If you grew up anything like I did, you often heard the saying, “Nothing worth having comes easy.”
Sayings like this are how we seek to instill the value of hard work in our children.
Obviously, we want to teach them to build resilience and create good habits while they are young to set them up for success as they grow.
And in many cases, nothing could be more true.
Hard work is a necessary ingredient to the recipe for success. From fitness to entrepreneurship, we must cultivate good habits and have the discipline to stick with them for enough time to see the fruits of our labor.
However, there is a dark side to work as a virtue.
As our success grows, especially when it comes to scaling our business and building wealth, the superpower of hard work often becomes our greatest limitation.
The problem with hard work is that eventually, we reach maximum capacity, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
If we rely solely on hard work to solve our problems, we will eventually hit a growth ceiling.
I often have founders do an exercise where they write down their stretch goal for the income they want to make next year.
Then, I have them list all of the things that would be necessary to get there.
They begin furiously writing, and often, at this point, they feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks on their list.
Next, I have them triple (or 10x) the original number and repeat the same exercise.
This is where the aha moment happens.
They realize that they can’t possibly do it by working harder.
In this simple thought experiment, they see in an instant that to increase income by an order of magnitude, they must build systems that remove the limitation of our work capacity.
This is the moment they begin to understand the Hard Work Paradox.
Usually, this illustration is enough to catalyze a mindset shift around a founder’s role in scaling a business.
However, the path is often not quite easy when it comes to growing our wealth.
The idea of our bank account growing effortlessly and without “working” for it can be overwhelming enough to actually create physical discomfort.
The more we value our hard work as part of our identity, the harder it is to imagine.
Feelings of guilt and shame surface seemingly from nowhere. It can be confounding.
Why should the two be so disparate?
Why, on the one hand, can we imagine building systems to scale our company with pride and anticipation, yet when it comes to our personal wealth, we have such a hard time applying the same principles?
The truth is, we’ve been conditioned to believe that money earned without sweat is somehow less noble, less deserved. But here’s the irony: Just as systems free us from the grind in business, allowing us to scale beyond our wildest dreams, financial systems can do the same for our wealth.
The real paradox isn’t just in hard work; it’s in our reluctance to let go of it as the sole measure of our worth. The key to breaking free is realizing that smart work, leveraging systems, and embracing passive growth doesn’t diminish the value of what we’ve built—it amplifies it. When we finally accept this, we unlock a new kind of freedom, one where our wealth grows not despite us stepping back, but because of it.
Our success lies in our ability to evolve beyond the grind and embrace the systems that allow us to do more by doing less.
True wealth isn’t measured by how many hours you log or how much effort you expend. It’s measured by the freedom you create and the impact you have, both of which are multiplied when you build systems that work for you rather than you working for them.
The moment we release the tight grip on the notion that hard work is the only path to success is the moment we open ourselves up to exponential growth—both in our wealth and in our lives.
In the end, the secret to becoming truly wealthy isn’t about working harder; it can only be achieved by letting go of the emotional tie to money and work. This shift is the gateway to a life where wealth flows naturally, where you have the time to enjoy it, and where success is no longer a product of relentless effort, but of thoughtful design.
Once we embrace this idea, our limitation becomes a superpower once again.
To building the machine,
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