“Shark Tank” star Daymond John, who built a billion dollar brand while living on the tips he made waiting tables at Red Lobster, has a similar mentality. Ultimately, the secret to success boils down to one thing, John argued: “Work. Bust your butt. Get up before everybody, go to sleep after everybody, and bust your butt. That’s it.”
Not everyone agrees with this approach. “More work is never the real answer,” said billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on “The Tim Ferriss Show” podcast. “The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It’s actually one part determination, one part ingenuity and one part laziness. Yes, laziness.”
“You want to minimize friction and find the most effective, most efficient way forward,” Hoffman continues. “You might actually have more grit if you treat your energy as a precious commodity.”
But for Cardone, long hours are the answer: “If you gave me $5 billion, I’d still be grinding tomorrow.”
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