SUMMARY
People say that we are on the edge and near disaster but actually, we are in the greatest times filled with opportunities. So much is happening and so many things are changing. At a time like this, it is really important to set the stage for what it is that we are going to do. There are two paths that you can take.
The first path is what the society believes it should be. You get a degree, then a job and wait for promotions to climb the corporate ladder, slowly. This has been done since a long time by a lot of people. But just because everyone does it, is it the right way to do it? This road is filled with stress that can negatively impact our health and well-being.
The second path is to design your life the way you wanted while having the courage to do so. Do it your way as long as it is moral, legal and you’re not hurting anyone. It takes courage, boldness and the ability to step out of your comfort zone to take a different route than the rest. There will be people that laugh at you, torment, fight, ridicule, and criticize you. You need to be okay with that. You need to move forward and reach the other side that contains all the joy that you were looking for.
There will be struggle along the way, but if you are on the right journey with the right purpose, it won’t feel like a struggle. It just feels like a part of the process, and you will be able to enjoy the journey and not just the destination. You might have hiccups on the way but if you make the right choices and decisions, you will find success.
One of the greatest regrets that people have during their last moments is not having the courage to live the life they wanted. We’re not here to live a life of mediocrity. We’re here to thrive and build something vibrant so at the end we can be happy and fulfilled about the life we lived.
When entrepreneurs have an idea, they run full-fledged with that idea to bring it to life but since they don’t define every step they will be taking, years down the line, they will face hurdles and won’t be able figure out why. The reason for this is that they weren’t specific from the beginning. When you’re focused on the numbers you lose people and the things that are really important, that drive the numbers. Always know that people matter in the process.
— Begin Transcript —
Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the Founder of Business Breakthrough Academy, where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.
And welcome back to The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and this episode of the show I was going to start to dig deeper into the three phases of business life and a question came across to transcend that I think is really important to set the stage for what it is we’re going to do.
So when I get back, I want to deal with this concept of designing a business for your life and the elements of that and the courage to design it the way you wanted vs. the way other people believe it should be. So, when we come back after this brief introduction, we’ll get into that because that is the foundation of the choices and the things that you’re going to make in your business when we go through the three phases of business life.
Hey there I’m Mel Abraham and welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution where we’re focused on the modern millionaires path to more profit, fans and freedom.
And in this episode, I actually want to talk a bit just about life. I was actually watching a video of a good friend of mine Robin Sharma and he was talking about this and he made a quote that said, “Don’t live the same year 75 times over and over again, and call that life.”
And I need to tell you, with my travels—which is really kind of cool—I get a chance … I feel blessed and honored to get a chance to travel the world. Actually, I just came back from Sydney, Australia speaking and I get to meet entrepreneurs such as yourselves and business owners such as yourselves with these amazing incredible visions of changing and shifting and transforming people’s lives and it’s so energizing, it’s so invigorating, and it gives me hope for a tremendous and great future for my kids and the generations beyond.
But yet at the same time, I hear things and I hear things from folks looking at it and saying we’re actually on the precipice of disaster and the media talks about it and the concept of we’re on the edge and I’m not sure that’s the case. I believe that we’re in the greatest time of opportunity ever in society. Given the fact that so much is going on and so much change is happening, and with change comes need and with need comes opportunity and with opportunity comes entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs serve the opportunity to serve the needs of the people that are needed.
Remember, I say that businesses are created to create community, support society and live your dreams. And so why not design it to make it so and I truly believe this wholeheartedly that, if we left the world’s problems into the hands of entrepreneurs, they’d get solved.
They’d get solved:
- More efficiently,
- More effectively,
- More cost effectively and
- A whole lot quicker.
But enough of that, one of the things that came about is that: the realization of whose life are you living.
I know for me, I started out; many of you may have heard my story, I started out at one of the big accounting firms. I was following the traditional path. I got my accounting degree, I got my CPA license, and I went to one of the big accounting firms and I was going to work the process which was to start as a newbie and then you become a junior and then you become a senior and then you get manager and then at some point, you move up to the point of possibly becoming a partner in the firm. And that’s the big deal, to become a partner in the firm and that’s the road, that’s the path they expect accounting graduates to kind of follow.
