“Success is not about being a genius or getting lucky. It’s about working hard and never giving up.” – Hope Solo
No one has qualified for the Olympic team solely because of randomly getting the right numbers, and rarely has pure talent gotten someone to the podium.
The best salespeople may have talent but they grind, making more calls and contacts in a day than their peers do in a week. And they do it every single day for years and decades, not resting on their laurels when they hit a huge goal or are #1 yet again. Because the work ethic that got them there demands that they get back to work.
The greatest musicians hit their 10,000 hours of focused practice early and kept playing and improving, allowing their genius to emerge as they struggled with higher and higher order work.
I see people start and stop and start something different over and over again in business, never giving the endeavor enough time to get traction and start to succeed. The person that records a half dozen YouTube videos in a two-week span but then doesn’t record another for several months and wonders why they don’t have followers. Contrast this to the person that posts every single day for a year. Who is going to be a better presenter and have more impact? As well as a loyal following.
Growth comes not from doing a thing full out for a day or a week, but in getting up in the dark and doing it over and over again for months and years. Consistent effort every day, especially on the days you don’t feel like it. This is the single highest potential pathway to success: showing up and busting your butt over and over and over and over. That is how champions are made.