growNman
growNman
I am growNman 111 Embracing Business Wisdom: Aligning Passion and Purpose for Personal and Professional Success
Ever thought of life as a business? That's exactly what I did when managing my cigar lounge, and it turned out to be a goldmine of insights. Join me, JD, as I share how the small, consistent habits we nurture can lead to significant personal growth and professional success. Drawing from my journey, we question societal norms and the traditional education-to-career path, advocating instead for a life driven by passion and purpose. By adopting a mindset of continuous improvement and perseverance, much like the famed Mamba mentality, we can align our personal and professional lives for ultimate well-being and success.
Entrepreneurship is far from a get-rich-quick scheme, and those who thrive understand the power of hard work and resilience. This episode peels back the layers of starting and sustaining a successful business, revealing the necessity of long-term commitment and embracing failure as part of the growth process. We debunk myths and offer realistic insights for budding entrepreneurs, encouraging mentorship and a proactive approach to nurturing ventures. Celebrate small victories and personal growth with us, and find motivation to stay committed to your goals, whether in business or personal development.
What up, though, and welcome back to I'm Growing man. It's your man, jd, in the building. Happy New Year everybody. I wanted to jump on here and talk about daily habits. You are only good as the habits you practice, and I'm really excited I'm in my fourth year of a solid practice on an everyday basis. We're working on language, communication, health, practicing new ways to improve Like. I've been on this, and I guess it's the perfect time to talk about it. I don't know what people do every day, but I know every day I have pockets of time that I just work on improving, and I know that some time is going to show what I've been working on. But overall, what are you working on?
Speaker 1:You know, I hear everybody talking about entrepreneurship. Running a business is really difficult. A business is really difficult. That's why a lot of people work for other people, because it's a lot of things in running a business that will stretch a lot of people, and they don't know that they can be stretched that far. So the first business that everybody should be working on, that's themselves.
Speaker 1:Whether you know this, your life is a business, and if you're not taking care of your health your health includes what you eat and your daily activities as far as walking, being non-sedentary and I noticed that if you don't look at your life as a business, you won't take care of it, and some people have some bad businesses and can't say really it's any fault of their own, it's just the practices that they grew up on and they were never corrected. But if you're going to actually run a business, you should run your own business accordingly, because running a business is going to affect your health in so many different ways and if you're not good physically and mentally, it's going to cause you to hit a wall and quit and all of the work that you put into it will be pointless because you didn't complete the process. So those of you that are thinking about a business or working on one or have one, don't quit. You're supposed to see any and every way your business supposed to feel, so that it doesn't come close to that, unless you have a mentor that can walk you step by step. Your experience is going to determine how successful you will be and if you get to those moments where you can problem solve and reduce the amount of headache, mess, for lack of better words reduce these things from occurring, your business will improve. But you have to know nobody's born a great business person or business owner. Their business experience comes from mentors, mentorship and experience. And if you don't have that it's very difficult.
Speaker 1:You have to just do it on purpose, because a lot of time I remember I had a business, had a couple of businesses and you know of course I didn't have the information I have now, but it required a lot of time that in my mind it was going to happen immediately, I thought, because I was a great guy, I had a good idea, I had the capital to get it going. I thought it was just going to be an easy transition and although I was successful in experience, I didn't know how much work it had to take for it to be where I wanted it to be and, being in education, they didn't allow me to this business I had. The business I'm talking about is a cigar lounge. It didn't really complement what I was doing on an everyday basis because that required time, a lot of my evenings every evening, a lot of entertaining, adult beverages, of course, cigars, and that's a lot of wear and tear on the body.
Speaker 1:But if you're going to do a business, my biggest recommendation is to work on yours, work on your business, your life. Because once that, once that improve, you remove, you remove so many blind spots. Because we're taught you know, do good in school so you can go to college or go to a trade school, you find a job and you can make good money. We're not taught that. Hey, maybe we should work on being really good in whatever we want to do and the money will come. I think there's a. If you get this degree or you go here, or if you do this, you'll get this. But at the Like, whatever you think you want, whoever has it, they had daily habits that allowed them to either go full time on it or have it in the background, and that's what I really want for most people.
Speaker 1:Because I was talking to my wife a few days ago. We were just talking about how our kids are going to be able to go to college and do something that they want, not because it's a job that can make good money. It was something that they're interested in. And when I was growing up, or when we were growing up, it was like you go to college, you know, be a lawyer, be a doctor, you know, be all of these things that can make money, but it wasn't because you loved it.
Speaker 1:They say you know you should find something you love. It's so easy to say that, but in order to find something you love, you have to be exposed to a lot of things and you have to have the parents that's willing to allow you to kind of float that way. And if you don't, you're going to be distracted by what job pays the most and what am I good in so that I can get paid to do what I'm good in. And once you get there, it's not like you continue to get better, it's like a level of comfort. So any and every one of you who's getting the opportunity to give me some time, whatever you do understand you have to have daily habits to improve. I had on a few episodes ago when I was talking about Kobe Bryant.
Speaker 1:If you're talking about the Mamba mentality, I try to introduce that to my students. The more minutes you accumulate in math, the better you become in math. But you got to put the work in and a lot of times you don't put the work in. So you don't have this expectation of failure. Failure is a lot lower if you don't put work in it. You know, like I didn't try anyway, so why don't you try? First of all, you should put, if any, effort into you, because the better you creates a different output that you don't know you can do because you haven't done it before. Because if you truly knew what you could do, do you think you'll be where you are?
