One of the most common questions I get asked is what I did to become successful at such a young age. Those of you who have followed me for some time know that I’m extremely transparent about how difficult that was for me- especially having started from nothing. I learned quickly to become comfortable being uncomfortable.
Something I learned very early on is that you have to “choose your suck” in life. What that means is that you have to accept that every single path in life is riddled with tons of unforeseen obstacles. To become successful you must be 100% committed to your choice and face it head-on, even when things are uncomfortable.
For example, if you choose to spend most of your evenings watching Netflix and chilling with your friends it means you accept that the time you could have used to further your life is being sacrificed on activities that aren’t moving you closer to your goals. However, you could choose to take a second job, work overtime, network, or spend your evening hours studying how to improve your goal-related skills. Yes, it’s less relaxing and in many ways exhausting but it’s a simple matter of deciding how bad you want to make a change.
Three Tips for Building a Purpose-Driven Business
For me, I worked 18-21 hours a day for seven years to get where I am. I didn’t have resources, classes or connections to speed up the process for me. Everything I have I built with God’s help, from scratch. I’m successful because I kept my purpose in front of me no matter what I was doing and no matter how uncomfortable the circumstances. I’d love for you to be able to do the same, so here are three tips for building a purpose-driven business worth getting uncomfortable for.
#1: Define your why.
You have to have joy in something bigger than yourself. This allows you to overcome all the obstacles you will undoubtedly face when building any business. When you are deep in the trenches building a business or leveling up a career, you need to have a very clear vision of what you are working so hard for. That vision needs to be bigger than any short term gratification or comfort you could get by quitting or easing up.
#2: Find a mentor/coach.
I can’t overstate the value of finding someone that can teach you the ropes, even if it means doing work for free. Working for free may sound crazy but it is one of the best decisions I ever made for my career because the guys that I worked for taught me so much about the business. I went through a lot of struggles at the start of my journey in business so I decided to teach to help people overcome the same things I went through, but much faster. At the end of the day, just make sure that the person you choose to learn from has a visible, proven track record for success.
#3: Only listen to people you want to be like.
Whenever you set out to do big things in life there will undoubtedly be people that try to hold you back or tell you that it isn’t possible. I went through this and still do. Actually, for a point in time, most of my family didn’t talk to me because they didn’t agree with what I was working towards.
Knowing that these attacks on your goals are going to happen this is why it is so important to only listen to the people you want to be like. Also, you only listen to them in certain areas that you want to be like them in. For example, say someone has built an amazing business and you want to imitate that success. That doesn’t mean you have to take relationship advice from them.
Finding these people can be extremely difficult, especially if you’re a purpose-driven person, like-minded people can be hard to come by. Once you find them, hold on to them. They become your strongest network and biggest advocates.
While these three tips barely even scratch the surface of what it takes to sustain in such a tough industry, you certainly can’t exist without them. As we head into 2020 and you set goals for yourself, get crystal-clear on what you want to accomplish and why. If it’s something you’ve never had before you’re going to have to do some things that you’ve never done. Success doesn’t happen without effort.
At the end of the day, you have to decide what you’re willing to do (and sacrifice) to achieve your goals and then go all in to make it happen.
If you’re looking to join a group of entrepreneurs on their journey to building and scaling purpose-driven businesses check out my G-FORCE Mastermind Program.