The Wake To Faint Principal

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by Admin on November 10, 2009
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It wouldn’t be more fitting that I am writing this at 2:36 a.m. to introduce you to something that I like to call the “Wake to Faint Principal.”  This is a super scientific formula, or the “secret sauce” on how to be extremely successful in business.  Everyone has their own formula to success, right?  And usually all of them are pretty willing to convince you that they know best.  You may hear, “ahhh you got to write a 107 page business plan.  That’s what you are missing.”

It’s like my favorite comedian Kevin James says from the King of Queens, “Everybody thinks they got the secret. ‘You know what you got to do. You got to chew sugar-less gum. That’s your problem right there.’ Yeah, because my ass got fat from Bazooka!”

“Hell Week”

Back in high school I used to play soccer.  Yes, I was what many of you haters called a “grass fairy” and a damn good one too.  I mean I was far from the best on the team, actually closer to the worst, but it was a good team.  And I can take you out with the meanest slide tackle so don’t mess with me.  In preparing for the new season, we would kick off the summer with what was called “hell week.”  You already know this sounds fun.  Try two and three a day practices in the midst of a humid Chicago summer.

Basically, running until you want to vomit your face off.  Drills until your legs are weak.  Working so unbearably hard until you are fighting back tears.  It’s conditioning.  Conditioning your mind, body and soul in preparation for the new season ahead.  It also shocks your body to create routine.  Believe me, everything after hell week is literally a piece of cake.  When things seem to get tough in my life, I reflect back to that one single week.

On thing remains certain from my studies of the wealthy over the past few years.  Successful people have an insurmountable work ethic.  Now when I say work, it can be substituted for fun because they all love what they do.  When you love what you do, you have no problem putting in a 10, 12 or 14-hour day.  Many times, that is what it takes.

The Wake to Faint Principal

The wake to faint principal means you have an incomparable passionate work ethic.  To be in production mode from the moment you wake up until the moment your body wants to collapse under exhaustion.  It means you go as hard as you can every single day and you literally willing to die for what you believe in.

Sounds extreme?  It is.  Many of you may think it’s stupid and that life is about balance.  From my experience, there is no such thing as balance when you have a business.  Maybe later on in life when you have built out systems that are cash machines, but not now.  You can try to balance, but in the end if you are passionate about what you do, it will consume you.  All day, every day.  Success should be the first thing on your mind in the morning and the last thing on your mind at night.

I think we all need to take more of a “hell week” approach to our lives.  I swear so many people are just flat-out too lazy to make it in business.  And that is cool with me.  If you are satisfied with a life of mediocrity, it is your choice!  When you work out, do you push your muscles until they can’t go any further or do you cop-out after your 10 reps?  Try working 18 hour days for a month straight.  Are you built for it?  Are you willing to do what ever it takes to succeed?  If not, get out now.  Go take dominoes up as a hobby.  You will just be setting yourself up for a disappointment.

I am literally going to outwork you every single day of the week.  That is what makes me so different and why I win in the game of business.  I will stay up later than you, get up earlier than you, skip meals if I have to.  This is how I am made.  Everyone used to call me lucky when I was little.  The trick to my luck is that everything becomes an addiction to be the best.  10-years ago when Nintendo 64 hit the market, no one could beat me in Mario Kart on the course Koopa Troopa Beach.  I have played it like 2,500 times and I just won’t lose.  Is it lucky that I win every time, or the hours I put in of mastering the game?

Do I have to work hard like you to make it?

No, you have to work hard like you to become successful.  If you are built like me then yes.  We all have a different definition of success.  Your goal may be to only work 4 hours per week like Tim Ferris.  That is cool too!  Do whatever makes you happy.  What I am doing right now in my life is exponentially speeding up the process.  I know that in a few years I won’t be looking back and regretting anything.  Plus being a young entrepreneur, I have ground to make up on all of you that are older than me if I plan to be a millionaire before I turn 27.  How else can I get to that point besides out working everyone?

Some will sit back and call me crazy and you know what?  While you are sitting back thinking how crazy I am, I am working.  While you are out having cocktails with your friends, I am working.  Working really damn hard on how I am going to blow your mind with my next post.  Hard work pays off.

