When I was younger, I was told that “character” is what you do when no one is watching. This snippet of advice was given with context so I understood it: I could choose to do the right thing, even if I didn’t get noticed for it.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve heard different versions of this and it’s been burned into my brain. How you carry yourself when nobody is around is who you really are. It’s impossible to keep a facade going forever. Eventually, the truth is revealed.

The strengthening of your character (in private) is something few of us probably think about. Yet, the wisest among us advise this regularly. And the in private part is important. If you’re just doing “character-building” exercises for people to see, you’re not building character, you’re showing off. That’s ego, and it’s dangerous.

So how does one “build” character, even when nobody is around see?

Here’s a few thoughts:

When was the last time something easy changed your life?

Conversely, challenges have probably changed your life multiple times over. How we react to challenges is the best indicator of our character. But if you’re rarely (or never) challenged, it’s hard to get to know yourself on that level.

I don’t want an easy life. An easy life, by definition, is one devoid of difficulty. If everything is easy, nothing would force me to stretch. I want to be challenged because challenge brings change. I want to keep growing, keep maturing, and keep refining myself. I want to top my most recent feat.

“…we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance…”
– Romans 5:3

Suffering is something most of us actively avoid. But if we never face hardship, we don’t grow. James, the brother of Jesus, said, “suffering produces perseverance.” Steel isn’t forged by laying iron in the sun for 30 minutes and hoping it gets hot enough to become malleable. It is intentionally heated to 3,000 degrees for three and half hours. Talk about suffering.

The same goes for our lives: suffering shows us what we’re capable of. Running a marathon taught me a lot about who I was. Forcing myself to write for 90 days did, too. And although the Redbox movie I watched last night was great, it didn’t have the same impact. A comfortable life isn’t the key to happiness.

Assess where you are. Think about the last time you were challenged and how it changed you. You need nights with a Redbox movie and some time to chill. But you need to fill the other space with things that mold you into the person you want to be. Find the furnace that will heat you to the temperature required and suffer as needed.

A Wish

Wanting to accomplish something, but never taking action towards it is not a goal. A goal without a plan is merely a wish. I have always preached this, and yesterday I took the time to sit down and do some planning.

I have been working on a marketing business since January. This marketing firm has already built a few websites and helped a few clients gain more customers through online and traditional marketing tactics. In a sense, I’m coaching small businesses about their marketing but I’m also performing services at the same time. 

Yesterday I blocked off an hour to plan this business out for the year. It’s been scaring me to death that it won’t work and that I’m not doing the correct thing with my life. But that’s just because I couldn’t see where I was headed with my eyes looking down.

The Goal

The first thing I did was pick up my eyes and picture where I wanted to be (financially) at the end of this year. This was my goal and I put that on the bottom of my whiteboard in my office aka living/dining room.

I put it at the bottom because that’s where I want to get to. At the top I put down my current clients and what I’ve made so far. This was my starting point.

The Plan

Finally, I connected the dots from the top (where I am today) to the bottom (where I want to be at the end of the year) to come up with a rough sketch of how I am going to get to my goal.

I have a few current clients already as well as a few prospects that I can count on for a small amount out of the gates. I counted that as “future income” that I don’t have to prospect for.

Next began the prospecting for new clients. By my calculations I need 15 new clients to work with (through website re/building and content marketing packages) in order to achieve my goal by the end of the year.

The four ideas I came up with for growth are listed below. I came to the conclusion that I will need a combination of all these ideas to get to my final goal of 15 new clients. If When I get all those clients in line my business will be where I want it for the short-term. The long-term still remains to be seen and planned thoroughly.

1. More of the same
   • Networking events
   • Personal outreach
2. Hire a Sales Person
   • Paid commission on new business they bring in
   • I have plenty of these in mind, even if they work part time
   • Whatever sales script I write, I can use myself
3. Hire a Designer
   • Never done this, I need to find some designers (possibly interns) that are looking to branch out
   • They must be familiar with WordPress
   • Makes the most sense for me to sell & them to design with my guidance
4. Use online marketing tactics
   • Drive customers to my new site and use an online sales funnel
   • Largest and most tedious project
   • Will require a little bit of work every day and will constantly be a WIP (work in progress)

The minute I walked away from this I felt relieved that I had a plan in place. Most of these thoughts were swirling around in my brain, but I had never put them ALL in one place. It was a relief to step back and see the big picture from far away and know that I could zoom on each individual piece when needed.

Speaking of which, I have a meeting with my first prospective sales person today 🙂

Do you have a goal without a plan? What’s stopping you from putting your thoughts together to form one?

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Leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your feedback on my business plan. 

Have a great day!

We all have tons of ideas and aspirations for greatness. Some of us achieve it, and some of us just flop around in the mud. But if we try, we go through this phase. It’s a challenge and it can crush many of us. But what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

Self-Doubt

Plain and simple. I am convinced that self-doubt is the single biggest killer of dreams known to man-kind. We begin to tell ourselves how much we suck. 

