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

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She never worried about me all day long because everyone in town knew who I was, and there were eyes everywhere, watching me. Every once in a while, somebody in town would call her because they saw me doing something I shouldn’t, like tipping over somebody’s garbage cans. We always had that awareness: Gee, no matter what I do wrong, I might get in trouble here. It was nice from a parent’s point of view, and it was nice from a kid’s point of view because it allowed for a lot of exercise in judgment and character development.

Now here is a mystery. That boy who was brought along to clean up the wood scraps, who grew up in a working-class town with a frontier mentality, would go on to found one of the most disruptive businesses of finance’s computer age. That business would utilize the latest communications and digital technologies to revolutionize and democratize the clubby, old, highly regulated, East Coast–based financial industry—and in the process, the founder of that business would become a billionaire. First, I had seen how very hard my father worked, the double pressure he was always under, to keep revenue coming in while sustaining his reputation for quality. I remember once we heard that a tornado had hit a farmhouse and destroyed it. The people whose home was destroyed belonged to our church. We kids were excited because building a farmhouse meant that Dad would take us out to the farm where we could do things we thought were special, like riding horses, though the farm kids had horses around every day and seemed to think they were boring. 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.” It may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out."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. In 1955 a version in the family of maxims is used by a popular actress and singer in musical theatre. Beyond the world of sports the expression is embraced by some in the world of show business [EMS]: 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." I've never been embarrassed about having streaks in my drawers. You know, it's all part of growing up." 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:

Special thanks to Steven Hales who told QI that the bibliographic data for the 2002 “Golf Digest” citation had mistakenly been omitted from a version of this article.)Most of the time change is a good thing and I think that’s what it’s all about–embracing change, being brave, doing whatever you have to so everyone in your life can move forward with theirs, and maybe it’s the only way you can truly make her be happy.”

I know that plenty of other young people would not have had this reaction, but to me it was like that scene you saw sometimes in adventure movies, where someone opens up the pirate’s chest and everyone’s face brightens with the light reflecting off the treasure inside. You could open up the paper and it showed you where the money was. With this, a whole new era of my life began. 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." 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.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. 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. Yet I did not grow up to become a midwestern Steve Jobs, some tech geek in a barn. It was never my interest to understand how the machines worked. I had no special enthusiasm for technology. In fact, I had very little exposure to new technology at all. We were one of the last families in Nebraska City to own innovations like air-conditioning or television, because my parents did not count those things among life's necessities. But maybe because we didn't have the new machines, I could see better what they could do and what a difference they could make in our lives. In 1913 the fantasy author L. Frank Baum, creator of the famous World of Oz, uses the maxim variant that hails knowledge [OZP]: As set forth in her autobiography, the philosophy of Ethel Merman, a woman with large eyes, good legs and an incredible voice, who is probably the finest musical-comedy performer of the last quarter century, is a homely one and considerably less complicated than the lyrics of Cole Porter, which she has often rendered with absolute felicity.