In this episode, we discuss the importance of going towards success and not being passive about it.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning. 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 financial planning with self-development coaching.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how you should go where the opportunities are. Another favorite quote of mine is that success doesn’t come to you, you go towards it. So if you’re expecting success to come your way, you might be waiting for a long long time.
This is a major reason why I joined the Marines. I wanted my education to be paid for and I wanted to earn a paycheck and leadership skills. The Marines helped me grow up a lot and it was one of the greatest decisions that I made. I had to go through that difficult period but I came out of it a stronger person. If I didn’t decide to say yes to that opportunity, I don’t know where my life would have gone.
I don’t think I was ready to be a full-time college student right out of high school and I’m glad I took some time to discover myself. When I was in the Marines, I was lucky enough to be stationed in Hawaii and I was introduced to Latinos for the first time in my life that were my peers. I had one friend that was Mexican when I was growing up, but in the Marines, I had over 20 friends now that were Latino. It got me into my Spanish culture and I don’t think I would have gotten that same experience if I went to a school in Oregon.
This was an experience that I wasn’t expecting and I got introduced to reggaeton, which I love and I learned how to salsa, merengue, and bachata. I can only do the basic moves for those dance styles but I don’t think I would ever get exposed to those things if I didn’t go after opportunities.
I’m a big believer that you should go after opportunities because it will make your life a lot better in the future. For my dad, he is an immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico and came to the United States in the 70s to get more opportunities. You do what you have to do to get those opportunities and I benefited from them tremendously. Since I benefited from my dad seeking opportunities, I guess I wanted to do the same thing for me so I’m always prepared to take advantage of an opportunity.
I remember me and my ex-wife graduated from college during the great recession and she was offered a fellowship in DC. Since finding a job in Oregon was difficult, I urged her to take the fellowship, which ended with her getting a job in DC. So when I finished school a year later, I followed her to DC. Then I was exposed to so many more opportunities. I didn’t even realize what life could be like until I went to DC.
I remember going to receptions and galas my first week in DC and I was like whoa, this is how life can be. I had to go out and buy a bunch of suits and get business cards printed out. On a side note, business cards are pretty much useless, if you really want to connect with someone, get their information so you can follow-up because more people are really bad at following-up.
But in DC, I realized that I could become a financial planner. I was hanging around friends in DC and was talking about my 401k and how I was optimizing it. I asked my friends if there were doing similar things and they had no clue. Then I found out that in TSP, put were automatically put into a government bond fund that was not giving my friends the growth opportunities they needed to help them reach their financial goals. So then I decided to become a financial advisor.
So I decided to go through one company to become a financial advisor and was a financial planner through them for four years until I decided to start my own financial planning company through the XY Financial Planning Network. I wanted to work with more 20, 30, and 40 year olds because I was tired of seeing people near retirement who needed help in their younger days but the model with my previous company was restrictive with doing that but XY Financial Planning was made to handle the folks I wanted to target, so I decided to follow that opportunity.
I will always go after the opportunities because I know they will slingshot me into the future I want out of life. If you want to change in your life, you have to change as a person and a great way to change as a person is to go after opportunities. That opportunity might not work out for you but you can use it as a learning lesson to help you be better in the future.
If there is a book, podcast, YouTube Video, conference, or networking event that can provide me an opportunity and it fits my current agenda, then I will go after it. You don’t want to spread yourself so thin that you’re really not progressing your life and that can easily happen if you spend too much time with your preparation and not enough time on the implementation. So just be aware of overdoing it. You might have to fail a couple of times before you really understand what is required for your goals.
My next opportunity is to build up my grow with joe financial planning business and I will just chase opportunities that will help me in that area and I will ignore the other opportunities that fall outside that realm and get back to them when the time calls for it.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, success doesn’t come to you, you go towards it. So make sure you’re going after opportunities and if you have two opportunities that are basically the same in value, go for the opportunity that is more challenging or uncomfortable for you. That will ensure you will grow as a person and not stay stagnant.
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
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
