Will Smith’s 8 Life Lessons for Advisors

In a book written about the superstar, Smith explained, “I will outwork everyone.”

He takes this approach, he says, “because I want to be the best.”  

This goal was passed down to him from father, Willard Smith, who had trained as a refrigeration engineer and ran a family ice business. “A strong work ethic was hugely important to him,” he son explained, “though selling ice in Philly in the winter didn’t work out so well.”

When his father had a brick wall torn down at the plant and asked his children to rebuild it “one brick at a time, I did not think we could.”

But Smith helped mix the concrete and lay the bricks, even while he was in school. “Don’t every tell me there is something you can’t do,” his dad said when they had finished.

“So, I lay one brick perfectly today and another tomorrow. Then, you are going to have a wall!” Smith explained. “I got really comfortable having perfect brick moments, and then when you string them together and look back, I know I will have a career.”

Perils of Stardom

Smith has quite the “brand” in Hollywood. In fact, he is considered to be the only actor to have had eight consecutive films that brought in $100 million in the U.S. box office, 11 that drew over $150 million worldwide and eight in which he starred that opened in top spot in the domestic box office.

“This record means you are very marketable, but doesn’t that create pressure?” Hughes asked him at LPL Focus 2016.

“Never let success go to your head, and never let failures go to your heart,” said Smith, explaining that he learned that lesson from one of his co-stars from “The Fresh Prince.”

“All we have is the ability to do hard work, grind, study and understand what is happening — and then surf [and enjoy] what is happening,” he explained. People First

Through his 30 years in the entertainment business, Smith says his mission statement has “not been about making money or being number one, but the missions was to improve lives, as my grandmother and the Baptist Church taught me. It’s all about service, so for instance, I do not make commercials for alcoholic beverages.”

His value system comes down to asking the question, “Does it improve lives? That’s my north star, and it is the only mission statement that sustains vs. hitting quarterly numbers. Yes, I want to do that, too, with the goal of making everyone’s lives better.”

At the LPL event, Smith said he was speaking with the United Nations about taking on a humanitarian role.  

Just as financial advisors have to separate themselves from how the stock market or their portfolios perform, movie stars have to separate themselves from how their films do.

“It’s excruciating,” Smith said. “Financial success does not equal self-worth.”

Tech Truth

“Technology is forcing transparency … and honesty – it’s forcing you to be who you should be anyway,” Smith explained, joking that there is “no more cheating” in relationships due to media coverage of any move you make.

“It’s forced us to evolve in a way that is painful and actually beautiful,” he said.

“Racism is not getting worse, but it is getting filmed. Truth is on the table,” the actor stated.

Truth can be painful and entail “dark periods when it’s out there on the table,” but that is “the dark before the dawn,” he explained.

Just like with his own marriage counseling, Smith said, “Politics means getting things on the table, having them understood and then getting through the dark times. Facing the truth is, when you look back, what happens in life to [get] you where you are today.” 

— Check out Duke’s Coach K: Lessons on How Advisors Can Build the Best Teams on ThinkAdvisor.