Personal development for entrepreneurs is different from general personal development. It's about finding what truly drives you specifically so you can apply it inside a business that needs your full energy. When you identify your true driver, business becomes easier because you're no longer running on discipline. You're running on genuine motivation that never runs out.
If you want to see massive results in your business, you cannot skip investing in your own personal development. In this episode, I break down why your own growth has to come first.
He shares the big difference between dabbling in personal development and going all-in on it as a high-performing growth-driven entrepreneur.
You'll also hear what motivates him above anything else. Getting clear on what drives you is a game-changer for your business; tune in to hear how you can start finding out what that is.
When you find your drive, you'll win more and you'll have a lot more fun in both business and in life.
In this Episode:
- Why I wasn't able to fully tap into my personal development training without adequate life experience
- What personal development really comes down to when you're in business
- Why the quality of your mentor doesn't matter as much as your personal journey
- My one true drive in life and business
- How personal development is different for high-growth CEOs
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Transcript:
Personal development seems to attract far more "small business people" and people who are searching for an inner drive to help them achieve more in life.
But when you're a businessperson, or an entrepreneur, or a CEO, personal development is completely different, and it can be summed up in one statement.
We need to discover what truly drives us in life.
How Did Personal Development Help Early in Business?
Early seminars and coaching programs had far more value than I could tap into at the time because I lacked the business experience to contextualize what I was learning. The frameworks were there but I couldn't fully apply them. Later, as I accumulated experience, those same frameworks suddenly clicked and accelerated my decisions dramatically. The investment pays off when you have enough business experience to contextualize what you're learning.
When I first started in business I read a ton of personal development books and went to personal development seminars. In fact, I remember one seminar that I literally had to put 3 credit cards together to afford the ticket. Not because it was such an expensive ticket (I think it was about $1,500 or $1900) but because I was just in that stage of my life where I hadn't figured out how to make money yet.
And after that seminar, I got into a personal development coaching program that gave me so much value. But at the time I was only able to really tap into a small portion of that value. Because I didn't have the world experience I needed to even understand how to get myself to keep moving forward.
The truth is, when you're a businessperson, or an entrepreneur, or a CEO, personal development is completely different and it can be summed up in one true statement.
What Does It Mean to Discover What Drives You as an Entrepreneur?
Look at patterns in your life before business started. What did you do quietly until you could reveal it fully formed? What accomplishments gave you the deepest satisfaction? Those patterns point to your core driver. For some founders it's their children. For others it's proving something to themselves or surprising the people they love. Your driver is usually already there. You just haven't named it yet.
It doesn't make a difference if you're the CEO of a large company, or owner of a million dollar, ten million dollar, twenty, thirty, fifty, hundred million dollar company.
...Or if you're a businessperson who fits somewhere in between, or maybe like I was back then you're struggling to break a million-dollar mark but you're an action taker and you know you'll scale big if you keep moving forward.
And I'm glad I "graduated" out of that phase of life but at every stage of business personal development comes down to this.
We need as business people to discover what truly, truly drives us as humans.
How Did You Eventually Break Through Early Struggles?
Success started with small wins that built into larger ones. As wins accumulated, all the personal development seminars, books, and coaching I'd absorbed finally made sense. The issue wasn't the quality of the teaching - it was that discovering what drives you is different for each person depending on their stage of life. No matter how good a coach is, that clarity requires lived experience first.
And that eluded me for many years. In fact, I spent the first decade of my business life struggling to make ends meet. I literally lived on credit cards meaning that I paid my credit cards with the balance from other credit cards, and then tried like hell to run a promotion in business that would bring in enough money for me to pay off that debt.
And some months were great, but most were less then I needed so I carried a credit card balance over and over for the first decade of my business life.
And, of course during that time especially towards the end of it - I had some small wins. And your success in anything you do (in life or in business) is built on small wins, turning into larger wins, and then turning into reaching your goals.
And after I began having some success, all of the personal development seminars, and personal development books, and personal development coaching that I had up to that point made sense.
Because unfortunately no matter how good of a teacher a personal development coach is. Figuring out what drives us is different for each of us depending on what stage of life we're at.
What Is Your Personal Driver in Building Businesses?
Surprising people. From a golf course job kept secret until I'd saved money, to building health clubs without telling my parents until they were profitable, to unveiling a fully written book - every step was driven by wanting to surprise and amaze. Every business, every major accomplishment was built on that desire to surprise people in a good way.
In my life now that I look back on it my true driver has always been surprising people.
It started as far back as my first hobby which was at a golf course carrying peoples golf bags. I never told my family about that until I had been doing it for several weeks and saved a little bit of money. Because I wanted to surprise them that I went out, got my own job and started to make some money.
Then fast forward several years I got into the health club industry and eventually built several clubs. But I didn't tell my parents until after I had built my first club and made it profitable in fact when I told them they didn't even believe I owned the company.
...And years later when I wrote my first book, I didn't tell anybody I was writing it. Then I unveiled it after it was fully written and printed and the first box of books was delivered to my doorstep that's when I did an unveil and showed it to my family.
At every step in my career I've been driven by wanting to surprise people.
Every business I've built, every major accomplishment in my life was driven by my desire to surprise people in a good way to amaze them to shock them.
What Happens When You Find Your Personal Drive?
Everything becomes easier. When fastest-growing CEOs find what motivates them beyond money and use it consciously - whether it's their children, surprising loved ones, building wealth for family, or changing their industry - they push through obstacles that stop most people. They don't just know they want to succeed. They know exactly what success means to them and use that clarity daily.
And that drive has helped me build nearly a dozen businesses, and one of my companies is a consulting firm where I work with a small handful of other companies who want to scale past the 8 figure mark.
And after working with some of the fastest growing companies and truly driven entrepreneurs, I can firmly tell you that every CEO, entrepreneur, or businessperson understands personal development, yet they understand it, and they live it, differently than most people do.
And when they figure out what truly drives them, and they use that in their life, everything becomes easier for them.
Some examples of what drives top CEOs and high growth entrepreneurs are:
- their children, their love of growing businesses, their desire to surprise those in their lives, their desire to build a personal net worth so their family never has to worry about money, or the desire to grow a company that helps the world.
There's a lot of things that drive us as entrepreneurs and when you find the one that currently motivates you to keep moving forward even during tough times, even when it doesn't look like you can reach that astronomically high target you set when you find your drive you'll win more and you have a lot more fun in both business and in life.
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