In this episode, we discuss the importance of not relying on luck to help you get out of your situation.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how anyone can be lucky, but not everyone can persevere. This is a good subject to talk about because of its easy to forget what it took to get where you are right now and you can easily slip back into mediocrity because you’re not doing the little things that will keep you at the top.
I remember when I first started out at my last firm for financial advising, I made a lot of insurance sales, and I hit my quota really fast, but then things suddenly dried up and I was struggling to find more clients. For my last four years, it’s been like a roller coaster, good times and bad times. When you start a business, you don’t want to focus on hitting home runs every once in a while, you want to focus on getting singles and keeping the bases constantly loaded. Don’t have empty bases because then you’ll be less likely to score.
Anyone can be lucky and hit a home run on their first attempt but to stay in the league for 20 years requires a different set of skills. It requires mental toughness, constantly making sure your skills are sharp, being a constant learner, and knowing how to work with others. If you get lucky, you might say that you don’t need to do those little things and then all of a sudden, every at-bat ends up in a strikeout.
You might have a really good presentation and that leads to some opportunities, then all of a sudden you get it in your mind that you don’t have to do little stuff or practice for future meetings. It takes discipline in order to do the little stuff when things are going well and stay complacent. One thing that I learned in the Marines is that complacency kills. When you’re in Iraq and it’s months six and you’ve every single day for the last six months, you really want to take easy but that’s when things can wrong and you can harm yourself because you took it easy. I didn’t have to go on any convoys or anything but I heard stories of how convoys got hit. I don’t want to harm myself or others with my complacency so I try my best to ensure I do the things that will keep the train moving. When you’re on a convoy, you can only be lucky for so long before it runs out.
There also companies that were big when I was a kid or artist that had their one hit, and are no longer around. It’s hard to stay to persevere. It requires us to stay focused on the future while living in the present. We might have something going really well for us now and it’s our cash cow. The key thing with a cash cow is that once there is no more grass to feed the cash cow, we end up having to slaughter the cow for one last meal and then we have nothing. You have to look at your future and ask yourself, is this what I have going to be required to have a successful future. It might be really uncomfortable to leave your cash cow because there will be a lot of uncertainty but you have to do it so you don’t starve. I guess it’s kind of like being on a boat and you see an island on in the future. You’re out of fuel so you can’t go anywhere and you only have food for a few more days. Do you stay on the boat and wait for someone to save you or do you swim to shore and start living off the land. If that is the case then you have to go swim because the island has more resources than what the boat has to offer but it’s going to be scary to swim to shore and then trying to figure out how to live off the island but that is what is necessary to help you stay alive.
You might have gotten lucky in getting a job but in ten years that job might disappear. You can do nothing with your life and just wait for the job to disappear or you can take an active role in your development and persevere with your life. The choice is yours, just make sure you’re making the right one. I left my old firm because I saw that the industry was changing. At my last firm, I was not allowed to create my own spreadsheets, write my own blogs, or do certain things on social media that I thought was ridiculous but it wasn’t my company. So I heard about the XY Financial Planning Network and discovered that this was how the future of financial planning was going to be done. So switched my life around and started something from scratch. I just got my first two clients after a month of struggling but I know I have to continue to do things that will help me stay in business. This will ensure that I’m not lucky and will persevere.
You might see someone who got lucky, but you just need to focus on what you can do. There are always going to be lucky people but they won’t get the enjoyment out of life like you will from putting in the hard work. Then once you surpass them, then life will seem even sweeter cause you earned it, it wasn’t given to you.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, anyone can be lucky but not everyone can persevere. Don’t rest on your laurels, you have to put in the hard work every day. You have to treat your life like this quote “Success is never owned, it’s only rented, and the rent is due every day.” If you can treat your life like this, then you will persevere in life and life a great life that’s filled with substance and not empty feelings.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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