When all you want to do is give up, it is very important to move forward. You have to reach when you have nothing left. It’s so hard for so many people to find that final push. Don’t. Give. Up.
Be Dedicated To Learning
Here’s my confession of the day, I’m a little bit of a self help book junkie. I’m addicted to learning more about how to be the best me I can. I love knowing what drives others and how they achieved their success and what makes them dredge on when they have nothing left. I always wonder, “what’s their secret sauce?!”
Have Patience
I know patience is a virtue. Not all of us are very patient, especially in today’s society. Patience is something I had none of until I had kids. My boys made me a better person because of the patience they taught me in life. They also taught me not to sweat the small stuff.
When I started my business in travel, I was experienced in entrepreneurship. My parents are both entrepreneurs. It’s like second nature to me to run a business. My mom said, “you have to be the best to make people come to you for a service.” Uhhh, how do you become the best when you have nobody to provide service to do? Ohhh, the lessons that humble you.
Be Persistent & Consistent
Persistence, motivation, consistency, patience and just plain hard work have been the keys to my success. Farming has never been easy, nor will it ever get easier. I wish I were farming back when you could survive on 80 acres and 5 cows, but that just isn’t the case anymore in agricultural production. It takes a lot of work to keep a farm running. Cattle have to be fed every single day. Every. Single. Day. Those cows want to eat. And, every single day they get fed. I mean, sometimes, in the summer, when the pasture is wonderfully green and tall and the cows go out to a fresh paddock, then they don’t need fed the very next day. But, they come looking for a little treat after a few days. They like their grain! Maybe my cows are spoiled, but grass doesn’t keep them happy.
There’s what I call the trifecta of success, which is motivation, consistency and patience. You have to have the love for what you do to get a combination like that. Nothing worthwhile is easy and nothing easy is worthwhile. So, bask in the struggle, reach a little farther and keep going. Every. Single. Day.
Love What You Do
Why do I have a Farm?
My Pa always said, “You have to love what you do to be successful at it. I love farming. It’s not a job to me. I love doing it. Maybe not all the time do I love doing it. Every day I wake up excited to go work on my farm.” I carry that mindset with me. And when I get down, I think about what life would be like without the farm that he loved. I think about the struggles he told me about from the years he worked at Reynold’s. I think about how he would tell me about his dreaming of farming on the long days at work at a job he hated.
How did I get into travel?
Pa always urged me to do what I love. There were days he would look at me perplexed about selling travel and he’d constantly ask me, “where do your leads come from?” Finally one day I took a few hours and explained to an 80 year old man that hated computers for anything but checking his stock account about social media. I explained how I can make a video, turn it to an ad and put it right in front of my target audience.
He may not have understood Facebook ads, but he understood a target market. And he may not have understood how I got leads from that video, but understood how sales work. He thought I was a genius when travel agents were a thing of the past. It was like I was his new found favorite grandchild at that moment. He couldn’t have been prouder of all the information that he just learned from me. Don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t that short of a conversation. Pa always had a hundred questions you never saw coming. He wanted every detail! I miss him dearly every single day, but his legacy keeps the farm going and the cows fed.
Let People Watch You Succeed.
People will watch your journey. Something like about half of them hoping you will fail, fall flat on your face and end up living in a van down by the river. And after everything, the only thing to keep you going is the willingness and motivation to show up day after day after day and not call it quits. The willingness to be consistent and show up every day after feeling like a failure the day before and just keep trying. The patience to wait it out and just see. Don’t be afraid to show people why you love doing what you do. Don’t be shy about putting yourself out there.
Show Your Passion
Your passion will show and people will take you seriously. If you don’t show them that, they’re not going to take you seriously. If people don’t take you seriously, you’re never going to be successful. You know that phrase, “fake it til you make it”? Well, there’s a little truth behind that. Don’t fake your passion though, just pair it with letting people watch your journey.
My best advice, work the hustle, don’t make the same mistake twice and keep going even when you don’t think you can.
Listen up! I’m giving you my secrets to success here!
Don’t Give Up, Rest Up
Rest is my secret sauce. The struggle is real. Rest helps me get into my zone of genius and really give every day my 110%. I get tired. Oh, do I get tired! My brain won’t shut off. I can’t sleep. I meditate. My brain calms down. I stress eat if I don’t meditate enough. My brain stresses me out, it runs 100 miles per hour some days and I can’t stop and cook and eat a healthy meal. Heck, half the time I can’t find time to grocery shop, let alone meal prep! But, each day gets easier. Having a solid routine helps. It kind of puts you in a groove. But rest puts things in perspective.
Be Accountable
Make yourself accountable. If you can’t be accountable to yourself, find an accountability partner to keep you on track. Make your goals non-negotiable and keep your vision in sight. Don’t loose sight of that vision. Don’t change it without thoroughly asking why. Just like a workout buddy helps when you’re training your body. An accountability partner helps when you’re training yourself to be consistent in your business.
Take Time To Celebrate!
Celebrate the good. I don’t care if the only good thing that happened today is that you got out of bed and paid your electric bill, celebrate the good. The more you tell yourself that you did a good job, the better job you’ll do tomorrow. So, I don’t care what meaningless task you completed today, give yourself some credit! Unless you laid in bed all day and did absolutely nothing, give yourself some props for being a productive member of society! Heck, sometimes just being nice is hard. Celebrate that! Learn to identify those baby wins and give yourself some props!
Setbacks Happen, Learn From Them.
Success is not a straight path. You will have setbacks. Things may not happen as fast as you want them to. That doesn’t mean you give up! That means you need to push a little harder. If you’re climbing a rock face and you’re not to the top in 4 hours, do you just let go? No, you reach a little higher!
Have some more patience.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’re building your future, sometimes you have to take it a little slow, but that doesn’t mean that you sit at the stop sign for an hour. You take your pause and you move on. Enjoy the steps in your journey. You will learn valuable lessons along the way. You will have failures. Just fail forward.
Successful people aren’t the best. Successful people are just the most persistent. It’s why successful people are so rare, they don’t give up. Just stay humble and kind and get up every day putting your pants on one leg at a time and walk your path one foot in front of the other. You’ll eventually get where you’re going.
