episode 80: working hard isn’t the answer

Listen to this episode here. Transcript below.

As a business owner who’s now owned and built up two tattoo shops, this is a topic that’s frequently on my mind.  Often, when you start a new business, people will tell you things like “your hard work is going to pay off.”  In fact, people will tell you this any time you start a new big endeavor - like going back to school, or doing some kind of new job training.

While the intent behind that kind of statement is kind and good and optimistic, it’s not necessarily true.  Your hard work is NOT destined to pay off.  I hate to say that.  However, we have this tendency to think that if we just put in the time, put in the hours, and put in the effort every single day that we’re going to achieve whatever it is that we desire the most.  That is simply not the case.  Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we don’t get what we really want.  And why?

Well, it’s not just about hard work.  It’s more about directing our hard work in the optimal way.  If we keep working our collective butts off, toiling away in a manner that’s maybe not the best for a given goal, we’ll never get there.  Seriously, if you’ve had a goal forever, and you keep working and working and working on it, and you never achieve it, something about your methodology is wrong.  And what’s that definition of insanity again?  Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

I’ve talked about my earlier career as a musician many times on this podcast, in fact I think I talked about it last week in conjunction with burnout.  Even though I retired early from my musical career, at 40, due to extreme burnout, I have zero regrets mainly because that career taught me SO much about life in general, and especially it taught me some great lessons I was able to apply as a business owner in my current career as a tattoo studio owner.  Here’s a great story for you about how hard work doesn’t always pay off.

Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I decided to write a musical.  I collaborated with a mentor of mine, an experienced playwright about 40 or 50 years my senior - we were a very unlikely duo but it totally worked!  We worked together extensively for about two years starting in 2003, just developing the project - he wrote the book (which is the script) and the song lyrics, and I wrote all of the music.  We took a bit of a hiatus while I finished up my doctoral dissertation that year, but got back to the project, and really finished up a first version of it around that time.  Then we applied for grant funding, got the award, and put on a workshop performance of the musical in the spring of 2006.  A workshop basically is an unstaged production of a play or musical - it’s a way to shop new productions around to different theatre companies, producers and directors.  Any big Broadway musical you can think of started out just as a workshop, for example.

Anyhow, we invited a ton of people to the workshop performances.  And…waited for offers to come in.  Crickets.  Then a year later, more crickets.  Finally, after doing some revisions and shopping THOSE around to more folks, we got some interest from a theatre company in - of all places - Romania, specifically the city of Cluj which is located in Transylvania.  We were super stoked; at this point, I think we had been working on the production for a good 7 or 8 years, so it had been a long road.  That culminated in us going to Romania - to this theatre company - in 2011, for yet another workshop, mainly to see if they were going to pick up the production.  And then…

Crickets again.  Waited again.  For a few more years.  And we kept working and working.

Then, finally, we got the news that the theatre would put on our production for a season beginning in 2014.  Oh my god, I was so stoked.  I flew over for the final tech rehearsals and then for the premiere and literally had the time of my life.

What happened after that?  Am I now a household name in the world of musical theatre?  Nope.

So, it ran for a few performances, and then basically tanked.  A few months later, I get a notice for a bank transfer for our royalty payments.  At that point, my collaborator and I had worked on the project for 11 years.  11.  That was like a third of my lifespan at that point.  Anyhow, I’m excited, oh my god, royalties!  So I log into my account, and see the deposit.  Can you guess how much it was for?  Let’s just say I couldn’t retire yet.  After 11 years of work, I made…four dollars.  FOUR.  Technically it was 29 dollars, but there was a 25 dollar international transfer fee.

Needless to say, this was, ummm…a bit disappointing?  I still, after all this time, have few words for how that felt.  I mean, I worked my ass off on that show.  And what did I end up with in the end?  Well, some cool friendships that I made on the production - I do still have a number of RAD Hungarian actors and musicians that I’m in touch with from that time on my social media (and if you all are listening, know I have the BEST memories of y’all!).  But other than that?  Not much besides the lessons I learned.

In this case, my hard work and that of my collaborator did NOT exactly pay off.  You could say the lessons were worth it, but those don’t pay our bills, know what I mean?  It took me a lot of time to process everything, but in the end, the biggest lesson I learned was that if you don’t go about working hard in the right way, it’ll bite you in the end.  For example, I never had an attorney or agent look over the contract I signed - I was just so excited to get the gig that I signed whatever was put in front of me.  HUGE lesson.  But after time, feeling like I had been wronged, feeling like I just DESERVED the accolades and the financial payout because, well, I worked hard, I realized that that didn’t matter if I wasn’t producing a viable product.  And frankly, when I got raw with myself, I saw EASILY that the main musical number in the show pretty much sucked.  And due to my own ego, my own attachment to it, even though I had intuition about it from the get-go, I couldn’t let go of my own agenda and change it, even though I knew it didn’t really work.

So, I’ve just told this long story to illustrate a few things.  And these are the lessons I wanted to share today.  If you’re constantly spinning your wheels, toiling away over and over again, and continuing to get disappointed with the results, these lessons are for you. Whether it’s a job, a degree, or a relationship?  All of this stuff applies.

One - unless you can get honest with yourself and see your shortcomings, you’re not going to be able to work hard in an optimal way.  If you can’t see the forest through the proverbial trees, nothing’s going to change.  It’s SO easy to get tied to ego.  To get tied to: well, everyone tells me this, but only I know what’s right for me.  And then I work hard and it doesn’t happen, so the universe must be out to get me.  NO.  That’s not the case.  You’re just not willing to be honest, or to look within.  Honestly, taking a deep look within yourself to see what’s really working and what’s not for you is so difficult.  But it’s necessary if you want to make any progress toward any goal, and to work hard in the right way.

Two - you can’t exist within a bubble.  In my case, I just shut out the outside world and told myself that I would really deserve the success from that musical if I worked hard enough.  I didn’t really research what other composers were doing at the time, no, I was too good for that, too full of my own ego.  I wasn’t about to “sell out.”  I was above that.  And what was the end result?  The production failed, because I wasn’t giving an audience what they wanted to see or hear.  If you’re working hard, going for something, you’ve gotta know the context - what you’re up against, what the environment is, who you’re dealing with.  You can’t just say, I’m my own inner compass and it’ll all just come to me.  It doesn’t, unfortunately, work that way.

Three - you can’t be afraid or unwilling to ask for help.  In my case, I didn’t want to hire an agent or an attorney.  In retrospect, hey, even if I had written a blockbuster, I probably still wouldn’t have made any money because I didn’t negotiate royalties through hiring a pro to represent me.  When you’re going for a goal of ANY type - again, career, relationship, you name it - you need people in your corner.  You need advice from people who have been there, who have achieved what you want, people who have the experience and perspective.  And then YOU have to be willing to actually listen and take their advice.  That takes humility.

Four - you’ve gotta shake it up.  I wasn’t willing to change my music to make the production more appealing.  I just thought, hey, I’ll crank out more of the same and the audience will come!  Y’all.  No.  That’s so misguided.  And that’s probably the biggest lesson of all to come out of this.  If you keep working your butt off, and you’re not getting anywhere, there’s something wrong with your method.  So if you want change, then YOU are the one who has to change…something.  You’ve gotta try something different.

Don’t let ego keep you stuck.  Don’t let an unwillingness to see what’s really out there, or an unwillingness to ask for help to keep you stuck.  I truly believe we all are capable of SO so much, but only if we work in the BEST way for us.