Talent alone won’t get you very far. The smartest kid in the class might have an easy time getting the grades she needs to get into a top-tier school like MIT. But once she’s there, everyone is at least as smart as she is. Some are much smarter. The only way to stand out and excel in that environment is to work harder than anyone else.
In an interview for CBS, Will Smith explained his own success in exactly those terms:
“I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping? I’m working. While the other guy’s eatin’? I’m working. While the other guy’s making love, I mean, I’m making love, too. But I’m working really hard at it.”
People with an exceptional talent for a given activity or skill are rare, by definition. But so are people who are willing to work really hard. People with exceptional talent who are also willing to put in exceptional effort to improve upon their natural ability are extremely rare indeed. Generally, you find those people on top of victory stands receiving gold medals.
Whether we like it or not, there are certain areas of life where natural ability conveys a significant advantage. If your hope is to compete at an elite level in an international sporting event, to end up with that gold medal around your neck, you’ll need more than just hard work. You’ll need significant natural abilities as well.
However, there are many areas in life where the benefits of talent are less pronounced and a commitment to hard work is therefore much more valuable. Business is one of them. There are plenty of talented people all across the business world, and many hard workers too. But the nature of commerce allows for many winners, instead of just one. In addition, there are so many different aspects to business and entrepreneurship, so many different approaches one can take, that a single person rarely embodies talents that cover them all.
Perhaps the biggest reason why talent alone will lose to hard work in the business world is that most people dramatically underestimate the amount of time, energy, money, and effort it will take to bring their project to fruition. Talent, in such circumstances, will only take them part of the way. But there will still be many obstacles to overcome, and most people will give up instead of pushing through with hard work.
The 10X Rule, a book by Grant Cardone, makes this point quite well. What he realized, and based his rule on, is that his business was not succeeding in the way he wanted and expected until he started putting in ten times the effort he originally thought he needed.
In cases like that, natural born talent can actually become a liability. Talented people sometimes fall into the trap of believing that their talent is all they have. They’ve been able to solve so many problems and perform so well without much effort that when things get tough they assume that this problem is simply beyond their abilities. Instead of working hard to overcome the problem, they give up. The less talented, however, have always had to work to surmount the challenges they’ve faced. When a new one comes along, bigger than ever, they respond the same way they have before: Buckle down and work until they get through it.
There is, in the end, no substitute for hard work. For those born with great natural gifts, it is hard work that turns those into incredible skills. For those of us in the middle of the bell curve, hard work turns average talent into impressive and ongoing success, easily surpassing those who rely on their talents alone.
