Diary Of An Entrepreneur: Will Allred

 

The Risk of Hard Work

 

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare." - Juma Ikangas, winner of the1989 NYC Marathon

Today I read something from two of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons. Gladwell, the author of "The Tipping Point" and "Blink," has the distinctive ability to make ordinary things fascinating. Simmons, an ESPN writer and tragically obsessed Red Sox fan, is known for hilariously capturing the psyche of a sports fan. Coincidentally, the two had an e-mail exchange that has everything to do with entrepreneurship.

In Gladwell's words, "This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard because if you fail, you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection; if you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and fail, the problem is that you're stupid - and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it's far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger Woods is tougher than Phil Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong. Woods is tougher than Mickelson and because of that, he works harder."

Gladwell's argument is that mental toughness is the cause of, rather than the result of, hard work. Entrepreneurship, like sports, requires a tough competitor to exhaust all resources in preparation. How many entrepreneurs fall to "preparation anxiety," as Gladwell calls it elsewhere in the article? How many are paralyzed by the realization that their business may fail? And hard work - meticulous preparation - would eliminate every possible excuse except the most obvious, most devastating and most likely: "I can't do it." Just like stupid for a student, "can't" is a death sentence for an entrepreneur.

This is the most brutal of facts that I must face if I want to be a successful entrepreneur. I may not be good enough. After all, that's the only explanation if, after lots of late nights, personal credit card debt and "phone fu" (a highly effective brand of cold calling), I still fail. So how do I overcome the psychological risk of hard work? Love.

Taryn Rose, an orthopedic surgeon whose passion led her to become a shoe designer, answered a reporter who questioned her drastic career change by saying, "I feared regret more than I feared failure."

Rose understood the biblical adage, "there is no fear in love," and pursued her love for shoe design until she purged any justification for failure.

It requires toughness to keep pushing, eliminating excuses that may someday salvage your reputation. But if I am to reach my ultimate goal (creating something greater than myself and a lasting legacy), I have to find the "will to prepare." I have to love entrepreneurship enough to eliminate the fear of being exposed as a failure. Hard work comes at a high psychological cost, but, like anything else, you get what you pay for.

 

Will Allred is the founder of Firepoll, a market research company focused on Generation Y. He can be reached at will@firepoll.com.