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  • good WORK! :)
    like you've said. Everyone got his own definition of success and so does everyone got of work itself. You don't really think you work, do you? For me it really sounds like a game! If you would compare World of Warcraft to Real Life then you would play all day long because you KNOW what you get at the end of the day. But hell that's not important at ALL. Why? Because you enjoy the day ITSELF.
  • (sorry posted comment on the wrong post)
  • Love it. Totally agree. My clients are self-made millionaires and they put in the energy and the long hours. They love what they do. The truly successful ones get it done and make time for their friends and family. You are doing great. Keep surrounding yourself with success and working smart.
  • to add on...there's always something you can be doing. the internet has provided a 24/7/365 resource that ANYBODY can use at ANY TIME. this is a different age and consider yourself lucky to have the access to everything at your beckon call!

    now, if we can only figure out a way to get 25 hours in a 24 hour day.......sounds like a good post title, lol
  • leeforkenbrock
    I agree on this to a certain extent, but at the end of the day if you are working that many hours a day you have to work on efficiency. I too am a successful entrepreneur. I have put my time in working 12-14 hour days, weekends, etc... to grow a business. Now I have a family so you start finding that you still need the same productiveness in less time. So, while I agree to the "Hell Week" philosophy, you also have to consider "Am I Efficient Enough?".
  • Great point. Efficiency is key. So it sounds like you had to put in the long hours at the beginning. That is what I want to stress to young entrepreneurs. They can get leaps and bounds ahead by working their butt off and by the time they have a family and decide to settle down, they can afford to take time away because they have already built the systems that will take they to where they want to be.

    I want to take my productivity to a whole new level. I feel if I could type faster and had maybe 2 VA's, I could get 5x the work done in a day. Something I must now consider. How do you advise being efficient while balancing time with your family Lee?
  • leeforkenbrock
    Let me explain what happened with us and how our company as a whole worked to be more efficient and in turn more profitable. First off, we own/operate Loadsys which is a web development company. When we started, we were putting in the 12+ hours just to pay the bills and barely taking home any pay. This seems crazy right, well you find you spend a lot more time experimenting in the early days. Experimenting with marketing, taking on type of work you have never done before, etc... So, a lot of your time is unbillable. You take on jobs just to get them and you sometimes end up bidding low. So, here are a list of items that we have done overtime.

    1) As our company evolved, we started to only take on projects that excited us. Of course this takes time to get to, but once you get to that point you find that you naturally are more efficient because your morale is up. So, "Do what you love, love what you do"

    2) Don't cheat yourself out. Charge a rate that makes you profitable but is still competitive. Money is a key factor to keeping the amount of hours you work a day down. So, charging a rate that covers your expenses and churns a profit is key.

    3) Find a good daily management tool. We use Basecamp http://www.basecamphq.com for project management, but we also use it to manage internal task such as marketing, accounting, etc... Use a program like Online Quickbooks to manage your financials for your company. It will make a world of difference. Also, use it to do payroll, it makes it very fast.

    4) Physical meetings are a thing of the past. Virtualize as much as possible and bill people for physical meetings.

    5) Only turn Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.. for specific portions that you plan out for the day. For example, I typically look at social networking items for an hour or less in the morning, a half hour at the end of the day, and sometimes during my lunch while I single fist an apple. This also holds true for email. One problem I have is that I am good at multi-tasking, but it is also my enemy because I get distracted. Email is a big distraction on top of social applications. Try to check your email once per hour if you need to check it more frequently.

    6) Organize your tasks into "Must Get Done" down to "Not extremely important if I don't get done" You will find that if you get the most important items done first and out of the way, your morale is up and you actually become more efficient.

    7) Plan out tasks before you work on them. Setting aside time to do this actually will make the task itself go by much quicker. In our field we have what is called "Analysis and Design". This is the phase before actual work on a project starts. It helps you clearly define the goals and requirements for a project. This can also hold true at the elemental task level, because you now will have a clear idea of what you need to get done and how you plan to get it done.

    8) Re-use as much as possible. In our case, we our developers, so our re-use is obvious. We chose a framework called CakePHP to build web applications because it allows us to build libraries and plugins that we can easily re-use from project to project. We can now knock out projects in half the time we could a year ago.

    9) A happy home makes a happy entpreneur. Even with being an entrepreneur, you have to find time to have with your family, this is why it is cruical to become more efficient. But, even this quality time by itself makes you more efficient because it too boosts your morale. This holds true even if you don't have a family. Make time for close friends, because as an entrepreneur, before you know it your friends start to become very distant because of your lack of time for them.

