“Oh my God, Kevin Hart is doing too much. When is he going to sit down? How many movies is he trying to do? I’m getting sick of him. It’s too much. He needs to relax.”
But who works hard just so they can relax? What was the point of the blood, sweat, and tears that I put in on that road from Philadelphia to New York and all across the United States if I don’t keep going?
Success is not an excuse to stop; it’s a reason to move the goalposts farther out and accelerate. There is no destination, just a journey. And that journey is to keep building on top of what I’m building.
When my comedy career got going, that meant it was time to get my acting career going. Now that my acting career is going, it’s time to get my writing, producing, and directing careers going. And then I’m ready to become a better CEO of my companies. I want to excel in the day-to-day operations, hiring, managing, preparing budgets, forming corporations, selecting health insurance plans, and, especially, understanding taxation.
A few years ago, I rented a single office and conference room on the fifteenth floor of a building in Encino. I walked in with Harry and Joey on that first day and said, “This is HartBeat Productions: you two, me, and this here office!”
“You don’t need to waste your money on a place like this,” Joey said.
“Man, it’s not a waste, because we’re gonna be in here working. I’m talking from sunup to sundown. This office is an investment in us creating our own TV shows, our own movies, our own social media team, and our own start-ups.”
Within a couple of years, we expanded to fifteen employees and took over half the fifteenth floor in the building. I now run four companies—HartBeat Productions, HartBeat Digital, New Generation Promotion, and the Laugh Out Loud Network—out of that space. I recently rented the whole damn floor: I don’t even have enough people for the other offices yet, but I know that I’m gonna grow into them. And once I fill the floor, I’ll work to fill the building. There’s always more.
Here’s a recent example of this approach that means a lot to me: One morning on the What Now? tour, before my daily run, I posted a tweet telling people to meet us in the park and run with us. Three hundred people showed up and ran through the streets of Brighton, Massachusetts. In the next city where I tried it, three thousand people showed up. After that, it was five thousand people, and then sixty-five hundred people getting out of bed early and doing something healthy together.
From there, I contacted Nike and set up a meeting with their executives. I walked in with proof of the impact I was having on people’s fitness. I told them that I wanted to use my influence to help people make the decision: I want to start running. I want to start exercising. I want to take care of myself.
“Put me in a position to do it,” I said, “and I promise I’ll do it in a way that’s never been done before.” They listened and, as a result, I became the first comedian ever sponsored by Nike. Together, we launched the Nike Hustle Hart sneakers—and the Move with Hart campaign that, to this day, motivates people to run on our official Sunday RunDay.
I willed the dream I had at eighteen years old, before I ever discovered comedy, to come true: I’m finally working for Nike. If you grind hard enough and stay true to yourself, all your dreams will come true—even the ones you’ve forgotten about.
This book is not the story of my life—it is the story of my foundation. The construction of my life is still in progress.
I refuse to relax. I refuse to get comfortable. I refuse to sit down. (Okay, sometimes I sit down, but when I sit down, I’m still working.) I’m on a quest to find the ceiling of what’s possible in this life and raise it, so that my children and their children and their children’s children will look at my accomplishments and go, “Holy shit.”
I’m chasing after that Holy Shit Effect.
If this sounds arrogant, that’s because it is. If you don’t believe in your own greatness, no one else will. You’re limited only by your doubts, your fears, and your desire to fit in rather than stand out.
And there’s room in this world for all of us to stand out.
99
* * *
THE BLUEPRINT
Life is like a pack of cards. There are fifty-two cards in a deck, but only four of them are aces. The goal of life is to make your way through a crowded deck where the odds are stacked against you and draw an ace.
Looking back over the decades covered in this book, I’ve picked out eight qualities that put me in a position to draw aces. These characteristics don’t work alone. Like a recipe, they only create success when combined together in just the right amounts.
1. Persistence: More than anything, my willingness to be persistent is responsible for the success I’ve had. My mindset is: It’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to quit. Struggle, rejection, failure, and doubt break most people. Your goal is to learn from these challenges without letting them diminish your motivation. The secret to accomplishing this is simple: Let yourself be driven by your will to succeed rather than your fear of not succeeding.
2. Patience: The companion to persistence is patience. It drives away the anger, disappointment, and resentment when success doesn’t happen overnight. Patience is understanding that your moment will come at the right time, and your job is to get ready for that moment. Because if it comes when you’re not prepared, then it vanishes just as quickly. Know that your patience will always be tested, and if you can pass that test, you will be tested again and again, until the rare few left standing reap the rewards.