Purpose, Not Passion

What are you passionate about? What would you do if money were not an issue? Where does your passion lie? These are all questions that some “life-coaches,” and guru’s will ask you to answer. However; is it possible that we should not be following our passion, and different entirely?

How about exploring what our purpose is instead – what is our purpose? Purpose always leads to passion, not the other way around. No matter what your religious beliefs, God has a purpose for you, and you alone. You have been instilled with specific gifts and talents – that if cultivated can become your strengths!

Just because growing up I was extremely passionate about playing in the NBA, there came a time in high school where I had to give that passion up and start to play towards my strengths (which ultimately led me to a college football scholarship). If we aimlessly follow our passions, we can lose a lot of time trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Not going to happen.

One of my favorite writers, George Bernard Shaw put it so much more eloquently:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Wow. Thanks George! You were definitely ahead of your time.

Start exploring your essential purpose – and if you want to know mine, please reach out!

#LiveFree

How to Master Your “Inner Game”

I like to think one of my talents God provided me with is the ability to see trends. Trends that come from many different sources but are ultimately teaching the same concepts. For example, I will be reading a book and studying one of the concepts, then I will be listening to an audio in my car and hear a similar concept but put a completely different way, and finally I will be working with my Mastermind group or my Accountability partner when he says the same things! It’s as if the universe is smacking me in the head saying “Listen, this is something you need to focus on!”

With that being said, my overall theme this year has been focused on mastering my “inner game.” I have been studying books on emotional intelligence or EQ for short, social psychology, psycho cybernetics and neuro-linguistic programming. The realization that I have come to is that it is just as important to feed, nourish, and exercise our minds as it is our bodies. The brain is a muscle, and we must do our best to keep it healthy and grow it stronger.

I want to give you a brief overview of a new series of posts that I will be working on. One of my mentors and great authors Ron Willingham opened my eyes to what we will call the “inner game.”

Here is a diagram that illustrates what I understand to be emotional intelligence:

New Discoveries About Breakthroughs

1. We all have an inner belief boundary that defines who we are, what’s possible for us to achieve, and what life rewards we enjoy.
2. This boundary is based on your past perceptions, and not on actual fact or truth.
3. We live out these inner beliefs without questioning their authenticity.
4. We have a strong inner need to hold on to these old beliefs and experience difficulty releasing them.
5. Your achievements and life circumstances won’t significantly change until you release the need to hold on to these old beliefs and move past them to new goals.

Success is an inside game. Become the person that deserves the goals you want to achieve.

“Be great, nothing else pays.”

#LiveFree

 

The Road Not Taken

Dedicated to my role model, my best friend, my guidance, my motivation, my sister: Regs.

Regan has many unique, yet amazing characteristics about her. Regs is my older sister, but really she is more than that. Regan and I don’t have the normal sibling relationship in the sense that we are more friends than anything, but the friendship goes so much deeper, because we are blood. Probably because Regan and I have been through so much together, been able to relate to each other, and most importantly been able to grow into adults together. Regan also bought me a book of poems for Christmas and this one has always stood out to me. Love you sis, this is for you.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What I really like to do with my writing is to take somebody else’s work and relate it to how I can implement it into my life. It reminds me of the age old question in school – “When will I use this in the real world?” In this sense, choosing the road not taken is somewhat of a cliche, right? I don’t mind cliches, in my mind they became well known because everyone kept repeating them. Everyone kept repeating them because they make sense.

Best selling author Rory Vaden said it best when he said “Success is not owned, success is only rented, and the rent is due everyday.” Time to relate this to the “real world.” I was at my first trade show this week with my new company and observed something very interesting. All of these companies are exhibiting their booths and potential customers come to see what the industry has to offer. There is a weird dynamic happening here because unless you stop the people walking by and actually talk to them, they just walk on by. So what do I do? I create a game with my colleague to not let any of the potential customers walk by without engaging them in some sort of conversation. This was not easy, and definitely not what the other exhibitors were doing. The companies next to us even sort of started rationalizing why they were NOT having a successful trade show. I heard all kinds of excuses – the weather caused the attendance to be low, my spot in the hall is not very good and on and on. They even started to comment on how “outlandish,” we were by reeling in all these people! I couldn’t and wouldn’t accept any of those excuses. We ended up making the best out of our situation and organically cultivated over 20 new customers for our business!

Key Takeaways – literally when everyone else is doing something one way and you see they are not achieving the results you would like to accomplish, simply do the opposite. Be so different that people HAVE to stop and talk with you.

Take the road not taken in every area of your life. This will not be easy and reminds me of an old grade school poster that said “What is easy is not always popular, but what is popular is not always easy.”