Speaker 1:And that is my biggest thing about these habits that I've adopted on a daily basis, taking care of your health through the foods you put in your body and your physical activity. You should always be learning something. Also. I think learning creates a motivation in you to find more answers so that you can enjoy the privilege of life. I was just telling my wife yesterday there was, like I don't know, 100,000 sperm cells fighting for one egg. We're already an exception when we're born, but when you're alive, you try to become the exception. But how do you become the exception when you're alive? Through effort and the information you believe in. And if your information is limiting you from growing, you need new information, and learning has been probably one of the most beneficial practices I could have ever.
Speaker 1:I always like to learn, but I wasn't doing it on purpose. Like every single day, you should be learning something, something in your area that you love, because at some point you're going to accumulate so many hours of information in that area that you separate yourself from a group of people and then, if you keep working on it, you become an expert in this area where people come to you for this information because they didn't put the work in that you've put in. But everybody has that ability. You just have to want to. If you're not learning, you're kind of taking up space and you'll become a liability in your own life by not taking care of your business.
Speaker 1:Your environment is really important also. I don't know what you do in your daytime job. I don't know how you live when you get home or how many hours of sleep you get, but all of that plays a significant role in what you're trying to create. I know you hear people say you know I work all the time and they're rich and all of this. I don't even think people want that life. They want the glam and glitter of it all, but that work ethic to not enjoy the things that could be overwhelming to like. I see rich people not happy and I think they're not happy because they don't understand how to take care of their own life either. You know they've been taking care of it in a particular way and they have so many more distractions than a regular person, and it's very difficult to move through life if you succumb to distractions. That's not in the best interest of your household. So your daily routine should be composed of habits that will protect you, keep you motivated and at the same time, while you're working on yourself, it's creating something in the background. It's almost like a program on your computer you're on something else, but in the background it's still working. That's what you're doing and every time you put minutes into it it just gets better and better.
Speaker 1:Um me being in education, like my 22nd year working on communication, and my relationship has been my program that's working in the background. I know that at some point that the fruits of this labor will will help me and my family do well. But it's coming through an effort that I didn't know about and I don't think a lot of people know about it. I can honestly say that I've been giving my best effort 90 to 95 percent of the time, and only reason I'm not giving 100 percent because you can always do more in something. But I do know I have a routine that keeps me consistent.
Speaker 1:I would like the household I'm creating for my kids, because my wife and I are constantly conversing about ways to not give them things, but to show them how to accomplish things. When we're not there, we can say, hey, you need to put this effort in, you need to work here. We got to let them know you're going to feel this way and it's okay, it's only right, it's only natural. But if you have to do that on your own because your parents didn't have those tools, that's a different type of journey, and I feel like, since I had that journey growing up, my job is to break the ceiling that my parents had created for me, but breaking that ceiling so that my kids can actually go to college for reasons that they want to, not to get a good job or to make a certain amount of money, because when you're good at something, people are going to pay you anyway. And if you don't know how to get that level of good, you will always work for somebody. And I'm not saying working for people is bad, but you can't expect to retire from working for people either until you can, because a lot of times when you're working for other people, you're living off of that money.
Speaker 1:My son was like my daughter's godmother's parents when they were younger. They saved a whole paycheck for like 20 years. They lived off one paycheck. And my son was like why don't we do that? And it was too late now because we live a particular lifestyle. So in order for us to be able to really enjoy life, we have to have things working in the background. Because we've invested so much time in these other things, that kind of it kind of locked us in. But what I can say is that I'm working on becoming a better educator so that this can change my salary at some point. At some point I probably will become a consultant to help people increase math scores and math participation, will become a consultant to help people increase math scores and math participation. But I have to put the work in and show people, hey, this guy is worth it. And then when I do get that salary increase, I can use that money and put it in different places so that I don't have to worry about the day-to-day functioning of a paycheck.
Speaker 1:A lot of times the biggest problem in living is thinking you're supposed to live a certain type of way and through my routine to my habits, I've learned other people's mistakes and what they did, and I'm trying to curve that so that that doesn't happen to me, so that our kids will have this information well before they even get their first job. And when I say that, I mean like when they graduate from college. They could live off a certain amount of money and just keep stacking and then they'll have a routine in their finances that is always working in the background and whatever they're working on is their love anyway. So if we can set up a routine of habits and you do it every single day, every month, three months, quarterly, half a year, to the end of the year, you got to check in with yourself how many days did I do with this? And until you are doing it every single day, that's when you're going to see how can I find more time to help develop this creation that I didn't even know I could create?
Speaker 1:And, before I go, those of you that are starting new businesses if you're not doing this in five years, why are we supporting you? Like, a lot of people want to have businesses so they can make this money, but if you're not here in five years, it was a pointless business unless you can sell it and make it worth your while. A lot of people get mad because you're not supporting new businesses. Well, they think it's a get rich quick scene, and it's not. It takes work and there's very few companies that can just take off because they got a great idea. Majority of us are going to have to work, and I say work I mean like learn why it's failing, learn how it's not going to fail again and learn how it's going to help other people and it becomes your, your baby. You can handle. That is the reason why people go work for people, because they don't want that part of the life, of that freedom. That freedom takes away a certain amount of you to get there, and a lot of people are not willing to get this because they don't believe they can get there. Like I said, if you don't have a mentor or you don't go through the experience, there's no way that you can be successful in creating a business or having a successful business.
Speaker 1:Again, I want to say Happy New Year. I hope you guys use these, these minutes that I'm giving you as a way of nurturing whatever you're trying to create, because you deserve it. Y'all made today better than yesterday. Don't worry about anything you can't control. Ga-t-a Get after that action or that action will get after you. Be great on purpose.