Think on Things of Thanks

 

This week I'm taking a break from my normal blogs in observance of thanksgiving and my birthday. I turn 29 the day after thanksgiving this year, and I'm incredibly thankful for all those that are around me that lift me up, give me encouragement and give me advice. As of writing this my family is still  not quite at financial freedom but we are almost there. Its such a blessing to wake up each day and feel this sense of peace when you know you are on the right track. Sure there are still struggles and worries. For years people have said that we are incredibly lucky or blessed and that we better watch out cause those blessing may stop and then what will you do? They would say these things because the way in which we invested either or time or money would give us such a huge payoff that most people couldn't believe that we were able to achieve those levels of returns. 

At the time I didn't think what i was doing was all that special or different, I've always had the ability to see the value in the un-put-together puzzle and as i could see how each piece fit together i was able to do cool things and make a decent living. 

As its such a busy time for me this week I'm not going to go into great depth about all of these things but id like to share a few thoughts with you all about how I'm able to do this and hopefully inspire some of you all to incorporate some of these things into what you are doing. I imagine these abilities as individual personas that came about form different times of my life. I try to never forget who i was because each of those people had strengths. I think too many people try to forget about the people that they used to be when instead they should be learning from them and using their strengths. 

• The Child 

As a child i had a grand imagination, far better than i do today even though i fell like i have a great one for an adult. In business no imagination leads to a stale business that will eventually find itself with out any solutions to either their internal problems or those that need to be solved by their customers. Not only that its the truly imaginative people that are able to build entirely new industries and change how we view the world. If you want to grow this or get in touch with your inner child i would urge you to go to a local comic con. Find the merchandise of a childhood favorite cartoon and wear their T-shirt. Watch cartoons again (find the old ones, so far as a father, the new cartoons are garbage) Remember what it was that you loved to do as a child and spend time doing that. I think this is not only something that would benefit people in business but how many of us have children that would love for their mommy or daddy to play literally anything with them. I for one can not wait till my son and soon to be daughter, are old enough to play Dungeons and Dragons! 

• The Sculptor

A large part of my life was devoted to art. I tried my hand at most styles of art. My favorites were realism drawings in pencil and Sculpting. When you draw realism or sculpt probably more so than in any other of the types of art you learn that you have to look at your artwork from every angle. If you are bringing a new product to market or trying to create a new business you need to learn this skill. Take a step outside of yourself and look at the opportunity from all angles. Try to imagine being the customer using or hiring your services. What would the customer want to see or experience. I think this is why the "halo effect" is such a true concept. Who would you rather hire to hang crown molding in your formal dining room, the contractor that pulls up in a rusted truck and is smoking and covered in mud, or the clean cut guy that drives a clean car and doesn't look like he is going to make a mess. Its unfortunate because i know personally some of the best craftsmen are the former and there are a lot of the latter that wouldn't be able to sink a trim nail in no less than a dozen swings all the while bending the nail and then after a half dozen swings has to pull the nail out and put a new one in. But still the message rings true, When looking at investment take time to look at the end user, how are they going to feel about the thing, how will competitors feel about it? Try and view every opportunity from every angle and find its weaknesses and strengths. 

• The Student

I hated school, I dropped out of college after a couple of weeks into my first semester although i stuck around at the library of all places (*cough, cough* trying to pick up girls *cough, cough*) But something happened to me around 21 years old. I was introduced to a book on sales from Grant Cardone when i was selling cars. Through that I remembered something that i forgot i know when i was a kid. See I was a middle child and so i got to watch how my older sister handled certain things and how she was punished for doing certain things. I quickly figured out that i didn't have to make those same mistakes and that i could learn from her lessons as well without having to go through the pain. So when i started to read about sales and hear some of the lessons that Grant was teaching in his book i found this passion for learning that I never had from formal education. Since then i have become a student of other peoples lessons. I heard a great analogy a while back about this line of thought. If we as a human race didn't have the ability to learn form our lessons or share or knowledge we would still be running around the wild without fire to cook our food or warm ourselves. Its because we have these abilities that allow us to go farther each day and build upon the work of those that came before us. Some us may know that intrinsically but we still decide to forge our own path and try to reinvent the wheel each day instead of learn from other and build upon what they have already done. 

• The Suit

This is probably the most boring of my personas and probably the one that most everyone reading this has. Running a business means certain things, do your analysis, keep expenses low and profit high. I don't want to spend much time on this one. So ill leave it at that haha. (I'm being lazy!) I don't want to work hard its my birthday today so yeah be a business person if your going to be in business.

• The Believer

Call it Faith, Call it a belief in god or whatever you want. This part has to be the most important. Success without a reason is empty. I believe the reason I'm so successful is not because i believe in god or that i believe god will make successful. I believe god will always take care of me and provide for my family, i also believe that god wants us all to be successful and to have a lot of money but he wont just give it us. He nor anyone else is going to show up at your door and just hand you your dreams on a silver platter. You have to go out their and work for it. Any success that i have comes from him and is for him. It allows me to have a lot of free time that i get to use to be with my family, spend helping others, pouring into others, eventually we want to do mission trips and fund other missions. I trust god will give me the ability to help change the world and build his kingdom on this earth. In light of thanksgiving i want to end this simply with I am thankful that god has given me these abilities to do what i do and to be able to one day build what i believe i will be able to build for him. Have a happy thanksgiving everyone.