Helium Blog 20170714 website

Work Comes Before Success

Biz 101, Growth, Strategy

I was inspired to write this blog from some recent conversations with a client. In fact, the title of this blog comes from a recent post they made to social media. Their drive, their passion, their work ethic is astounding. Listening to the passion and the hard work they’ve put in over the past decade it’s no wonder that they are, by most people’s standards, successful. However, they’re not done putting in the hard work, and they may never be. 

When we take the time to understand that the hard work has to happen first, we frame ourselves in a way that establishes a foundation for success.

Success comes in many forms for different people. For some, success is helping others achieve their own goals. For others, success is achieving their own personal goals, and for others, success is simply a measure of how much money is in the bank account. None of these are right, none are wrong. They’re just different tools used to measure the version of success for each of us. 

Whatever your version of success is, it needs to be measurable and there needs to be an understanding that, by and large, hard work has to happen first. As mentioned, there are some businesses that seem to just luck into having a successful run with very little effort in the beginning. This is uncommon, however, it’s still legitimate success. For everyone else, success is an ongoing quest. When we take the time to put the work in, to make mistakes and to learn along the way, that’s when we will have the greatest success. And then comes the work required to maintain that success.

We kid ourselves if we think that it is common for businesses to make it ‘big’ on the first try. Podcasts or books are not hard to find about people having a ‘magic formula’ for instant success. It can become very discouraging when we use that same ‘magic formula’ ourselves and it doesn’t work for us. We should rather be committed to putting in the work long term. Strategy and planning will go a long way to help guide us. Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t felt your success yet. Keep thinking, keep planning, keep executing, and keep working hard. This is what will pay off.

I’m inspired by our clients in many ways. Watching them grow as leaders, improve and innovate their products or services, and be consumed by their passion to improve their corner of the world. It inspires us to continue pushing the envelope, creating, and elevating our own products and services, and as a team, we are honoured to have played a part in our clients success stories.

Your success has truly been our success.