Simply Brilliant: Episode #17 “Putting in Hard Work”

On this episode Richard talks about what goes on behind the scenes and the hard work it takes to get what you want in life.

On this episode of the Simply Brilliant Show, we’re coming to you from Fairhope, Alabama on beautiful Mobile Bay. We’re going to talk a little bit about what do we do for fun, and how you explore the world, and how you make time for it, and how you prioritize and how you pay for all this stuff. And here you go, check out the yield.

As you see behind me, absolutely gorgeous, stunning spot in the deep south that my family and I come to occasionally, and thought the world would love to see it. I mean, we just have a blast here. On this episode we’re going to show you some of the things we do as a family, including crabbing and fishing and paddle boarding. It’s just a great way for us to get away and relax and unwind from all the day-to-day activities, be they school, work, all of the different things that consume a lot of our time.

And when we come down here, we really just recreate and we hang out as a family. There’s very little on the way of distractions, and it’s a great family bonding time, and I think you’ll see some of that in the video. And the point of this Simply Brilliant episode is that while you see me in a variety of different locations, whether it be in Crested Butte, Colorado or here in Fairhope or in a variety of different places that we’re filming, the message is pretty straight forward. What you see is what you take away and the perception that you have, which is, “Wow, this guys travels an awful lot,” what you miss is the behind the scene stuff, the stuff that makes it happens.

Nobody really thinks about all of the time and the energy and the work that are required in order to travel and so on. And so whether it’s talking to my team or speaking to my employees and my children, you know, it’s really important that you recognize the work ethic that’s involved and what’s required to make this sort of things happen.

And so, you know, on this spring break, I was in Crested Butted, Colorado. You saw some footage earlier in a prior episode of Simply Brilliant. What you didn’t see was that my wife was not on that trip because she performed surgery. She is an orthopedic surgeon, and so she had patients that she had booked for weeks if not months in advance. And so as painful as decision as it is to say, “I can’t participate in the family vacation,” that’s reality.

If you want to maintain this lifestyle, then you have to make the hard decisions and you have to be willing to sacrifice. Similarly, we came down here as a family and we were in Fairhope, and a client needed my help, and we’ve got a little video put together on that for a wedding that occurred in Palm Springs. And so I left at 3:45 in the morning the day before Easter and I flew all the way to California, did 4,000 miles in like 36 hours, and I missed Easter egg hunt with my kids and so on, and I got back 36 hours later for Easter dinner. And too often, I think, people assume that people are luckier than they are or wealthier than they are because they are more talented or they think that…just putting your head down is going to generate results.

I think the reality of it is a combination of luck and talent and perseverance, but it’s also be able and willing to do the things that most people say no to. I mean, the average person isn’t going to want to miss a vacation with their family or the average person isn’t going to want to miss a holiday. So I just want to make really, really clear to anybody watching that you may see me in all these fancy places doing all these wonderful things and associate that with success and wealth and a lack of hard work. What I’m trying to say is it’s the exact opposite. That is the result of years of hard work, of sacrifice, of discipline, of dedication.

You, too, can do that, but you need to be willing to do the work. Now, I don’t know that everybody wants to do what I want to do, and that’s fantastic, that’s fine. But whatever your goals and aspirations are, I would suggest that they’re going to take a lot of hard work and discipline and a lot of time. So, from Fairhope, Alabama signing off. I hope you’ll share this with friends, family, loved ones, teammates, whomever, go ahead and share it, subscribe, pay attention. We’ll be filming from various locations and job sites and so on, and it’s only getting better.