federal regulation of banking, so a local banker was like the owner of any small business: He made his own decisions and lived with the consequences. That meant that our family had access to capital. They had seven children and wanted a farm for each. My grandfather was the oldest child, so they bought the first farm for him, taking on a lot of debt. The crops were good, the farm made money, and as soon as they had some equity in it, they borrowed against that and bought another. In time, they owned farms from South Dakota down through Kansas. You could say that for their time and place, my immigrant forebears were very successful entrepreneurs. Yet, 1961 is the date of the earliest instance of the aphorism that QI has located that uses the word “practice”. It appears in a book titled “The Devil to Pay” and is used by a soldier of fortune. (Thanks to ace researcher Bonnie Taylor-Blake for verifying this citation on paper.) The following passage describes a man being killed with a single shot [DTP]: Those who support the statement would argue that hard work is the key to success. Working hard towards reaching a goal requires dedication, discipline, and endurance, all of which are necessary for the achievement of any goal. It is also true that those who are willing to put in the effort are more likely to be successful than those who are not. Furthermore, hard work can open up new opportunities, as it can lead to recognition and increase an individual's chances of promotion or finding better job prospects.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. In 1981 in a letter to Sports Illustrated the golfer Hubie Green is credited with the saying [HGSI]: