Jared Leto:
I think some people, and maybe I used to think, once you got successful you could (sigh) – ah, you’re successful and ok, now you can kind of just relax a little bit and that’s not the case at all. You have to pedal even harder. You have to work even more. There are more opportunities that need more time and dedication and in order to do them well you have to really, really hunker down and do the hard work… but I’ve never been afraid of hard work and I always tell people when I’m asked – and it’s pretty often I’m asked about dreams and achieving creative goals – that I always believed that the bridge between reality and a dream is work. I always, in moments of despair and doubt and dark days, focus on work. I show up and work and work and work.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Talk about passion. Passion’s the game. If you are pissed that you’re falling asleep, then you’re winning and if you’re not, you’re losing. It’s as simple as that! I’m convinced with every piece of my soul that the far majority of the people in this room do not love to death what they do. I started Wine Library TV on my 30th birthday. I was driving from New York to New Jersey, to the store, and realised I was only ninety-nine per cent happy. That one per cent made me change my entire life.
Les Brown:
If you’re not one hundred per cent pumped every second. If you actually are happy it’s the weekend or are pumped to go on vacation, your shit is broken! There’s a dirty word that nobody ever wants to talk about. It’s the dirtiest word in the game: work. You have to work your fucking face off to kill it and there is no substitute and the only way you’re going to work 15 hours a day and pay that sacrifice to be away from your loved ones and travel and hustle is if you’re doing something around the subject matter that you live and breathe and die for.
Chris Ross:
I was going to give a presentation and this voice inside of me said, ‘You can’t do this! You don’t have everything it takes!’ I shut up. I have got to do it. You’ll get scared sometimes. Your mind will go blank on you! Some people you will allow to unnerve you. You wonder what’s wrong with me, I’m not crazy. That’s why you got to learn to make a conscious, deliberate determined effort to stand up inside yourself.
Working on yourself, watching that inner dialogue that will determine the quality of your life. No-one’s gonna tell you when to throw a left, right or jab… but life will throw obstacles at you. People can give you advice. People can tell you what they went through, but you can’t give up!
Any time you see an obstacle (which I call a tree), you are the answer (which I call the axe). Anytime you chop one tree down, it takes more than one try. It may take 100, maybe two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, but you can’t give up after one try! Keep going. You’re gonna have to fight. Someday, if they feel like you can’t make it through, you just have to take one more step. You have to think about what got you over yesterday, but when you cry you won’t regret going through everything you had to go through. Take the shot. Right now! This is the perfect moment. I want you to go after all your dreams. somebody needs to hear the words of your testimony. Somebody needs to know how you made it!
