You can work hard and be smart, but you need to think about when you're going to be part of a startup and build it. You only have so much energy, whether you want to admit it or not.
I don't think America can just drill itself out of its current energy situation. We don't need to destroy the environment to meet our energy needs. We need smart, comprehensive, common-sense approaches that balance the need to increase domestic energy supplies with the need to maximize energy efficiency.
Be honest! You are not going to want to admit energy loss. Someone is making it hard for you to look.
Performance-wise, you really need to be down in the trenches; you need to do the hard work, for a lot of reasons: To build yourself as a performer, to get a sense of the audience, to work hard and to wonder, 'Do I really want to do this?'
It's a bit daunting going into an industry that is very much based around your appearance. I just want to act; I don't care about that stuff. I hate that you need to think about it as much as you do to get work.
You want hard workers. You'd be surprised how many people tell me, 'I don't need to work hard. I'm smart.' Really?
It's tempting to think, 'This is silly. I'm an artist. I care about my work, my work is first. I don't care about what kind of dress I wear... That's so secondary to me.' But if you care about your work... then you need to take this part of it just as seriously as you would going into an audition and going into work.
The smart way to build a literary career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that product so people know what they are going to get. That's the smart way to build a career, but not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier. That's an option, too.
If you see that your sport is changing, you need to change yourself and think about it and work with people around you who are really smart in what they do, whether as a coach or as a managing director.
The American Dream is still alive out there, and hard work will get you there. You don't necessarily need to have an Ivy League education or to have millions of dollars startup money. It can be done with an idea, hard work and determination.
At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn't matter as much to us. We care about great work.
You know in a startup, you only need three people. You need someone who can make something. You need someone who can sell it. And you need someone to collect the money. That's the only three roles in a startup. So which one are you?
When entrepreneurs talk about their success, they rarely talk about luck. I think that's because most of them think the concept denigrates the hard work and smart thinking they put into their projects. But luck is a huge part of any successful business.
You don't need a ton of moves to get to where you want to be. You don't have to expend energy in a wasteful way. That doesn't mean not playing hard. It means playing smart.
There's nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup, you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year.
Ideally we're going to stay at an American hotel. We just want to take every precaution. Because if you get sick out there, and you're playing in that hot sun and you get depleted, it's going to be a problem. So that would be the only other thing I think that athletes on a whole are going to be worried about. But again, we have to do our part and take every precaution and be smart.
I want to be a champion, and win races as much as I can and elevate my platforms and become an icon in the sport. It's going to take a lot of hard work and determination from my camp and for myself to get to where we need to be. I'm excited about the journey.