And I was on that path, I was one of the lemmings on that path until one night, late at night, I was working late again. 10 o’clock at night I’m standing on the 28th floor of the City Corp Tower Plaza building in Downtown Los Angeles—looking out at the skyline of Downtown Los Angeles—which at night it happens to be really a beautiful skyline.
But I started to think about my life and I looked inside and I saw the partner sitting at his desk and saw my future. And I realized that the future if I stayed on this path had a lot of stress, a lot of strain, potentially heart issues and blood pressure issues and obesity and all that because these guys and girls were working all hours of the night and they were working for achievement but not fulfilment and I think that that’s the difference.
And in that moment I looked back at the skyline and I said, “You know, I can’t do this.”
And I walked into that partner’s office, that night and hand in my resignation. I told him, “I quit”, which freaked him out but at the same time, I quit because I realized that there had to more and that I had the opportunity to design my life even though society said, “This is the path for the accountant”.
Now where does that show up in your life? Where does that show up in our lives?
To look at things and say, “Well society says I should do it this way”, “Society says that that’s the way it’s done”.
I mean if you talk to someone long enough they go, “Well that’s the way it’s always been done”.
Well, just because it’s always been done that way, is that the right way to do it?
And I would submit to you, I would invite you to think about it and say, “As long as it is moral, as long as it’s legal and you’re not hurting anyone” … Do it your way, live it your way.
Here, most entrepreneurs they have an idea and they take that idea, and they get all excited about it and they start running full-fledged into the idea to bring it to life, to put it to the market place and
- They don’t think about it
- They don’t orchestrate it
- They don’t define every step of the way what they want to do.
And they jump in a boat that’s on a river and they don’t even know where the river is going. They have no paddles, no life preserver and they have no map and no direction. And all of a sudden five years down the road, they come to someone like me saying, “I need help with my business. I’ve hit the rocks and I can’t figure out why.”
It’s because they weren’t specific at the beginning. They didn’t think about designing it a certain way. They looked at it and said, “Well, this is what the way it’s always done”. You know well society would love to put everyone into the belly of the bell curve and the belly of the bell curve; if you think about it is a life of mediocrity and I don’t know about you, but I believe that we’re not here to live a life of mediocrity.
I think we’re here to thrive, to build something that’s vibrant, to get to the end of our life, to be at the waning of our life huffing and puffing and looking into the mirror and going, “Man that was a life well lived”.
I was reading an article of a hospice nurse who spends a lot of time in the last days, the last moments of people’s lives and she wrote about the regrets that they have. And one of the greatest regrets that they had was not having the courage to live the life that they wanted. That’s a sad statement to be at the last days of your life thinking about it and saying, “Damn, I didn’t have the courage to live the life I wanted” and to realize at that point.
And yet, I get it-I get it for you to live the life you want, to create the business you want, to take another path that people don’t expect you to take because they say, “You started that way, just keep going. Keep your head down. Just do what they say to do and you’ll be okay”.
It takes courage, it takes boldness and you know what? You’re going to get ridiculed.
It’s like Mahatma Gandhi said about change:
“At one point, they’re going to ignore you, then they’re going to start to laugh at you and then they are going to fight you and then you win.”
And it’s the same thing here, is to look at your life and if you’re looking at starting a business or directing a business or creating a business, I look at people like Fred Gary Erickson who is the founder of Clif Bar, and he specifically orchestrated and created Clif Bar in the spirit, in the vision that he had.
And you know what? Profit wasn’t number 1, people and planet superseded it. And he knew that when he took care of people and he took care of the planet; in the process profit would come about. And he’s built one of the most successful, privately held nutrition companies around.
