NFL Draft Season

Count money, man.

Count money, man.

Stacked riches.

I'm trying to told him I'm a beast, but...

What's up gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

And so it's...

Here in Pittsburgh,

it's Draft time.

Okay, we just ended...

We just ended the draft

last week,

and we're looking at...

I'm having conversations

with people about what they think about

what each team got.

I'm talking to friends of mine

that had great careers

in the NFL.

And man,

one thing stands out to me...

is that even the crazy players,

even the ones that you're like,

man, looks like something went wrong there.

Elevator don't go to the top floor.

Whatever it is,

one thing that stands out to me

about almost all of the greats,

the ones that accomplished great things on the field,

is they were known about...

They were known from their teammates

as being extremely hard worker.

Like I'll give you an example

that people have mixed feelings

and emotions on Antonio Brown

and what happened with AB,

is it the concussion thing

and all this stuff.

But I know being in Pittsburgh,

let's take, if you think he's crazy

or whatever, out of it,

but you can't deny how great

of a player he was on the field.

Six-round draft pick,

I believe.

I don't know if Josh is checking my facts back there,

but I think he was a six-round draft pick.

Not a huge guy.

So not real big,

six-round draft pick

after the end of his career

had off the field issues.

So how could this person be so damn good?

He was so good on the field.

Well, let people tell you that played with him

and they say,

dude had an unbelievable work ethic.

One of the hardest workers.

Some of the best players right now

in the game that I'm hearing

that I know people that know them

from different teams.

One thing stands out.

Super hard worker.

Very rarely,

do I hear of somebody having longevity

in the NFL

without having an extreme work ethic.

Or you'll find people

that are has-bins,

or they could have been great.

They last,

but they get passed up

by six-round draft picks.

How to first-round draft picks

get passed up by six-round draft picks,

work ethic, discipline.

If I'm drafting,

I want to draft hard workers.

So what do you define hard work as?

What is hard work in your line of work?

You could get to a place

where everybody works hard.

Now how do you separate yourself

and work hard?

I think hard work has to you,

has to do with you understanding

that it's work.

I think too many people get in their feelings

about all I don't feel like doing this.

Or I'm not having as much fun

or I'm not as happy.

Now trust me,

we want to be happy.

We want to have fun.

If you can make it fun,

that's great.

Whatever it is that you love to do,

you can have fun doing it.

And if you're going to go to the next level,

at some point,

it's not all going to be fun in games

and it's going to be,

you got to go to work.

You got to grind.

That dirty four-letter word.

And so circumstances

don't change your responsibility.

And what is responsibility?

Your responsibility is your ability

to respond.

Ability to respond to what?

You're supposed to do

regardless of the way that you feel

or regardless of the circumstances,

the circumstances are an ideal.

If you need perfect circumstances

to go to work and do your job,

that's the difference as you're a professional.

We went from playing flag footballs

a little kid to now you're a professional football player.

That is your job.

Your job is to go to work.

People think,

oh man, it must be nice.

You get to play football.

You get to play basketball.

And I know it is.

But they all,

they also could mistaken

that you ain't doing nothing

but lifting a couple of weights

and going out there

and having people clapin' for you.

There's a whole lot more in between

and it's work.

It becomes work.

It's the not fun film study.

It's the not fun rehabilitation

from an injury that you just had

on top of the one that you just got over

and the one prior to that

you just got through rehab and healing

and now we're injured again

and we're injured all season.

The rehabilitation.

They're not being able to go out

when others do.

They're not being able to get up

when you want to get up.

You got to get up and go earlier,

workin' on weekends.

I've mentioned this plenty of time before

in football, in sports.

They play 17, 18 weeks.

You got five preseason games.

22, 23 weeks.

You go through to playoffs

and a superboat or two weeks

break from the last game to the Superbowl

so you're talkin' about another six weeks.

Looks like it's about a 30 week deal.

There's only 52 weeks in a year.

So that means more than half the year

they're working on the weekends

as usual, like Drake said,

working on the weekends.

As usual, I'd love to decorate it for you.

But the professionals,

until they retire or get to a certain level,

most gotta work on weekends.

Whatever you're seeing is luxurious life.

It's masked.

Underneath, pull back the layers.

Don't show me what you got.

Show me what you did to get it.

People, I wish I was in the NFL.

I wish I was in the NFL.

I wish people wish they were professional athletes,

but they don't even want to travel every other week

for two or three days for business.

How you gonna travel and work every single weekend?

You got spring training.

You got people lookin' at you.

You can't even scratch your head the wrong way.

So what is hard work?

If everybody's doin' it,

how do you separate yourself and say you're workin' hard

if 100 men or women are doin' it?

We're all doin' it the same.

How is yours hard?

How do you make yours harder work?

There's no substitute for workin' hard.

Ray Lewis said,

wins and losses come a dime a dozen.

But effort?

He says, but effort?

Wins and losses come a dime a dozen.

But effort?

Effort is what separates people.

Effort don't come a dime.

There's a difference between, there's a loose ball

and we're diving for that sucker.

Max effort in practice.

And so I want you to check yourself

and ask yourself right now,

audit yourself in my world

and my the hardest working person on the team.

If I'm not the hardest working person on the team, why not?

