Working Hard vs. Working Smart

I was invited to give the closing speech at the Greenhorn Aspire Leadership conference at University of Nairobi Business School on the 22nd October 2014. The following was my speech

  

"My name is Eugene Mbugua. I am 23 years old and the creator/executive producer of a TV show called Young Rich. 

Young Rich is a television show that tells the stories of young Kenyans who have managed to build businesses that are worth millions. We just completed season 5 of the show and have so far featured over 55 such individuals. 

The show is watched by over 4 million people every week on TV and has been watched over 1.6 million times on youtube alone.  We are rather popular and the reason for this popularity is that we try to get as deep as possible into the thinking structure of the young millionaires we feature on the show.

I often get asked; what is the most important lesson that I have picked up from all these young and arguably successful entrepreneurs?

 I have picked up several; and I am going to share one of the most important ones with you today.

There is a common phrase you hear people throwing around all the time and I am sure you too have heard this phrase quite often.

 “Don’t work hard, work smart” or “Work smart not hard”

On Young Rich we have a segment where the entrepreneurs give advice to other budding youth and when we begun, I expected to hear this phrase quite often because I felt quite strongly that success was about working smart and not hard.

 

Surprisingly, save for one or two, this cliche line is barely ever given by any of the entrepreneurs.

All of them, without exception, however, always give the advice “You have to work hard”

Now you have to understand that most of the people we feature on Young Rich are not wealthy. They are rich and these two words are worlds apart in meaning. 

Being wealthy is defined as that status of an individual’s existing financial resources that supports his or her way of living for a longer duration, even if he or she does not have to physically work to generate a recurring income.

Rich on the other hand is anyone with some relative amount of money. Relative because anyone with more money than you can in your view be rich.

The people we feature on Young Rich are not wealthy, they are rich. They are not made people; they are people who have made something.

Back to the phrase “Work smart not hard” 

I have come to one realization; the people who use this phrase are mostly lazy poor people, liars or very wealthy people.

The lazy poor ones are trying to make an excuse not to work hard. The liars actually work hard but either don’t know it or are trying to mislead others so as to appear smarter while the wealthy ones can actually afford to work smart. 

There is no in between.

 

If you are poor and looking to get rich, working smart is not an option for you. Unless you inherit or win a chunk of money in the lottery you have no choice but to work very very hard.

Why do I say this?

Working smart somewhat implies that you are tricking the system or that you are actually not putting in the physical work required to achieve the goal you are after. Of course you can get rich by tricking the system and people who do that are called criminals. They are the true embodiment of working smart.

In the course of producing Young Rich, I have met one young person who genuinely works smart. He is my business mentor and his name is Dennis Makori. He is the CEO of Onfon Media. Onfon Media is a one of the leading mobile marketing companies in the region. They were just recently listed as among the top 100 medium sized companies in the country. The company that Dennis owns is worth billions of shillings.

Dennis Makori on Young Rich

But Dennis and his company did not achieve this fete by working smart. They did by working hard.

Dennis was born in what he describes as “below poor” background. He saw electricity for the first time in high school and a computer for the first time when he went to Moi University. While at university, Dennis spent many hours of his days and nights, for months on end, teaching himself how to code.

Dennis then partnered with a friend and painstakingly built Onfon Media over a period of over a decade. They did it by working hard.

Today at the age of 34, Dennis works smart. He invests his money in courses he believes in. He’s set up different other businesses that are run by other people and he spends a considerable amount of his time playing golf, mentoring others and being philanthropic.

The point I am trying to put across is that working smart is not something you simply do; it’s something you earn after working hard. Had he not put in those hard hours of learning how to code, Dennis would not be able to work smart as he does today.

When success is involved, there is absolutely no substitute to working hard.

Another question that people ask me often is: With all the young millionaires you have featured, which is the industry that you would say one has a chance of succeeding most at?

The people who ask this are trying to work smart; trying to see if there’s an easy way out.

The correct answer to this question is that it doesn’t matter which industry you get into, how much thought and hard work you put into it is what equates to success. This fact is evident on Young Rich. We have featured people who have made millions from IT, farming, photography, restaurants, tents, education, athletics, housing, film, publishing, events organization, animation and even comedy.

The common thing among all of them is the time and effort they continuously put in their chosen field. Whatever it is you are good at or are interested in doing, you can succeed at if you do the same.

I have had several businesses in my short entrepreneurship years. Some have failed and some have worked. All of them however have been financed by other people other than me. These people put their money on me not because they think I am smart or I am good at business but because they know that I will go hard to work at whatever undertaking it is.

I have about 11 people that work with me at my different ventures, most days I am at the office hours before and hours after them. When we are shooting, most people who meet us for the first time do not know I am the boss because I am often the one running around the most.

I am working hard now so that in a number of years to come I can afford to work smart.

 Most of the people in this University with you have some level of smarts so in this way you’re not unique. The only thing that can set you apart and ahead is the amount of hard work you combine with your smarts.

I do not mean to over simplify this matter by saying that hard work is the only ingredient of success. There are many other factors involved of course; but hard work is undoubtedly the most prominent one.

Unless you worth is in the billions, forget about working smart and focus on working hard."

Twitter: @kipnoey