Success Doesn’t Come Easy (But It Shouldn’t)‍

An open letter from Glenn Stearns, CEO of Kind Lending

Success didn’t come easy to me.

That’s an understatement. Let me rephrase…

Success was a PAIN IN THE ASS.

That’s right — the road to success was a long and arduous one. It was a road that drove me through the flames more times than I can count. And many of those times, I got burned.

Badly.

But I never stopped going. No matter how many times my company was faced with a life or death situation, no matter how many crises popped up in a day (day after day), no matter how stressed I got or how sleep deprived I was…

I just kept going.

And I believe that the only reason I won success in my chosen field — and more importantly, the only reason I HELD ONTO IT — was that I had made it through that fire.

Better than that, I had learned HOW to make it through the fire.

I knew all the shortcuts. I had a keener sense for trouble. I knew the right remedies for a singed elbow. Every sleepless night, every hard-fought (and lost) negotiation, every challenge, every pitfall, every chest-beating triumph, and every heart-breaking loss — each and every moment on the path to success taught me something that I needed to know before I could make it to the promised land.

They say that every time you give your child something, you take something away as well. That’s a very wise thought, and I’m sure whoever came up with it was much smarter than me. But I’m not beyond grasping what it’s really about.

If you’re embarking upon the road to entrepreneurship, or you’re planning to rise through a corporate hierarchy all the way to the top, the road to success WILL be a challenging one.

But you shouldn’t want it any other way.

I hope you allow this to be a message of hope as well as warning. Yes, if you’re planning to go above and beyond and accomplish a scope of work greater than many in your field, you’re going to be hit with setback after setback. You’re going to have to work your ass off on days that you really DON’T want to have to work your ass off.

But in a way, that’s part of the fun.

Those that consistently apply themselves and work harder than their contemporaries are doing more than grinding away. They’re learning. They’re picking up tricks and figuring out how to be more efficient. They’re making mistakes, sure, but they’re educating themselves on how to FIX those mistakes too!

And after untold hours of painstaking effort (assuming you’ve chosen the right path and been kind to the people you met along the way) you’ll find the gates of success open wide and waiting for you.

Then, after all your hard work, walking through them will be the simplest thing in the world.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

But then again — it shouldn’t be.

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Signing off,