I can’t do it.
I’m not good enough.
I am not smart enough.
I don’t have those resources.
Nobody will show me what to do.
I do not have a background in that field.

And these start out as whispers in our heads, then we start to question ourselves.

Why am I doing this?
Isn’t there an easier way? (this one booms in my head every single day)
Who am I to blaze that path?
Do I like punishment or something?
Why am I ruffling feathers like this?
Are people noticing what this? Do they care?

Then we start to rationalize with these thoughts. We start to tip just a little bit in that direction of the self-doubt ever so slightly.

Maybe I’ll just take a break from working on it
If I don’t finish nobody will care (except me)
It doesn’t really matter if I accomplish this or not
I started this for stupid motivations anyway
I can live with the fact that I quit on this
People aren’t noticing this
Even worse, people are noticing & they have expectations now

That’s all I know though. I can’t tell you what comes next because this is where I’ve been able shut it down every time. Starting is hard. Shipping is even harder. We go through these phases and if we can’t turn that doubt into motivation it will get the best of us.

Find what motivates you and remember why you started in the first place. Remember that feeling you had when you took your first step towards that goal and let it fill you. Keep that motivation in front of you, today is not the day to give up on your goals!

If I knew there was no option for failure I wouldn’t even be writing this today, I would be hard at work. As you can tell I’m having a little self-doubt these days. Thanks for reading, I’m back in line and I’ve got work to do!

What are you struggling to finish? How has self-doubt struck you recently?

Have a great weekend!

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The Backstory

I wasn’t sure if I had anything to offer, but I wanted to help. I inquired about getting involved with the Alzheimer’s Association of SC last year after I did a walk to raise money. It was a simple walk and we raised around $1,500 as a team (Shout out to Katie, Ross, Trent, & Krystin for joining!) in the final 2 weeks leading up to the event.

But it wasn’t quite enough, for me at least. I had an itch to give more, but I wasn’t sure how. Today I went to my first committee meeting to start making a dent in the universe. I didn’t know what to expect and I wasn’t sure if I could offer much besides my presence, but I went anyway.

Lessons Learned

I won’t bore you with the details of the meeting, but I will share a few things that struck me during my time there. First off, it was amazing to see people willing to donate their time and efforts to this cause. The Alzheimer’s Association is amazing and this is what I choose to support, but there are countless other charities and organizations that are run my volunteers as well. Granted, Alz is a non-profit but 6 of the 8 attendees were volunteers! We hear so much about how terrible things are happening across the country in the news, and it was a wonderful breath of fresh air to see these people willing to give their time to this cause.

Second, I realized that so many of our past experiences will come in handy to us at some point or another. As I sat there wondering what I could offer, the head of the meeting spoke about the need for a marketing chair person that would help market The Walk in the city of Charleston via billboard, radio promos, social media, etc. I knew exactly why I was supposed to be there, and I’m looking forward to serving on the committee.

Bond, James Bond

For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about, think about a James Bond film. At the beginning of every Bond movie, 007 gets a bag of toys and a cool car that has all sorts of gadgets. You have no clue what he’ll use them for, or why he would ever need a watch that shoots a steel cutting laser out of it, but they always look fun. Then at some point in the movie, Bond is about to be killed off and he suddenly remembers that he has that bag of tricks. He begins to creatively use them to fight the bad guys and always seems to come out on top.

We all have a bag of tricks that we can use, we just need to be creative enough to know when and where they come in handy. I wasn’t sure how my marketing and sales background would be useful to these people that already seemed to be doing a great job of promoting The Walk. But after listening to their needs and thinking about my past experiences, I was able to find a match for my skills.

Questions – Where can this be done in the workplace? How can you use your skills to help another co-worker or another division of your company? How can you use your past experiences to help you solve current day problems?

Your Turn

I wrote this for 3 reasons:

1. I am excited about this and I wanted to tell the world
2. I wanted to share that anecdote about past experiences
3. I want you to get involved

I’m not pressuring you to join me, but if you would like to donate or hop on my team, you can follow this link to Alz.org and get involved. You can also read a brief story about why I’m getting involved and how to do so with me.

If you don’t want to get involved with this, I encourage you to get involved in something! Imagine if we all donated 1 hour of our week to a charity or to someone in need. How much better would if we were all just a little more self-less and a little less selfish?

Have a great day!

I’m a big advocate of goals. I use them, I teach them, and I encourage others to incorporate them. But as of recently, I’ve had some feedback from readers about giving up on your goals. Many of us will start on a journey towards a goal, and for some reason or another we have this urge to quit. At what point can we give ourselves permission to quit?

Many of you know me outside of the blog, you know I’m not a quitter. I’m not someone that just rolls over and gives up on anything I do. So I initially avoided this topic for a bit, until I realized I had a perfect story to help illustrate my point. There are times we need to quit and move on to bigger and better things.

