Kevin Hart sat down with Lewis Howes on his The School of Greatness podcast and opened up about infidelity, retiring, and his goal to one day become a billionaire.
Hart is the comedian of our era. From performing as a stand-up comic, starring in hit films, to producing and writing for his own projects, there’s nothing that will stop Hart’s drive. In a new interview with Howes, Hart says there were no shortcuts on his journey to success.
“There are no easy roads. So when I was coming up, and I’m not getting any auditions, or I’m not getting any opportunities, I had to say to myself, ‘It’s going to come. If I put the work in, it has no choice but to come’… It wasn’t about the money; it was about the craft. So I knew if I got better at the craft that I would eventually get to the money, and that’s what my focus was,” said Hart. He says while he has stumbled and made mistakes along the way, he says he wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Without those f*ckin’ mistakes and hard punches in the stomach of reality of life, then you don’t have space to grow. You don’t have a f*ckin’ lesson to learn. So I can’t say I would’ve been able to achieve,” Hart explained.
“You have to experience some downs to know why you’re getting up. The whole thing of a ‘cancel culture’ and the consequences being so severe for so many, it’s fucking ridiculous. Do I think there should be consequences for people’s actions? Absolutely. But are you telling me that you should never be able to recover from a mistake?” Hart says that sentiment is true even in regard to his cheating scandal back in 2017. “She’s the strongest person in the world,” Hart said of his wife, #EnikoHart. “She came to an amazing conclusion of, ‘I like the fact that we have a family, that we have a household, and I like the fact that we now got a job to do to get better. That’s what you owe me. You owe me the get-better.’ And she held me accountable. It wasn’t a walk in the park, but it was her understanding that we don’t let the outside world affect our inside, and I credit her for setting that tone.”
Hart has a plethora of tasks he’d liked to achieve, and one of those is becoming a billionaire and retiring one day. “I think the biggest one is just my business surpassing my celebrity. In 10 years, in a perfect world, when I’m 50, I would like to battle with the decision of possibly retiring.” He says one of the key things he’s learned and valued during his journey is supportive friends, like #DwayneJohnson. “He’s a guy that’s adamant about breaking new ground, about doing the unthinkable. He goes after it, and I can only credit him. I can only take my hat off to him because he’s doing it at the highest level possible, and he’s still going, he’s still pushing… There’s a supportive, competitive nature that exists there.”
He continued: ”This is what our world suffers from. People feel like they gotta be the best, and they gotta be number 1, but there’s so much room out here for so many. Information is the only thing that’s limiting the opportunities. Everybody wants to keep secrets. Everybody wants to keep the road a secret or the how a secret. And they shouldn’t be. There is no gold star given at the end of the day for being the only one that knew. I’m about winning, and it’s a bigger win when you show other people how to win. It’s a bigger win. Opening up a door and allowing some people to come through the door and figure it out so they can open up more doors, that’s a win.”
He says the best advice he’s received is from his mother. “If you’re going to do something, give it your all. Don’t do anything halfway. There’s no value in that. Either give it your all or don’t do it.” He defines greatness as the happiness you find within yourself. “Happiness within what you do… That’s a nice definition of greatness. If there’s happiness within what you do, then you’ve achieved a high level of greatness because that’s what a lot of people are searching to find, that thing that makes them happy.”
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