Typically the haters are the ones

that wanted the dream,

that quit on the dream,

because the results didn't come as faster as easy as they wanted,

because they refused to consistently put in the work long enough

so then they just start hating on the other people

that get the job done.

Don't become one of those people.

What things do you need to give up?

Better holding you back right now.

You got to work hard on developing yourself.

Work hard on developing the discipline.

Skill set and mindset working on both of those things.

Not just your skill set, but your mindset.

The way that you look at things.

The way that you talk.

The way that you think.

That's how you develop your mindset.

Find a way to get around winners.

Don't hang around people that are losing.

Misery loves company.

I believe if you got just a little bit of talent,

just a decent level of talent.

Not crazy talent, just decent.

You got decent talent.

You could create almost anything with that.

If you're if you got decent talent,

if you're willing to work hard enough with consistency,

you could pretty much have anything you want.

You could go get anything that you want.

If you're willing to put in the work.

Putting in the work is simple.

It's as simple as this.

There's something else that you'd rather do that's more fun.

And then there's this work that you got to do.

How do you get yourself to do this work that you got to do

that's not as much fun as this fun stuff that you got to do?

The more work that you do,

the more fun stuff that you get to do.

Then what happens is you get to a certain level

and you've done the work, you've put in hard work.

This is how you see people go backwards.

You ever see people that go far

and then they just all of a sudden they're not good anymore?

It's because they stop putting in the work

with the same hunger that they put in

when they were first trying to win the title,

when they were first trying to make it.

They lost that hunger.

They lost that sacrifice.

They lost that ground.

They stopped doing what got them to the dance.

It's always going to be hard work, ladies and gentlemen.

Don't let nobody lie to you.

It could be different work.

So like if I'm playing football,

that's hard work, practice, running, sprints, all that.

But if I'm the head coach,

just because I'm not sprinting and running

and rehabilitating my body,

does it mean that I'm not putting in hard work?

Sometimes people look at the coach

and they think,

man, he's not really working that hard.

Typically, the head coach is doing what?

The head coach is working harder than the players.

Differently, differently.

But the head coach is working extremely hard also.

Watching film all night.

Up early, meeting with the coaches.

Meeting with the players.

100 players, 100 families, 100 problems.

Everything rolls up.

I'm mentoring people.

I'm helping people.

I'm working with their personal life.

This one got in trouble.

I got to go help them over there.

This one, I got to discipline this one.

I got to prepare for this team.

This one got injured.

Stress.

Job on the line.

Mike, Mike E.T. coach Mike Tomlin here in Pittsburgh

never had a losing season.

He's still always talking about people talking about all he shouldn't be here.

He needs to move on.

He hasn't had a losing season.

In the National Football League, 18, 19 years, that's crazy.

Imagine the stress.

Imagine the pressure.

So there's always going to be hard work.

It's just a different work.

It could go from blue collar work to white collar work.

But it's going to be hard work.

It's going to be mental work.

It's going to be a lot.

If you want to win, get comfortable blending your life to understanding.

That's just what we do.

That's just what you do.

The only place where you don't really have to work hard.

And you get to continuously grow.

Is if you're retired.

And you got money invested and it's just compounding interest going out there.

I rarely don't even talk about our business that much on the podcast.

But I think one of the blessings of our businesses is we have residual income renewals to where you could stop working and still get paid years and years and years from all the people that you've protected all the people that you've helped the people that your people, the team that you've led all the people they protected.

You could be paid residual income on that.

That's a way you could not work that hard and still get paid.

But what did that come from?

Years and years and years and years of hard work, years and years and years of sacrifice, years and years of weekends and pressure and stress and all those things.

So I want you to know I want you to know the one thing for sure whoever's whoever's number one in your industry

Whoever's number one whoever's the top 1% or whatever you're looking at doing one things for sure

Those people are probably the hardest workers

If you're trying to get on that level and you have an opportunity to get around people that are winning at the highest level

I want you to talk to them about the process. I want you to study not what they have not the car

They're driving the plane they're flying the clothes they're wearing the weekends they got off now whatever it is

I don't you could be inspired by that

But I want you to get the questions to them about

What was the work that they had to put in what were the sacrifices that they had to make?

How long did they make those sacrifices? How long did they put in that type of work?

The only place that that

fun

comes before work

Is in the dictionary in real life

You got to do a bunch of work before you get to have the level of fun that you want to have

Broke fun ain't that much fun

If you can't afford it

You can't buy what you want to buy you can't go where you want to go you can't do what you want to do you're under all this pressure and stress

It's not the same

Let's be the hardest workers in the room. Let's be the hardest workers in the locker room

Let's be the hardest workers in your business. Let's be the hardest workers in your game in your sport because

Hard work beats talent when talent don't work hard

Talent could be a gift in a curse sometimes the more talented people are

The less hard the less that they work if you put both of those things together. It's scary

That's a controllable

Being the hardest worker in the room. That's a controllable. That's something you can control

Let's try it out this week

Ask yourself at the end of the week that I did I leave any stone unturned was out the hardest working person that I

Possibly could have been that I put all the focus into whatever it is that I needed to focus in to be great

Hard work always wins

Hard work consistently those are the greatest those are the greats those are all the famous

Keep grinding out there

Don't let anybody tell you otherwise don't let nobody discourage you the people that are ahead of you if they slow down

If you keep working you're gonna catch them if this message helps anybody do me a favor spread it for me share

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