Investing in Yourself To Grow Your Business

You know that investing in different aspects of your business is key to growth, but what are you investing in yourself? In this episode, Chris breaks down why you can’t skip investing in your own personal development if you want to see massive results in your business.

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 Chris wasn’t able to fully tap into his 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
• Chris’s one true drive in life and business
• How personal development is different for high-growth CEOs

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• 4 Tips for Building an Online Community That Promotes Your Business Growth
• Position Yourself/Your Company as a Leader in Your Field
• Stressed vs Stretched: Super Productivity for High Growth Entrepreneurs

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 I First Started in Business

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.

We Need to Discover What Drives Us As Humans

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.

Trying to Make Ends Meet

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.

My True Driver: Surprising People

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.

The Benefit of Understanding What Drives You

And that drive has helped me build nearly a dozen businesses, four of which are eight figure companies, and one of my companies is a consulting firm where I work with a small handful of other companies and I help them to scale will past the 8 figure mark too.

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.