    This is what I have off the top of my head. Daily you should evaluate what you are doing and how you can be more efficient at it. Small tweaks in all directions can be the deciding factor to whether your company will turn a profit or if you will break even while giving yourself high blood pressure in the process.
  • Bradley Bradley Bradley. I did not know you played soccer! I remember my first hell week as well. It was my freshman year of high school, playing on the varsity team. We just got a brand new coach who was coaching at Binghamton University the year before he came to coach our school.

    It was when I met him that I learned the definition of hard work. I remember running until vomiting, and then running more. Always pushing myself because I was determined to be the best. My coach would always find out where we were in our skill level and help us reach the next level. He is one of the biggest inspirations I have to be successful and I know that the conditioning that he put me through when I was 15 years old is the reason that I am where I am now.

    I am not to the point where I can consistently put in 18 hour days exclusively for business but whenever I have free time from my homework/exercise schedule I am learning and taking action trying to push myself to be better and more successful.

    "I am literally going to outwork you every single day of the week. That is what makes me so different and why I win in the game of business." I really like this because the hardest working is often the most successful.You are a major inspiration.

    Keep up the great work and you've got a fan for life.

    Chris Hughes
    http://WhosChrisHughes.com
  • Bradley, I'm guessing you didn't edit or even read this post before you hit "Publish". Not because of the grammar mistakes (which there are a few), but because this post has a sense of rawness that reminds me of the Gary Vee interview. It's obvious that you are telling the truth.

    Personally, when I have those long, grinding, 14-hour days, I feel so much more satisfied with myself when I go to bed. And I would much rather be dead tired and satisfied than kinda tired and pathetic. I don't have the same work ethic all the time, but it feels good when I do!
  • Thanks for looking out! Yeah sometimes I rush things when I get excited about a topic that pops in my head. Those long days are so fulfilling if they are extremely productive. When they are not, you feel empty. My body needs less and less sleep these days. I have cut down to 5-6 hours a night. I can really function well as long as I am eating balanced. Thanks for the comment Nick. What's the longest day you have ever worked?
  • It's a good thing that you published it before filtering out the rawness. Shoemoney is a great example of this.

    Not sure. It has to be around 20 hours. But I try not to do that.

    I actually met a guy about 6 months ago who is so entrenched in his business that he no longer sleeps. He literally has to take tranquilizers. Kinda scary.
  • Absolutely, nice observations....Reminds me of the phrase: work hard, play hard....sleep hard
  • So true, you gotta be willing to put the time...even a Tim Ferriss lifestyle requires an incredible amount of front-loaded work. I think sports were fantastic preparation for entrepreneurship. The work ethic, the fighting through pain, the camaraderie between teammates, the summer camps, the offseason workouts, the extra hours after practice...the punishment with running laps/suicides, having to rally after a defeat, and somehow you just have the urge to keep going back. Why? Because of the victory, because of the adrenaline rush when the crowd is so loud that the sweat in your ears is literally rattling. When you go from a smalltown gym to playing in front of thousands in an arena against people you're now watching on TV... people like Anthony Morrow from the Golden State Warriors who I held to 11 points the year that he won Mr. Basketball for the state of North Carolina. You see in basketball, you can win games with athleticism and talent, but the teams that play tough-nosed defense, who never miss a box-out and focus on all the little things are the ones that win championships. The same is for entrepreneurship, you can win for a little bit with flash, but over time quick money goes away just as quick and the ones who are in the trenches until 2:38am are the ones who win over the long-term. Whether winning for you is financial, whether its freedom for travel, or whether it means you can comfortable spend as much time with your family as you'd like: winning takes work.
  • Squeezin in those 10,000 hours! Gladwell would probably agree... Couple questions just out of curiousity:

    1. Where/on what do you spend MOST of your time?

    2. Where/on what do you spend the BEST (most return per hour) of your time?

    Great post!!
  • Ahhh I see you have read Outliers. I believe in the theory fully. Now, how much can we speed up the process when we work harder, younger? I spend the most of my time on this blog and developing our systems for two of my businesses. Well, since I am not making money on this...you get the point. ;) How about you Jake? Great comment!
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