The End of an Era

At the end of 2012 I was having some reservations about my work at the furniture company. Decisions were being made that I didn’t agree with and there seemed to be some sort of power struggle, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. I am an easy going person and I had been the bridge to mending a lot of communication issues in the past within the company. But something just didn’t seem right for a while.

Then there came the fateful night that I cracked. It was an argument over something on which I normally had a wealth of input. My opinion was silenced and I was told my point of view was not worth anything, so save my breath. I’d never had such a professional smack in the face. It was on that night late in January of 2013 that the first thought of quitting Atlantic Bedding and Furniture crossed my mind.

But how could I quit? I helped build this thing from the ground up? I poured my heart and soul into the company for over 6 years and helped recruit or hire over a 1/3 of the people that worked there. This was my company! I always treated it that way at least…

From that night (I slept about 3 hours over the next 36) until the day I received an email prompting my responsive resignation, I couldn’t ever shake that thought of quitting. I’d never given up, I’d never quit on something. I wrestled with that choice for many months, even after I sent in the resignation. 

Hindsight is always 20/20, and from this view I can clearly see that I made the right choice by quitting.

Real Reasons

We all have different reasons for quitting something. Mine was because I didn’t want to be in that environment, I knew it was toxic to me and I shouldn’t stay there. I didn’t know what was next, but I knew I had lots of opportunity. I had lots of connections and a great level of education mixed with experience, so the upside was there. I had to walk away from many goals that my life revolved around for years. 

Sometimes if a goal consumes your life you need to reevaluate whether or not it’s worth the sacrifice. I determined that all I was sacrificing was not worth it.

At other points I thought it was, and I don’t regret those, but I wouldn’t make the same choices today. I missed out on a lot of family time, friend time, and personal time while I worked towards my dreams, but I was ready and willing to make those sacrifices back then.

But not everyone can make a leap like that on their own, many times we have to be pushed. Some people believe that as one door opens, another one opens. Some people see the next door open even before the first door is finished closing.

Some people look to their spiritual side for direction in times like this. Prayer has always helped me through trying times like these. For others it may be meditation or talking with mentors.

Whatever your decision is, make sure to take your time before dropping a goal. Be sure to take your time and ask yourself if you can live without this thing or this accomplishment before you completely make the break.

Quitting Early & Quitting Often

Tim Ferriss and other entrepreneurs talk about quitting all the time. They say it’s a good thing.

I mostly agree with what they’re talking about. If you aren’t having fun or whatever you’re doing is not working, just quit it and move on. But where I’m fundamentally different than these people is the start of the process.

I talked at length about goal setting and how we should reflect on our past before making goals for the future. If we take the time to really think about what we want to do and set forth a plan for that next goal, there is a much smaller chance we’ll want to quit it. But if we haphazardly jump from goal to goal without really planning things out, we’ll definitely quit a lot of stuff before we are able to see it through.

Made-Up Reasons

Many of us start off towards our goals strong. We are enthusiastic, we are motivated, and we are focused. Then The Resistance sets in. The Resistance, as outlined by Steven Pressfield in The War of Art, is that voice in your head that says, “You’re not good enough! Who are you to accomplish that?” and if you aren’t motivated by your goals and the people around you, you’ll begin to believe it.

Some of us may not get that sort of voice talking to us, but maybe they get are overthrown by their Lizard Brain. Seth Godin describes the Lizard Brain as that urge inside of us to avoid the most important work. We’ll settle on cleaning the house instead of writing our novel (guess who does that one), we settle on answering emails instead of mentoring our new employee, or we’ll even convince ourselves that it’s too cold outside to train for that upcoming race.

If either of these pops up, we must shut them down. The Resistance and The Lizard Brain have stopped people in their tracks while well on their way to accomplishing some of their greatest works. When you recognize them creeping up, find that accountability partner I talked about and ask them to help you stay focused. Remind yourself of why you started, don’t give in! When you recognize it and acknowledge it, you are half-way to overcoming it.

Push Pause

Sometimes we are able to give up on our goals momentarily. Think about the college athletes that have gone back after years in the pros to finish their college degree. They just put their dream on pause and came back to it when they were ready.

I talked about pausing on projects a while back to clear your mind. Sometimes those pauses may take years or decades to sort themselves out. Sometimes we may come up on something that we’re truly unprepared for. Being unprepared and being fidgety a la The Resistance, is totally different. It is OK put that goal off to the side until you are more prepared to attack it.

Don’t be afraid to fail

I’ll wrap with this: Don’t be afraid to fail. Trav and I were talking about how proud we are of Epic Day even though we technically failed at making money. We put ourselves out there and we jumped at that goal of starting a company. No, we didn’t make it, but we sure learned a lot in the process.

You know what that means? I’ll be much more prepared the next time I’m ready to make that leap. I can’t tell you exactly when you should walk away from your goals, but I hope this has provided some good thinking points and an outsiders perspective for you.

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Have you ever given up on a goal? Were you filled with relief or regret? Leave me a comment below or chat with me on Twitter.

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Thanks for reading, have a great day!

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