Get out there and be different!

LiveFree!

How to Elevate Your Life and Create a Game-Plan That Works!

It’s that time of the year where we are all reflecting on our previous year’s performance and setting goals for 2015. Goals are one of those topics that people sort of brush off because of a past experience (usually not accomplishing them). Well I am about to blow that limiting belief out of your mind and change your frame of reference. I have recently been researching day and night how to create a game-plan that I can stick to that will help me achieve the “Greatness” level in 2015. You must write your goals down! You also need to find an accountability partner to review these every week.

There are plenty of models to follow when creating your game-plan for 2015. I have deduced the following that in some part should be a part of your plan:

• Definite purpose – this is your overall end game goal in life. To put this in realistic terms I have provided you with my definite purpose: My personal definite purpose is to motivate and influence people to live the most authentic life as possible while being wildly successful in their businesses and fulfilling their dreams and aspirations.
• Definite aim – this is your overall goal for the upcoming year, essentially why you do what you do. Here’s mine: My Definite Aim is to grow Idle Smart to X,XXX,XXX in annual revenue, personally selling X,XXX,XXX worth of units, and growing my online presence to over 10k followers. I will also pay off all school and car loan debt by December 31^st, 2015.
• Goals – these are the 5-7 points in your life that you work toward fulfilling every single day. One of mine is as follows:I will successfully grow my online presence to over 10k followers by December 31^st, 2015.
  • As you can see this goal is SMART – specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound.
• Objectives – these are the action steps that you need to take to accomplish your goals. Building upon the goal stated above, here are my objectives:
  • To accomplish this I will buy a URL so I am able to upload documents, create an email list for a weekly newsletter, and create an ecommerce site.
  • I will seek out a successful online presence for mentorship and guidance
  • I will write 2 blog posts every week providing great content as well as interviewing successful people in the industry.

This is a great starting point for any game-plan that you are looking to create. Here are some other tips for you to create this document:

How to write your Goals/Objectives

1. Write your definite purpose or definite aim as a heading. Under the heading make a list of what you really desire or want to accomplish that will help you live out your definite purpose/aim. The list you have written is a list of your goals
2. Write a one sentence explanation for each goal in your list. If you can’t express it in a single sentence, it is not a goal. If it is more than a sentence, then it is an aim and needs to be broken down further.
3. Put your goal statements in writing – helps you be more specific and can help hold yourself accountable.
4. Make all of your goals measurable. Each goal should allow you to easily determine if and when you have accomplished it. Here are some questions that will help you with this:
   1. How much time will it take to do and when is the deadline up?
   2. What are the quotas, minimums, maximums that must be achieved?
   3. What is the profit margin? The break-even point?
5. Examine your goal statements to determine if your goals are challenging yet attainable. Goals need to be realistic – but they should also stretch your knowledge, skills, and self-discipline.
6. Examine your goal statements to determine if they are stated in a positive fashion. A goal that is stated as a negative may focus your attention on what you fear rather than the result you seek.

Reach out to me and I will gladly speak with you about your goals and help you line-out your gameplan.

LiveFree!

“Be Great, Nothing Else Pays.”

What Have I Been Doing?

I hope you all enjoyed the last post with the amazing Brent Vogel, and would really appreciate some more feedback on that type of post as well as how you are applying the concepts discussed in your own lives. We live in a world filled with information, and we are sometimes overloaded with information and it comes in one ear and out the other. The trick is to weed out the noise and really adopt certain principles, values, and goals into your own lives.

Moving on, Wanted to give an update of what I have been up to and some really interesting ideas that I would like to share in relation to wealth building and the term we all use so freely “financial freedom.”

First off, I recently finished stage 2 of my training as a business coach/franchise consultant with Jimmy John’s! It was an enlightening (and extremely cold) experience which taught me invaluable lessons in business and more importantly taught me about who I really am as a person (thankfully I am quite pleased with the findings).

My top Take Aways from the 10 week Apprenticeship I completed at 2 different stores in Ann Arbor Michigan:

1.) To be successful, a business needs rock solid systems and procedures.

2.) If you can measure it, you can manage it. Keep detailed records (even if it seems unimportant). Business is Ultimately a numbers Game.

3.) You Will only be as successful as the team you surround yourself with. Put the time and effort in to hire right, then nurture and build those relationships.

4.) Hustle Always

I am about to board a plane to Portland Oregon, been the craziest last 24 hours of travel I have ever been a part of, but you have to try and see the silver lining in every situation. Next post will be about the business I am starting, and hopefully will attract some like minded people who are interested in connecting.

Have a Great Day,

And Always,

LiveFree!