And so you look at other companies like Zappos and Tony Hsieh and how he’s brought culture in there and how he’s done it his way, and he said, “I will continue to do this as long as I can do it this way”. Because he wants to provide something greater than just a job, he wants to provide something greater than just a product. He wants to provide something greater, which he calls “Delivering Happiness”.
And so when you look at designing your business and you may talk to, “I’m one of them. I’m an accountant that’s going to look at the cons and pros. Let’s just talk about the numbers, let’s make the numbers that happened”.
I learned the hard way that when you’re solely focused on the numbers, you’ll lose the people; you’ll lose the things that are really important, that actually are driving the numbers and so design your business, design your life to make it in the spirit, in the vision that you have.
And here’s how to do it:
1. It’s going to take bold steps. You’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone and there’s going to be those people that are going to ridicule you, going to laugh at you, they’re going to fight you, they’re going to torment you, they’re going to criticize you and you need to be okay with that. You need to be decisive about it, and you need to be unrelenting about your march towards your vision.
And on the other side, I promise you this, on the other side of that march, on the other side of all that work, on the other side of that is a tremendous amount of joy. It’s a lifestyle by your own design, whether you turn around and say, “I want to live in lavish palaces.” Great!
I’ve got a colleague of mine that has been traveling the country with his business in an RV for three and a half years. And him, his wife and his two dogs are happy as all get out because they did it by their design and there’s a whole lot of people including myself.
I don’t want to be in an RV for three and a half years. And my wife would probably shoot me if we were stuck in an RV together all that time.
But the point is that he is living his life by his own design and contrary to what the industry that he’s in does. So, he created a lifestyle and at the same time now in the process of that, you end up with freedom. You end up with freedom to know that you did it your way as the old song went. “You know I did it my way.”
To be able to say, “I’ve done it my way. I’ve made some choices, and I made the choices and I have myself to thank and I have myself to blame. Now granted, none of our successes in fact, probably none of our failures are just solely ours because there’s so many people around us that help us. But at the same time, the choice becomes yours, the decision becomes yours.
Will there be struggle?
Absolutely along the way, there will be struggle.
But it’s the joy of that struggle, to know that you’re on the journey, the right journey that you’ve designed and decided to be on, that matters. And when you are on the right journey, when you know that you’re going towards the right purpose, towards your vision, towards the life that you want. You know what the struggle doesn’t feel like a struggle, it just feels like part of the process and you start to enjoy the journey in the process because at the end of the day, you’re looking at fulfilment and its fulfilment from the joy of the journey not some destination.
I’ve been on a path, I’ve had my hiccups, I’ve had my setbacks. Many of you know that I’ve blew one-third of my net worth in a bad investment at one point of time and had to recover. You know it clearly wasn’t enjoyable, wasn’t fun but it was part of the path, it was part of the journey, it was part of the fulfilment. And I look back on my life and I look at my life today and what the future holds and I feel blessed, I feel honored. I feel blessed by the people that are in it, such as yourselves, my wife, my kids, my loved ones and those that are around me.
But I feel blessed more that I had the opportunity to make some choices, to make some decisions, to take some bold steps, to live congruent with what I want and to know that I did it my way.
And so, I hope this is enough for you to start thinking about things in your life, in your business and say, “Let’s design it my way. Let’s design it based on a set of values, a set of standards, a set of things that I want to be remembered for that, I want to create that are meaningful.”
And know that people matter in the process.
I’d love to hear from you about how you’re designing your business, the things that you make a priority in your business and in your life by leaving the comments—leave some comments for me. And if you like this episode, go ahead and subscribe and share it with a friend. I’d love to hear from your friends just the same.
If you’re looking for more business tips, entrepreneurial tips or have questions feel free to get in touch with me. If you have questions actually leave them. Go-to AskMelNow.com and you can leave a question right there for me. It can end up on one of these episodes and hopefully I can help you through that process by becoming your own entrepreneurial mentor and if I get a chance to talk to you, I look forward to it.
Until we get a chance to see each other again or talk again,
May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!
See you soon!!
— End Transcript —
++++++++++++++
Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel
++++++++++++++
